by Eva Alton
“Followed by mine,” I pointed out.
“That would be a shame. I like the way it stands on your shoulders.”
I snorted bitterly, then I took a cautious step toward him, holding his gaze. “Let’s just keep our heads in place, shall we?”
“I NEED TO FIND MARK before he leaves for Costa Rica with the girls,” I said, swallowing hard. “He wants to leave them there indefinitely with his girlfriend. Just so I can’t be with them. It’s absurd.”
“Allow me to go with you,” he said unexpectedly, offering his hand. I stared at him, still unsure about his intentions.
“Is this a trick?” I asked, dying to hold him, but afraid to be deceived.
“No tricks. Just some... friendly help.”
“Friendly help with or without memory wiping?” I squinted with mistrust.
“Definitely without.” He smirked. “At least for tonight.”
“Fair enough. Can you drive?” I asked.
“To some extent,” he said, with a half-smile.
“Good. Wait here.”
MAY WAS LESS THAN ENTHUSIASTIC to lend me her shiny new white pickup, and she would have been even less if she had known about the two glasses of champagne I had soaked up that evening and the remote date of my last driving experience.
She dropped her cigarette and made me sit at the wheel, putting her head through the window with an utterly worried expression.
“Will you manage?” she said, her knuckles white against the open window.
“Everything under control,” I lied, and pressed the gas so ridiculously hard that the engine stalled. “I need to get acquainted with this model, that’s all. How do I change gear, by the way?”
May looked at me in horror. “It’s an automatic, for God’s sake. Where on earth did you learn to drive?”
“Actually, it was in Germany,” I said with a grin. “I learned with a stick shift. They have more pedals, you know?”
I didn’t mention I had never tried again ever since.
My poor neighbor waved at me from the sidewalk as I drove away, her face twisted with panic as I fumbled with the control panel to turn on the headlights.
I stopped briefly in front of my house and waited for the passenger door to open.
Clarence sat down next to me and smiled, just the way he used to do before everything went wrong. “Where exactly are we going?”
“To kick Mark’s ass,” I said, pressing the gas as I headed toward the highway.
“I think I’m going to enjoy this trip,” he said, and his ivory fangs shone under the street lights.
PHILADELPHIA WAS STILL hours away, and my eyes were starting to droop after two nights of nearly no sleep. The built-in GPS showed our destination was more than a hundred miles away, and even the dubiously helpful vampire sitting in the passenger seat―and his entertaining remarks―weren’t enough to keep me alert any longer.
“I need you to take the wheel,” I told him, scanning the road for a place to pull over. The lanes had started to become blurry, to the point that I wasn’t sure whether I could see three or four. Clarence nodded obligingly, and we exchanged seats at a gas station.
“You can move the seat backwards, but you probably know that, don’t you?” I asked, watching him struggle with his knees against the wheel.
“Certainly,” he said unconvincingly, raising the seat so much that his head bumped against the roof of the car.
“Clarence, I don’t want to sound snarky or anything, but... um... were there any cars when you were born?” I asked, adjusting my seatbelt as tightly as possible.
“That’s entirely immaterial.” He sounded offended, but he was turning the wheel left and right with the engine off. I pressed the start button for him, starting to feel concerned.
“Okay... you have driven a car before, haven’t you?” I asked nervously. We merged back onto the highway with a couple of rough jolts, and I thanked all known Gods and Goddesses for our lane being empty.
“This is easy as pie, my dear, just relax.” He almost crashed into a speed limit sign as he spoke. “I see people driving cars all the time.”
“You see them?” I said, twisting my hands as a truck honked wildly at us, flashing all its lights in anger. “I’m not sure that’s enough. Maybe we should just stop and sleep somewhere?”
He turned toward me, affronted, and I pushed his face back toward the road. “What’s the point in engaging a vampire if you don’t allow him to do things for you at night?” The way he said it, it could have meant just about anything. “Come on, everything will be fine. Didn’t you say we were in a hurry?” He tried to squeeze my palm, but I swiftly placed his hand back on the wheel.
The white pickup sped up, swerving all over the road, and I said all prayers known to man in at least three different languages. I might be a poor driver, but Clarence was hands down the worst chauffeur the world had ever seen. Still, there was a chance Mark and the children might leave for the airport the very next morning, and once they landed in Costa Rica, the prospects of finding them again would be much slimmer.
“Do you have a plan?” Clarence asked. “What are you going to do once we get there?”
“I’m not sure. First, I’ll try to talk to Mark. If it doesn’t work, I’ll do whatever it takes to make them miss that flight.”
“I hate to be a doomsayer, but it doesn’t sound very well thought-out to me.”
The car almost went off at a bend of the road―an occurrence I’d had thought impossible on a highway―and I yelped so loud that Clarence released the wheel to cover his ears.
“Are you trying to crash the car on purpose just to get rid of me, like Elizabeth wanted?” I shouted, steering the wheel with my left hand to get the vehicle back on track.
“Of course not, I just had a lapse. Just close your eyes and take a nap, will you?” Clarence’s eyes were fixed ahead and shimmered with a mesmerizing red glow of excitement. He was like a kid playing bumper cars, and I would have sworn he was having the time of his life. “Let me take care of this for you, lovely Alba.”
“I’d love to, but I’m not an immortal, in case you forgot,” I said, wrapping my fingers around the handlebar above the door like it was a lifeline. I shut my eyes to block out the traffic. “May I ask who your driving instructor was? Because he or she sucks.”
He pondered before he answered. “Well... you, I suppose?” he said with an innocent smile.
Someone overtook us from the right side: Clarence had managed to meander onto the left lane while my eyes were closed and was happily traveling in it at snail’s pace.
Oh my goodness.
I was just about to die.
Chapter 34
Alba
4:30 AM.
Still alive.
Still not detained by the highway patrol.
A wide boulevard flanked by regal-looking rows of gigantic sugar maples announced our arrival to one of the fanciest suburbs of Philadelphia, where my parents-in-law had built their extravagant family villa a couple of decades ago. Mark’s father, an architect, had died in the nineties right after finishing his masterpiece, but his wife had lived in that house until her recent passing, taking good care not to change one single thing in the elegant residence. Currently, the house was unoccupied, while Mark tried to gather the courage to sell it against his deceased mother’s last wishes.
Clarence slowed down the vehicle, and I sighed as we left the highway behind, thankful I had lived through the bumpy ride. To his defense, he had gotten slightly better after a couple of hours of practice, which had somehow diminished my stress levels.
The boulevard was nearly empty at that hour, and I determined it might be safe to finally release the handlebar above the door. I rubbed my poor fingers, which had become stiff after clutching a plastic handle for an hour, and I let out a little yawn. Clarence stole a glance in my direction, and the corners of his mouth curved in an affectionate smile. Being able to drive for the first time in his long life had put hi
m in a fantastic mood, but I was sure his cheerfulness would vanish as soon as we took time to discuss a few important issues which had remained untouched during our ride―namely, the situation with Elizabeth and my concerns about whatever had happened between him and Julia on the eve of 1962.
My intention was to ask him on the way, but I had ended up being too busy surviving.
“Should I turn right or go straight?” Clarence asked, as we neared an intersection.
“Just keep straight,” I said, suppressing yet another yawn and trying to remember where the house was. “It must be just a mile or so until―”
A deafening explosion interrupted me mid-sentence, as the airbags burst on our faces.
Something struck the right side of my lower back, and I screamed. The white pickup started to whirl around itself in the middle of the junction.
As the car spun, it crashed into a traffic pole, then a road sign. When it finally stopped, the abrupt silence was deafening.
The driver who had hit us, no question a drunkard in a small red convertible who had overseen the stop sign on his side, managed to abscond the scene even before our vehicle stopped spinning.
I felt my face and my back, afraid of what I might find. To my surprise, I was mostly unharmed and I could move all my limbs. I was just really sore. There was no blood, and nothing felt broken. May’s car, on the other hand, hadn’t come off so lightly.
“Are you all right?” Clarence asked, his knuckles white against the wheel. When I nodded, he exhaled and let his head fall forward, muttering something I couldn’t make out.
“Try to restart the car,” I said, pointing at the right button. He pressed it, but the car was dead. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.” I tried to open my door, just to find it stuck. “I’ll have to go out through yours.” I leaned over his knees and reached for the handle on the other side. “Well, at least this one works.”
He rose and offered a hand to help me out. Once outside the vehicle, we both stood on the asphalt, holding hands in the half-darkness as we stared in dismay at the remains of May’s new car. The rear-left side was all bumpy and scratched, and had the convertible hit us in a slightly different angle, it would have been my body and not the car chassis which would have cushioned the crash. Luckily enough, the other driver had brushed by, instead of causing a full-blown T-Bone collision against my door. After that, the traffic light pole had smashed the front end of the pickup, crumpling the hood like it was made of cardboard. What had been a shiny new car five minutes ago had turned into a bunch of scrap metal in a matter of seconds.
“May is going to kill me,” I gasped, raking a hand through my hair.
“Tell her to get in line,” Clarence said with a weak smile, then shook his head and sighed with his eyes closed. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny.”
“It’s actually a tiny bit funny,” I conceded, squeezing his hand. “In a depressing kind of way.”
“No. I shouldn’t have insisted on driving. It was a terrible idea, and it could have ended much worse. I’m really, really sorry this happened.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. It really wasn’t. “The house is not far, maybe a half an hour walk.” I pointed at a closed mall on the other side of the road. “Follow me. There’s a shortcut.”
May’s car had landed on the curbside, so I just grabbed my handbag from the back seat, locked the doors and left the pickup where it had stalled. We would deal with it later. I really didn’t feel like talking to the police once again, and I was certain Clarence shared the sentiment.
The air grew relatively chillier as dawn got closer, and Clarence put his arm around my shoulders, letting his cloak cover both of us. Suddenly, that Dracula disguise of his didn’t seem so out of place anymore.
“I’m starting to like this thing,” I said, tugging at the velvety cloak as we passed by the deserted main entrance of the small shopping mall.
“Maybe one day you’ll be as fond of its owner, too,” he said with a faint simper.
“I don’t think finding reasons to be fond of him is the issue here,” I answered slowly, examining his burgundy eyes for clues.
Clarence stopped walking and leaned back in surprise, his shoulder brushing the glass facade beside us. “No?” he asked. “Then why did you run away and tell Elizabeth not to expect you back? Wasn’t it because of me?”
Memories of Julia’s diary appeared clearly in my mind’s eye, together with Lillian and Alonso’s hurtful words. As much as doubts were eating up my insides, I couldn’t gather the nerve to ask him. Not in that moment, and not with Mark awaiting me at the end of that road.
I shook my head.
“It was something else,” I said, ducking my head to sneak out of his cloak, where I was starting to feel too confined.
“I wish you would tell me what,” he said, crossing his arms in frustration as he let me go. “It would make things so much easier to address.”
I bit my lips, hesitating. Even if he denied everything, would I believe him? Julia was dead, and the truth had died with her.
“Not now,” I said, and grabbing his forearm, I started to walk again. “Today is my birthday, and I’ve had enough crap already.”
When I turned around to study his reaction, I noticed two reflections on the glass facade beside us. I stopped abruptly and realized he was staring at the glass, too. Our eyes met with a gasp of recognition.
“This can’t be true,” he whispered, tapping over his image on the glass wall.
Astonished, I squeezed his hand, then I released it.
His reflection disappeared immediately, like it had never been there.
“Do it again,” he said, extending his arm for me to take it.
As soon as I seized him, the reflection appeared again.
“Magic,” he muttered with incredulity.
“You said mirrors can’t reflect a creature with no soul,” I said, reciting his own words. “I suppose this must prove something.”
“I have never seen anything like this,” he moved in front of the glass pane, studying his face with bewilderment. “It’s been so long... this is...” his voice broke. He looked away and remained silent for a few seconds.
“Looks like we have a miracle going on here,” I said, gaping at him. It was like I could turn his reflection on and off just with my touch. I had no idea what that might mean, but it was indeed unexpected.
“You are the miracle, my Isolde,” he said, and then he embraced me: the shy, distant embrace of someone who doesn’t wish to be rejected once again.
I tightened his arms around my waist, giving him tacit permission to hug me properly, and his eyes burned into mine as their inner fire stirred. The electricity between us was irresistible, mightier than any fears or doubts I might have, and it made me forget about Julia, Mark, Elizabeth, and all the things and people which had been keeping me awake for the past few days.
I threw my arms around his neck, my lips seeking his in desperation and craving the coolness of his. My body had missed the sheer strength of his sturdy embrace so badly. I could feel his chilly breath on the side of my neck, and it made me shiver, as I twisted and got lost in the present, with no awareness of what had been or what would still come to pass.
“Happy birthday,” he murmured, leaning backwards to look at me, “my sorceress.”
The first ray of sun burst behind the buildings and flashed on the large glass surface beside us. Clarence’s irises flickered, a mixture of dismay and desperation boiling inside them, and his fingers slid away from my back, accompanied by a soft rumble.
A gray cloud of mist appeared where he had stood, and just like that, he was gone.
Chapter 35
Alba
The black raven darted into the air, then hovered furiously, rising and falling with evident frustration. I winced when his sharp claws landed on my shoulder, but he settled on the thin fabric of my blouse without leaving one single scratch. Clarence rubbed his soft feathered head soundlessly against my
cheek, leaving there a chaste, unfulfilled kiss which left us both lingering in the instant before dawn.
After a while, he took off again, flying over the glass buildings. I felt awfully alone and loathed the shameless, untimely sunrise.
Hopefully, Mark would be dealt with by sunset.
I kept walking, followed closely by Clarence from the air, until the manicured lawns of Eastern Hemlock Road appeared in front of me. By the time I reached the Andersson house, I was so tired that my whole body felt numb. Mark and the children would still be sleeping, which might give me the advantage of surprise. I was ready to tape my body to the hood of Mark’s car if I had to, or run after them to the airport and make a scene at the check-in counter. Only one thing was for sure: after the things he had accused me of, I wasn’t going to let him get away with his evil plan.
The Andersson house had an imposing double stairway on the front side, edged by a pearly stone balustrade. It led from the first-floor balcony of the mansion to the ground floor, drawing an inverted U shape on the facade where the main entrance was located. The house stood out among the rest, all white marble and gray steel surrounded by majestic landscaping: the dream home of a talented designer who had died too soon to enjoy it. A man just as gifted as his son―such a shame that Mark Andersson Jr. had focused that innate intelligence of his on trying to ruin me.
The sleek silhouette of Mark’s black sedan peeked out behind a carport, encircled by tall rosebushes. I let out a sigh of relief: they hadn’t left yet.
I imagined Katie and Iris tucked in their little beds, holding a teddy bear and breathing peacefully, unaware that mommy was right outside their window. Had anyone read them a bedtime story for the last two nights? Was Mark’s new girlfriend nice to them? And what was worse: what had Mark told them about me during my absence?