Madeline swallowed and looked away, feeling oddly embarrassed for gawking. She supposed constantly being on the move, constantly pushing himself kept him in shape. And what a lovely shape. Oh my.
“I think I’ll take the couch,” she said.
Noah appeared at the crack in the door. “No way! You get the bed.”
She shook her head. “You’ve done so much for me, paid for this place, even, and I would just be too racked with guilt if you slept on the couch.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she added quickly, “I insist.”
He shook his head hopelessly and gave a little smile. “Okay.” Then he turned away to resume getting ready for bed.
Madeline sighed and looked down at the couch, forcing her body to cool down. Parts of her ached for Noah, and she told those parts to cool it. Even though they’d been through a lot together, she barely even knew him.
As she took the cushions off the couch and pulled out the hideaway bed, Noah appeared from the bedroom. “Ready to go brush our teeth?”
Madeline started. “Out there? Again? Where that thing is?”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I think I’d rather be irresponsible and not brush my teeth tonight. Damn. Why couldn’t they make these cabins with bathrooms?”
“Too cheap?”
“Can’t I just use a cup and some water from your canteen?”
Noah relented. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll do the same.”
They brushed their teeth in silence, Noah doling out water from his Nalgene bottle, and Madeline just glad to stay indoors, away from the creature.
“Madeline,” he said when she was finished brushing, “help me catch the creature.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “What?” Her gut sank.
“Help me catch him. With your gift and my knowledge, we could stop him. I can feel it.”
She shook her head, her gut wrenching at the thought. “No. I’m just a college student. I’m no vigilante.”
“But how can you ignore your gift like that? Especially after you already caught one killer?”
“My gift?” she spat. “It’s no goddamn gift. It’s not some knitted handbag my grandmother gave me. It’s made my life hell. You think I wanted to see those terrible things the Sickle Moon Killer did to those men?” She threw her toothbrush and the little tube of toothpaste into Noah’s backpack and stalked away. If that thing weren’t out there, she would have stormed out of the cabin right then.
Fear. Plain old mind-numbing fear swept over her.
“Madeline,” he said. “I know you’re hurting. I know it’s been hard. I’m just saying that this is your chance to turn that ability around, make it work for you.”
She exhaled sharply, turning to look at him. “This is exactly what I don’t want. What I came out here to avoid. Don’t ask me to do this. That thing almost killed me! You can’t expect me to go up against it!”
He shook his head. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I asked too soon.”
“Too soon?” she raised her voice again. “No, please don’t ask me again. I’m sorry, Noah, but I just can’t. I came out here to try to scrape together a semblance of a normal life. Now my life is in danger and frankly… I’m terrified.”
He stared at her, then his eyes narrowed, and he went into the bedroom, leaving Madeline outside with her ghosts of Ellie and the Sickle Moon Killer. Before he shut the door, he said quietly, “I can see you’re terrified. But if you could just think about it-I can take you to his latest hideout, a cabin near here. You could touch his belongings.”
Madeline felt so opposed to the idea that she was shaking her head before he even finished.
“Please,” he said. “Think about it.”
Then he shut the door between them.
With Noah breathing softly in the bedroom, Madeline lay in the main room, unable to sleep. Why had she insisted on taking the foldout bed? Her face still felt flushed in anger at his request. She’d never escape this cursed ability. For a while she’d felt almost like a normal person with Noah. Now her “gift” loomed between them, just like every other relationship she’d tried to have.
Her mind wouldn’t rest, kept sweeping over the story he’d told her.
Noah was over two hundred years old.
She thought of the old journal she’d found in his backpack. At the time, she’d never dreamed it was his journal, just some keepsake he’d picked up on his journeys. The temptation to peek inside now was overwhelming. She glanced over at his backpack, which still sat on one of the chairs. But she couldn’t invade his privacy like that.
Throwing a worn, yellow blanket aside, a blanket she suspected had been living unwashed on that couch for nigh on thirty years and had probably developed its own rudimentary sense of logic and arithmetic, she crept to Noah’s bedroom.
“Noah?” she whispered when she got there.
He stirred.
“Noah?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry to wake you.”
“No problem.”
“It’s just I…” She faltered.
From the light filtering in from the main room, she could just make out his shadowed form on the bed. The sheets draped over his body, and he propped himself up on one elbow.
“Your journal… is it a record of hunting the creature?”
He nodded. “A spotty record. I’m not very good at journaling. When I first began, I wrote almost every day. Now I write once a decade if I’m lucky. Two hundred years, and I never had to buy a second book.” He smiled.
She felt uncomfortable, nosy. “I know this is a terrible thing to ask, but I was curious to look at it. Just to get a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”
“Hmmm… well… I guess that would be all right. Just don’t pay much attention to the whole ‘girl in every city’ theme. And that barmaid in France? It was just a fling.”
Madeline began to doubt if she wanted to read the thing after all.
“And the herd of goats in Greece was really more of a roll in the hay. Heh.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I’m kidding. There was no barmaid. No girl in every city. I may look as dashing as Captain Kirk, but I don’t have a gorgeous alien lover on every planet. Not even on this planet.” He stared at her from the shadows, a thin slice of light falling across half of his face. “But suddenly I’m not opposed to the thought of being with someone again…”
Their eyes locked, and she smiled.
“The journal is in my backpack. Have at it.”
She could think of two things at that moment she’d like to have at but opted for the journal. It was a little less daunting and would give a clearer idea of the other thing if she read it.
He winked devilishly at her, and she turned away with difficulty, intent on at least making it to the backpack. When she reached inside and her fingers closed around the diary, though, a great sadness swept over her, the same as on the mountain.
She returned to the sofa, climbed under the nearly sentient yellow blanket, and began to read.
July 14, 1763
Mountains above Vienna
I feel that I should keep a record of my tribulations so that, if I am found dead, and someone else takes up the cause, they will at least know something of the creature which I pursue relentlessly, and will be better armed with information in order to stop it.
I find it too painful to relate the details of how I came to be on this desolate mountain trail, weary from exertion, following a killer. Perhaps later I will be able to write about it. But suffice it to say that Stefan, this thing, this terror, killed my beloved, and I will stop at nothing until he is destroyed.