Jack was already asleep, but I didn’t mind. I curled up next to him, knowing that in a matter of minutes, I would be asleep.
I closed my eyes, and soon after, I began see splotches of blue across my eyelids. It was almost as if someone was throwing cerulean paint directly onto my vision. Since I couldn’t sleep through that, I quickly discovered that they weren’t splotches at all – they were blue flowers.
As soon as I opened my eyes, their sweet perfume enveloped me. Buried beneath the floral fragrance was the musty scent of dirt… and decay.
Though the sun was shining brightly above me, the way it always did, this time I couldn’t feel it. I only felt cold, the way I had at the end of the last dream when I’d been pulled underground.
I sat up, squinting into the bright light, and scanned the horizon for her. Just when I thought I was alone, with the flowers growing and tangling themselves in my fingers, already holding me prisoner, I saw her.
Far off in the distance, she was rushing toward me, running over the hills of flowers, with her feet barely touching the ground. Her Victorian gown floated around, seemingly moving in slow motion, which only added to her otherworldly appearance.
“Alice,” she crooned in her lyrical accent as she reached me. “Time is running out.”
“I don’t know how to help you!” I shouted at her, growing agitated. “I don’t know what to do! You have to tell me what you want!”
“I’ve already told you,” she said, and for the first time, her echoed voice sounded just as frustrated as I felt. “You need to help the ones you love make peace!”
“How?” I demanded.
“You must figure it out yourself. Try, Alice!” She was almost pleading with me now. “Danger is coming for you!”
Wind blew through her crimson hair – wind that only she could feel – and that’s when it hit me.
In Peter’s letters, he’d written descriptions of Elise. Her eyes were gray, like a heavy fog that blanketed me, and her skin was white as porcelain. Red flames of hair framed her face.
That was her, standing before me, and her lilting accent was her native Irish tongue.
All this time, no one had ever described Elise to me, and Peter had no paintings or pictures of her – at least none that I had seen. So, I hadn’t been able to put it together until I read his letters, but now it was as plain as day.
“Elise?” I asked.
Her grey eyes widened and she took a small step back from me. When she moved, that’s when I saw the flowers reaching up toward her, wrapping around her feet and ankles, and I wondered if this place was holding her captive, too.
“How did you know?” she asked finally, then shook her head. “No, we don’t have time. We can’t stay here long, or we’ll be trapped forever.”
“Where is here, exactly?” I asked.
“It’s neither life nor death, heaven nor earth, but somewhere in between,” she explained quickly. “It’s the only place I can go to reach you.”
“Why me? Why not Peter? Why not anyone else that knows you?” I asked, and I could already feel the vines creeping up my arms, biting into my flesh as they tried to pull me down.
“He won’t let me in. He’s closed himself off to me completely. But you were open, and you’re strong. You can do the things you need to.”
“What does that mean? Can you stop being so cryptic?”
“I can’t!” Elise shouted as I fought against the flowers as hard as I could. “I only get glimpses of your world, of the joys and the dangers ahead of you. I only know that the window for peace and happiness is closing, and you must help him.”
“How?” I yelled, but the flowers were pulling me under, burying me under the cold ground, and my struggles did nothing to dig me out.
WITH JACK STILL SLEEPING, I crept out into the living room and grabbed my laptop. After the dream I’d had – although “dream” was definitely not the right word for it – I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep, so I decided to contact the one person I knew that might be able to help and would talk to me about it. Assuming of course, he was awake at such a ridiculously early hour.
Are you up? I texted him.
Soon after, a text message arrived: Yes. What do you need?
Can we Skype? I asked, deciding that a visual conversation would be better.
A minute later, a pleasant tone rang from my laptop, indicating that a video chat request was coming in. I accepted it, and Ezra’s face appeared on my screen. His hair was unkempt, and behind him, I could see the mess of construction in his office from the restoration project he was doing on his manor in London.
“What are you doing up so early?” he asked, his deep voice sounding wonderful even through my laptop speakers.
“I needed to talk to someone, and since you usually have all the answers, I thought I would go to you,” I said.
Ezra laughed warmly at that. “You give me too much credit, but I’ll be happy to help if I can.”
“What do you know about ghosts?” I asked.
He looked taken aback, his mahogany eyes widening slightly, but he answered reasonably, “Not very much. I don’t think I’ve encountered one. Why? Is this about the thing that happened at Jack’s shop when we were visiting?”
“Sort of.” I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, hoping Ezra wouldn’t think me as foolish as I felt. “I think I’m being haunted. By Elise.”
“Elise?” he asked, incredulous. “Peter’s Elise? How do you even know it was her?”
“I found some of his letters, and he described her,” I said, then added, “And then she admitted to being Elise.”
“What does she say she wants?”
“She’s very vague, and says she contacted me because Peter is closed off to her.”
“Peter’s closed off to everybody, so that makes sense,” Ezra muttered.
“I think she wants me to solve her murder,” I confessed.
It was the only logical reason I could come up with for her to be pestering me. That didn’t explain her warnings of danger, but maybe she was just saying that to motivate me to get it done.
“Why now?” Ezra asked. “And why didn’t she come to me or Peter or her friend Catherine, years ago, when it might have been possible?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. She never said to solve her murder specifically, but she said that she wanted me to help give Peter peace.”
He pursed his lips. “Honestly, I don’t think anything will give Peter more peace than he already has.”
“But solving her murder might help him, right?” I asked hopefully.
“I really can’t say,” Ezra said, but he didn’t sound optimistic.
“What can you tell me about Elise?” I asked. “Was she kind? Is there a chance that she’s just messing with me because she’s a vindictive old ghost?”
“I can’t presume to know what she’s like as a ghost, but as a vampire, she was very kind and loyal.” Ezra leaned back in his chair as he launched into his story of her. “She was very young when Peter met her, and I believe she’d only been turned for a year or two. So, she was rather naïve and innocent, and it didn’t help that she was a farm girl, which at that time meant she was uneducated. Peter actually taught her to read and write.”
“Did she love him?” I asked.
“Oh, absolutely,” he replied immediately. “I was with him when they met, and it was palpable. The way they looked at each other, true love just radiated from them.”
I ignored the tiny pang of jealousy I felt, the same pang I felt every time someone talked about how much Peter loved Elise, and how easy it had been for them to be together. I loved Jack, but it didn’t change the fact that I wished everything hadn’t been so difficult and painful in the beginning.
“Cate told me she thought they might not have been each other’s soulmates,” I said.
“I don’t know exactly how either Elise or Peter felt about each other, but based on everything that I witnessed, they seemed as bloo
d bonded for each other as any other couple I’ve seen,” Ezra said.
Even me and Peter? Or would you say me and Jack? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. Not when Jack might overhear, and I didn’t want to derail the conversation about Elise. I had a haunting that I needed to deal with before I started worrying about the implications of soulmates and blood bonds.
Instead, I asked, “So you think they were meant for each other?”
“As far as I know, yes,” he said. “Why did Catherine think they weren’t? Did she give you examples?”
“She just said that she never liked Peter.”
Ezra nodded, as if confirming his own thoughts. “I always wondered if that was the case. She was polite to him – to us both, really – but it seemed… too polite. Like a concierge at a fancy hotel. You know they don’t really like you, but they’re kissing your ass like you’re the Queen of England.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I think I know what you mean.”
“What does it matter if Catherine never liked Peter?” he asked, returning to the topic at hand.
“She said that she’s Elise’s maker, so she should like whoever Elise was bonded with.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s news to me. I’d always been told that a stranger was Elise’s maker.”
“So do you think Elise was lying then?” I asked. “Or that Cate is lying now? And why would she lie?”
“I doubt that Elise was lying. It wasn’t really her style,” he said. “But there are plenty of reasons why Catherine may have hidden the truth from Elise about her real maker.”
“Like what?” I pressed.
“Elise had a lot of mixed feelings about becoming a vampire,” Ezra explained. “Her whole family had died in the famine, and I think she had a great deal of survivor’s guilt. I had long speculated that Elise had actually been the one to kill her father.
“The story she told was that her father paid a vampire to turn her to save her from starving to death, but she never mentioned what became of her father after that,” he went on. “When we met her, it was only three or four years after she turned, but he wasn’t around, and she never explained his absence. At least not to me.”
“You think Cate could’ve turned her, and then in the whole mess of the change, Elise either forgot her or blocked her out or something, and then attacked her dad?” I asked, thinking back to my own transformation.
It had been an awful, painful mess, where I was only vaguely aware of what was happening through the whole process. I did distinctly remember what happened right before, when Jack convinced me to drink his blood so I would turn. But if I hadn’t known Jack, and that moment wasn’t so traumatic – with me being certain that Peter was about to kill him – then I might not have remembered it at all.
Milo didn’t remember much before he’d turned, and Jack had only just found out a few years ago that Mae had been the reason Peter had to turn him. Jack had only remembered going to the vampire club, then everything after that was a blur until he woke up as a vampire.
“That’s a definite possibility,” Ezra said, nodding. “I always suspected that whoever turned her left her too soon instead of helping her through the transformation. But it effects everyone differently. Elise’s may have been faster and more chaotic, because she was most likely half-starved before she turned. There’s a chance that Catherine meant to come back and help her, and just arrived too late.”
“That would give Cate a reason to cover up the truth,” I said. “I doubt Elise would’ve been happy if she knew that it was Cate’s fault that she killed her own father.”
“Not to mention she was a very virtuous girl, and even after turning, she was a practicing Catholic,” Ezra explained. “If I recall correctly, she waited until their wedding night to lay with Peter. Toward the end of her life, I know that she really struggled with her vampire nature and immortality. Peter tried desperately to make her happy, and sometimes it seemed to work, but I think she spent a lot of time very depressed.”
My heart broke for Peter, all over again, as I processed what Ezra had told me. I knew that Peter and Elise hadn’t been together for very long, but I’d pictured their brief union as one extended honeymoon, a giant montage of love songs and slow dances, like a flashback from a Nicholas Spark movie.
But to hear that it had actually been a struggle, that their love – as pure and true as Peter believed it to be – hadn’t been enough.
That was something I had learned with Jack. That love made life richer and fuller, yes, but it didn’t give it purpose and it didn’t heal all that was wrong with me. Jack’s love didn’t erase my guilt over Jane’s death or any of my shortcomings. He made me want to be a better person, he supported me in my endeavors, but he didn’t – and he couldn’t – just magically make everything all better.
But it was still a bitter pill to swallow to realize that there wasn’t such a thing as “happily ever after.” There was only “happily until the next bad thing, that hopefully we’re strong enough to overcome forever after.”
“So as much as she loved Peter, you think she regretted becoming a vampire?” I asked Ezra.
“Yes. I do,” he replied simply.
“But if Cate really didn’t like Peter, the way she claims, and we assume that she is Elise’s maker, does that meant that Elise and Peter weren’t really bonded?” I asked.
Ezra shook his head. “I don’t know. The relationship between maker and progeny is very complicated and often intense, and the nature of the blood bond is already fraught with confusion and extreme passion, as you very well know from your own experience. Then add the transference between of bonding from maker to soulmate to progeny to family, and it’s just a whole mess of possibilities and things far beyond our understanding.”
“So you’re saying that Cate could be right, but she could be wrong?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, yes, that is what I’m saying,” he said. “To put things in perspective, my maker Willem was a vile, evil man that tortured me and kept me enslaved for nearly a hundred years before I broke free. I can’t even count the number of people he killed and tortured in front of me.
“But despite all that, it was difficult for me to end him,” he continued grimly. “There was a bond inside me that pulled me to stay with him. And killing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was fighting against the very core of my being. But I knew I had to do it.”
“I’m sorry you went through that,” I said.
He waved me off. “No, no, I’m not seeking your sympathy. I’m merely telling you that everything about vampires and blood is very complicated.”
“And now Elise is throwing a vampire ghost in the mix.”
EZRA STARED BACK AT ME through my computer screen, his mouth turned down into an apologetic scowl. “Sorry I can’t be of more help with that. You might be better off discussing these questions with a medium or a psychic.”
I sat up straighter in the dining room chair and looked toward the bedroom door, where I could hear the dog snoring loudly as she slept beside Jack.
“Hey, has Jack talked to you?” I asked, quietly so as not to wake him.
“About what specifically?” Ezra asked.
I glanced at the doorway again. “About him being dead.”
“He’s dead?” he asked in confusion.
“No, not really,” I said quickly. “He’s fine and he’s alive. We went to see a psychic, and she had this really strong reaction to him and claimed that his soul was dead.”
Ezra leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand. “Jack has not mentioned that to me. But are you sure the psychic wasn’t messing with you for more money?”
“I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure. Have you heard of anything like that, though?” I asked. “Vampires without souls?”
“Not anything credible,” he said. “There are always stories and superstitions about demons and vampires. But I don’t think any of those would help you.”
“Where do you thin
k vampires go when they die?” I asked honestly.
He thought for a second before asking, “Are you asking if I believe there is a heaven in general, or one specifically for vampires?
I shrugged. “Both? Either?”
“I’ve been alive for… 340 years now, I believe. In that time, I have seen many, many things. Some miraculous, some horrendous. Some I could explain, but others I’ve never been able to. But I have never seen irrefutable proof in anything beyond this life,” he said.
“So you don’t believe in heaven?” I clarified.
He shook his head. “I didn’t say that either. Back when I still served under Willem, he had a business associate. An aristocratic vampire called Bogdan who treated me respectfully, as an equal. He’d been alive for over 500 years when I met him, though he couldn’t be certain of his exact age, because it was much harder to keep track of time back then. He’d seen a great deal of things; empires rise and fall. He’d buried more family, lovers, and friends than I could even comprehend.
“After Willem would go to sleep, I would sit with Bogdan and watch the sunrise, and we would talk philosophy, astronomy, and religion until the sun rose so high we couldn’t bare it,” he went on. “The last time we went to visit him at his home, and toward the end, he told me that he had enough. He had seen everything the world had to offer, and he had nothing left to give back. He was immortal, but he was convinced that his time here was up, and he wanted to see what came next.”
“What came next?” I echoed.
“Yes. After life,” Ezra said. “He was certain there had to be something more, and he wanted to see it. He asked me to stake him through the heart. I balked at it, but he persisted, saying he couldn’t do it himself, and he wanted to die with someone he trusted and cared about by his side.”
“Did you do it?” I asked.
“I did,” he said. “And as the light went out in his eyes, I saw a man succumbing to serenity for the first time in a very long time.”
“You think he went to an afterlife?”
“I’d like to think he did. But even if he didn’t, I don’t regret what I did. After five-hundred years, he’d lived more lifetimes than one man should. He was done with this earth, and even if what came next was just a vast nothingness, I think he was ready for it.”
Swear (My Blood Approves #5) Page 14