by Noelle Ryan
“What the hell is going on with you, Aly?” she asked, and this time all the playful jesting had left her voice. “First you stand me up after swearing you won’t. Then you tell me you’ve been attacked and all but cut off contact with me. I worry myself sick, thinking you’ve been beaten, maybe even raped, that you may be hiding out of shame...” her voice tapered off and she stared at the carpet for a moment.
And then the memory that had to be running through her mind at that moment caught up with mine. During grad school, we’d both had the hots for this older student, Todd. He’d been nerd-chic—dark, handsome, Buddy Holly glasses and scruffy beard. One night, when a bunch of us were gathered at a nearby pub, guzzling cheap beer to recover from having finally completed our comprehensive exams, Todd approached Ava and asked her if she wanted to have coffee sometime. She'd been thrilled, I'd been thrilled—okay, and maybe a tinge jealous, but I figured the vicarious details would be worth it—and she'd said yes.
Two nights later, I got a call from her just as I was cuddling up in bed with my latest urban fantasy. She was crying so hard I could barely recognize her voice, and I couldn't understand a word she said. I scrambled out of bed and drove to her place, still in my polar bear p.j.s. She didn't open the door the first few times I knocked, and I finally had to call out that it was me and she'd better open up or I was calling the cops.
When she opened the door, she didn't even look at me; she just turned back to her couch and curled up in the corner, surrounded by a nest of wadded tissues. I sat down across from her and waited for her to speak.
“It's my fault,” she said finally. “I dared him to a drinking contest, but I kept switching mine out for plain soda water. He probably never would have...” she trailed off.
“Would have what, honey?” I asked softly.
“Would have. You know.” She gestured to her lower torso, and my face paled. A moment later I was so angry that, had Todd somehow crossed my path, he probably would have found himself hanging out the 8th story window beside me. By his jewels. With a rusty nail.
Instead, I'd asked her if I could give her a hug and, when she'd nodded, slid across the couch and pulled her toward me. We'd stayed that way for quite a while, but after a few unsuccessful attempts to convince her that it wasn't her fault and that she should report him, we never discussed it again.
Now I'd reopened that wound. I felt like the lowest of the low. And I still didn't have any idea what to tell her.
“I'm so, so sorry, Ava,” I said. “You're absolutely right to be pissed at me.” Or rather, I attempted to say that, but my sincerity was mangled by my fangs, which were still severely interfering with my ability to talk.
“Why didn't you just tell me what really happened?” She paused. “No, scratch that question. Just tell me now. What happened, Aly? And could you please take those ridiculous things out of your mouth so you don’t sound like an idiot?”
“I can’t,” I mumbled, staring at the floor while mentally chanting retract, retract, RETRACT.
It didn’t work.
“Now you’re just being absurd,” she muttered darkly, marching over to me and reaching her hand to my face. Once I realized she was reaching for my mouth, I backpedaled, bouncing awkwardly off the wall as I went. She stared at the spot I’d been standing in for what seemed like minutes, a terrified look on her face.
“Ava?” I called out.
She turned toward me, fear now battling confusion.
“How...how did you do that?”
“Do what?” I asked, feeling as confused as she looked.
“It was like—like you disappeared, or something, and then you were down the hall. What just happened?” She began backing away from me, and I noticed her face was now moving from a wide-open question to a narrowed glare. “That’s it. I’ve had just about enough of this today.” She paused. “I hope you get over this, or him, or whatever is going on with you fast.”
She resumed walking to the front door, and glanced back at me only after she was standing outside it, inches from being closed.
“Please don’t call until you’re prepared to be honest with me," she said.
Then she shut the door, quietly, and I heard her flip-flops slapping against the stairs as she jogged down. I continued to just stand there, listening to the sound of her car turning on and pulling out of the parking lot, the blended rumble as it joined the traffic on the main road and sped away. Then I dropped into a crouch, idly tracing the ugly beige carpeting with a fingernail, staring at the small cut on my thumb as it slowly closed and healed, until I couldn’t even be sure where the wound had been in the first place. I gently probed my teeth with my tongue. With an unerring nod towards Murphy’s Law, the fangs had now slid back, leaving fairly normal feeling canines in their wake.
I pulled out my cell again, wondering just how long it had taken me to ruin my relationship with my best friend. Two-fifteen. Wow, I thought bitterly, I wonder if I should be calling Guinness with that one. I wondered if this was why vamps had the reputation of being angst-ridden whiners—I certainly felt like moping around in loose black dresses while singing along to Morrissey right now. Though, come to think of it, none of Damian’s vamps had been wearing black, so maybe it was just me.
As I tucked my phone back into my pocket, I heard a soft crinkle. Tom’s note. I fished it out and unfolded it, hoping it might provide an effective distraction from my current pity party.
Aly,
Thanks for letting me crash on your couch. I’m bummed I didn’t get the chance to bond with Beckett—I was looking forward to being awakened by the thump of four kitty paws hitting my chest at some absurd hour of the morning. I grinned. Anyway, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable last night. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that, it’s just. I paused, trying to read through the dark lines he’d scratched through the next few words, but couldn’t. I know you’ve only known me for a couple weeks, and most of those as your student, but I’ve wanted to touch you for months, and I guess that urge took over my better judgment last night. I’m sorry. I know that sounds like an excuse—I guess it is one—but I wanted to let you know.
I’m heading over to chat with Damian about dropping your class now that you know we’re keeping an eye out on you. If he says yes, I’m hoping you’d be willing to get to know me a bit better as someone who is no longer off limits due to your professional ethics. As far as the blood lust goes—well, there are ways to avoid it, if that's what you decide you want to do. What would you say to us going out on a proper date, your pick of place?
Give me a call when you get up. I know Damian is hoping you two can finish your conversation today.
-Tom
The last time a guy had asked me out was at least six months ago, and the kiss we'd exchanged at the end of the night definitely hadn't caused me to become almost paralyzed with lust. My emotional roller-coaster of the last few days probably qualified me for some potent prescriptions—just the jump from friendless despair to butterflies-in-the-stomach in the last few minutes was leaving me kind of dizzy. I felt like I was seventeen again, and that did not feel like progress, as much fun as the butterflies were short term.
I felt irrevocably nerdy doing it, but the only counter I knew to being hyper-emotional was to get hyper-intellectual, so I flipped the note over to its blank side and drew two columns. Over the first I put “Reasons to date Tom” and over the second I put “Reasons not to.” Then I scratched those out, deciding I needed to answer a more fundamental, albeit less fun, set of questions first. I carefully renamed my columns “Reasons I should try to get my life back to normal,” mentally adding and spend as little time with vampires as possible, and “Reasons I should not pretend my life is the same as it used to be.”
I decided to start with column A.
First came every modern girl’s perpetual concern: career. I wrote “I have worked for years and I’m damn lucky to have landed a tenure track position at a research university; I need to spend as much time
as possible on getting published and impressing my students and colleagues so I can secure tenure” under the first column.
Then, a close second, friends. “Ava was there for me when my parents died, when my dissertation adviser almost dropped me, and when we managed to get lucky enough to land jobs in the same town. She knows me better than anyone, and I’d be an idiot to screw up our friendship. Not to mention my other colleagues, all of whom I know and trust a lot better than a few vampires I just met.”
That thought prompted reason three. “I hardly know these people, and I never asked to be turned into a vampire. How do I know this wasn’t all a set-up to give Damian some new semi-psychic toy to alleviate his boredom?”
I set the pen down for a moment, sure I was about to get good and pissed; I didn't want to end up with a pen flung halfway through my wall in a bout of anger. After all, didn’t Damian serve to gain a lot by turning me into a vampire while making it look like he’d rescued me? How did I know he was telling the truth about Dorothy, or about the desire of vamps for clairsentient blood? For all I knew the only way to make a psychic vampire was to turn a psychic human—maybe drinking human blood did absolutely nothing for “regular” vampires. But if Damian had me believing I was dependent on him for my safety, I was far more likely to play ball with any plans he had for me. Just what I’d be good for I wasn’t sure, since thus far I’d only seemed to serve as a mentally resistant newbie and early alarm system for attacks and phone calls, but maybe that wasn’t all I was capable of—or maybe Damian had simply hoped I’d be able to do more.
As I was musing over all this, I gradually became aware of a nagging feeling in my gut. Puzzled, I sat up straighter and rested my hand over my abdomen, closing my eyes to try and figure out if I was just hungry again or if something else was going on.
You’re wrong.
My eyes flew open and my hands jerked to the floor to stop me from rocking backwards. I’d heard a voice inside my head. I was hearing voices. Visions of strait-jackets danced through my head, and I wondered if anti-psychotic medicines worked on vampires.
The nagging feeling in my gut intensified, beginning to spike into pain, and I clamped my hand back over it instinctively, wincing.
Don’t be a fool. Of course you’re hearing voices. It’s part of your gift.
I started panting. I tried taking my hand away, but the pain spiked, and so I left it where it was. This didn’t make sense—I thought my gift was to feel things, or know them, but not hear voices. I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do.
Just listen to me.
Oh, of course. Just listen to a delusion. Sure. No problem. No problem at all.
A delusion? I don’t think I was ever called that before. Trust my little professor to give me a new name.
What do you mean, your little professor? I mentally replied. Hey, if I was going to have delusions, I might as well go all out and talk to them.
Alyson, it’s Dorothy. I’m not a delusion, I’m your great-grandmother.
But you’re dead! Score one for team obvious.
Of course I am; I couldn’t talk to you otherwise. You’re not generally telepathic—but, if you’re like me, you can occasionally communicate with the deceased.
I can?
I know you didn’t manage to block that experience in Santa Fe completely from your mind, dear. That’s when Damian became certain you’d inherited my gifts; he started keeping a much closer eye on you after that.
Santa Fe. I’d really tried hard to forget about that trip. This delusion was digging up memories I really preferred buried.
I’d gone to Santa Fe when I was eighteen to live with the Benningtons, some family friends. They needed a nanny for the summer, and I was eager for an adventure. The high desert and mountains of Santa Fe seemed incredibly exotic to a girl who’d spent her entire childhood amongst oak trees and wide grassy lawns. Shortly after I arrived, I met two brothers who were around my age, David and Joseph. We hung out on the evenings the Benningtons didn’t need me to watch their kids. The brothers had a pool table, a massive stereo system, and plenty of beer, all of which made them terribly cool in my eyes.
One night we were sitting around in their garage, listening to Bob Marley. I’d been feeling tired that day, so while they drank beer I sipped on my water bottle, only half paying attention to their argument about the shortcomings of some recent rock star’s remake of “One Love.” The original version of the song in question had just finished playing when, out of nowhere, the skin across my back, neck, and upper arms felt as if it had half-dissolved, as if my insides were suddenly open to the slow currents of air the overhead fan was lazily circling around the garage. And then I felt someone inside my skin with me. Michael. I’d heard David and Joseph mention Michael and his death a few months before, once or twice, but we’d never discussed it in detail. Now I was feeling Michael’s thoughts, and I knew I was supposed to tell David that he was okay, that he’d had to leave this plane of existence for a reason, and that his fall from his tree house had not been a suicide as David feared.
My reaction to this sudden influx of sensations was almost instant—I’d clamped down on my brain, telling myself I was obviously sleep deprived and needed to get home and get some rest. As I repeated this to myself, the sensation in my back, neck, and arms gradually faded, replaced instead with a pounding headache. David must have noticed me grimacing in pain when he looked up to ask me a question a few minutes later, because he offered to give me a ride home right then, even though my original plan had been to hang out with them for another couple hours.
After a silent five minute car ride, we pulled up outside the Benningtons’ house. I’d gathered my bags and turned to thank David for the ride, when the clear sky suddenly clouded and began dumping rain.
“These summer storms only last a few minutes; you might as well wait in the car until it’s over so you don’t get soaked” he said.
I sat there, staring out the window, trying to will my headache to go away. Instead the pain intensified, and for some reason that I still don’t understand to this day—perhaps my urge to avoid pain was simply greater than my urge not to sound insane—I decided I might as well tell David what happened. I described the entire experience while staring out the car window, afraid of the disgust or anger I might see in his eyes if I faced him. When I finished, we were both silent for a moment. Then he began crying.
I spun to face him, reaching out with one hand but as afraid to touch him as I’d been to look at him a moment before. “Oh David, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew I shouldn’t have, and I don’t know why I did. I’m so sorry to bring up those painful memories again—”
“No,” he said. “You don’t understand. Earlier today I was alone in my room, pleading with Michael to send me some sort of sign about what had happened to him. It’s been tearing me up for months, wondering if there was something I could have done, something I didn’t see…”
Now it was his turn to avoid my gaze, and he stared out the window at the lessening rain.
“Thank you,” he said after a few more moments of silence.
Once I realized I was no longer in danger of getting soaked through, and that there was nothing else to say, I climbed out of the car and went inside. My trip to Santa Fe ended a few weeks later, and David and I never spoke of that night again. I never knew if he’d told Joseph, or his parents, or if he’d simply dismissed it the next day as hopeful insanity and buried it in his memory, as I did.
As if she’d been waiting for me to finish my little trip down memory lane, the voice continued. Unfortunately for you, David got drunk a few months ago and confessed it to his fiancée, who then told her friends—one of whom happened to consort with vampires, including a particularly nasty one named Cesar who had been hunting psychic humans for years. Damian is trustworthy. Bewildering sometimes, but trustworthy. I heard a whisper of a chuckle
The tension in my stomach began to relax, and I gripped at my
abdomen.
Wait—but what should I do? How am I supposed to handle all this? What do I tell Ava? Or Tom?
The chuckle was fainter this time, as was the voice that followed it. That’s quite a list of questions for a “delusion.” I just didn’t wish you to dwell needlessly on whether you could trust Damian—I can’t tell you what to do with that information, much less how to handle anyone else in your life. Though I will tell you this—if Tom is half as delightful as Damian was, you’d be a fool to pass him by. And then the feelings, and Dorothy’s voice, were gone, leaving me curled on my side, alone.
Eight
Okay, so I was a clairsentient vampire who could talk to her snarky dead great-grandmother. And I was protected by said great-grandmother’s former vampire lover and his minions, one of whom wanted to date me, from various other vampires who wanted to suck me dry. Literally. No biggie, I tried to convince myself, you’ve handled worse, right? Now if only I could silence that niggling thought that was loudly countering no, as a matter of fact, you have not handled worse.
Fortunately, that voice got terribly distracted by the sudden knowledge that Damian was about to call me. I took a few deep breaths, finding the action soothing even though the air was no longer strictly necessary for anything besides speech. Then I stood up and retrieved my phone, answering it just before it began to ring.
“Yes Damian?”
“Ah good, you’re awake" he said. "Listen, our…guest…last night revealed who is so intent on draining you, a vampire named Cesar.” I decided not to tell Damian I already knew this. “It seems he isn’t interested in stopping even though he knows you’ve already been turned, and I’ve been unofficially authorized to take action against him as a result. Not that I wouldn’t have anyway, but having the added support makes this all so much more entertaining.” He chuckled in a way I found really disturbing. What had Dorothy seen in this guy again?