by Am Hudson
“I could ‘convince’ someone to let us in up the front,” David suggested.
“No, it’s okay.” I stopped him. “It’s a part of being human. It’ll be good for us.”
His shoulders drooped slightly. But he dutifully walked off to get the paint we’d been waiting on then, and when he returned, he stood beside me in the line and we waited patiently. Until five minutes passed and the second person in line still hadn’t been served.
“Don’t get queue rage, David,” I said, touching his arm as if that might calm him; it didn’t. “Fact is, the line will move—eventually. We just have to wait, like everyone else here.”
His eyes fell on the mountain of junk in our cart.
After a moment, he reached in, dug down deep, and drew out a wooden ruler.
“What are you doing?”
“Helping you with your…” Powers, he added in thought, half glancing back at the woman behind us. She was engrossed in her phone screen though, so I doubt she’d have heard if he said ‘powers’ aloud.
“And how is a ruler going to help me? Ow!” I squealed when he smacked my bum with it. I rubbed the sore spot. “Why’d you do that?”
“I wanna see if you can snap it.” He smacked me again.
“Ouch!”
“Break it,” he said with a cheeky grin and smacked me again.
“Stop it.” I covered my bum with both hands. “People are staring.”
“Well.” He laughed, unfazed. “When you break it, I’ll stop.”
As it came toward my bottom again, I could almost feel it impact, even though it hadn’t struck. And it hurt. He hit pretty hard for such a loving guy. But I couldn’t concentrate—couldn’t exactly use my powers of telekinesis to snap it if I was trying not to get hit by it.
The ruler clapped across my sore spot again and this time, when I screeched loudly, everyone turned and looked at us.
“Jerk!” I slapped him.
David just laughed, bending to pick up a piece of the wooden ruler. “See?”
My eyes went so wide they could have swallowed David. “I did it?”
“You did.”
“But… I didn’t even try. How did I do that?”
“Because I’m just that good of a teacher.” He tossed it back in the cart. “And unlike my brother, I know how to get through to you. I don’t need to steal kisses to teach you new tricks.”
“New tricks?” I folded my arms. “I’m not a dog.”
“Oh, yeah? Then let’s see how you do when I up the ante.” He picked up one end of the ruler again and grinned at me, his wild, playful eyes filling me with worry. “Fetch,” he said quickly, and threw the broken ruler straight toward the head of an old lady standing at the front of the line.
My mind raced ahead of the flying object, and as quickly as I realised impact was inevitable, I tried to use my powers to stop it. And failed.
“Shit,” David said as he realised, but it was too late even for him.
We both quickly looked away as the old lady yelped loudly, holding the back of her head.
When I dared to take a peek, her accusing eyes scanned the stunned faces in the aisles and down the service line. David and I took a very sudden interest in our paint swatches, hiding our laughter as best we possibly could.
“I guess you’re not as ready as I thought you were,” he said.
“Might have been smarter to test that theory without assaulting the aged.”
When David laughed then, it was so sudden and so throaty he folded over and covered his mouth with a fist to hide it. And I laughed too, because he just looked so human when he did that.
***
David opened the trunk and stood back with his arms folded. “Go on,” he said.
“What?”
“Put the paint in the trunk.”
“You lazy sod!” I demanded, pushing past him to grab a can from the cart.
“Not with your hands,” he said, stopping me. “What kind of a man do you think I am that I’d make a pregnant girl load paint cans? Even if said girl can probably lift this car without breaking a nail.”
“Well…” I looked at him, then the cart. “What do you mean then?”
He tapped his temple, grinning impishly.
“Oh.” I bunched my hands together, scanning the parking lot. “But someone will see.”
“So?” he shrugged, his arms still folded. “They’ll never believe their own eyes. And if they do, we’ll just tell them we’re magicians—shooting for our new YouTube channel.”
Good idea. But, still, I wasn’t sure I should.
“Have you ever moved something by choice—aside from a pie?” he asked, winking at me.
“A few things. But nothing as heavy as a paint can.”
“My love, telekinesis can move buildings.” He leaned in and spoke quieter, one hand cupping my elbow gently. “The weight of something has no bearing on the strength of your mind, or its ability to move the object.”
“I know that, in theory. But—”
“You need to let go of the world as you know it, and imagine that the paint can is just a thought. There is no paint can,” he said with a cheeky grin. “Don’t move the can. Imagine it being in a place other than where it is now, and let your mind do the rest—don’t think about how or why it moves, just let it be.”
For some reason, that just felt like too much information all at once.
I decided to give it a go, even though I didn’t really understand what he meant, but when I tried, my hands sparked with blue.
“Wrong power, Ara.” He laughed. “Use your mind, not your Cerulean Light.”
“I’m trying.” I rubbed my head. “But I can’t find the place in my mind that I go to when I move things.”
He stepped a bit closer and tilted my face upward. “Have you got a headache?”
“I’m standing on pavement, of course I do.”
“I’m sorry.” He made a point of touching my wrist. “I know you genuinely do need that bracelet, but you understand why I threw it away, don’t you?”
I scowled at him.
“Come on.” He stepped back. “Move the cans and we’ll go get you a new bracelet now.”
I focused on the paint can—imagined it in the trunk—narrowed my eyes at it, spoke to it in my mind, but it sat there as though telekinesis wasn’t even a real thing, making me feel silly. “David, I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.” He walked around the other side of the cart and picked up the can like it was made of plastic—light and easy to carry. “Think about where you want me to put it—where in the trunk it’ll fit best.”
I looked into the trunk; there was only one spot left, really—with all the other junk in there. “Okay. Now what?”
“Now, I’m going to do the ‘man thing’ and put it in the wrong place.” He walked around to the trunk and placed the paint can on my new cushions. I went to grab him and say, “Don’t you dare put that there!” but as I moved to stop him, my mind reached him first, imagining the paint being placed on the black carpeted base of the trunk instead.
David looked up in surprise as the can left his hands and jerked to the left, falling on its side—away from my new cushion. “Wow.”
“I did it!” I jumped on the spot.
“You did. And you’re strong, too. I couldn’t hold onto it.” He righted the can. “Want to try it again?”
“No.” I held my head.
“Are you okay?”
I pressed my temples firmly. “Why am I getting this headache, David? I didn’t use my Cerulean Light.”
“That’s normal,” he said, loading the other cans. “I get them too—when I’m doing something new. It’s because you’re using a part of your brain that hasn’t been used much—like developing new muscles; they hurt for a while after a workout.”
“So it’ll go away?”
He stood right up against me and swept my hair back, placing both of his cool hands on my temples. “Let’s see…”
> I closed my eyes as I felt David inside my head. His thumbs massaged circles around my temples a few times, and after about five seconds, the pain lifted—like a light coming on and cloud moving away.
“Better?”
“Oh my God.” I tapped my head to make sure. “How did you do that?”
“I blocked your pain receptors.”
“That is so cool,” I said, watching him in awe as he closed the trunk and returned the cart to the bay beside us.
“It comes in handy,” he said casually, and as my eyes travelled past him for a spilt second to the other end of the parking lot, I thought I saw a familiar stride on a very tall and lanky guy.
David followed my puzzled gaze across the rows and rows of cars.
“Is that…?”
“I think it is,” I said, stepping closer as if to get a better look. “I mean, he’s… so much taller, but…”
A white flash caught my eye then and a dog barked beside me, sending my soul out through the top of my head in a giant involuntary leap.
I looked down into its icy blue eyes and nearly fell over. “Petey!”
“What are you doing here?” David said rudely, as though he wasn’t actually speaking to my dad and Lord of Eden—as though he truly was speaking to a dog he’d owned for decades.
Petey backed away deliberately, keeping his eyes on Sam and Vicki, and we followed, squatting out of sight at the front end of the car. When I looked at the white ball of fur, he seemed to say, “What are you doing here?”
David nodded to him, then shook his head. “It’s not safe for us there now.”
“Wait!” I grabbed David’s arm. “You can read his mind now, or is he giving you those thoughts?”
“Concentrate, Ara,” he said. “I’m sure you can read it, too.”
So I tried, while he talked to my dad, but I couldn’t get in. I could hear Sam in the distance calling out for his dog, though, which was breaking my concentration.
“We’re at the lake house,” David said, glancing back at Sam. “Come find us when you can.”
Petey nodded once and ran off as Sam’s calls slowly grew more desperate.
“He knows where the lake house is?” I asked, standing up.
David laughed. “Of course. He was my dog since before I was vampire.”
I rolled my eyes at myself. Duh.
***
By the time I stomped up the steps to the house after my morning run, the sun was up and so was David. I unwrapped my neck and put my scarf over the porch railing, noticing then that it didn’t snag on dry flecks of greying paint. The surface was smooth and looked milky, like the wood beneath all that age and deterioration was white oak.
“David?” I called out, not really sure where to send my voice.
“Up here.”
“Up where?”
Two thuds came from the rooftop. I stepped back down onto the top step and shielded my eyes against the sun’s glare, framing the slender silhouette on the roof. “What are you doing up there?”
“Fixing the chimney.”
“You fixed it the other day.”
“It… fell down again.” He held up a book; I couldn’t see the title. “I’ve got some help this time.”
“Oh. Okay. Good. But…” I ran a hand down the smooth pole supporting the roof. “I thought we were going to work at human speed.”
“We are. Why?”
“Beee…cause you sanded the entire house in under an hour.”
He gave me a guilty grin and disappeared.
“David Thomas Knight! You get back down here and answer for your crimes!”
All I heard was a laugh.
“If you keep working at this speed, we’ll be done by the end of the week.”
“One can only hope,” he called down.
“Yes, but then what will we do?”
A shadow grew over the dirt beside the stairs and a giant beanpole landed heavily on top of it. He dusted his hands off and turned back to look at me, squinting in the sun. “You’re right. I’m sorry, your Majesty. I’ll work slowly.”
I poked my tongue out at him and went inside, taking my scarf with me.
While he pottered around up on the roof, doing who-knows-what, I tore down the old curtains and bagged them, swept out the remainder of the leaves I’d missed last time, and tried my best to mop up the mud and damp that had collected under them over the decades. But it occurred to me, after scraping the mud away and scrubbing the crumbling corners, that we’d need to replace the floorboards. At any moment one of us could step in the wrong spot and fall right through.
By the time David came back down from the roof, covered in soot and grey dust, the inside of the house was clean and ready to be painted.
“The new stove should arrive at the store today. Wanna come into town with me? We could have some lunch before we pick it up?”
I laid the dustpan aside and scrambled to my feet. “It’d be so much easier if we could just get delivery.”
“You know why we can’t.” He walked over to the sink to wash his hands.
“Same reason we can’t have phones. Same reason we can’t have friends. Same reason we can’t even get an electrician out here.” I sat down heavily on the new mattress. “I can’t live in isolation, David. I feel so cut off.”
“That’s because you are cut off.” He leaned against the edge of the giant porcelain sink, drying his hands on a towel. “And besides, I seem to remember a girl saying once that she could live in a world with just her and me and no one else.”
I flopped back, sprawling out. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
I started a little when he appeared on top of me, his face right over mine. He pushed his knee between mine to part my legs, and dropped onto his hands, holding himself up off Bump.
“And that’s why they say to be careful what you wish for,” he added.
“Well—” I put my hands on his sides, “—when you say it like that, it’s not so bad.”
“Say it like what?”
“When you say it while you’re lying between my legs.”
He laughed and leaned down to kiss me, drawing back reluctantly. “And this is very nice, but it’s going to rain tomorrow. We should get that first coat of paint on outside.”
“Okay.” I rolled up a little and he sat back. “Maybe we’ll paint the outside at vamp speed then—so it has time to dry.”
“Sounds perfect.” He stood up and offered his hand. “In that case, why don’t I go out and finish that job while you get started in here.”
I took his hand and stood up. “Is the chimney fixed?”
“It is. And the few tiles that needed replacing are done. We should be good now if there’s a storm.”
“What about snow?”
He grimaced. “I might replace them all before the snow comes.”
“If the snow comes, you mean,” I said, thinking about Loslilian—how I was once told that it was the most beautiful place on earth when it snowed—and a part of me missed it so much then that I felt a little hole starting to grow inside my chest.
“I know the weather here well enough to know that if it was hot yesterday, it’ll be snowing next week,” he advised.
I laughed. “I’d say that’s a fair assumption.”
David laughed, too. “Anyway, we best get to work, my love. I want this done before midday so we can go into town—maybe even get a burger at Betty’s.”
“I’d like that.” I nodded, plotting out each task in my mind.
“Although, if we’re to spend the morning apart—working—we need something to keep us company.” He disappeared into the narrow stairwell behind the bathroom wall, coming back down a minute later with a giant tuba thing attached to a small box.
“A gramophone?” I raised a brow at it.
“What’s a little work without some good music?” He winked at me and laid the gramophone on the wobbly table in the middle of the kitchen. “I’ve just realised
we should probably get a new dining table while we’re out today.”
“Then we’ll need a bigger truck than the one we brought the mattress home in.”
“That won’t be a problem.”
“You don’t think it’s a bit of a flashing sign above our heads—you know, like ‘here we are, come follow us to our lair’?”
“No.” He disappeared again and reappeared a second later with a stack of square card sleeves—the records inside wrapped in shiny tissue-like paper. “We’ll be fine.”
“You better be right.” I grabbed the pile of white sheets off the stool beside him. “I’m going to cover everything over before I paint. And we need new floors, by the way.”
“Of course we do,” he said, laying a record gently on the gramophone and meticulously placing the needle on the surface. “The whole house needs replacing.”
“I thought you said it was solid,” I teased.
“Well, perhaps I was wrong.” He pressed down on the floorboards with the toe of his shoe. “But I have a feeling it won’t matter soon.”
“Why not?”
“When we ran into your dad the other day at the store, he had a vision.”
“A vision?”
“You remember the Book of Carmen: Vampirie’s predictions over the course of history—”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” I said lightly, then put one hand on my hip, taking the pose of an angry wife. “So, why are you waiting until now to tell me my dad had a vision?”
“I wasn’t sure I should.”
“What?” My hands dropped to my sides with disappointment. “But we promised each other—no more secrets, remember!”
“I know,” he said innocently. “That’s why I decided to tell you.”
“Took you long enough.” I sighed, letting it go. “Anyway, what did he see?”
“A battle at Loslilian.”
“Did he see the outcome—or when it happens?”
“Outcome, no. But the battle takes place in the coming weeks. That’s pretty much all I saw in the three seconds it played out.”
“Damn.”
I dumped the sheets on the bed and walked past David to the sitting area opposite the bathroom door, flopping down heavily in the old chair. Motes of dust puffed up from under me and danced in the spread of sunlight. I watched for a moment, letting this new information sink in.