Obviously, something else had happened—such as my being abducted—but it had evidently happened after I fell asleep. The question was: how could I have slept through being removed from my coffin and transported to this purple room? Indeed, how could I have slept through anyone entering my lair or opening my coffin lid? I have the keen senses of any normal vampire and would certainly have sensed such an intrusion, even in my sleep. So what on earth had happened?
I tensed as I heard a faint thud coming from somewhere else inside this building. A door closing? The sound was followed by footsteps. My abductor was approaching this room! My heart pounded as anxiety gripped me—
Wait a minute. My heart was pounding?
I hadn’t had a heartbeat since being turned in 1927, inside the Biograph Theater in Chicago.
At the same moment that this bizarre realization paralyzed me with shock, there was a knock on the door, and then it opened. A middle-aged woman wearing a bathrobe took a couple of steps into the room, saw me, and paused in obvious surprise.
“What are you doing cowering on the floor like that?” she said with a puzzled frown.
I stared at her in mute confusion, listening to the peculiar sound of my heart beating and wondering who she was—and also how such an innocuous-looking person had infiltrated my lair, kidnapped me, and transported me to this messy prison.
“Did you have a bad dream?” she asked.
“I—I—” I couldn’t think clearly enough to focus on the obvious question I should be asking: Who are you and why have you brought me here?
“Or are you looking for your shoes?” Her face cleared and she shook her head. “How many times do I have to tell you? Clean your room.”
“I beg your pardon?” I blurted.
“Well, you’re up, anyhow,” she said. “Do not get back into bed. Do not go back to sleep. Breakfast in twenty minutes.”
I stared at her.
“Margot, do you hear me?” she prodded.
“Huh?”
“And the answer on that gold tube-top is still ‘no,’ so don’t even think about coming downstairs in that thing.”
“What?”
“No!” she snapped. “We are not going around and around about this again. Don’t test me, young lady. Not unless you want me to let your father start setting the rules about this. Then you’ll be wearing a nun’s habit to school every day!”
She closed the door and stalked off. I continued crouching (I was crouching, not cowering) beside the bed, more confused than ever.
However . . . I had been mortal once, long ago, and I had been a daughter. There was, I realized, something monstrously familiar about this woman’s attitude and tone. A horrible, dark suspicion was starting to fill my being.
I looked down at the hands that clutched the (utterly tasteless) bedspread that was spilling over the side of the mattress. I didn’t recognize them; they were short-fingered and tan, quite unlike my long, slender, pale hands. And the nails were painted black.
I would never in a million years wear black nail polish. And as an immortal, I mean that literally.
“Oh, no.”
As I said those words, I realized that even my voice sounded unfamiliar. It was nasal and a little high-pitched, quite unlike my own husky contralto.
I looked down at my body and saw that it was not mine. It was a stranger’s body. Shorter than my body. It was also—I ran my hands over it, rather impressed for a moment—more buxom and curvaceous than my own slender frame.
From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed blonde hair. I pulled it away from my face and looked at it, so different from my own coal-black tresses.
“No!”
But my protest was pointless. Realistically, there was no denying that I was in a stranger’s body. A mortal’s body, I surmised, based on the way my heart continued pounding in response to my agitated emotions.
That heart . . . What a distracting sensation! Ker-thud, ker-thud, ker-thud. It was like having a three-legged rabbit running around inside my thorax. How on earth did mortals think with this giant muscle jumping away noisily in their chests? Or with this roaring of blood in their ears? It was making such a racket, I could scarcely hear my own thoughts.
My chest was by now rising and falling rapidly in agitation, and there was a repetitious gushing noise that was also distracting me. I froze when I realized what this was: breathing.
I hadn’t breathed in more than eighty years. Not since drinking the immortal blood of my dark sire in Chicago and reawakening as a creature of the night by the light of the full moon.
(Those were the days. No one really turns a mortal in style anymore.)
I had forgotten how much energy breathing required. Now that I was doing it, I found it so demanding, it was hard to concentrate on anything else. No matter how much air I got, I still wanted more. No sooner did I expel one breath than my body—no, this body—craved another. And another. And another after that! If this body couldn’t be sated, I thought with mounting irritation, this breathing could go on all day.
Then I remembered that breathing did indeed go on all day. And got particularly noisy during sex, too. (I never missed mortality after being turned.)
Thinking of sex made me think of César. He would help me.
But . . . help me with what?
All I knew right now was that I had gone to bed in my own home and body, and I seemed to have woken up in the home and body of someone else—an adolescent girl with deplorable taste, if my instincts were serving me well.
There must be some explanation for this bizarre circumstance. I had already discarded the notion that I might be having a nightmare; these repulsive physiological functions I was experiencing were too real for that to be the case. In fact . . . I realized with revulsion that I needed to find a toilet.
“Oh, hell,” I muttered.
I rose from my crouched position, flinched when a ray of sunlight touched my skin and then stared in wonder and amazement when nothing happened. The sunlight did not harm me, let alone incinerate and destroy me.
Bizarre.
I was truly mortal now—or at least, this body certainly was. Therefore, I had to get rid of it immediately and return to my own without a moment’s delay.
But first, I needed to find the damn bathroom in this place.
I exited the bedroom and roamed the hallway unrestricted, opening and closing doors until I found the tiled cubicle which I sought. I entered the room—then gasped and flinched when I saw someone else in there with me. An instant later, I realized I was not seeing someone else; I was looking at a mirror.
I hadn’t seen my reflection since 1927.
And I still wasn’t seeing my reflection. I was gazing at the reflection of the girl whom the mother had called “Margot” a few minutes ago.
She was a pretty girl, albeit in a bland, vacuous way. Her skin bore a golden tan, her eyes were blue, her teeth were white and straight, her shoulder-length hair was blonde and parted in the middle. She looked a little oily, and I realized after pondering this that she needed to be washed after I relieved her bladder.
Based on the foul taste in Margot’s mouth, I ascertained that her teeth would have to be brushed, too. (Yes, it was all coming back to me now. There was no end to the long list of tedious maintenance tasks involved in maintaining a mortal body.)
Vampire hygiene needs are minimal compared to those of mortals, but César enjoys showers and shampoo for sexual purposes, so I had some familiarity with using them—though washing all that hair and that whole body (and doing so without any assistance from César) took some time. Brushing Margot’s teeth was more of a challenge, since I hadn’t done anything like this in many decades and had completely forgotten how. But I managed as best I could, by imitating what I had seen actors do in films. (I’m a huge movie fan. Though vampire films, to be candid, just make me want to chew vigorously on everyone who’s involved in making them.)
As I returned to the purple bedroom, I heard the mother calling
from the lower level of the house, “Margot ! Breakfast!”
Margot’s stomach rumbled. I realized I was famished. I wondered how much Margot’s mother would object to being bitten by (from her perspective) her daughter.
“Margot!”
“Coming!” I called.
I searched the room for garments. I found what appeared to be a very large gold lamé headband. After experimenting with it, I realized that it must be the tube-top her mother had warned her not to wear. I cast it aside. I had no desire to enter into a fruitless sartorial debate while trapped in this body, so I sought clothing that I thought would conform to the mother’s ideas of appropriate adolescent fashion. It wasn’t easy. Based on the jumbled clothing I kept examining and discarding, Margot evidently aspired to be a streetwalker when she finished school and habitually dressed herself in eager anticipation of entering that profession.
I finally found a pair of sweatpants and a baggy shirt that completely concealed Margot’s curves. Thinking these items would surely win approval from the girl’s maternal parent, I donned them while responding to yet another summons from downstairs. Then I left the bedroom and descended the stairs in search of the kitchen, all the while trying to think of an argument that would convince the mother to allow me to sink Margot’s teeth into one of her arteries.
I recoiled from the smell of mortal food when I entered the kitchen, then realized with consternation how inadequate Margot’s senses were. I had not scented the disgusting odors of fruit salad and waffles until being in the same room with them. Margot’s stomach rumbled, as if favorably stimulated by the stench. As one who finds carbohydrates particularly revolting, I tried not to gag at the sight of the food sitting on the plate on the kitchen table.
“Your waffles are cold,” said the mother, with her back turned toward me as she occupied herself with cutting up a cantaloupe on the kitchen counter.
I remained motionless in the doorway, not sure how to proceed.
“Sit down and eat, Margot. You took forever in the bathroom, so you’ve only got about five minutes left before you have to leave.” She paused in her task and turned to look at me—and froze with the knife in her hand, her expression a mixture of surprise and skepticism as she studied my clothing. “You’re wearing that to school today?”
“Huh?” I said, staring hungrily at her carotid artery. Or, rather, at where I knew it must be; Margot’s human senses were so feeble, I had to guess at its probable location, rather than seeing and sensing the warm, sensual pulse of blood flowing there.
“If this is some sort of attempt at reverse psychology,” the mother said as she returned to cutting up that odorous fruit, “it won’t work. If you want to be a frump, be a frump. It will not change my mind about that gold tube-top.”
“All right,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“And another thing, young lady—ouch!”
She dropped the knife with a clatter and grabbed her wrist as she held up her hand. I saw that she had cut her finger. Blood was dribbling down the digit and toward her wrist.
Seizing the moment, I crossed the room swiftly, grabbed her hand, and stuck her bleeding finger into my mouth, sucking hard.
An instant later, I spat it out with a cry of disgust and made a face.
The mother gave me a strange look, turned on the faucet in the sink, and held her finger under the running water. I felt queasy as I watched the blood and water mix.
I blurted in appalled wonder, “That was awful.”
“No argument here,” she muttered. “What were you thinking?”
The blood was bland and unappetizing, save for a slightly chemical taste that remained in my mouth and made me feel rather nauseated. Its texture had seemed slimy rather than sensual as it touched my tongue. And the feel of the live finger twitching reflexively in my mouth had been unbelievably revolting, rather than arousing and satisfying.
Weird.
“I’m hungry,” I said in response to her quizzical expression as she turned off the water and held up her bleeding finger. I discovered that I now found the sight of blood distressing and wanted to look away.
“Then sit down and eat your breakfast,” she said in exasperation. “You’ve only got a couple of minutes left.”
I glanced doubtfully at the plate on the table—and felt Margot’s stomach rumble again. My mouth was suddenly wet, flooded with saliva.
I made a face and wondered how severely I would be reprimanded if I spat in this kitchen.
“Now what?”
I had a vague sense memory, from another lifetime, which suggested to me that this messy-mouth incident was a response to the smell and site of the food items on the table, and that it signaled this body’s desire to consume the fruit and waffles.
But a vampire has to draw the line somewhere, and this was clearly the place. Whatever Margot’s body might want, I found few things in this world more viscerally disgusting than refined carbohydrates. The very idea of consuming those golden waffles made me start gagging.
“Margot?” the mother said.
“I don’t want breakfast,” I said faintly, terrified that I was about to be subjected to yet another all-too-human experience, namely vomiting.
Now she looked at me with concern. She put her uninjured hand on my forehead, then on my cheek. “Your temperature feels normal. But you do look a little odd.” She glanced over my outfit again. “And you obviously didn’t feel up to making an effort today.” After a moment, she said, “Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?”
My glance fell on her other hand. When I saw the blood seeping from the cut, I gagged again as I recalled sticking that appendage into my mouth.
“If you feel this bad,” she said, “I don’t think you should go to school today. I want you to go back upstairs and lie down.”
“What? No!” I wanted to escape this house and start seeking answers to my dilemma, not remain in Margot’s bedroom doing nothing.
“If the very thought of eating makes you gag, you might be coming down with something, and you shouldn’t be in school. Now go upstairs and lie down.” When I tried to protest, she spoke in a voice I found hard to deny, “No arguments, young lady. Upstairs. Now.”
I sighed in defeat, then turned and walked out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. My mood improved as I realized that this was probably a better plan, anyhow. The school, rife with adolescent bodies and hormones, would probably overload Margot’s senses to such an extent that I couldn’t possibly focus on my problem (figuring out how to return to my own existence); I would also be overwhelmed by the challenge of masquerading as Margot amidst her peers and in her regular lifestyle. At least in her bedroom, I’d have solitude in which to think.
“You don’t need to escort me,” I said when I realized the mother was following me up the steps. “I’m going to, er, my room.”
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she said. “I need to put a bandage on this cut.”
I proceeded to the purple bedroom. She proceeded down the hallway to the bathroom. Only moments after I closed the bedroom door, I heard her shrieking at me about the mess I had made in the bathroom.
Unaccustomed as I was to human hygienic requirements, I probably had indeed left the bathroom in disarray. I considered apologizing . . . but given the state of Margot’s room, I suspected her mother was accustomed to finding the bathroom in unacceptable condition after Margot used it. So I said nothing.
I sat down on the unmade bed and considered my situation. Since I was in Margot’s body and living her life in a suburban home (New Jersey? Westchester County? Long Island?), I thought the most logical prospect for what had happened to my body was that Margot currently inhabited it.
On that basis, confronting Margot-in-my-body was obviously the first step to take toward resolving this peculiar situation. What I should do, I decided, is call myself. I remembered seeing Margot’s cell phone earlier, somewhere amidst the jumbled mess of her possessions. As I heard the mother descen
ding the steps to return to the first floor of the house, I started searching the room for the cell. A few moments later, I heard music. A vapid pop rock song that I didn’t recognize. I wondered why that music had suddenly started playing—then realized it must be Margot’s ring tone. And the noise was coming from beneath the discarded gold lamé tube-top. I tossed the garment aside, seized the phone, checked the LCD panel—and recognized César’s cell phone number.
I answered the call immediately. “César?”
“Yes, chérie.” César said. “Is that you?”
“Yes! How did you get this number?” I asked. “What’s going on? Where are you?”
“I’m at your place. Or, to be strictly accurate, I’m in the basement laundry room directly above your place.” Cell phones didn’t get a signal in my lair. “I came here shortly before dawn, hoping you were feeling better by then and would welcome a little company. Instead of you, I found someone in your coffin who looks, sounds, and smells exactly like you, but who is most certainly not you.”
“Is her name Margot?” I asked anxiously.
“Indeed. And I would have called you sooner, but it’s taken me since dawn to get her to stop shrieking, jabbering, cowering, and wailing. Whatever she was expecting when she started playing around with black magic, it evidently wasn’t to wake up in a coffin underground to find a vampire trying to have sex with her. I think she’s going to need a lot therapy after we get her back into her own body.”
“That’s how we wound up switching bodies?” I was aghast. “This girl was playing with black magic?”
“Yes. Though it’s taken me some time to get a coherent explanation from her. Just listen to her babbling and weeping,” he said with a sigh.
“I don’t hear anything,” I said. “Mortal senses.”
“Oh, dear. Of course.”
“But why me? I don’t know this girl. I’ve never met her. I’ve never bitten her.” I’d seen her face in the mirror this morning. I would recognize her if I had snacked on her.
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