by Gayla Twist
“Jessie, no!” I tried to stop him. He couldn’t offer his life. Not to spare mine. “It’s not worth it. Just let them make me a vampire.”
He whipped his head around and stared at me, pain and anger etched across his face. “Be quiet. I know what I’m doing.”
Winston was a little wide eyed, goggling in surprise at Jessie. “You’d really rather die at the stake than have your human become one of us?” he asked.
“A thousand times over,” Jessie assured him.
The matriarch vampiress sighed. “That was very romantic, young man,” she said. “But are you sure you know what you’re agreeing to?” She shifted her gaze to look at me. “This is actually quite an honor for the young lady.”
“You can’t kill him,” I said, somehow finding my voice, even though inside my head I was screaming. “I’ll do what you want. I’ll become a vampire if I have to. Just don’t kill him. Don’t lock him away.” The whole room shifted a little. Those obviously weren’t the words they expected to come out of my mouth. They thought being killed and then brought back as the undead was an honor.
Jessie turned to look at me again. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do,” I told him. “I won’t let you do it. I can’t let you do it. If you die, they might as well kill me, too. My life will be over.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jessie insisted, his gray eyes the color of the Atlantic during a perfect storm. “This isn’t the life for you. There’s so much you don’t understand.”
“I understand that I love you,” I insisted. “I understand that if you died for me that my heart would be broken. I mean, forever broken. You know how that feels. You know what I’m talking about.” Jessie had mourned for the real Colette Gibson for close to eight decades. He couldn’t tell me I’d get over him being staked for my sake.
“Madame Bishop?” I said to get the matriarch’s attention. We hadn’t been introduced so I didn’t know exactly how to address her. “I’m happy to become a vampire,” I told her. “I know Jessie doesn’t think it’s right, but I’ll get to spend eternity with him, so that’s fine by me,” I said. “I would very much like to accept the honor of November thirtieth being my maker’s day. But I have a request, if it is not too presumptuous for me to ask.” I knew I was being very presumptuous, but hell, they were about to turn me into a vampire, I had to try something.
The matriarch nodded. “Go on.”
“I’m only seventeen,” I told them. “Human years, of course, but still, that’s pretty young by modern American standards.” Jessie just stared at me, eyes wide, his perfect lips parted in a small “o” almost like a kiss from a child. No one else said anything, so I took a deep breath and kept going. “In the Vanderlind family, it’s a tradition that family members aren’t turned until they are twenty-four.”
“But you’re not a family member.” Vilma all but hissed at me, there was so much venom in her voice.
“I know,” I told her before continuing to address the entire room. “But I will be a family member when I marry Jessie.” I raised my left hand, letting the enormous engagement ring sparkle in the fluorescent lighting. “And I also know that after Jessie and Daniel, there are no more Vanderlinds left. They are the last of their line.” My statement caused some whispering amongst the vampires. “I’m not arguing about being turned,” I told them. Giving a small bow toward the head vampiress, I said, “I think it’s the right thing for Jessie and my relationship.” A small smile flitted across her lips, and I had the feeling that she had argued in my favor. “I’m asking for a delay until I’m twenty-four. That gives me an opportunity to grow up a little.” I reached over and took Jessie’s hand. “And it also gives us a chance to try to have a child.”
“You can’t have a child!” Vilma leapt to her feet. “It is impossible. Vampires cannot bear children!”
“But humans can,” I insisted. “And modern scientists are doing remarkable things with fertility. Did you know that Japanese doctors are on the verge of cloning a wooly mammoth using frozen DNA? They think within five years we’re actually going to have mammoths again using an elephant as a surrogate mother.” This was news to the vampires. They all just gaped at me. “What I want to know,” I continued, “is why can’t we do this with vampire DNA? With the right doctor and a few more advances in technology, why couldn’t I have Jessie’s child?”
Even Jessie turned to look at me, completely flabbergasted. “Do you think it’s really possible?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said in complete honesty. “I’m not a scientist. But I think it’s worth trying. Don’t you?”
There was some grumbling amongst the vampires. No one looked completely convinced. I had the feeling that several of them would have been happy to leap onto the table and suck all the blood out of me at that exact moment. I was about to say a bit more about DNA, but Jessie superseded me. “Look at it this way, it’s only seven more years,” he told the other vampires. “And if it works, it’s a way to extend family lines that we thought had come to an end.”
“I think this is something we should discuss amongst ourselves,” the matriarch said. “You may wait in the lobby until we reach our decision.”
Jessie rose and then took my arm to help me to my feet. I felt stunned, like I was superimposed on the scene rather than actually functioning in it. The idea of being turned into a vampire was only slightly less frightening than being outright killed. The thought of drinking human blood to stay alive was pretty damn repugnant. Where would I live? How would I survive? What would I tell my mom?
As Jessie guided me out of the room, I heard the matriarch say, “I meant all of you need to wait in the lobby.” Glancing over my shoulder, I noticed that Vilma had tried to stay in her seat, obviously keen to contribute her two cents to the debate. She reluctantly got to her feet and followed us out the door.
In the lobby, Jessie settled me into one of the chairs. I felt a wave of panic. There was a very good chance that I was on the verge of becoming a vampire, and I needed to know what would happened to me if the Bishops went through with their plan. “Jessie,” I said, looking up.
He bent and kissed me on the forehead. “I think you’ve done it,” he breathed in my ear. “Just try to stay calm, and we’ll see what they have to say.”
“But, Jessie…” I said, my lips trembling.
“I need to have a word with my dear friend Vilma,” he told me. “Do you think you’ll be all right on your own for a minute?” I nodded, too stunned to say no, and Jessie gave my shoulder a little squeeze before striding over to the loveseat where Vilma had flung herself, one leg hooked over the armrest.
Jessie started the conversation, saying something in a low voice that I couldn’t catch. Vilma responded with, “Well, I wasn’t going to have you making a fool out of yourself for the next fifty years. I’d have drained her myself before I let that happen.”
I sincerely wished there was another human in the room so I could catch their gaze and roll my eyes. Vampires were so convinced of their own superiority it was annoying. Then I remembered what that other human had said to me in the ladies room at the vampire ball and felt a momentary urge to snicker.
There was a beeping sound, and the receptionist picked up her phone. “You can go back in now,” she announced, so we all got up and shuffled back down to the conference room.
“Congratulations,” Winston said to me after we were all in the room. “It looks like not only will you be a vampire, but you will have the chance to become a mother. Your maker’s day will be on November thirtieth of your twenty-fourth year.”
I didn’t know if I should jump for joy or burst into tears. I turned to look at Jessie, but he only gave me an encouraging nod. “Thank you,” I said, trying to appear honored or pleased or something besides a little nauseated.
“And starting now, Colette Gibson will be accorded the same respect and benefits as if she was already made,” the grand vampire
ss announced.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Vilma growled.
“Let it be known that anyone who does not treat her with the respect she deserves shall have to deal with me personally,” the matriarch went on, unleashing a fiery look in Vilma’s direction. “She will, after all, one day be the mother of a Vanderlind.”
The next thing I knew, we were all out on the sidewalk. “What just happened?” I breathed the question into Jessie’s ear as we walked out the door of the building, our arms entwined. He responded by shooting me a look and giving my arm a squeeze.
“Would you like to catch a ride with us?” Madame Csorbo asked as a limousine pulled up to the curb.
“No, thank you,” Jessie told her. “I think we’ll fly back. Colette and I have a lot to talk about.”
After the others had piled into the car, Jessie led me down the street. We walked along for a few blocks without speaking. I had no idea what time it was, but the streets of Budapest were empty but for us. “What did you want to talk about?” I asked after about the fifth block.
Jessie turned and looked behind us. No one was there. He looked to the left and right. We were all alone. Then he cracked into the most dazzling smile I’d ever seen. “You did it, Aurora,” he said, sweeping me into his arms. “You did it!” he shouted, launching us into the air.
We went swooping and barrel rolling through the sky with Jessie laughing and me holding on for dear life. “Jessie, whatever I did I’m glad you’re happy, but I really don’t want to throw up,” I told him.
Jessie settled us on the roof of a tall building, him sitting on the ledge with me in his lap. He kept kissing my cheek again and again, and then squeezing me tight. “Okay, okay, I get it, I did it,” I told him, “but would you please explain what I did?”
“You tricked the Bishops into letting you live,” he said, joy dancing in his gray eyes.
“I did?” I was confused. “I thought they just agreed to let me stay human until I’m twenty-four and then it’s vampire time.”
Jessie laughed in delight. “But don’t you see, vampires have no real concept of time. Not the really old vampires. Not the Bishops. It’s nothing to them. They’ll mean to have someone check up on you in seven years, but by the time they think of it, a good thirty or forty years will have passed. And by the time they actually send someone to America to check on you, you’ll be in your sixties. And they’ll be looking for Colette Gibson not Aurora Keys. Probably by the time they find you, you’ll be seventy or eighty and none of this will matter,” he said, chuckling so gleefully he had to kick his feet in the air like a child.
“But…” I tried to absorb what he had just told me. I didn’t have to become a vampire. That was a relief. But that also meant that I would grow old. And Jessie would stay seventeen. “Don’t you want to be with me?” I asked. “Don’t you want us to be together?”
“Of course, I do,” he said. Looking deep into his fathomless gray eyes, I could tell he was sincere. “I want it more than anything in the world,” he insisted. He set me down next to him, but kept his arms around me. “I love you, Aurora. And I don’t love selfishly. Not anymore.” His eyes grew distant for a moment, and then he looked back at me. “I should have never asked Colette to run away with me. That was selfish. That was wrong. I should have thought of her safety first instead of my own feelings. That’s what true love is—when you care about the other person more than you care about yourself. You see that with a mother for a child. You see that with humans that have been together for fifty years.”
I interrupted him with, “But if I was a vampire, we could be together forever.”
“Oh, Aurora.” Jessie sighed, leaning in and kissing me gently on the lips. “Spending my life with you would be the best thing I could imagine. But you don’t understand what it is to become a vampire. It can change you into something unrecognizable to anyone who knows or loves you. There’s a chance it would change who you are in a way that you can’t even conceive of right now.” He shook his head quite adamantly. “I would hate that for you. It would kill me to see you change the way some vampires do.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “I think I understand.” But then I had to blurt, “I just hate thinking about how things are going to be when I’m Grandma Gibson’s age and you’re still…” I waved a hand at his handsome face, his perfect body, “you.”
Jessie closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine. “Can we just count our blessings for tonight and be thankful that we got you out of there with your heart still pumping?”
“Yes,” I said, breathing in the citrus-cloved scent of him. “We can do that.” I was happy. I would have been happy to sit on that rooftop with Jessie’s arms around me for the rest of my life.
“I should probably get you back to the villa so you can get some sleep,” he said, nuzzling my hair. “After all, we have a flight to catch tomorrow.”
“Sleep?” I could tell I was tired, but sleep sounded like such an alien concept after everything we’d been through.
“I know,” Jessie said. “I want to fly you to the moon or… I don’t even know. We should at least do something to celebrate. Is there anything I can do for you? Or… buy you or anything that would make you happy?” he asked, his gray eyes so warm and earnest.
“I am happy,” I insisted.
“Me, too, but is there a way I can make you even happier?” he asked.
I thought about it. “Well, there is something you could do that isn’t exactly for me, but it would make me very, very happy,” I told him.
Jessie narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but a grin played across his full lips. “What?”
Chapter 35
“I can never stop thanking you,” Gloria said for what felt like the seven hundredth time.
“Could you maybe thank me by stopping thanking me?” I asked. She had to stop at some point.
“You just don’t know what this means to me,” she said, crouching by my seat in first class, blocking most of the isle. It had been too late to get her a seat in anything but coach. The flight attendant had already asked her to return to her seat a couple of times, but she kept coming back to thank me again.
“Yes, I do,” I told her. “That’s why I asked Jessie to do it.”
“But I can’t believe it. I’m going to see Viggo in just a few hours. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you did this for us.” Gloria swooped in and gave me a hug. The first time she’d done it, back at the Csorbos’ mansion, it felt like a very non-Gloria thing to do, but I was getting used to her hugs.
I’d originally asked if Jessie could buy Gloria’s freedom. I knew it was probably a ridiculous amount of money, but I thought I’d ask. Jessie was a little surprised. I’m not sure he expected me to ask for something so costly and for somebody else. And the Csorbos, of course, didn’t want to give her up. I’d fallen asleep while Jessie kept negotiating and only woke up with Gloria bursting into my room and then bursting into tears of joy.
Jessie hadn’t managed to free Gloria from her debt. There was some nonsense about vampire law and the proper way for a human debt to be repaid, blah, blah, blah, but he was able to buy out her debt so that she could come to America and serve the Vanderlinds. It wasn’t freedom, but she would be able to be with the man she loved, so it was the best I could do for her. And she was pretty happy about it, or so I gathered from her constantly wandering into first class to thank me again and again. I finally just feigned sleep and wouldn’t react, no matter how much she “accidentally” prodded me.
I wanted to do something to help Margaret as well, but didn’t know too much about her beyond that she was very nice and worked for vampires. I finally asked Jessie if I could give her the moonstone necklace he had given me for the ball. At first he was hurt, until I explained that, “I think it’s the most beautiful thing in the world, but you know I can’t keep it. My mom would find it in my room sometime, and then how would I explain things?”
Jessie narrowed his eyes at
me but finally relented with, “Okay, fine. We’ll give it to Margaret. But you let her know she’s a fool if she sells it for anything less than twenty-thousand Euros.” He changed his mind, almost instantly, and said, “No, wait. You can still give it to her, but I want to be the one that talks to her about it.” He wouldn’t tell me why, but I had to agree. It was his necklace, after all.
Madame Csorbo was genuinely sad to see Gloria leave, and not just because a good servant is hard to find. She made a point of getting up from her coffin to see us off. As we were about to head out the door, she gave Gloria a big hug, and I swear there were tears in her eyes. Vilma did not make an appearance, which was a relief. I wasn’t sure I could have been gracious, even though she did, to some degree, testify on our behalf.
Once I got Gloria to leave me alone, I had some time to think about Jessie and what he’d told me about when people turned into vampires. I’d met quite a few vampires by that time, and more than a handful of them were real jerks. I had just assumed that they were jerky when they were alive and that being undead hadn’t improved the situation, but maybe that wasn’t the truth. Maybe most of them were originally nice people who had just become distorted after turning vampire. It was hard to picture someone like Vilma as ever being pleasant, but it wasn’t completely impossible.
Jessie was still the nicest and most generous person, human or vampire, that I had ever met. I didn’t know his mom very well, but she seemed pretty pleasant, and she obviously loved her children very much because she had tried very hard to save them from being turned into vampires by her own father. But Jessie’s brother, Daniel, was a complete ass. He came off as a stereotypical spoiled and selfish first-born son. Or at least that’s how they were always portrayed in romance novels. If I did end up having to go vampire at twenty-four, I wondered what kind of bloodsucker I would be.
I had to check Jessie’s coffin in at the airport and that was bizarre. It made sense to repatriate the body of a Hungarian back to his homeland, but it didn’t make sense to still have him with me on the return flight. The woman behind the ticket counter didn’t even bat an eye as I mumbled some excuse about the cemetery not accepting the body and my family deciding it was better to bury Grandpa Vanderlind back home. I guess, seeing that Budapest had such a large vampire population, they had a lot of bodies flying in and out. I was very nervous anyway, but fortunately I had Gloria there to walk me through it.