“Josephine, it’s Ian,” I introduced myself, hoping she would remember me. She did. “Hey, Sebastian and I had a talk, and he said he’d help you out if you still want. I know you said you didn’t have anyone else to ask.”
A long silence. I listened, wondering what kind of news I’d just delivered.
“Thank you,” she said at last, softly.
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ll be over shortly,” she said, and hung up.
“Ah –” I got a dial tone. Clicked my phone off. Maybe it was sudden, but I didn’t think having Josephine over would hurt anything. Even if it annoyed Sebastian to have to deal with her so soon.
Shoving my phone back into a pocket, I took myself down the hall after Sebastian. I had no idea which door he’d disappeared behind, but I figured I could find him.
Easy enough. I could hear him moving in one of the rooms. Fourth door on the left. I knocked, waiting for a muffled “Yes?” before I let myself in. I found myself in some sort of dojo-looking room: mirrors, padded wood floor, all kinds of weapons and workout equipment spread around. Sebastian had a wooden staff in his hands, his long hair pulled back into a tail, his eyebrows raised.
“I called Josephine,” I said. “She said thank you, and that she’ll be right over.”
He stood there, like he expected more than just that. I stood, too, not sure what else to say.
“Ah,” he said, carefully, still expecting something.
“Just to let you know,” I said.
In a second his stance shifted from relaxed and expecting to tense and impatient. I’d said what I came to say, now he wanted me to leave.
“Okay,” I said, and let myself out.
I wandered back into the living room, leaving Sebastian to his martial arts . . . or whatever that was. Someone should wait for Josephine to arrive, I figured. So I dug my drawing pad out of my bag of things, dropped onto the couch, and waited.
IAN
Sebastian had yet to reappear by the time I’d finished up a rough sketch of him. It was a full-body portrait, complete with long coat, sword, unreadable posture – and the expression he’d had on his face for just one second the other night. That brief flash of something other than his cold inscrutability. I had him lit from behind, which gave me shadows to play with.
I had finished out the basics: outline, hints of shadows, bits of detail that needed defining. I considered the drawing as it was so far, then settled in to add those definitions. Leaned back with the sketchbook propped against my knees, I let the tip of the pencil hover over the eyes.
A phone rang.
I jumped a clear foot and a half in the air and landed shaking. The phone rang again.
I swore at myself. It was the phone on the little table near the elevator. A courtesy phone, most likely. I stalked over to it and picked it up.
“Mr. Cain, please?” a young male voice said.
I checked back down the hall. No sign of him. “He’s . . . indisposed.”
“Are you his house guest?” the voice continued politely.
“Uh . . . yes. Can I help you?”
“This is the lobby attendant. Misses Josephine and Emily Gray are here. Will you send the elevator down for them?”
Phew. Was that all? “Tell me what to do.”
He did. I thanked him and hung up.
On the wall by the elevator, the call button lit up with a soft, rosy glow as promised. I got up and pressed it, then waited. Sure enough, a minute later, the doors slid open and there they stood.
“Hey, how are you?” I said as they came in.
“Good evening,” Sebastian said from the other side of the room. I jumped again.
“Hello, Sebastian,” Josephine said demurely. “I can’t thank you enough for this.”
“Yes, thank you,” Emily echoed. She shrank in behind Josephine.
“Thank Ian,” he said. “She was the one who felt it necessary to include you. You may thank me when this has been solved.”
They both glanced at me, not quite sure what to do or say. I gave them a short smile. I’d sort of expected Sebastian to just take the credit for changing his mind.
“Please,” he went on, “sit. We must talk.”
They did, with an air of tension.
“Ian, some privacy?” Sebastian said to me. “I need to speak with Josephine about Evan, and perhaps on subjects that will make her uncomfortable.”
I shrugged, picked up my drawing things and left. I would have liked to have listened in, but I understood some kind of need for privacy. Besides, once I let myself into my room and took another look at the rough, I had to admit I did like this drawing. If I could keep my concentration on my work, I thought it would flesh out nicely. I settled on the bed on my stomach, eraser in my mouth, sharpener within reach, and went back to pondering Sebastian’s face.
It was some time later when I spat out my eraser and looked for my sharpener, thinking of adding some more creases and shadows to the coat. As I lifted my head, I just barely noticed someone in the doorway. I gasped and jerked my head up – Emily. She stood very still, watching me with a smile tugging her mouth.
“You do that so well,” she said, ignoring my surprise.
I let out a breath and tried to relax.
“Been drawing a while,” I said. My voice barely shook.
She smiled at me. A warm, eyes-lingering sort of smile. I noticed it and felt a little mixed up, startled and trying to calm down, drawn in by that seriously warm and interested look. “I tried to learn, once,” she said.
My trembles gave way to her warm expression. I set my pencils aside and sat up. “Really?”
She nodded, blond curls tumbling around her face. “I wasn’t very good. I had a teacher, an old nun, who kept yelling at me. She said if you couldn’t do something well, you shouldn’t do it at all. I mean, I know how wrong she was now, but still . . .”
“That kind of criticism sticks with you.”
“Yeah. I’m Emily, by the way. We were never introduced.”
I held out my hand, which she came in to take firmly. “Ian. It’s nice to know you.” I meant that.
“I didn’t know Kent had any children,” she continued, apparently happy to keep talking. She stepped back far enough to lean against the wall instead of the doorframe.
I started to answer, then stopped. How much did she know about vampires? To all appearances, I should have been Kent’s little sister, not his child.
“I guess that’s fair,” I said, “cuz I didn’t know about Josephine or Sebastian or you until the other night.”
“He didn’t tell you there were others?” She asked as if that surprised her. She sounded like she knew plenty, but I didn’t intend to chance anything. The last thing I wanted was Josephine angry at me because I made assumptions.
“I think he planned on telling me, just . . .” I didn’t finish.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, looking at my hands.
I didn’t want to cry or get upset. I wanted to keep talking to Emily, maybe flirt a little.
“So you live with Josephine?” I asked. I sounded distracted.
“Oh, yes,” she said at once, like she could tell I needed to talk. “For eight years now. I run errands for her during the day, keep up appearances, keep her company, that kind of thing.”
And they share a last name, apparently.
What did that mean? Were she and Josephine a couple? Related? If they were a couple, was Emily interested in me or just flirting? If they were related, would Josephine kill me if I made a move on Emily? I tried not to fidget.
“Eight years? That’s a lot of company.” Oh, that sounded dumb. I might as well club her with a brick.
She laughed, her head thrown back, her mouth open wide. Laughing at me. I was glad I couldn’t blush. When she looked back at me, her eyes sparkled.
“Yes,” she said simply.
“Was that funny?”
“A little. Don’t w
orry about it.” She shifted her weight and tugged a curtain aside to look out the window. This room had a perfect view of the mountains. Pretty.
“So how long were you with Kent?” she asked, turning back to me.
The subtext in that wasn’t much better than my question. I resisted laughing at her. At least we were starting out even.
“About four years,” I said. “Not including how long I knew him before –” I caught myself before I said “he changed me,” choked and managed to get out “– before we moved in together.” I suddenly realized I hadn’t talked to anyone very intimately since Kent had changed me. I usually kept conversations to a breezy minimum. Staying in secret and chatting warmly at the same time would take some practice.
She nodded faintly. “Are you from Seattle?”
“No, I moved here from Eugene. Oregon. To go to school, originally. That’s how I met Kent. I mean, not in school, but after I moved here. At a poetry reading at Crawl Café. They have them once a week and I didn’t know anybody, so I figured I’d go by myself and have a good time.”
“You write poetry?” She asked with so much interest I wished I could say yes.
“No, that’s Kent’s department. Was.” I cleared my throat and tried not to think about Kent again. But I could see his face so clearly, the way his words had reached out to me that night. How I knew I had to talk to him.
“He was so flattered when I walked up to him.” My vision went red with tears. I tried to wipe them away discretely, but that only turned my fingers pink. “I’m sorry.” I tried to turn away.
She set a hand on my shoulder, stopping me. It was firm. I couldn’t pull away to hide my eyes. “Come here,” she ordered softly, sitting on the bed beside me. “It’s okay, you have every right to cry.”
I hid my face. Maybe I could plead nosebleed, get to the bathroom where I could let go and sob.
“You’re afraid I don’t know,” she said, so matter-of-factly I froze. Carefully, I peeked between my hands, hoping to see her face without showing mine. Her expression was sympathetic – knowing. “You’re fine, you aren’t breaking any rules.” She tucked her fingers under my chin to turn my face towards hers. “I know about you, about them.” She gestured back at the living room.
I almost forgot how much I wanted to cry. Almost.
“Come here,” she said, tugging me. I wanted to – I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. I scooted closer to her. Emily put an arm around me and pulled me against her shoulder.
“Now,” she said. “Tell me something about Kent.”
IAN
I didn’t know what to say. There was so much, how could I sum him up?
“He . . . I . . . we always . . .” I sighed. Made a helpless gesture in the air with one hand.
Emily smiled and pushed my long hair away from my face. “Well, I know how you two met,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me how he decided to change you? Then I’d know something about both of you.”
The shock must have shown on my face, because she laughed at me, gently. “You can tell me.”
When I hesitated still, she pressed her lips together and set one fist on her hip. “You know how Josephine got changed? She met a woman, a beautiful woman, who fell in love with her and swept her away. Lillian stole her from her family and changed her before Josephine knew what had happened.”
I felt my eyebrows raise, and then as the words registered, I gawked. A mortal knew that? About any vampire? Then I had to smile. “Are all vampires queer?” I asked, half-chuckling.
As if she’d know, I thought, too late to take it back.
She took it in stride, though, laughing that wide-open, happy laugh. “Josephine? She’s only bi because she’s been around. Blood is blood after a while. So she says,” she added, in a voice that said she wasn’t so sure.
“You think she was a closet case?”
Emily looked at the ceiling, one hand up defensively. “She says she was straight as an arrow – Lillian never had a chance. Let’s just say she hides it well.”
I chuckled while Emily gave me a grin. “So, how did it happen to you?” she asked.
Just that little bit of talk helped. The question didn’t shock me like it had the first time. In fact, I felt like talking about it – I’d never told anyone before.
I thought of how to begin, remembering, and then had to throw my hands up. “He just asked me one night.” I started laughing. Emily cocked her head. I nodded. “I thought he was nuts. That he was on drugs, delusional, something. But I’d known him a while and I didn’t think he was a druggie or a nut. So I laughed him off. Something like, ‘oh, is that why I never see you during the day?’ But he just said ‘yes,’ and let it drop. But then he stayed out with me, you know? Talking about drinking blood, getting in before the sun came up. That kind of thing. Hearing that stuff creeped me out at first, but I got used to it.”
I stared at a carving on the post of my borrowed bed. “I don’t think I really believed him. And then one day he said, ‘so have you thought about it any more?’ And I said ‘what?’ And he said, ‘being a vampire. I was serious when I offered it to you. You don’t have to accept, but I want you to know I meant it.’”
I shivered a little, thinking of his face when he said that. So serious. But so casual, too, like he wanted an answer about meeting for coffee.
“I don’t know what finally made me believe him. He was just very honest with me from the time he told me, but still himself. Like that was all he’d ever hidden from me, and I knew him, and I knew I could trust him. So I asked him to tell me about it.”
And he’d told me some of what to expect, that it might not work, that I had some time to decide since I was still young and probably wouldn’t die soon, but that accidents could happen. We talked all night.
I’d thought to myself, this is my best friend. I love him so much. How can I not be part of this with him? Emily squeezed my shoulder while tears traced down my cheeks.
“He answered some questions and explained some things, and just before the sun came up, I accepted. And he said, ‘go out today. Be in the sun. Don’t go to bed, no matter how tired you are. Cut class – you won’t need school anymore anyway. If you have to sleep, nap on a lawn somewhere out in the sun. Then come here tonight after the sun sets.’”
I’d done what he said. I went out in the sun, even though I was tired. I felt too curious, too excited to sleep, even a little. I stared up into the sun, leaving dancing purple spots behind my eyelids, wondering if I would really never see it again. I walked through the campus art gallery, thinking of never going there again . . . thinking of everything I might give up. School, my family, my friends – coffee, sunbathing, food. I’d felt half-awake the whole day, but I could remember everything I’d done perfectly. And when the sun finally sank, I had one last cup of coffee and went to his house.
“And here I am,” I said.
Emily touched my face, and through the grief, through the pain, I thrilled to it. Her fingers raised goosebumps on my skin.
“You must miss him like a second father,” she said. “I think that’s why they talk about each other like family. It’s like that, isn’t it?”
The word “they” made me pause. I let it go, nodding at her question. “If he wasn’t a second father, he was an older brother. Always looking out for me, always letting me make my own mistakes but picking me up afterward.” I sniffed. “Yeah. I miss him. It’s only been a couple of days, but I miss him like crazy.”
“Yeah,” she murmured. “I know.”
The pain in her voice reminded me why she and Josephine had come in the first place. I squeezed her shoulders. She had to miss Evan as badly. I wondered what her relationship to him had been – their names suggested brother and sister to me, maybe twins. I opened my mouth to ask.
“Ian, would you join us?” Sebastian’s flat voice cut past mine, stopping me. He stood in the doorway, framed by the light. Like my drawing. “Josephine would like to speak with you about what h
appened.” He mercifully didn’t elaborate.
I thought about refusing. I didn’t want to sit around and jaw about Kent’s murder.
“Yeah. I’m coming.”
I hauled myself up, wiping my eyes, and offered Emily a hand up. She took it – and was it my imagination, or did she hold my hand longer than she really needed to? Was that a soft squeeze? My stomach fluttered and turned over, in a nice way. I squeezed back in case she had. If she hadn’t, well, then I just made the first move. Either way, she gave me another lovely smile before heading back down the hallway.
Josephine had curled into a corner of the couch, like she didn’t want to take up too much space. Sebastian waited until we came in before he sat back down, eyes dark. Thinking dark, not angry or concerned. A random wall seemed to have his attention, but I could see him watching Josephine. Something about her had his mind clicking.
Emily found a spot next to Josephine. I took one of the other red-velvet-and-oak chairs. I tried to watch Sebastian, wondering why Josephine had him so twitchy, but he saw me and the look vanished.
“Sebastian’s said everything he knows,” Josephine started, quietly. I jumped anyway. She made an apologetic face. “I think it’s pretty complete. I just wanted to know what you saw, if you might know something he’d miss.”
“I guess,” I said, feeling small. Waited for someone to ask me a question. They sat, looking at me expectantly. I cleared my throat and sat on my hands.
“We went to the Half-Moon for a gig. He left me on the dance floor to go backstage. I danced for a while, until they announced his name over the loudspeaker, asking him to come backstage. I went to the stage –”
“What were you doing at the time?” Josephine interrupted. “Just dancing? Nothing else?”
“No, not really. Why?” I frowned.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Go on.”
I cleared my suddenly dry throat again.
“So I went to the stage, to ask if anyone in the band had seen him, and they all said no, and then I turned around and saw this woman –” I choked on more tears, the hard ball in my belly working its way up my throat.
In the Dark Page 9