by Kristi Cook
Aidan had disappeared several times since learning of the attacks—at Mrs. Girard’s request, I think—going to Manhattan to see if he came across any vampires who’d gone rogue. Each time, he’d returned to Winterhaven as mystified as ever.
Apparently there was a pretty well-established community of vamps living in New York City—a coven, of sorts—and they knew nothing; they had seen nothing out of the ordinary. There were no newly turned vampires, no strangers walking among them. They were inclined to believe that it was a mortal committing the acts, an impostor.
The greater the mystery grew, the more restless I became. There was this deep, seething need growing inside me, and it scared me. My Sâbbat tendencies? Maybe, but I didn’t want Aidan to know that they were stirring, if that was what was happening.
I shut the screen as a freshly scrubbed Kate walked back in, looking fiercely determined.
Why did Jack have to go and screw everything up? I knew with certainty that our group would never be the same again.
12 ~ Blast from the Past
I scrunched down lower in the seat, pressing my knees against the cracked green vinyl in front of me. Between the bus’s noxious fumes and the blurred view outside the dusty window, I was starting to get queasy.
Beside me, Aidan looked entirely unaffected. “Jack hasn’t said anything to you about Kate?” I asked him. “Seriously?”
Aidan shook his head. “I told you, we don’t talk about that kind of stuff.”
So Jack breaks up with his longtime girlfriend, totally out of the blue, and doesn’t even mention it to his friends?
“Hey, you feeling okay?” Aidan asked, his forehead creased with worry. “You’re starting to look a little green.”
“I just wish we’d hurry up and get there.” I let out a sigh. “I swear, I just don’t understand your half of the species. What do you guys talk about? If personal things are totally off limits, I mean.”
“Hey,” Tyler said, his head popping up from the seat in front of me, “no raggin’ on dudes. We’ve got you outnumbered.”
“And surrounded,” came Josh’s voice beside him. “Man, how much farther?” he groaned. “Dr. Andrulis! Are we there yet?”
“Almost,” Dr. Andrulis yelled back from the seat behind the driver.
Tyler was still peering over the seat at me, a scowl on his face. “You look awful. You’re not gonna blow chunks, are you?”
“Go away,” I said feebly. “Aidan, make him go away.”
“Aw, c’mon, don’t sic the boyfriend on me.”
Aidan made a low noise in the back of his throat. “Vi, tell your little friend to turn around. He’s starting to get on my nerves.”
“Hey, man, you’re a mind reader, right?” Tyler drawled. “Why don’t you read mine right now.”
Several seconds passed in silence—I guessed Aidan was doing exactly that. His eyes narrowed. “Right back at you, man.”
“Here we go again,” I muttered, even though I knew it was really just for show. They liked each other well enough. At least, I was pretty sure they did.
The bus lurched to a stop. I glanced out the window across the aisle and saw the looming facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Finally.
Dr. Andrulis stood in the aisle, his gloved hands gripping the seat backs on either side of him. “Okay, folks, listen up. I want you in groups of four—check in with me on your way off the bus and let me know who you’re with. Take the list I’ve given you, and make sure you’ve got something to write with. We’ve got four hours, plenty of time. There are twenty-five paintings on the list; make sure you find them all. Jot down the basic information and then spend some time examining each one.
“You’re going to have to pick one from the list for your research project, so make a note of the ones that interest you. Back on the bus by two p.m., no excuses. Okay, people, I think that’s it.”
“You with us?” Tyler asked.
Aidan nodded. “Sure, why not? C’mon, Vi.” He reached for my hand and helped me up.
I stood, swaying slightly on my feet. “God, I hate buses. Why couldn’t we have taken the train?”
Minutes later, we were gathered in the museum’s massive lobby, waiting for Dr. Andrulis to return with our little metal admission tags. Joshua had grabbed a map and was already cross-referencing the list we’d been given.
“Hey, do y’all mind if we take a quick trip through the Egyptian stuff first?” I asked. “I know it’s not part of the assignment, but it’s my favorite exhibit.”
Joshua looked up from his mapping quest. “Sure. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“I’m cool with it,” Tyler said with a shrug. “As long as the boyfriend doesn’t mind.”
I whacked him on the arm with my notebook. “Shut up, dork.”
“You’re just pissy because I kicked your pretty little ass at practice yesterday.”
“Only because my shoulder’s bothering me,” I shot back. My old rotator cuff injury had been acting up lately, probably because I’d been training so hard for our first big tournament.
With a smirk, Tyler wagged his head. “Always got an excuse.”
“Whatever,” I murmured, reaching up to rub the shoulder in question. Sophie had checked it out this morning and said there was some serious inflammation in the joint. Time to break out the meds.
Dr. Andrulis returned with our tags, and we clipped them to our shirts. “Have fun, kiddos,” he said with a wave.
I wondered if those ever-present gloves of his were going to come off today. I could just imagine him reaching out to touch works of art whenever the guards had their backs turned. I knew his gift could be a major pain—if he wasn’t wearing gloves, that is. But how cool would it be to get inside an artist’s mind, to actually see and feel and hear what they were experiencing while creating a masterpiece?
It was definitely better than my gift.
“Hey, are we going to stand here all day?” Tyler asked. “Where’s this Egyptian stuff you want to see, Violet?”
“Follow me,” I said, leading the way.
Fifteen minutes later we stood in front of the Temple of Dendur, easily the most spectacular sight the museum offered. On the far side of a rectangular pool of water, the tan-colored sandstone structure stood framed behind a towering doorway, illuminated by rays of sunlight that streamed in through a slanted wall of glass on our right.
I heard Tyler’s low whistle of appreciation.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” I said with a smile, leading the way around the pool, toward the temple.
“Pretty incredible,” he agreed. “We can actually go inside?”
I nodded. “Yep. A little bit, at least.”
Joshua tapped the list he carried clipped to a notebook. “C’mon, let’s take a peek, and then we’ve got to get going. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
Strangely, the little temple was mostly empty of visitors when we approached it. Joshua and Tyler headed toward the columned entrance on the left side of the porch; Aidan and I went right, examining the carvings etched into stone so long ago.
“I think it’s some sort of tribute to Isis,” I said.
“Something like that,” Aidan agreed. “Hey, look at this.” He took a step farther in, pointing to a line of figures at hip level. “What does that look like to you?”
I squinted, trying to make out the details. “It looks like a woman holding something—a stick maybe.” I followed the line of figures. The next showed the woman raising the stick—which I now noticed had a sharpened end—over her head, aimed toward the male figure beside her. Toward his heart, actually. “Oh my God, you don’t think that’s—”
“You guys ready to go?” Joshua interrupted behind us.
Aidan nodded. “We’ll be right there.”
Mercifully, Joshua and Tyler moved away, toward the reclining sphinxlike figure at the temple’s side.
“Were there vampires back then?” I whispered, still staring at the strangely familiar imag
e.
“Of course. Remember I told you about the Eldest, Isa? She’s Egyptian, born during the reign of Amenhotep IV. Or so she claims.”
“Then it’s possible there were also Sâbbats,” I mused.
Aidan shook his head. “They wouldn’t have been called that, not that far back in time. It’s an eastern European term, probably from the Middle Ages.”
“So they were called something else,” I said with a shrug. My gaze lingered on the carving of the woman. I felt a kinship with her, a link to the past. I knew exactly how she felt, stake raised, poised to strike.
The hatred, the terror—all intertwined, sharpening your focus, making the rest of the world fall away as every cell in your body honed in on the target.
The vampire’s heart.
Aidan reached for my hand. “Hey, you okay?”
“I’m just … remembering.”
He drew me closer, his face just inches from mine. “What you did that day was incredibly courageous,” he said, his voice low, his gaze intense. “You, my love, are strong and brave and fierce. I have no idea what I did to deserve you, but I’m eternally grateful that you came into my life, Sâbbat or not.”
“Are you two done whispering sweet nothings over there?” Tyler called out, loud enough for half the exhibition hall to hear. “C’mon, let’s go.”
He was lucky I didn’t have my stake with me. If I had, I might have been tempted to use it on him. At the very least, I could have whacked him upside the head with it.
An hour and a half later, we sat around a rectangular table in the noisy museum café, finishing up lunch.
“Okay, pretty much everything else we need to find should be here in this gallery.” Joshua pointed to a lavender section of the map labeled 19TH- AND EARLY 20TH-CENTURY EUROPEAN PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE. “Second floor.”
Aidan nodded. “I know where it is—all my favorites are there.” The paintings from his time, I realized. Of course they would be his favorites.
“Let’s go, then.” Tyler stood, picking up the cellophane wrapper from his sandwich and tossing it into a trash can.
I threw away what was left of my salad and fell into step beside Aidan.
We’d already found what we needed to see in the American Wing, so we hurried back through and up a flight of stairs, then past a bunch of European paintings we’d already explored as well.
“A Van Gogh, a Degas, a couple of Monets,” Joshua was saying, ticking off the remaining paintings on our list. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
I checked my watch—we still had an hour and a half, so we were good. My feet, however, were not. I glanced down at the cute silver flats I’d worn and wished that I’d opted for my running shoes instead.
“We’re almost there,” Aidan said, hurrying his step. “It’s just past this temporary exhibition area.”
Which seemed endless, I realized.
Behind us, Joshua had stopped and was staring up at a framed photograph on the wall. “Look at this,” he called out. “It’s an early photograph—1895, it says.” He took several steps to the right, where a framed painting depicted the exact same scene. “Pretty cool, huh?”
I took the map and checked the listing for temporary exhibitions on the second floor. “Photography and late impressionism,” I read out loud.
Fascinated, I moved from one pair to the next. I’d never seen photographs this old. It was like peeking back in time, back to Aidan’s time.
He stood silently beside me as I gazed up at a photograph of two women in voluminous skirts with bustles, their blouses buttoned up to their throats. Sisters, I mused, noting their resemblance, and then moved on to look at the accompanying painting.
“Ho-ly shit!” came Tyler’s voice from somewhere around the corner. “Violet, you’ve got to come see this!”
“What?” I asked, hurrying toward his voice. “It can’t possibly be that exciting.”
“Oh yeah, it is.”
I turned the corner and found him staring up at one of the larger photographs on the wall. It was a nude, I realized. Even from halfway across the gallery space I could see the bare breasts.
“Oh, give me a break,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What are you, twelve years old? You didn’t get this excited in the sculpture garden—”
I stopped short, sucking in my breath. The picture … oh my God!
“She looks just like you!” Tyler said, putting words to my thoughts.
Not again.
I stepped closer, examining the photograph as my heart thudded against my ribs. It looked like a dance studio, with a wooden barre on one wall opposite a long row of mirrors.
In the middle of the open, airy space stood a woman—and okay, she wasn’t totally nude, thank God. She was wearing some sort of tulle tutu-looking thing that came to her knees. Her back was to the camera, but her face and entire body were visible in the mirrors, bare boobs and all.
“And here, look at this.” He was pointing to the bottom right corner of the frame, where a tall guy with golden blond hair stood leaning against the wall, his face in profile. Though he was mostly hidden in shadows, everything about him was eerily familiar.
My gaze flew to the cardboard description tacked to the wall between the photograph and the accompanying painting, and I flinched. OPERA DANCER IN LONDON, 1892, it said, and beneath that the artist’s name—Guillaume Fournier.
I quickly did the mental math. Aidan was born in 1875. That would have made him, what? Seventeen in 1892. It was all falling into place. An opera dancer in London, one who looked just like me, her blond-haired lover looking on while she was photographed. He was seventeen when he met Isabel, still seventeen when he was turned. This must have been just before—
“What the hell?” Joshua said, stepping up beside me.
“Yeah, Vi, put some clothes on,” Tyler teased.
I saw Joshua’s gaze move lower, toward the boy in the corner. His eyes narrowed perceptibly. “Is that …?” Because he knew, I realized. Tyler was totally in the dark, but Joshua would know that it was entirely possible.
I swallowed hard, looking at the painting now. It was pretty much exactly the same as the photograph, except the boy in the corner was gone. Allowed to watch protectively while she was photographed, but not vital to the actual work of art.
My stomach lurched uncomfortably, the salad I’d just eaten threating to make a reappearance. I had to do something, I realized—say something before Tyler realized that this was freaking me out way more than it should.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, okay. She looks like me; I get it. Can we move on?”
Tyler turned to face me, his eyes wide. “She looks just like you.”
“Nah,” Joshua said, shaking his head. “I mean, there’s a resemblance, I guess, but that’s all. See, her mouth is different and … well … no offense, Violet, but this chick’s tits are bigger.”
I wanted to kiss him. Clearly he knew something was up, and he was covering for me.
“Hey, no offense taken,” I said with a shrug.
“Where’d you guys go?” Aidan called out.
“In here!” Tyler yelled back. “You gotta come see this.”
No.
But it was too late. Aidan was there, right behind me. I turned in time to see his stunned expression before he shuttered it, replacing it with a look of nonchalance.
“That’s it?” he asked, his voice deceptively smooth. “You’re all worked up over a bit of nudity? I think you need to get out more, Bennett.”
Tyler raked a hand through his hair. “Dude, you are not going to pretend you don’t see it, too. C’mon, she looks just like her.”
Aidan just shrugged.
Joshua started flipping through the list again, looking bored. “It’s not even full frontal,” he muttered. “We’ve still got another six paintings to find—we should get moving.”
Tyler stood there, openmouthed. I knew he’d seen it—that shock of recognition on Aidan’s face before he’d wiped it cle
an. For a moment there, Aidan had looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
Because he had seen a ghost.
It’s you, isn’t it? I asked him in my head. There in the corner of the photograph. Watching her.
His eyes met mine, and he nodded. I’d completely forgotten about it. I had no idea it would ever be shown in public, much less somewhere like this.
I knew it was entirely unreasonable that I should be jealous, but sometimes your head and your heart don’t exactly agree. Oh, man … I felt sick. I took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, willing my racing heart to slow.
“Josh is right,” I said coolly. “We’re wasting time.” Without a backward glance, I turned and walked away.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?” Aidan said, sliding into the scabbed seat beside me. We were the last ones to board the bus, taking the very last row of seats, away from everyone else. “C’mon, Vi, you can’t be mad.”
I let out my breath in a rush. “I’m not mad.”
“Are you sure? Because you’re acting like you are. Ever since we saw that picture—”
“How do you think I feel?” I snapped, shaking my head in frustration. “For once, put yourself in my shoes. Imagine that picture was me instead, and the guy looking on was my ex-boyfriend. You know, watching me cavort around naked. How would you feel?”
“You never mentioned an ex-boyfriend.”
“You never asked,” I shot back.
“And besides, she wasn’t naked. Not from the waist down, at least.”
Was he really that obtuse? “You’re being a dick.”
“Am I?” He reached up to brush my cheek with the back of one hand. “I’m just trying to understand—”
“Understand what? Why I don’t like to imagine you with her?”
“My God, Vi, it was over a hundred years ago. I was a different person then.”
“You looked the same, except for the clothes,” I said stubbornly. “I saw you.”
He tipped his head back against the seat, looking tired. Defeated. “What can I do, Violet? How can I possibly make it up to you? I can’t erase my past. My mortal past,” he corrected. “None of it was even worth remembering.”