“Hey, doll,” said a rough tenor voice next to her. “You look like you’re having a good time.”
She hated this. Making connection, making small talk, getting a glimpse inside someone she’d never see again. She understood the vampires who kept menageries of sheep: humans no one would miss. Menageries reduced the risk of being found out, of having to go hunting, of feeding from strangers, and they served as a sort of crèche from which new vampires were born. After a while, the sheep could be made to forget who they had been, and most of them learned to love their vampire, who slowly killed them. Maybe that had been the problem. Elyna hadn’t been a sheep for long enough to learn to love the monsters. Sure as God made little fishies, she couldn’t be made to keep humans as sheep just to save herself from a little risk and distaste.
“I am now,” she said to the man sitting next to her.
He told her his name was Hal, and she had no trouble coaxing him out into the dark outside the club despite the gold ring on his finger. He had no qualms about following her around the back to a small, dark space of privacy that had made her finally determine that this was the club where she would hunt. Hal would have hesitated to follow a man, but she was half his weight and a foot shorter: he didn’t find her threatening.
He laughed when she nuzzled his neck.
When she finished feeding and blurring his memory, she eased him down on the ground. Crouched beside him, one knee on the ground to brace herself against his weight, she felt them.
Vampires.
Elyna moved as fast as she could into the little bit of half-alley trap, no bigger than ten feet by twenty, then froze against the outside wall as flat as she could, thinking, No one here, no one here. Power flickered over her and she felt the drain touch her faintly. An hour was the longest she’d ever held this magic to her, and it had left her weak and violently hungry.
She heard their footsteps stop when they spotted her victim. It was dark here, but vampires can see in the dark.
“Not from our seethe,” said the woman, her vowels a little rich with the same accent that had colored Elyna’s Polish mother’s voice.
“None of ours would feed from anyone in Colbert’s favorite club,” agreed the man. “He’s not been here more than a few minutes.”
They did a meticulous search of her hiding place. Elyna stood with the stillness of the dead, all of her attention focused on her high-heeled raspberry sandals—not the easiest thing to do when deadly enemies are less than a handspan away. Vampires can feel people who look at them too hard or pay too close attention to them. It means survival in a world that would destroy them if possible.
After far too long the female vampire turned to her comrade. “Not here anymore. Damn. I could have sworn I saw something move in here, just before we found this guy.”
“I’ve heard some of the old ones can fly,” said the second vampire.
“Don’t be stupider than you have to be,” the woman said. “If a vampire that old and powerful had come to town, Colbert would know it. He’ll find this one, too. Time to go inside and let him know.”
Chicago was huge, but that wouldn’t save Elyna, not once he knew she was there.
“Life is what you do next,” she whispered to herself as soon as the other vampires had left. It was one of Jack’s favorite sayings. She walked quickly toward the L. She’d left her car at her condo because it was hard to make a quick getaway in a parking garage when monsters were after you.
Safely on the train, she shivered and tried not to look at the other passengers—in short, acting just like everyone else. She got off one stop early and walked through alleys and side streets until she made it home.
Home.
She locked the door behind her and sat down on the floor with her back to it. Vampires could not cross the threshold of a home—unless it was their home, which was why she had been able to get in to kill Jack all those years ago. Thresholds were made of life and love—all those things that turn a dwelling place into a home. She hoped that her threshold would hold them out.
But even if it did, it would not be enough. Once Colbert knew where she lived, he had only to wait until she left to feed. She was under no illusions. If he knew she was here, it was only a matter of time until he caught her: her death warrant was signed. Her only escape was to leave.
She could do that. Find some place that had no seethes. They were out there; vampires were not so common as fae or the weres. But it would mean leaving Jack again.
Jack was probably not here anyway.
She looked through the living room entranceway and stared out the window, where the sun was just beginning to lighten the sky. She had a third choice. Perhaps it would be enough penance for her crime if she died here, too. Popular knowledge was that vampires had no souls. Popular knowledge also said that ghosts were not souls of the dead, just leftover bits and pieces that remembered what they had been once. Maybe if she died here, her leftover bits could find Jack’s leftover bits as well.
Gold touched the edges of the rooftops across the road from her and washed over the now-matching windows in her front room. She smiled and took one last deep breath as the pain from the sunlight reached her at last.
She had to close her eyes against the light.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said. “I love you.”
Because her eyes were closed, she didn’t see the living room blackout curtains snap shut—just heard them the instant before her body died for the day.
She awoke in a crumpled heap in front of the door. The skin on her face was tight from the sunburn, but the bathroom mirror assured her that the curtains had shut before the sun had done much damage.
Staring at her wide-eyed reflection in the mirror, she said, “Jack?”
He didn’t answer, not then.
But when she and Peter were deciding which of several designs were closest to her original cabinets, a stray breeze fingered through the pages of a catalog they’d set aside and left it opened to a sleek modern style in hickory. She liked those, she thought, pulling the catalog in front of her. But she was trying to recreate her old home, not build a new one.
Maybe she could do both.
“What do you think of this one?” she asked Peter.
“Not very vintage,” he told her. “But they would look fine with the countertops you picked out. Good wood goes with almost anything.”
A few nights later she finished the book she’d been reading to Jack and replaced it in the bookshelf. The next night there was a book sitting on her chair, ready for her to begin: an Ellery Queen mystery.
The next evening, Jack rearranged the cardboard cutouts that Peter had made to let Elyna see how her kitchen would come together. She put them back as she’d had them, but he was relentless. He never moved them while she was in the kitchen, but if she left for more than a few minutes they were back the way he wanted them.
“And you called me stubborn,” she sputtered at him finally, standing in the empty room. “I’m a vampire, Jack. I don’t care where the stove is. Why should you?”
Something fluttered lightly on her lips, like a butterfly’s kiss. She froze. “Jack?”
But there was no further sign that she wasn’t alone in the room. She touched her lips with light fingers.
Peter rolled his eyes when she told him that she’d changed her mind on the kitchen layout. Frankie just laughed, a great big booming laugh that filled the air.
“Hah,” he said. “Told Peter it wasn’t natural the way you just let him dictate your kitchen. Never was a woman yet who let a man arrange her kitchen.”