The Secret Ingredient Is Love. No, Really

by RoAnna Sylver

  “We’re fine,” he said quickly. “Nobody’s—Jasper and I are fine, I promise. I wouldn’t keep that from you.”

  “I know,” she said with a fast exhale. “But just checking.”

  “Yeah.” He shot a glance at Pixie, still on his couch, still asleep. Not moving. Jude headed into his room and shut the door, hoping it would be enough to keep his lowered voice from reaching those big, pointed ears. Pixie needed the rest. “Can we talk at your place?”

  “Sure,” Eva said, sounding remarkably calm, considering. “I was going to take today off anyway. Mental health day.”

  “Okay. Give me five minutes.”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Yeah. And Eva—thank you.”

  Jasper took a much longer time to pick up the phone than Eva had, long enough Jude had started pacing, then made himself stop, worried about waking Pixie. He restricted his nervous motion to folding his arms and drumming his fingers against his elbow.

  “Hello?”

  “Jasper?” Jude said immediately, trying to keep his voice down to a whisper and mostly succeeding.

  “Speaking.” He sounded like he’d just woken up. Jude felt a pang of jealousy, both for the sleep, and the image currently floating around his head. He’d woken Jasper up enough times to know what that voice meant. Jude was an early riser even on weekends, while Jasper and Felix were decidedly not.

  “I told Eva,” he blurted at last. “Not everything—but I’m going to. It’s time, past time, she deserves to know.”

  “Right now?” Jasper sounded slightly more awake, or at least alarmed.

  “I’m going upstairs,” Jude said, surprised at the resolve in his own voice. “I’m going to talk to her first, and then…”

  “You want us to come in?”

  Jude froze. It wasn’t Jasper’s voice that had finished the thought.

  “Felix?” When Jude finally found his own voice, it came out in a breathless whisper. Somehow this still felt like a dream. Like any moment, the past several days would be erased, leaving Jude’s world as it had been.

  “Hey, Jude.”

  The world shrank. The universe fell silent. Nothing existed except the phone in his hand, and the voice coming from it, the words he’d never expected to hear again and feel anything but pain. Jude half-leaned, half-fell against the wall, eyes shut and mouth open, letting out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. It felt like the Earth had just pitched beneath his feet, knocking him off-balance. But instead of falling, he was weightless. He may never touch the ground again. Eyes stinging, he made himself answer. “Hey.”

  There was a long silence. Jude focused on getting his breath back and rubbed at his wet eyes. Finally, Felix continued, sounding so apprehensive, so anxious, so unlike he’d ever been, the laid-back calm and teasing medic forever preserved in Jude’s memory. “Are you sure it’s a good idea for… I’m… I just don’t want to scare her.”

  “That’s why I want to go first. I’ll let Eva know you’re alive, just a little different than she knew you.” Hopefully he’d just imagined Felix’s mirthless, bitter laugh after the word ‘alive.’

  “A little, yes.” Definitely a laugh, but not a sarcastic one as he’d feared. It sounded painful, but, like the words only he could get away with even after all these years, it was him. So unmistakably familiar, so unmistakably Felix, underneath it all. “Tell her… I can’t wait to see her. I missed her.”

  Jude smiled, praying he was up to any of this. Out of everything they’d been through, this next step seemed like the most perilous. And the most important. “Tell her yourself.”

  Eva was almost as fast opening her door as she was picking up the phone. Jude had barely knocked once before it flew open and he found himself pulled into a tight hug, the air rushing from his lungs in a not-unpleasant way.

  “Thank God,” Eva murmured into his shoulder before pushing back to hold him at arm’s length, taking a good look into his face. “You’re really okay? Everything all in one piece?”

  Jude tried to smile. The pain in his leg had faded, phantom and otherwise, and he’d even managed to escape without any new scars. The past few days had been harrowing, but all in all, he’d emerged in much better condition than he might have. Maybe there were other scenarios besides worst-case ones. “As much as ever.”

  “Good. Okay. So,” she stepped back inside, nodding for him to follow as she did whenever he actually came over. He’d done that more than usual since all this started, he realized. It had almost been… nice. Maybe the next time he came to see her wouldn’t involve vampires or any other sources of potential doom. “Under the mall. Pixie getting kidnapped—by who?”

  “Um,” he stopped mid-step, stomach clenching despite his dedication to see this through. He tried an old grounding exercise: pick an object in the room and study it, describe it mentally, even a wall or floor. Her hardwood was a lot cleaner than his, even after he’d swept up a lot of dust along with the glass from his broken window. It looked like she actually cleaned it, did some kind of wood treatment to make it shine. She did that, always put real effort and attention to detail in everything she did. Eva gave everything she had. It was time she got something in return. “I don’t know, exactly. A really bad guy—at least one. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Oh, really?” she shot him a smile that looked half-amused, half-resigned. “What’s bigger news than foiling a kidnapping in a secret underground?”

  Jude had never been good at conversation. Smoothness, tact, clever phrase-turns, those were Jasper’s department, and Jude could never hope to compare. Especially not about something so important. So he just said it: one small word for him, one giant leap for all of their lives. “Felix.”

  The smile slipped off Eva’s face. “What?”

  Jude took a deep breath, held it. Felt the air in his lungs, held onto this moment, of holding absolutely still. Of standing on a threshold. Hanging, hesitating just before that no-return step, a second of unbroken stillness and clarity in which he could spend a lifetime. He’d been on this threshold for five years. Then, as he had so often the past several nights, Jude made himself keep going. “He’s alive.”

  “Fe…” Eva stopped, staring at Jude, eyes wide and round, and face uncomprehending—until her head slowly began to shake. “No.”

  “Yes. Yes, he is. I…” Jude realized he was nodding, as if trying to convince himself of the same idea he could see Eva fighting herself to believe. “I know how it sounds—believe me, I know, it’s impossible, it has to be a lie, or a trick, or just a really, really bad joke, except that out of anything else in the world, I wouldn’t joke about this.”

  “Y-you don’t joke about anything,” she stammered, an uneasy smile flickering across her face. There was the lightheadedness, the this-isn’t-really-happening, everything’s-kind-of-funny feeling. He was getting too good at recognizing it.

  “I know,” he said, grounding himself, keeping his voice level so maybe he could do the same for her. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t about this. I said I’d never lie to you again, and I wasn’t lying then either.”

  “Felix…?” She held absolutely still. Her smile was gone, replaced by an expression he half-knew. He recognized the desperation and near-panic. He’d seen it often enough in the mirror, and been the cause of it too much for her. But the other half, the fragile openness of her wide eyes and held breath took him a moment to identify. Hope.

  “Look in my eyes, Eva.” Gently, he reached out to take both of her hands, but kept his eyes on her face, and she never once looked away. “I’m telling you the truth. He’s alive.”

  She stared at him for what felt like hours. Finally, she recovered enough to form one word. “How?”

  “It’s…” Jude stopped, scrambling for words and coming up empty. ‘Long story’ didn’t begin to cover it. And he wished he had another one to tell, one that Eva had a better chance of believing. But there was no other explanation, and she’d see
for herself soon enough. “He’s not quite the same as he was.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked, suspicion re-entering her tone for the first time. He could feel her building up her walls, preparing for more pain and disappointment. It was what happened every time he’d tried to talk to her before. She withdrew and denied out of self-preservation, he kept pushing, and they never took a step forward. But this couldn’t be like that, they couldn’t go through the same motions and go nowhere. This time would be different.

  “This is why I didn’t want to tell you over the phone,” he said quickly, trying to get the words out before she retreated too far away. “You need to see him.”

  “See him,” she whispered. The distance fell away. Jude let himself hope.

  “They’ll be here in a few minutes. Jasper’s bringing him.” He stopped to swallow hard and check her face for disbelief or panic, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. Eva’s eyes were unblinking, gazing past him, over his shoulder to her front door. “But before they get here, you have to know a few things.”

  “What?” she asked faintly, wavering a little on her feet. “What things?”

  “Do you need to sit down?” Jude tried to take her by the arm and lead her over to the couch, but she shook him off, and stood firm.

  “What things, Jude?” Eva asked, looking back at him now, eyes clear and focused. Ready to break away at the first sign of his old bullshit. Ready to take on whatever she heard. But he’d seen the fatigue and fragile trust in her eyes, and prayed that when he said the words she needed to hear, she’d hear the truth in them. “What do I need to know?”

  “A lot’s happened over the last five years,” he said, words coming out faster as his heart started to pound. Any minute now. “And he’s gone through some changes. The kind of changes that… I’ve been talking about. Ever since.”

  “Are you saying,” she said slowly. Jude could practically feel her slipping into a state he knew all too well, the dissociation that had nearly become his default. “That Felix is a vampire? Is that what you’re telling me right now?”

  “I’m telling you that it’s still him, Eva,” Jude said, as simply and honestly as he knew how. “Just, no matter what he looks like, remember that it’s still him.”

  Eva opened her mouth but no sound came out. Before she could say a word, there was a soft knock at the door. She seemed frozen, rooted to the spot, unable to move or speak. Jude knew from experience that she was caught in one of those year-seconds, time meaningless and breaking free impossible. So he took a small step toward her and spoke in a low voice.

  “We don’t have to do this now,” he said. “I can tell them to wait. It’s a lot to take in, we shouldn’t be springing this on—”

  “No,” Eva said abruptly. She didn’t look at him, eyes still fixed on the door, but there was no shake in her voice. “I want to know. All this time I’ve wanted to know, I need answers just as much as you do, I just…”

  “I know.” Jude gave her a faint smile. “It’s a lot.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed with a slow nod. “But I’m ready. Been ready. It’s open,” she called, raising her voice. It still didn’t shake or crack, but Jude knew that familiar mixture of terror and hope when he heard it.

  The door opened, and Jasper stepped through, giving Jude a quick, bright smile, and Eva a more bittersweet one. For the first time in recent memory, he said nothing.

  Behind him stood a taller figure dressed all in black. Felix did not move to step inside, and Jude could see that he stood outside the doorway, just past the threshold. Today he wore a long black trenchcoat, the odd shape of which told Jude that he’d folded his wings tight across his back, but they weren’t meant to lie completely flat. His hair was at least neater than it had been last night, combed out of his eyes at least and only slightly shaggy instead of the mess it had been. Eva’s eyes swept over him once, twice, flicked over to Jasper, then Jude, as if making sure they weren’t playing an elaborate trick on her—then right back to his face.

  “Felix?” she whispered, eyes so wide and round the whites stood out all around her pupils. There were tears spilling from them before the word even left her lips.

  “Eva…” his voice was soft. Softer than it had been on the phone; Jude had the impression he was trying to keep the edges of roughness or distortion out. “It’s me,” he said as Jasper quietly slipped over to stand next to Jude, giving Eva and Felix the moment. Felix’s voice was still raspy from disuse but sounding a little clearer every time. He also spoke without moving his lips much and Jude could easily guess why, remembering the flash of his fangs. “I’m… I missed you.”

  Jude couldn’t help smiling as Felix took his suggestion to tell Eva himself, and saw the clear gratitude in the brief glance Felix shot his way. Eva didn’t react. She never looked away from Felix’s face, not for a moment. She didn’t reply either, just holding perfectly still, staring into his eyes, mouth hanging open. Silence stretched, until, finally, Felix broke it.

  “May I come in?”

  “What?” Eva whispered, blinking as if the question was in another language, one neither of them spoke. Then she nodded, and kept nodding as she stared, eyes sweeping over him, from his grey face to his bare, clawed feet. They must have been impossible to fit into any shoes Jasper had. “Yes. I mean, please, yes… come in.”

  After only the barest hesitation, he took a step, crossing the threshold. Felix’s face broke into a relieved smile, and Eva took one slow step forward of her own. Then two much faster ones, and Felix barely had time to open his arms before she fell into them.

  She let out a strangled, pained sound Jude had never heard from her before, or anything that came close. Felix stood with his arms awkwardly held out to either side, as if he was afraid to touch and accidentally hurt her and Eva sobbed unabashedly into his chest. As he watched, Jude had the dim realization that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Eva cry. If ever. But she was crying hard now, like some dam had finally burst, a release too powerful to hold back another second. And slowly, carefully, Felix wrapped his arms around her, shoulders and head dropping as if he’d been carrying a crushing weight for years and finally let it go.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said at last, a whisper barely audible over Eva’s sobs.

  “For what?” Eva asked, not letting him go or even looking up. “You didn’t do anything. I’m sorry for—God, all this time? You were dead. I swear to God, you were dead, I never would have given up if I’d thought for a minute…”

  “No,” Felix said quietly as she trailed off, words dissolving into tears again. “I’m sorry for the time you had to hurt. Five years. For then, and now.” He spoke in short, careful sentences, as if he were choosing his words with the greatest of care, maybe to avoid being misunderstood, or preserve his almost certainly still-aching vocal cords. “How I am now.”

  “I don’t care!” she said immediately, only pulling him closer. “I don’t care how you are, just that you are—that’s not true, of course I care, I need answers, but right now? You’re here. Everything else is icing!”

  “Still,” he said, an actual smile spreading across his face, one that Eva looked up just in time to catch. The dryness in his tone had nothing to do with his neglected voice, nor did the ironic glint Jude caught in his eye. In that moment, the new Felix looked so much like his old self it hurt. In a good way. “This has to be a surprise.”

  “I’ve had bigger,” Eva said, shaking her head. The sob that came after was at least half-laugh. “And a lot worse. This—this is nothing.”

  “There’s so much I want to say.” Felix looked up at Jude as Eva leaned in for another hug and stayed there. Even though his eyes looked more feline than human, they were as expressive as they’d been in life, and Jude could see his struggle to find words that remained stubbornly out of reach. “To all of you. So much. I don’t know where to start.”

  “So don’t start,” Eva said, voice a little muffled with half her face still pres
sed against Felix’s chest. His arms were around her again, with only a half-second hesitation this time. “You’re here. That’s enough for right now. More than enough.”

  “Okay,” he whispered, eyes still locked on Jude’s, still looking caught between joy and disbelief. “I’ll explain everything later. You’ll get your answers. Promise.”

  Eva still didn’t let Felix go, but Jude caught the smile on her face. Just for a moment it was aimed at him. “You’d better.”

  Jude was tired and overwhelmed, as he frequently was. But he was overwhelmed in a good way, which occurred much less frequently. Eva took most of the news like a champ, though she’d obviously need some adjustment time. Once everything was out in the open, she and Jude had gotten about as far as “Can you believe it?” “No, but it’s happening,” before they ran out of words. There was too much to say, and not enough words to say it. Not yet. They all needed to find their equilibrium and it couldn’t be rushed.

  So Jude let Eva process and left Felix and Jasper to sleep, wrapped up in each other. They’d stay that way for days on end or, at least, that’s what he imagined and hoped. He had so much he wanted to say to Felix and could tell the feeling was absolutely mutual, desperately so—but this couldn’t be rushed either. Felix seemed to have an easier time talking to Jasper, and Jude got the feeling he needed time to work up to addressing Jude directly. They’d get there. He had to believe that.

  Jude didn’t want to intrude, on them or Eva, so he used the time trying to find his own solid ground—and he always did that best alone. And he was alone. After he’d recovered enough, Pixie had said he had some thinking to do and unspecified ‘things’ to see about. Jude could relate, but still felt a pang of anxiety and something harder to define as Pixie left—out the door this time, not the window.

  Anticlimactic, Jude reflected, leaning back in the chair Pixie’s first entrance had overturned. He stared up at the white plaster ceiling, counting the dents left by the broom-handle that came in handy whenever his upstairs neighbor cranked up the volume. Pixie wouldn’t live upstairs from him again, at least not without raising some very awkward questions. It would be a lot quieter around here.