Twice Bitten

by Diana Greenbird

  ‘Did you have to encourage him?’ Emerson asked. The music was loud inside, but I could still hear his low velvet voice in my ear.

  ‘No, but it was fun,’ I said. Emerson didn’t seem to get that it was making him jealous that was the fun part, not having another guy flirt with me. I wasn’t going to spell it out for him, though.

  I went over into the kitchen, mixing myself a rum and Coke. ‘What’s your poison, sailor?’ I asked Emerson. I took a swig of the rum before I screwed the cap back on.

  I was joking, since I knew he couldn’t drink. I’d only made him speed by because it was likely that Emerson didn’t have a fake ID and wouldn’t be allowed into the house if they figured he was a high school student. Especially since to a vampire, his “real” ID was his fake one.

  ‘How did you know about this party tonight?’ Emerson asked. He grabbed himself a red solo cup and poured himself a drink from the keg, all for show.

  ‘It’s Halloween. It’s college. There was going to be a party.’

  ‘Have you been to many college parties?’ Emerson asked.

  ‘They’re a lot more entertaining than high school ones,’ I answered.

  Even though Ali had told me to avoid college if I wanted to evade vamps as much as possible, Christian and I had ended up going to a fair few ragers since our foster house was in a college town. It was where we let loose, ignored our shitty lives and pretended we could be like any other young American: their whole lives ahead of them with endless opportunities to succeed. Christian had made me feel safe. I’d never feared running into a vampire with him. I’d simply believed that trouble couldn’t touch me when we were together. I was his protector and he was mine. I hadn’t realised that Death had simply been saving a better surprise until later for us.

  ‘I think people like Emma would have to disagree with you there.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry – did you wanna go to Emma’s widdle party?’ I asked sarcastically. I laughed at Emerson’s disgusted look, taking a sip of my drink. ‘Emma and the rest of the student body still believe high school is their whole life. I doubt Emma’s ever experienced anything outside of the bubble of her quaffed highlights and cheer practice.’

  ‘You’re in high school, too, you know,’ Emerson reminded me. He whispered it low so now one around us could hear, not that they were paying much attention.

  ‘As soon as you’re put in the foster system, you’re not a kid anymore,’ I told him, honestly. ‘And I’ve never had the luxury of the “bubble” life.’

  Emerson lowered his solo cup to the table.

  ‘This is the first birthday that’s yours since you turned,’ I reminded him. ‘Are we really going to talk about my depressing ass past or are we going to have some fun you can “remember” and dance.’

  I pulled Emerson over to the makeshift dancefloor which used to be the frat’s living room before all the couches and coffee tables had been pushed to the edge of the room.

  Emerson had left his cup behind, but I kept mine whilst we danced, drinking as we ground up against each other to the loud bass of the music. Emerson’s hands ran freely up and down my body, skimming over the fishnet tights to the edge of my dress. Since we’d touched yesterday, being close and intimate like this was second nature, rather than something I actively tried not to think about. Plus, it was his birthday and we were here to have fun.

  A couple of times, a guy would get too close to me, and Emerson would pull me closer to him, his hands going to the small of my back, his lips finding their way to my neck.

  As the night progressed, I’d drunk half the bottle of rum I’d been making my drinks from.

  ‘Do you think you need to slow down?’ Emerson asked me.

  ‘Do I look like I need to slow down?’ I responded. I was mildly tipsy, but nowhere near the black-out drunk I’d gotten when I was younger.

  ‘For my fifteenth,’ I told him. ‘Christian had me do a shot for every one of my birthdays. Ali had sent me a bottle of Patrón. She was so pissed when she found out we’d used it for shots.’

  I downed the rest of my drink so I didn’t think about my sixteenth birthday the year after. The one I spent alone in the middle of the trail, awaiting Christian’s sentencing.

  ‘These are friends of yours?’ Emerson asked me.

  I nodded, pulling him back to the dancefloor. I threw my cup away, taking off Emerson’s cap and putting it on my head. I hardly felt it since I was already wearing a wig.

  He shook his head at me.

  ‘Ali’s part of the Order,’ I told him. I was probably a lot more drunk than I thought to be talking so freely, but I didn’t realise it at the time. I was just saying whatever came into my head. ‘We met in New York when I escaped from my group home.

  ‘Mom and dad got buried with grandma in Washington, but they left their souls behind in NY,’ I said. ‘I was just so effing tired of being messed around and I wanted to go back just for a bit.

  ‘I always run to New York when things get hard. Death’s a lot calmer there. Maybe because it’s where we met, but he doesn’t screw up shit quite as bad as everywhere else when I’m back home.’

  ‘Liv…’ Emerson said. He looked wary. He wasn’t supposed to look freaking wary. This was his birthday; he was supposed to be having a good time.

  ‘Come on,’ I told him, grabbing his hand. ‘Have you ever played beer pong?’

  ‘No. I can’t drink, remember,’ Emerson said, as though the half-bottle of rum I’d consumed had somehow made me forget.

  ‘I’ll drink for you.’

  ‘I’m not enjoying the thought of spending my birthday in A&E with you due to alcohol poisoning, love,’ Emerson said.

  I flicked him on the forehead. If I hadn’t already taken off his cap, that would have required some special manoeuvring.

  ‘Ow! What was that for?’

  ‘Lighten up, asshole.’

  Emerson did as he was told. Since he was a vampire – and athletically gifted as his baseball play had proved – Emerson was a natural at beer pong.

  I missed half the shots I took. Mainly because I was both tipsy and distracted by Emerson’s hands which kept gently touching me, so light it was like he was trying not to scare me away. A small touch on my wrist before he stepped up to bounce the ball (we were playing the version where you had to get one bounce in before it landed in the cup, not the straight throw into the solo cup); bumping against my hip as we swapped positions; his fingers resting on mine a second more than they needed to, when he passed me the cup I’d promised to drink for him.

  After having to down the third consecutive solo cup of god-knows what, the frat brother against Emerson seemed to get pissed.

  ‘That’s no fair. He’s totally sober,’ one of the moronic frat guys said. ‘He’d miss at least one if she wasn’t drinking for him.’

  ‘Dude, when’s drinking ever been an issue?’ His brother rolled his eyes at him.

  ‘He’s Muslim,’ I lied automatically, thinking of all the times we’d gone out with Rayan. ‘He can’t drink because of his religion.’

  Emerson gave me a questioning gaze before he said, his pronunciation dead-on, with no hint of his English accent, ‘As-salamu alaikum.’

  ‘Oh. Right,’ the annoyed frat brother said. He looked like he was about to argue, but Emerson just grabbed my hand.

  ‘No problem, mate. We were done anyway.’

  I wanted to argue a bit more, but my hand in his distracted me. I was switching my mind off tonight, so I just held his hand tighter. Emerson smiled at my response.

  ‘I would have gone for Jainism if you were using a religion that didn’t drink for an excuse,’ Emerson told me as we made our way from the dining room up the stairs.

  ‘Jainism… I’ve never even heard of that. And what was that ass-a-llama-lick-them thing you said?’

  Emerson led me through one of the empty bedrooms that had a sign on the front saying “do not enter”. He didn’t go to the bed, instead he opened the curtains and wi
ndow, then hopped out onto the ledge. He held out his hand, which I accepted as I climbed through the window to join him.

  Though it had been freezing when we’d set off, the alcohol had numbed me enough that I no longer felt the cold. Emerson still took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders to keep me warm.

  The sky was clear. The excess of rain yesterday had cleared away the grey clouds. I turned Emerson’s cap around on my head so the visor didn’t obstruct my view. For once, I could see a hint of the stars despite the city lights. The blaring sounds of the music from downstairs and the overall chatter of the party could still be heard, but it was easier to ignore out here.

  ‘It means “peace be upon you”. It’s Arabic,’ he answered. I remembered that I’d asked the question before. ‘And Jainism is an ancient Indian religion, one of the world’s oldest religions, in fact. It’s based upon the principle that the function of the soul is to help one another.’

  I stared at him for a while. He was literally a vampire and yet I found that the least surprising thing about him. It was always something else. Something that took him out of the laidback jock persona everyone else at school saw, to the version he reserved of the reserve for Gi, or more recently: me.

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘What?’ Emerson said, he picked at the fake blood under his eye, seemingly uncomfortable.

  ‘Didn’t take you as a religion expert.’

  ‘I try to learn as much about different people and their cultures as I can. The way humans explain the spiritual world has always fascinated me. It’s interesting to see what their minds come up with since they have no proof, unlike lamia, that a higher power or force exists beyond their own belief.’

  ‘Lamia have proof of a higher power?’

  Emerson smirked. ‘We are the higher power. Witches can view energy, minds, see into a person’s history and future. If there’s a soul, a witch has the power to know it and can see where it travels to in the next life.’

  ‘And where does it go?’

  Emerson shrugged. ‘Far away.’

  ‘You guys are as clueless to us when it comes to life after death.’

  ‘We still managed to find a cure for it,’ Emerson pointed out. ‘Which is better than you guys.’

  ‘Not a total cure,’ I said. ‘You can still be killed.’ I recalled the dreams I’d not had for a month now, but still haunted me before I closed my eyes. The vampire hunters who had nearly forced the lamia into extinction before the Mors Exercitus.

  Thinking about those dreams brought up my latest ones. The ones with Emerson and Charlotte.

  ‘When did you meet Charlotte?’ I asked.

  ‘Where’s that coming from?’

  ‘Just a question. I want to get to know you better. Charlotte’s your… friend, right?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s my mate.’

  ‘Okay, so when did you guys meet?’

  ‘Is this some roundabout way to try and figure out my age, again?’ Emerson looked suspicious.

  ‘Urgh, Jesus. I know you’re eighteen, alright. Eighteen tonight as this is the first birthday you’ve had that you will be able to feel connected to since you turned. I just wanted to get to know you.’

  Emerson watched me warily again. Why was he so damn suspicious all the time?

  ‘Early twentieth century,’ Emerson admitted.

  ‘In England?’

  I’d never heard Charlotte speak. In my dreams, Emerson was American, as was Charlotte. I figured that was because I’d never been to the UK to dream about their accents or what their cities would have looked like back then. It was odd in my dreams to hear Emerson speak in an American accent. I much preferred the one he had when I was awake.

  ‘No. We didn’t go to England until after she turned.’

  ‘So you’re…’

  ‘American. By birth, at least.’

  Okay. That wasn’t freaky at all, my dream knowing another thing that turned out to be real. That was just a… coincidence.

  ‘Where abouts-?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘You can’t ask two questions in a row, love. It’s my turn.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘What’s your favourite book?’

  ‘That’s your question.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t want to change it?’

  ‘Are you worried I’m going to say your answer is a shite one?’

  I rolled my eyes at him. ‘Middlemarch.’

  Emerson grinned.

  ‘What?’ I demanded.

  ‘I know you read a lot of Classics; I just didn’t expect your answer to be so… dense.’

  ‘Middlemarch is not dense.’

  ‘It’s a very long-winded book.’

  ‘It was originally published serially. It’s not supposed to be read in one sitting.’

  ‘But let me guess: you do anyway?’

  ‘I feel like you’re asking way more questions than I asked.’

  ‘Mine are rhetorical.’ Emerson crossed his arms. Goosebumps had formed across his skin. Vampires still felt the cold, plus he hadn’t had anything to drink. I should have probably given him his jacket back. But I was selfish, and his jacket was warm.

  ‘What do you love about Middlemarch?’

  I thought about the reason. I’d never had to explain it to anyone before. I’d never actually spoken about books in general with someone since, on some level, it meant that the person asking a question felt comfortable enough around you that they wanted to know more – understand you better as a person. I’d only ever had that with Christian. But we’d never spoken about books. Books were my escape from reality, and whilst I’d been with him, he had been my escape.

  ‘Because in a hundred years, two hundred years – it doesn’t really matter the time – the book still reflects the ordinary lives of people. People who, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter, but whilst they exist, their actions are interlinked with everyone around them.

  ‘I love books about the ordinary people in life and the ordinary things they do and how every ordinary day to them is one a thousand different people will probably live through almost exactly the same. Except none of it is ordinary. It’s wonderful and unique and it’s their story and, for a while, whilst you’re reading it, they’re alive through you and you get to live that perfectly ordinary, perfectly wonderful life with them.’

  ‘If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence,’ Emerson quoted.

  I blinked a few times. ‘You really have that quoting business down.’

  ‘I told you: good hard drive of memories, just not my memories.’

  I realized at some point of us standing and talking, we’d moved closer to one another. He was barely a breath away from me. I looked up to his blood-dripping eyes and traced my finger along the streaks of red.

  ‘What are we?’ Emerson asked, his voice hushed, barely a whisper.

  ‘I think it’s my turn for questions,’ I avoided.

  Emerson grabbed my hand and stopped it from moving across his face. ‘I like you. You know that. And I think you like me.’

  ‘You’re alright.’

  ‘What are we doing, love?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted in a whisper. ‘Does it need to have a label, or be a thing? Can’t it just be?’ I asked.

  Before Emerson could respond I grabbed his face and kissed him. It looked like he wasn’t going to accept my distraction, but eventually he melted into my grasp.

  Kissing him felt right. I didn’t know why I avoided doing it for so long. So what if I had a crush on Emerson? He was a decent guy. A good friend. Seriously good looking. And it wasn’t like Death could screw him over. There were worse choices in guys to hook up with.

  Emerson’s lips curved into a smile as he kissed me back. I tasted like alcohol, and I wondered how it would be possible for
a vampire to get drunk. I knew that alcohol got into the bloodstream, if he drank from someone who was drunk, would that get him drunk?

  ‘If you bit me would you get drunk from my blood?’ I asked him.

  Emerson took a step back, his hands still on my hips.

  ‘The alcohol has finally hit you, then.’

  ‘It was a question, Emerson. Not an invitation.’ I rolled my eyes at him.

  That wary look returned to his face. ‘I should be getting you home.’

  ‘It’s barely two in the morning,’ I argued, pulling myself out of his grasp. ‘Plus, it was my turn to ask a question. Which you didn’t answer even though I answered yours.’

  ‘Mine were different. Mine were about you.’

  ‘Urgh! Fine! What’s your favourite film?’

  Emerson laughed. ‘Nice try, love. But I think we should call it a night.’

  I backed away, climbing through the window, into the warmth of the house. ‘No way, asshole. The night’s not done until I say it’s done. And until I am one hundred percent certain you celebrated your eighteen-year-old British/American… whatever you class your ass as – off, we’re not going home.’

  Emerson looked up to the stars, ‘I’m totally going to regret this.’ He climbed on back into the house. ‘Okay, love. What do you have in mind?’

  14

  I woke up with a mild hangover. Nothing major, just the extreme need for silence, water, and a possible stomach pump. My shoes were off, but my tights and dress were still on. There was also a vampire in my bed.

  I did a double take. Emerson was sitting up in my bed, Kindle in his hands, flicking through the electronic pages as he read.

  ‘Sleeping beauty finally awakes from her slumber…’ Emerson said.

  ‘Don’t speak so loud,’ I told him.

  He’d wiped the fake blood from his face, but he still had on the same clothes as last night.

  ‘I’m barely even whispering,’ he said.

  I flipped him off, groaned, and rolled off my bed. ‘What are you still doing here?’

  My alarm clock was blinking. It was eleven in the morning, an hour ‘til noon. Maybelle and Ken would be at church.

  ‘I wanted to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit.’