Almost Everything

by Tate Hallaway

  “Ha-ha,” I texted back. None of my friends could deal with the fact that he and I were just theater buddies. Heck, I still thought of him as Thompson, despite his constant insistence that I call him Matt.

  Plus, I think everyone, “Matt” included, really liked the idea of the star-crossed lovers: the jock and the class weirdo. I wasn’t completely opposed to the idea—Thompson had that he-man appeal of the high school hockey star—but, it didn’t seem right that I couldn’t talk to him about the most important stuff in my life. What kind of relationship could we really have? It was not as if I could tell him about my dad being a vampire or that my mom was the Queen of Witches.

  Bea wrote back. “Come on. It would be fun. T. would totally freak.”

  Even though no one ever used Real Magic or brought along their vampire butler, the potluck did bring out some of our stranger members. There were all sorts of people in the Outer Circle, for instance, that Thompson would consider “woo-woo.” Even Nikolai’s mom, who was an actual Romany, aka Gypsy, might give Thompson a heart attack.

  Nikolai.

  If I went to the potluck, it would be almost impossible to avoid my ex; as both an initiated witch and a vampire hunter, he was part of the inner Inner Circle. I wanted to ask Bea if she’d heard whether Nik was bringing anyone, but part of me didn’t want to know. What could I say? I still wasn’t over him. It didn’t help that his band kept getting more and more radio time. I couldn’t listen to Cities 97 without hearing about whatever venue Ingress would be playing at next.

  I looked at the last text he’d sent me. I had it saved in my in-box. He’d sent it last week. “Thinking of u.” I hadn’t replied, because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with that. I thought about him all the time too, but we were supposed to be trying to move on, weren’t we?

  “What r u wearing?” Bea asked.

  “Not sure I’m going,” I typed.

  My thumb had barely pressed Send when her response chirped. “What? U can’t not go!”

  “What about Nik?” I wrote.

  “Forget him. Bring T. He’ll be jealous.”

  Well, that was the best argument for bringing Thompson I’d heard so far. I was kind of curious if Nikolai would care if I showed up with another boy, and it wasn’t as if I could bring Elias—too much sun and too many witches. “Maybe.”

  I almost dropped the phone when it rang. The display said it was Bea. I answered. “You must really want me to go.”

  “You have to. I can’t go by myself.”

  “Aren’t you going to bring Malcolm?” Bea had recently started dating another one of our theater pals. Actually, he’d hounded her for months until she finally caved in.

  “I can’t really gossip with him.” She had the same problem with Malcolm that I did with Thompson. He was normal. She couldn’t talk to him about all the witchy and vampire stuff.

  Which reminded me, I totally wanted to get her take on Luis. “Hey, guess what? I got a visit from another vampire prince today.”

  “Seriously?”

  I told her all about what happened, including the near betrothal.

  “Wow,” she said. “Who knew vampires were so liberal about gay marriage?”

  I’d been thinking about that aspect, because my brain really went tilt if I thought about Elias kissing Captain Creepy. “It’s not marriage,” I said. “They have another word for it. The whole thing seems so political. Luis even said love had nothing to do with it.”

  “Do you really think Luis is a dhampyr?”

  “I don’t know. I kind of think he is, because he reacted so strongly to the word but didn’t deny it. I guess I feel like if he wasn’t and it was such an awful thing to be, he’d just say something, you know?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I suppose it is kind of … different.”

  That was an understatement. Silence hung in the air between us for a moment, and I remembered how horrified everyone had been when my true nature had come out at my non-Initiation. For a while, I hadn’t thought my friendship with Bea would survive the revelation. And we’ve been tight since kindergarten.

  “Anyway, promise me you’ll come tomorrow?” she asked. “If you bring Thompson, I’ll bring Malcolm.”

  For a moment I could still feel all those judging, disgusted eyes on me. “I have to think about it.”

  “Well, don’t think too hard. My mom’s bringing her famous pastries.”

  “Oh, well, that changes everything,” I said in all seriousness. I would never miss Bea’s mom’s food. Bea’s mom was a failed Initiate like me, but she made the best treats the coven ever tasted. “I’ll be there.”

  We spent a few more minutes talking about the latest reality show Bea had been following and other inconsequential things. Bea wouldn’t let me off the phone, however, until I absolutely solemnly swore I’d be going to the potluck tomorrow after Festival tryouts.

  Elias didn’t come home until after three a.m. I’d been waiting for him, just to make sure things were okay, and passed the time streaming old episodes of Firefly on Netflix. I heard the screen door snap shut downstairs and looked at the alarm clock by my bed. He’d certainly had a long brood. I was considering going down to talk to him, when glass shattered in the kitchen.

  I jumped to my feet and raced down to see what had happened. Of course, the downstairs was completely dark; Elias didn’t need the lights. I flipped the switch. The harsh overhead light flicked on.

  Elias lay, sprawled facedown on the linoleum. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but there was no obvious pool of blood. The decorative bowl that usually sat on the table was in tiny pieces. Oranges, apples, and kiwi littered the floor.

  Heedless of the broken porcelain, I knelt beside him. “Elias!”

  There was no response.

  Chapter Three

  Elias’s face was always pale, but I thought there was something particularly sickly in the stark contrast of his dark curls against his brow. I shook his shoulder anxiously. “Elias!”

  He groaned.

  I nearly fell over from relief. He was alive, at least.

  Behind me, Mom shuffled into the doorway in slippers. A sleepy mutter of, “What’s going on?” turned into an ear-piercing shriek.

  The noise made Elias’s eyelids flutter—another good sign, I hoped.

  “I think he’s alive,” I told her.

  “Think?” Her hand was over her heart. She wore her plain white nightshirt. She started to step into the kitchen but stopped when she saw the broken bowl. “What happened?”

  “I have no idea.” I couldn’t imagine that he’d been hungry for a kiwi, since he hardly ever ate human food that wasn’t set in front of him, so the only thing I could think of was that he’d passed out. On the way down, he must have hit the table and caused the fruit bowl to drop somehow. “Maybe it was the wards.”

  “He wouldn’t have made it this far,” she insisted. But when I shot her a doubting look, she added, “Listen—I don’t always like him, but I accept that he lives here. I didn’t make them lethal to Elias. I marked him as friend.”

  If friend was more painful than family, it still might have hurt him. “What else could be wrong with him?”

  “I have no idea,” Mom said. “I wish we could call a doctor.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more, but could you imagine? What would a doctor make of his fangs? But, he was mostly human. Maybe some of the same sorts of things would apply. But what? One of the only things I remembered from CPR class was that you weren’t supposed to move people if you didn’t know what was wrong with them. But, it didn’t seem right to leave him facedown. He might be hiding some major injury. “Maybe we could roll him over? See if there’s something obvious?”

  Mom must not have heard the question in my words, because she got down on her knees right away to help me try to heave him onto his back. He was heavy, but the two of us got him over quickly. I pushed the bigger bits of bowl out of the way with my forearm before we gently set his head down.<
br />
  Mom put her cheek to his lips. “I can’t feel much breath,” she said. We gave each other worried looks, but she added the same thing I’d been thinking, “Not that that means anything. Does he normally breathe?”

  “He does, but I don’t know that he has to, you know?”

  She nodded, taking his wrist into her hand. “Of course, there’s no pulse that I can detect. But I can barely find my own without help.” She sat back on her heels. “We might have to call Victor.”

  Victor Kirov was Nikolai’s dad, and the local vampire hunter. “Mom! You can’t be serious.”

  “He’s the only one of us who has ever seen a vampire die. He might have a clue as to what’s wrong with Elias.”

  He was also the sort who would just stake Elias out of spite. “You’d have to reveal that Elias is living here. Wouldn’t that hurt your reputation?”

  “I informed the council immediately after he moved in,” she sniffed.

  “You did?” I couldn’t imagine it. My mother had admitted to letting a vampire stay under our roof freely? There was more to this, I thought, but I couldn’t cope with it right now. I returned my attention to Elias.

  I began frantically looking for some clue as to what was wrong with him. I’d assumed an attack of some kind, but there were no cuts or blood or even a bruise anywhere on his body that I could detect. His T-shirt was black and untorn, and there were no obvious scuff marks on his jeans.

  I was beginning to think he hadn’t been in a fight, after all.

  What could be wrong with him?

  Mom glanced over to where our landline telephone sat in the butler’s pantry, gathering dust. “I’m going to call Victor.”

  “It’s not a good idea, Mom.”

  We were spared further useless argument by Elias’s sudden, deep intake of breath. His eyes popped open.

  His eyes darted about, taking in the scene and our worried expressions. Then, after a moment, he laid his head back and shut his eyes again, almost as if too embarrassed to look at us.

  “Are you okay?” we demanded in unison.

  “I’m fine,” he said unconvincingly in a hoarse voice. He calmly folded his hands on his chest and opened his eyes to stare at the speckled plaster of the ceiling. “Strong wards, Amelia.”

  It was the cause of his distress I was expecting, but something rang false. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the resigned way he reacted when he awoke made me ask: “This has totally happened before, hasn’t it?” I shifted so that my face was in his field of vision. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  With a grunt, he pulled himself up into a sitting position. He leaned heavily on shaking arms. “As I said, I’m fine.”

  “And you ended up on the floor … ?” my mom asked.

  “I slipped.”

  I pressed him: “And, what, passed out? Because that’s perfectly normal.”

  He didn’t answer.

  I watched his muscles tremble until I couldn’t take it anymore. I put my arm around his shoulder to support him. I’d never seen Elias like this. “You’re shaking.”

  “Stop lying to us,” Mom said, taking his hand. Together we helped him into the nearest kitchen chair. “Something’s wrong, Elias. Tell us what it is. Maybe we can help you.”

  “It’s your wards.”

  “They’re not that strong,” my mother insisted. “Not for a healthy vampire marked as a friend. Ana got through.”

  I was a bit shocked to be lumped in with “healthy vampires,” but I was too worried about Elias at the moment to protest. “I’ll agree they’re strong,” I said, giving Mom a bit of the stink eye. “But you passed out, Elias. That’s bad.”

  He sat with his head in his hands. Mom stood beside him. I stayed on my spot on the floor but pulled my legs out into a more comfortable position. His face was obscured by his hands, but I could tell he was struggling with something. Finally, he lifted his head.

  “I’m starving,” he said.

  For a second, I didn’t get it and nearly offered to pop a frozen pizza into the oven; then the true meaning hit me. He wasn’t talking about a craving for a midnight snack. He meant blood.

  Mom let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, then go get … something. I don’t approve, but I can’t have you starving to death either. Just do your business somewhere far away from here.”

  Mom didn’t really get the full implications either.

  Elias looked to me, and it was my turn to shift my gaze away. “It’s bigger than that, Mom,” I explained, feigning a sudden interest in collecting shards of porcelain. “He’s talking about the hunt.”

  There was a reason that “bloodsuckers” was a pejorative term for vampires. They didn’t survive on blood. Blood was really important; don’t get me wrong. I knew from personal experience that the first taste awakened all our special superpowers and could revive us if we were injured, but, believe it or not, we couldn’t live on it—not forever. The thing that truly sustained vampires was … well, it was death—magical, ritualized murder. It was a thing Dad called the sacred hunt. Traditionally, it was performed once every human generation, about twenty years or so.

  The reason I couldn’t look at Elias right now was that he and I both knew that if he died of starvation, it was completely my fault.

  I’d stopped the hunt not once, but twice.

  “I’m not the only one who suffers,” Elias said.

  Like, I didn’t suspect that. As if I needed that kind of responsibility. I so needed to hear that there were hundreds of vampires who were slowly dying, thanks to me. My cheeks burned as I gathered up all the big pieces of bowl and tossed them into the garbage. I got the broom from where it rested behind the pantry shelf.

  But I’d had good reason to stop the hunt. Last time, it had been Mom in the crosshairs. I couldn’t have let her be the victim, could I?

  “So, you see, the Southern prince and his army are double the threat.” Elias’s voice was quiet, not at all accusatory, and he looked at my mother as he spoke, but still his words cut me. I focused on sweeping the floor and gathering up the bruised fruit.

  Mom pursed her lips. “You worry too much about Ramses’ problems. You should focus on taking care of yourself. Go find a … friend. You’ll feel better.”

  “Mom!” I was utterly grossed out by what Mom seemed to be implying.

  “What? Blood has to help him, doesn’t it?”

  I started to speak, but Elias cut me off.

  “Where do you think I was? Nothing does much good. I can’t get enough. Not without killing,” he said. As he crossed his arms in front of his stomach, his eyes flashed cold. “I could do it. I have … wanted to. But, if I kill outside of the hunt, alone, that makes me nosferatu. No turning back. Not ever.”

  My mouth hung open; so did Mom’s. I didn’t know what “nosferatu” meant in this context, but the dark look on Mom’s face made me think that maybe she did.

  Elias didn’t seem fazed by our reaction. “And if I cross that line, I would lose more than my place in the ranks of the kingdom. I would lose my mind. Over time, nosferatu are reduced to unthinking, soulless animals. That’s why their name is synonymous with zombielike vampires.”

  It sounded as though he had some personal experience with one of those nosferatu. Our eyes met, and he nodded solemnly as if he’d heard my unspoken question.

  He continued. “It was once part of my duties to hunt down and destroy escaped slaves who had become nosferatu.”

  No wonder his reputation preceded him. Elias wasn’t just any old assassin; he was a vampire killer.

  Mom chewed her lip and adjusted her glasses. “And you say you were tempted to cross this line … recently?”

  Elias nodded. “I understand your concern, Amelia,” he said, hanging his head again. “It’s no longer safe for you to harbor me. If I could tarry but one last day, to gather my things and make alternate arrangements?”

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking about, but, yeah, that sound
s like a really good idea. You should go,” Mom said plainly. I wanted to protest, but she continued before I could form any words. “But what I wanted to know was, if you’re tempted, how are the others faring? I mean, everyone says you’re such a noble gentleman, as if that’s something unusual. Is there going to be a nosferatu problem?”

  Even though she stood in her nightshirt and slippers, there was something in the tone of her voice that made it very clear she was asking as the Queen of Witches.

  Elias lifted his head defiantly. “I am in exile, and, as such, at much greater risk. The prince will surely call a hunt, and the kingdom will feed, if it has not already.”

  “Oh, I think we’d know if it had.” There was that royal “we” Mom used only in her Queen of Witches role. “We need to talk to some people, if you’ll excuse us.”

  Elias nodded briefly, as if only grudgingly acknowledging her sovereignty.

  As I stood leaning against the broom, I suddenly felt exhausted. The clock on the wall ticked hollowly. Elias frowned, watching my mother head upstairs.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” I asked, feeling an old hurt. We talked so little these days; yet I couldn’t believe he’d kept something so important from me.

  He gestured with his chin in the direction Mom had disappeared. “Her Majesty,” he said, his voice dripping with disdain. “I haven’t had a chance to have a private conversation with you the entire time I’ve been her guest. Do you think that wasn’t intentional?”

  I’d thought he just wasn’t that into me anymore. I didn’t want to say that, though. To cover my expression, I took the opportunity to put the broom back in its place. “I had kind of noticed, honestly,” I said.

  “She’s been desperate for just this sort of information. At least I will no longer have to endure the interrogation she called ‘tea’ when I leave.”

  OMG. Elias hated tea too? This news was almost as shocking as finding out that he was a vampire slayer. But I felt as if he and I had been attending a completely different event all these months. “Are you saying she was pumping you for information this whole time?”