by Ramy Vance
He gave me that look of his … the one that says there’s always a good reason for everything, even drowning in lava. ‘At least you’d be warm,’ I thought.
“Excuse me?” he said, confusion on his face.
“Never mind.” I shook my head. “You’re just …” I looked deep into his impossibly blue eyes and sighed. Why fight it? “You’re just rubbing off on me.”
“So, you’ll come?”
“Maybe. I’ll come to one of your events. Eventually.”
“Excellent.” He clicked his heels like Dorothy ruby-slippering her way home, and taking my arm, helped me onto the tram. “I’ll put you on our mailing list. Lots of value-add content in there. Lots.”
“I’m sure,” I said, stopping before security. Then, turning around, I gave him one more goodbye kiss, this one on the lips. “Thank you, Aldie. You are …” I searched for the words until I found the perfect ones. “You just are.”
His expression lit up with a smile that threatened to split his face in two. “Thank you, Katrina. That is truly a great compliment, coming from you.”
HELLO MY LOVER
Egya, Deirdre and I returned to Montreal by coach, and what I was praying would be a normal life. We started our journey in first class, continued it in a private plane and, now that it was over, it felt right to fly home in the style that most people do. I’m not saying that first-class flights and private planes are bad, but if the people who have that kind of luxury go through the kind of shit we just went through on a regular basis, then give me economy class any day of the week.
Back home, we hired a taxi and made our way to campus. Egya and Deirdre walked up to the dorm, but I wanted a few minutes to myself. I needed a walk to clear my head and think about things. It was, after all, February 14th. I might have missed the first few weeks of school, but I had made it back in time for Valentine’s. Surprise, Justin!
Oh Justin … How I looked forward to seeing him and making my return his best Valentine’s ever—if you catch my oh-so-not-subtle-at-all drift. I could just see our reunion now. He’d say, “Kat, where have you been?” and I’d be all like, “Miss me, lover?” and he’d take me into his arms and everything would be OK. We’d make whoopee, as Ella puts it, and then I’d tell him everything. Everything, and we could roll the credits on our fairytale romance with the classic And they lived happily ever after clause.
Wishful thinking, I know, but I kind of felt like I deserved it. I had just saved the world … twice.
Off in the distance, a flock of birds was flying and diving and gliding in a manner that reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock’s’ classic horror, The Birds. And me, being me, I went over to investigate closer.
As I did, I continued to think about Justin and what the future had in store for us. I really wanted things to work out, but fairytale endings were few and far between in the GoneGod World. We’d most likely fight, and maybe worse.
Whatever our end, the last thing I expected was to see Justin holding another woman while fighting a flock of metal birds that circled the campus above.
What the hell did I miss here?
8 - ENCANTADO DREAMS
CHAPTER 1
Even with five hundred years of immortality under my belt, I still couldn't apply lipstick right.
“Call me Isa,” I said to my reflection, pressing my lips together. “No one calls me by my full name.”
The girl who stared back at me widened her green eyes, adjusted one red curl back into her bun. The eyeshadow was too dark, the lips too red; after a year in this form, I still hadn’t mastered the right shades for Irish coloring.
“I’ll call you whatever you want,” Aimee said, stepping into my line of vision in the mirror, “but if you make us late for class because you’re pretending to be someone else again, I will play the Brazilian samba while you sleep.”
I shuddered, turning toward her. “Not the samba. The drums are like a giant’s footsteps on my eardrums.”
She grabbed her backpack off her bed, slung it over one shoulder. “Then get your Gabbana-Coach-cinnamon-swirl whatever, and let’s go.”
“It’s Dolce & Gabbana.” I swiped a hand through the straps of my handbag. It was the perfect size for all my needs: textbooks, notebooks, my laptop, and even a makeup bag. I was starting to like fashion. “And I think it suits me, don’t you?”
Of course, she thought the bag was a fake. How could I afford the real thing on a research assistant's wages? I hadn’t told her—or anyone—about what I had stashed away in my savings account. Five hundred years was a long time to save.
Regardless, even if Aimee knew something about fashion, she would have been too kind to point out a fake.
Aimee crossed to the door, surveyed me as she opened it. “For class? Isabella, you could go in your pajamas and you’d be a knockout.”
I offered her a faint smile as I passed through the door. She might have been right. After all, I knew what humans found “aesthetically pleasing,” and this form was it. The youth, the red hair, the green eyes, the 0.7 hip-to-width ratio.
And yet. I stepped into the hallway, found myself staring at Justin Truly in profile. Justin-Perfect-Truly, I always thought when I saw him. Black-haired, blue-eyed, lithe as a jaguar and twice as muscular.
Jaguar, I thought automatically. Kingdom: Animalia. Genus: Panthera. Class: Mammalia. Species: P. onca.
"Uh, Isa?" Aimee said, stepping in front of me. "We have to get better about that staring thing. It's a little creepy."
"He's a jaguar," I murmured. Men like that were an endangered species.
Justin hadn’t noticed me from where he stood, knocking on Katrina's door down the hall. No one answered. He straightened, and his eyes passed over Aimee and me. I waved, all my fingers moving separately.
He paused a half second, hitched his backpack up and started the opposite way down the hall.
"He didn't wave back," I said.
Aimee glanced the direction I was staring. "That wasn't a wave, Isa—you looked like you were casting a spell on him."
I smacked my forehead as Aimee laughed, turning us toward the stairwell. "Merda," I said. "I think I’m losing my touch now that I’m mortal."
"It's fine. He's really good looking," she said as we started down the stairs. "But don't talk about him being a jaguar anymore, OK?"
"OK," I said. "Hey, wait up!"
Aimee was barreling down the stairs like a dervish, pulling on her hat and gloves. By the time we hit the first stairwell she was already fully suited up, only her eyes and nose visible. “We’ll make it if we run," she called back to me, muffled through her scarf. "And not Isabella-running, either.”
I was taking the steps a pair at a time, and I was breathless by the time we emerged onto the street. “Hey,” I protested, “what does that mean?”
At that moment, the cold hit me like a wall. As a native Brazilian, I would never get used to Montreal winters.
"It means you're my best friend, but you run like a beached dolphin," Aimee said.
“Thank you.” I set one hand to my chest.
She glanced back. “Why are you thanking me?”
“In my culture, it’s an honor to be compared to a dolphin. They’re the most intelligent mammals in the ocean, not to mention how my kind resembles—“
“Isa,” she said. “Class. Stat.” And before I could finish soapboxing, she struck down the plowed sidewalk toward the Liberal Arts building. I ran after, and as we careened past people walking down the sidewalk, I regretted wearing these black boots with their spindly heels.
Turns out, a pretty pair of heels does nothing for functionality.
"Porra!" I yelled, sliding on the ice.
It was only when I heard a “Woah,” and felt a pair of hands catch me at the waist that I knew who had saved me.
My head turned, and I nearly melted into those blue eyes.
"You okay?" Justin-Perfect-Truly asked.
Aimee appeared next to us. “Sorry,” she whispered to h
im, grabbing my hand and pulling me out of his arms. She always turned mousy and shy when we got outside. "We're going to be late for class."
And we were off again. "Curse you," I said. Suddenly I could have cared less about English 101. You'd think since I was fluent in all the Romance languages (and a few others, to boot) I’d have tested out of the class. Turns out, if you’re an Other, you don’t get that option; as a sophomore, they had finally graduated me from English as a Second Language into the standard classes. "That could have been my chance at love."
"Trust me, Isa," Aimee said breathlessly, "you'll find love again."
I could only glance back to where Justin stood looking after us, both hands raised as though he’d been offered free samples at a Chinese restaurant in a mall food court.
He seemed awfully sad these days. Cute-sad, but sad nonetheless.
And as Aimee and I rushed into our English class and slipped into our seats, I couldn’t help but wonder if that sadness had to do with Katrina Darling.
The auburn-haired, fashion dynamo had been missing since the start of the semester. Today, like every other day for the last three weeks, her seat in front of me remained as empty as ever.
↔
IT WASN’T any of my business what had happened to Katrina. We weren’t friends, or even acquaintances. The most she’d ever said to me was “Thanks,” when I passed her the syllabus on the first day of English 101.
And yet.
Maybe it was how boring our professor was, or the fact that I would get an A even if I happened to miss the next month of lectures—hey, I was octolingual—but her absence fascinated me.
As the professor called roll again, and “Katrina Darling?” came out of his mouth to no reply, I did that thing that encantados do.
I began to imagine her life. My hand went to the amulet around my neck, and I rubbed at the teardrop crystal as I envisioned her somewhere in Europe, riding low on the back of a teal vespa and chucking ninja stars at the legion of ghouls chasing her. Her auburn hair would have whipped out of its bun and she would have on a pair of those tall leather boots I’d seen her wearing once last semester—did she ever wear anything twice, for that matter?—and even on that vespa, she’d look cool.
I’d shifted into thousands of illusions in my time and never been that cool.
A pair of fingers snapped near my ear. “Isa,” Aimee hissed. “You’re up.”
My eyes shot from Aimee to the professor, who stood with the tufts of his remaining hair blowing under the vent, one hand on his hip. “Ms. Ramirez?”
Merda. That was me. Part of that encantado thing: you get really, really hyperfocused on whatever you’re fantasizing about—sort of like a human with ADHD.
“Coming.” I tucked my amulet into my sweater and swept my report and USB drive off my desk. I was ready for this.
I made for the front of the classroom, and when I knelt in front of the computer, I struggled to fit the USB into the slot. I must have practiced a hundred times, but I was sweating through my sweater by the time it finally clicked in.
I sprang up to find twenty sets of half-lidded eyes staring back at me. If you think imitating humans for hundreds of years during your immortal life would prepare you for a 10-minute presentation in front of a classroom of mostly human college freshmen, you’d be wrong.
Very wrong.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath as I indicated for our professor to dim the lights.
He stepped toward the door, made to close it on any late arrivals. But a hand caught the door just before it closed, and a set of extra-long nails tapped the wood.
Every pair of eyes turned to see who’d dared to arrive late. This professor was known to dress-down any students who thought they could barrel into his class after it had already started.
But this wasn’t a student.
The door creaked slowly open to reveal an elderly woman in a long, black dress. She hadn’t even worn a jacket; definitely not Canadian winter-wear. Her white hair had been left uncut and straggled almost to her hips. It framed a lined, unhappy face.
No—unhappy wasn’t the right word. I’d spent so long studying faces and recreating them that I knew exactly how to read a person’s face, especially if they were old.
This woman bore the face of a life lived bitterly. Frown lines framed her mouth, which pursed almost into lipless nonexistence. Two deep grooves sat between her eyebrows, what I’d often heard called “elevens.”
Elevens were a sign of worry, of pain, of anxiety. And they had the side effect of permanently marring a face.
Even now, her eyebrows drew together as she surveyed the classroom. Emerald eyes, the whites bloodshot and yellowing, started at the back and swept over every face until she arrived at mine.
The scorn in those eyes practically leveled me. I set one hand on the rail along the bottom of the whiteboard.
“Can I help you?” the professor asked.
Her green eyes narrowed on me, studying my features. And the more I looked, the more they seemed familiar. But that couldn’t be—I remembered every person I’d ever met. I was the Other equivalent of a “super recognizer,” which meant I could remember anyone’s face after seeing it once. Except I was beyond that. I had tens of thousands of faces in my memory.
And I didn’t recognize this one.
But those eyes … there was something about them.
The old woman didn’t even acknowledge that the professor had spoken. She came toward me in a smooth motion, the hem of her dress kissing the ground almost as though she floated.
When she stopped, I had backed up against the whiteboard—I was going to have red marker residue all over my back after this—as she leaned toward me … and sniffed.
I lifted a finger. “Uh, excuse me.”
The woman’s hand came out, touched a tendril of my hair. She brought it to her nose and took one long, deep inhale. “É você?”
Had she just addressed me in Portuguese? If I’d heard her correctly, she had said, “Is it you?”
Even if she did speak my language, I really doubted I wanted to be the person she was looking for. I removed my hair from her grasp, and she allowed it to slide from between her fingertips. “Desculpe,” I said, “nunca nos conhecemos.” Which translated to, “Sorry—we’ve never met.”
Her eyes widened with recognition, like she’d seen someone she never expected to see again. I knew that look. Heck, I’d been responsible for that look before.
By now, the professor had stepped up behind the old woman and set both hands on her shoulders. She looked absolutely frail next to him, and his hands appeared enormous. “All right, let’s figure out where you’re supposed to be.”
The woman’s eyes hung on me, but she allowed herself to be turned toward the door. She flashed one last look around the classroom, her eyes darting toward me as she and the professor stepped outside.
"Isabella, we’ll continue with your presentation in a minute,” he said as the door swept shut behind him.
And as it clapped to, the whole class broke into nervous laughter. It was like they’d seen one of those guys in a hotdog suit come running through the lecture room and dash out the other side.
Except for me. My heart was beating like a bird in a cage.
CHAPTER 2
T he morning chill hadn’t lifted, and Aimee and I walked slowly toward the dining hall.
“So,” she began, “that was unusual.”
“Understatement of the century.” And I would know; I had been around for five centuries.
Even as we passed down the sidewalk packed with students going to and from classes, my eyes searched for that woman. Those green eyes were haunting me.
“Do you know her?” Aimee asked.
“How would I know her?”
“She sounded … South American.”
“That’s kind of generalizing, Aimee. It’s a big continent.”
She shrugged. “Okay, whatever. You and she spoke in Portuguese, didn’t
you?”
I exhaled through my nose. “Yes.” That woman had clearly been a native speaker. And she actually sounded like she might have been from Brazil.
“Maybe you knew her ... you know, before.”
And by before, she meant when I was an immortal. Back before I had to burn time to shapeshift, and when years flowed through my fingers as simply as water over my dorsal fin.
Well, those rare times I actually took on my true form.
“I’ve never seen her face before,” I said slowly. “But those eyes …”
Aimee cast a curious look at me as she opened the door to the dining hall, and a wave of delicious hot air flowed over the both of us. Ahh, the wonders of modern heating. There were a few things I truly appreciated as a Brazilian in Canada, and this was in the top three.
Ahead of us, the morning crowd had assembled, most tables full of dull-eyed students in pajamas with bowls of sugar—what they called “cereal”—set before them. It was a miracle humans in the developed world lived as long as they did, given their day-to-day eating habits.
“The eyes? What do you mean?” Aimee asked.
“They were like … ” But I trailed off as my gut cinched. It had been seventy years, and I still couldn’t even think about him without a physical reaction. And I really didn’t want to talk about what had happened seventy years ago in the middle of the dining hall. So I just offered a faint smile. “They were like emeralds.”
“I thought she was going to turn you into a pillar of salt with the way she was looking at you,” Aimee said as we crossed to the tray dispenser. “Hey, isn’t that—?”
We had caught sight of him at the same time, and I froze with the tray to my chest like a breastplate.
Justin Truly, and he was staring straight back at us over a giant pile of whipped cream. There might have been a waffle under there somewhere, too.