Lust for Life

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  We go to the patch of scorched grass, which still smells of smoke. I try not to look at the smaller patches to my left and right, where Agent Rosso and Captain Henley died.

  “Got it!” Shane digs his index finger into the dirt. He holds up a marquise-cut diamond. “Where’s the rest?”

  I put my face near the ground, supporting my weight with my elbows. “Here’s the two little sapphires. And this blob of gold I guess used to be the band.” I place the blue stones and the yellow lump in Shane’s outstretched palm. “Nice work, Frodo.”

  He laughs, then kisses me. I move in closer, deepening the kiss, snaking my arms around his back, which is still lean and hard with muscle, and the warmth I feel is real, not relative.

  Lori calls from the porch. “Elijah says to get your damn fool asses inside. His words, not mine. Also, he says you’re avoiding something really important.”

  • • •

  This is not the hardest call I’ve ever had to make to Colonel Lanham, but it’s certainly the weirdest.

  “Who is this?” he snaps, no doubt thinking I’m dead and someone is using my phone.

  “Sir, it’s me.” I shift a pen from one side of my desk to the other and give Shane and Lori a nervous glance. “Agent Griffin.”

  A long pause. “Who is this, really?” His voice is hollow and hoarse. Was he . . . no, he couldn’t have been crying.

  “It’s Ciara.” I take a deep breath, then rush out the rest before he can hang up. “Shane and I burned to death in the sun, which you probably already know. But then we went through a few different, um, realms? And eventually came back to the same place where we’d burned, except we were—we are—alive. Human. And Shane is forty-two.”

  Lanham remains silent for several seconds. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Yeah, not so much.”

  “I—” He clears his throat, twice short, once long. “This is unprecedented.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “How do you know you’re human and not just vampires who can be in the sun?”

  “Is there such a thing? A real-life Gem of Amara?”

  Lori’s mouth pops open. Shane shakes his head in amusement.

  “Excuse me?” Lanham says.

  “Never mind.” I’m proud and surprised that I’ve waited this long to throw a Buffy/Angel reference into one of our conversations. “Are there vampires who can be in the sun?”

  “Not that I’ve heard of, but it seems more plausible than a reversion to humanity. Who else knows you’re alive? Assuming you are.”

  “Everyone who works here, plus Elijah. Oh, and my mom. Not my biological mom, but the one who raised me. Marjorie.”

  “You must keep it a secret for your own safety until we can solve the Kashmir problem. And you and Agent McAllister must undergo a complete physical examination first thing in the morning.”

  “You’re not going to lock us in a laboratory forever, are you?”

  “No, probably only a decade or two.”

  “What?”

  “It was a joke.”

  “It’s creepy when you joke. Sir.”

  “An agent will pick you up tomorrow morning to bring you to the Research Division’s facility.”

  “We’ll be at Lori and David’s house, as part of that whole staying-underground thing.”

  “Good idea. I’ll meet you at the facility after you’ve had your tests.”

  “Okay.” I notice Shane and Lori have disappeared into David’s office, giving me the privacy to ask Lanham one essential question. “Was Jim under maximum security when he escaped?”

  A long silence comes from the phone. “Why do you ask?”

  “We saw him in—that place. He said he’d semirehabilitated. Kashmir told us it was because of the wood you left in his heart, but I don’t know if I should believe him.”

  Another long pause, then Lanham says softly, “Why does it matter? The tribunal is over, Agent McAllister got a slap on the wrist—”

  “Shane knows he may have killed an innocent man.” I can’t keep the edge of pleading out of my voice. “We need the truth.” Not only about Jim’s state of mind, but whether someone high in the Control let him go on purpose.

  “Tests were done,” Lanham says simply. “Results were encouraging.”

  I swallow, trying not to think about what future Jim could’ve had. I focus on the bright side: that all Jim had to do to escape was mesmerize one guard and have his progeny create a distraction. No one in the Control is trying to kill us. At least, not this way.

  “I have to go now,” Lanham says. “But, Griffin, I want you to know . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He hesitates. “Nothing. It’s good to have you back among the living.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I feel a glow inside, warm beyond all reason. “It’s good to be back.”

  When I hang up, I hear distinct sounds of rummaging coming from David’s office.

  I get up and go to his door. “What’s going on?”

  Lori is armpit-deep in a three-foot-tall box I recognize as one of our Halloween supply containers. “David called and said they’re going to be a few more hours at the ER. It’s really busy there, and Jeremy and your mom don’t have life-threatening issues. So I figured you and Shane had time.”

  “Time for what?”

  Shane smiles as he holds up a dark wig. “Breakfast.”

  28

  Viva la Vida

  On the drive, Shane doesn’t speak much at first. He’s too busy looking at, well, everything.

  We decided to go way out of town for our inaugural human breakfast, across the Pennsylvania border to Hanover. Not that Kashmir’s human spies wouldn’t cross the Mason-Dixon Line, but it makes us feel more secure. We refuse to cower inside the station on what is literally our very first day out together.

  For the secret journey, I donned a black wig, à la 1960s Grace Slick (plus the bitchin’ shades), and Shane’s wearing a pair of Elvis sideburns and sunglasses, plus a trucker hat. All those WVMP Halloween parties are coming in handy.

  As I drive Lori’s car down the two-lane state highway out of Sherwood, Shane murmurs words like a kid, naming the marvels as we pass them. “Fields . . . hills . . . trees.” Finally he turns to me. “There are mountains over there.”

  “Yeah, you can see Liberty ski resort from David’s house in the winter, since he lives on a hill.”

  “I know, I’ve seen the lights at night. Can you see the snow on the slopes in the daytime from there?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow. We should go.”

  “To David’s house or Ski Liberty?”

  He gasps. “We could go skiing now.”

  “We could’ve before. They have night skiing. And wouldn’t it have been better to do it when we couldn’t break our legs?”

  “No, because if we hit a tree really hard and then walked away, people would be suspicious.” He smacks his hands on the dashboard in excitement. “I can go to the doctor! Or the hospital. I can have blood drawn, my reflexes checked, a strep test, anything.”

  “You are really looking on the bright side of this if you’re stoked about a strep test.”

  He touches his throat. “I have bacteria now. That is awesome.”

  “In a weird way, yeah.” There are so many things vampires don’t dare to do for fear of being discovered. We can take more risks—like skiing—as mortals than we could as immortals.

  “Of course, what would be ideal is if vampires could live openly without fear of being staked or burned or holy-watered.”

  He scoffs. “That’ll never happen in our lifetimes.”

  We fall silent. Our lifetimes. Which suddenly have limits, though only in length. A vampire’s life has limits in everything but length.

  He reaches for my hand. I give it to him. However long we have left, I hope we’ll spend it together.

  • • •

  “You need cream with your coffee?” the waitress at the diner asks Shane.r />
  “Just black is fine.” He raises his head, maybe remembering that he can actually taste cream now. “No. I’ll have a triple mochaccino with extra whipped cream and . . .” He turns his dark sunglasses to face mine. “. . . and a splash of coconut.”

  The waitress gives him a level look. “We got regular and decaf, hon. Take your pick.”

  “Oh. Regular. With cream.” He smiles to himself as she walks away. It is so cute.

  Then he turns back to the menu, paralyzed by the myriad choices of pancakes. “When did this happen? It used to be regular, blueberry, and chocolate chip.”

  “Just remember, Rip Van Winkle, this won’t be the one and only stack of pancakes in your lifetime.”

  “Can we come here every week?”

  “Only if you promise to keep working out. You did have diabetes when you were human the first time.”

  “Shit, what if I still have it?” He flips the menu page. “Maybe an omelet would be better. Wow, there’s a million of those, too.” He starts to sigh with frustration, but stops himself. “A million omelets. That’s pretty cool.”

  The waitress brings our coffee, but Shane isn’t even close to deciding on food yet, so she agrees to come back in a few minutes.

  He sends her an apologetic look as she walks away, then his gaze shifts to something behind me. I can’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but the way his head goes still and the corners of his lips draw back, I know he’s gone pensive. Besides, I can hear the baby cooing and giggling.

  Clearing my throat, I shift my napkin-wrapped utensil set from my left to my right side, then tap it against my water glass. Shane refills his coffee, then mine, with the “bottomless pot” the waitress left.

  “We don’t have to talk about it now,” he says.

  “Yeah, we do.”

  “Let’s just have one perfect day, okay?”

  “It can’t be perfect knowing that The Baby Talk is out there in the future waiting for us.”

  The waitress arrives and takes our order. She seems confused at our sudden change in mood, and speaks louder and brighter as if to make up for our solemnity.

  I order an omelet like Shane, though I really want crepes. No sense in torturing him—I’ve got my whole life to eat carbs.

  “When I originally asked you to marry me,” Shane says, “back when I was a vampire and you weren’t, I worried that we couldn’t have kids. I worried that you would miss that by marrying me.”

  “And I told you I didn’t want kids.”

  His chin tilts down. “You seemed like you meant it.”

  “I did.” I force out the painful truth. “I still mean it. I don’t want kids, ever.”

  “Why not?” he asks, like I’ve said I don’t want pancakes (which to me is a lot crazier than not wanting kids).

  “I just don’t. I don’t want the responsibility and the stress.”

  “But there’s a benefit, too. You get kids.”

  “Shane, to me that’s not a benefit. I don’t like kids, the same way that weird people don’t like dogs. Babies are boring. Toddlers are annoying. Teenagers are cool, but that’s a lot of boring and annoying to endure just to get to someone I can have a conversation with, when I can just talk to teens at our gigs instead. As people, not as sources of worry about what time they’ll be home and what drugs they’re taking and who they’re sleeping with.” I put my hands to my head. “I’m just not interested in the whole deal, top to bottom.”

  “You might change your mind when you get older.”

  “What if I don’t? What if, ten years from now, I’m thirty-seven and still have no interest? You’ll be fifty-two and you’ll have missed your chance to be a dad while you can still play on the floor without having to be helped up afterward.”

  Shane rubs his knee, as if already feeling the aches of age. Maybe he is. “I want to marry you.”

  “And I want to marry you. But I don’t want to disappoint you.” My heart feels like it’s pinching in half down the middle. A voice inside me insists I give him false hope so I don’t lose him right now. “Don’t marry me hoping I’ll change. Marry me for me. Your wife, not a mother of your potential children.”

  “I’ve never seen you as the mother of my potential children.”

  “Until now. You’re imagining it even as we speak, wondering what I’d look like pregnant or holding our son or daughter. Wondering if they’d have my eyes or yours.”

  His mouth tightens and he looks away, rotating his coffee cup by the handle.

  My own voice thickens with emotion. “I need you to imagine all that. Go look at baby stuff in the department store, go look at babies in the park. Go to Mass and watch a baptism, now that you can enter a church without freaking out.” I put my hands on the table. “Then imagine a life, just the two of us and Dexter. Growing old with no one to take care of us but us, and friends, and hopefully some swank retirement community with shuffleboard and mini-golf. Then think about what you want.”

  Shane takes a deep breath and lets it out, focusing on the baby behind my side of the booth. Then he takes off his sunglasses and looks at me, studying the angles of my face, the motions of my hands as they twist together.

  Finally he says, “I want you.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes. It is.” He holds my gaze as he speaks, and even though he’s lost those vampire mesmer-eyes, I’m no less mesmerized. “It’s that simple because you, Ciara Griffin, alone and unadorned, are everything I need in this world. Mortal or immortal, old or young, I cannot and I will not live without you. If it was ever possible before, which I don’t think it was, it’s not now.” He leans forward and speaks in a near whisper. “We died together. We went to hell and heaven and back. Together. We didn’t do that just so we could go our separate ways. Does the thought of never being a father hurt? Sure, but only a little compared to the thought of being without you. That thought . . .” He puts his sunglasses back on. “That thought breaks me.”

  I stare at him, and though I can’t look in his eyes, I feel like I can still see his soul.

  Shane moves the salt and pepper shakers into alignment, maybe by habit. “If you don’t feel the same way, now that I’m human, I’ll understand. Things’ll be different.”

  “Not the things that count,” I whisper.

  “Sex counts. We’ll have to start using birth control. I’m sure I won’t be the walking hard-on I used to be.” He fidgets with his left sideburn. “It’ll only get worse as I get older.”

  I slide my toes against his calf muscle. “You have experience. Nothing can take that away.”

  A slight smile escapes his lips. “True.” He reaches under the table and grasps my foot. Just as he starts to slip off my shoe, our omelets arrive.

  “Oh, wow.” Shane’s eyelids grow heavy at the scent of eggs and toast. My own mouth waters. It sounds tragic, but at this moment I don’t want to have sex. I just want to eat until I explode.

  But I wait for him. I want to see his face when he tastes solid food for the first time in almost sixteen years.

  His eyes water as he unfolds his paper napkin and places it on his lap, then carefully picks up his fork. He holds it awkwardly, like most people do with chopsticks. His other hand picks up a wedge of toast automatically. Muscle memory from long ago. He carves off a piece of omelet and places it on the toast.

  Then he stops.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask him.

  “Nothing. Just give me a second.” He closes his eyes, and I realize he’s saying grace, though both hands are full and he can’t cross himself. I know he’s giving thanks for so much more than this omelet.

  I look at my own food, and my own hands, unfolded. Who do I thank for what happened? Is there some god or goddess out there who wants to return vampires to a human state, but only under certain circumstances? Will we ever understand it?

  I think back to that time in the beyond. There was a presence, but it didn’t feel singular, like an old dude with a white beard
, or a beautiful woman with open arms and ample bosom, or whatever the goddess-worshippers believe in.

  It felt like . . . everything and everyone. It felt like the universe.

  Shane whispers, “Amen,” and I echo him, slightly louder. What the hell. It makes him smile.

  He takes a bite, and the noise he makes is worth all the aging and debilitation that lie before us. A vampire’s debilitation is equally inevitable, anyway. It’s just slower and affects our minds instead of our bodies.

  From now on, Shane and I can eat. We can sustain ourselves on something that can be obtained with mere money and time. No more enslaving ourselves to donors. No more taking human vitality to survive.

  We are free.

  And this omelet is literally to die for.

  29

  I Feel Free

  I still can’t believe Mom’s here. Seeing her on the outside, wearing something other than prison garb, is almost weirder than seeing Shane in the sunlight.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” I tell her as we share a pizza in the lounge that afternoon. “But I’m sorry I never told you what had happened to me.”

  “David explained it all, how you had chicken pox and would’ve died if you hadn’t turned. You couldn’t exactly tell me on the phone or in a letter—the prison monitors all our communication. Creeps.”

  “I know. But I’m sorry you had to find out this way.”

  She reaches out and takes my right hand. “When that man cut you . . . it was like he was cutting my own heart out.” She runs her thumb over mine. “Even though we’re not related by blood, you’re still a part of me, Ciara.”

  “I know.” I don’t bring up the fact that we’re not related by marriage, either, since my dad is still married to my birth mom, Luann O’Riley. To me, Marjorie will always be Mom. She did raise me, after all, even though she raised me to be a con artist.

  “I wish you’d told me you were getting out of prison in November instead of December. You know I hate surprises.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since ever. Remember that clown you hired for my sixth birthday party? I cried for hours.”

  She laughs. “Oh, my, I wish I’d had a camera to capture the look on his face when you kicked him in the kneecap.”