Velvet (10 page)

We stood there for a long time.

I deflated slowly. “I shouldn’t have slapped you. You’re an ass, but I shouldn’t have slapped you.”

“Why are you out here, really?” he asked finally.

I shrugged miserably. “She looks like my mom. Every time Joe does something nice it reminds me of my dad. I hate it.”

My voice seemed to get stuck somewhere between my lungs and my heart.

“How did it happen? With your dad?”

I flinched involuntarily. I hadn’t told anyone this story, except the police and my mom, and the words seemed even now like they were coming from someone else’s mouth. I wasn’t sure why I was telling him any of this, but the words tumbled out.

“We were out on his boat,” I said, wiping at my face. “It had always been fine, nothing bad had ever happened—and then one time, a perfectly ordinary day, he started talking, but he wasn’t making any sense. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. And then he fell into the water, and he knew how to swim, but he wasn’t swimming. The water wasn’t even that deep, he could have stood up, but he didn’t. After a while, I knew he was dead, but I didn’t want to touch him—if I touched him, it would be real. A fisherman found us the next morning and called the police. Just your run-of-the-mill brain aneurysm. There was nothing I could have done, I was five years old, but I still feel like if I had just jumped in, if I had dragged him to shore, maybe he would’ve made it. But I was too scared to touch him. So it was my fault.”

My eyes felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. “My mom shut down after that. She was just finally starting to seem okay again when she was diagnosed with bone cancer.” I shrugged. “Now she’s dead, too.”

My knees gave out and he caught me, but I didn’t care. Adrian could leave me here and eventually I would either get up or I wouldn’t. But he didn’t leave me. Instead, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. He was warm.

“Everyone dies, except for me,” I murmured. “I thought I’d come out here and cry about it for a little while.”

We stood like that for a long moment: me leaning against Adrian, Adrian keeping me from falling over.

“Caitlin,” he said slowly. “I need to tell you something. I think you need to know now. But you’re not going to believe me.”

I should have been more interested, but to be completely honest, I was falling asleep. “All right,” I murmured into his collarbone.

Keeping one arm around my waist, he leaned back to look me in the eyes, searching my face, waiting until he had my attention.

“I won’t die,” he said slowly. “Ever.”

I laughed tiredly. “Cool.”

He frowned. “It’s true.”

I shook my head. “That’s not true.”

“I promise, it is.”

“You can’t promise something like that.”

“Yes,” he said simply. “I can.”

He turned my chin with his thumb so I was looking directly into his eyes. They were gray, but more than gray. They were—

Silver?

They were
glowing
.

He murmured something, and with a snap, it all came flooding back, sharp and sudden, like some switch had been flipped in my brain retrieving repressed memories. The storm—the
fall
.

He searched my face. “You remember?”

“Oh my God.” I stared at him, that whole night flashing before my eyes. “Oh my God. How did I forget that? How did I forget
you
?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I sort of suppressed your memories.”

He was serious. He was completely serious. If it wasn’t for his swirling vortex eyes staring me straight in the face, I would have thought he was trying to pull some really unfunny joke. That, and the fact that I suddenly remembered the night of the storm with full clarity. I’d fallen, he’d caught me, he’d
done something
to me, and then we were running, running away, and Adrian’s eyes were burning silver.

“You
hurt
me,” I said, remembering the blistering pain in my head, the burning behind my eyes.

He shook his head, visibly upset. “I didn’t have a choice. I can’t explain that now, but I swear to God, I did it to keep you safe.”

“But—what
are
you?” I asked, staring unashamedly at his face.

He breathed in slowly, and let it out. “Caitlin,” he began, shifting his weight a bit and resettling me in his arms. “There are a lot of things you should know.” He caught himself. “There are a lot of things you
shouldn’t
know. So I’m only going to tell you a few essentials, the first of which is that we have a—creation story, if you will. A myth.”

“
We?
”

What the hell was he talking about? The conversation had very suddenly switched gears and I was not following.

“We,” he confirmed. “My family and I. And our story says that we aren’t really”—he grimaced again, looking almost embarrassed—“human.”

I stared at him. “You’re not human.”

He shook his head.

I scowled. “You look very human to me.”

He closed his eyes. “I’ll just say it. I’m gonna have to say it sometime. All right. So, there are a variety of terms for what we are, there always have been and I imagine there always will be, but I’m what you might commonly refer to as a…” He paused and muttered, “Shit, I really have to say this.” He took a deep breath and looked down at me. “I’m a vampire.”

He looked apologetic as he waited for my reaction.

I narrowed my eyes, staring at him hard. “Did I hit my head?”

He frowned. “Not that I am aware of.” Just to be sure, he grabbed my face and turned it, inspecting for lumps. “No cranial injuries.”

“Okay,” I said reasonably. “So I’m dead?”

He looked startled. “What?”

I stared at him. And then I smiled, and then I laughed. I laughed a lot. I laughed so hard I had to wipe my eyes on his sweater. I think I actually snorted at one point.

“I’m totally dead!” I exclaimed. I hugged him, and added an extra squeeze for good measure. “Oh, Adrian, you’re so sweet. Thank you for all those rides to school.”

He frowned. “You must be colder than I thought.” He looked at the boulder. “Your clothes are soaked through,” he said, indicating my snow-drenched sweater on the rock. “Can you stand by yourself?”

I smiled dreamily. I was dead! This was great! I could go say hi to my mom. Probably find my dad around here somewhere, too. Adrian wanted me to stand? Sure thing, my friend. I could probably fly, if I wanted to. I was about to hop around and flap my arms experimentally when he tugged his sweater off and handed it to me. To humor him, I put it on. It was toasty warm, and fell off my shoulder. Almost as toasty as Adrian standing in the snow without a shirt on. The boy was ripped.

He grabbed his jacket off the ground and slipped it on. I grinned at him.

“So you’re a vampire, eh?”

“‘Eh’?” he asked.

“I’ve decided to turn Canadian.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“They don’t have Canadians in heaven?”

“I’ve never met any.”

“Ha!” He was funny.

“Come here.” He stretched his coat over me as I hugged my arms around his naked waist. “Good God, you’re cold,” he muttered when my hands touched his skin.

“Sorry.”

He closed the jacket more tightly around the two of us. “Vampire is a misleading term,” he started again. I couldn’t believe he was still going on about this, but I was dead, so I figure I’d let him steer the conversation. Maybe this was some weird Heaven Initiation Ceremony and Adrian was my angel tour guide. I could live with that.

“You don’t drink blood?” I asked.

“Well—yes.”

“That’s cool.”

“That’s cool?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking into his silver, luminous eyes. He had probably been my guardian angel the whole time. I always knew he was too good-looking. “It’s cool. The whole leaning-in-and-biting-the-neck thing.” Strictly for demonstrative purposes, I stood on my tiptoes and softly nipped his collarbone with my teeth, since I couldn’t actually reach his neck.

“Caitlin—
stop
.”

His voice was strained. I looked at him again with a smile, but the expression on his face dropped the laughter right back into the pit of my stomach. I was dead; was it possible to still be scared?

“You’re not dead, Caitlin,” he said through slightly gritted teeth, “you’re very much alive. So if you could just not move for a minute, that would be great.”

I was confused. The light and the snow and the whiteness covering everything; the cold air and the heat of Adrian’s body—wasn’t I dead? And if I wasn’t, why was he telling me all of this?

I shifted and he tightened his hold on me. “Just … don’t.”

His irises seemed to be swirling, which was a weird thing for irises to do. The grays mixed, melting into each other, re-forming like storms. I was just starting to get dizzy, to lose my sense of gravity, when he closed his eyes, tight. When he opened them again the irises were still silver, but they were motionless. He let out a breath and looked down at me.

“Where was I?”

“What was
that
?” I asked. “Your eyes went all crazy.”

He stared at me pointedly. “I’m thirsty.”

Ah.

“So if you would be so kind as to not bite me again, we might get through this.”

He loosened his grip on me a little and rolled his shoulders. “As I said, vampire is a misleading term. We only drink blood because our bodies can’t produce it. And it’s not a purely hematic diet—I probably eat three times as much as your uncle.” He smiled. “Great metabolism, ridiculous grocery bill.”

“I bet.”

He smiled, then frowned at me. “This all sounds crazy.”

I frowned back at him. “Yes.”

“But you’re still here.”

“You’re holding on to me.”

“And if I let you go?”

“You’re the only reason I’m standing.”

“Hmmm.”

“And I still mostly believe I’m dead. So continue.”

“Right. Well, my father—he’s a demon. From hell.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Bummer.”

He smiled. “Some believe we were wiped out before the flood.”

“The flood? Like Noah’s flood?”

“That’s the one.”

“But you weren’t?”

“I have no idea—this is all a story, remember? I wasn’t there, no one left alive remembers. Some of us believe the story. Others don’t.”

“And what do you believe?”

He smiled a little, then let it slip away. “I’m still making up my mind.”

I grabbed his face and turned it, inspecting for wrinkles. “How old are you? You’re totally really gross and old, aren’t you? Do you have kids? Do you have
grandkids
?”

He snorted. “I’m eighteen, no kids. And you’re seventeen. No kids, either. Unless you have a secret love child I don’t know about.”

“No love children,” I confirmed, and let his face go. “What about your family?”

He hesitated, but I was calm. Probably way calmer than he thought I should be. “Lucian is eleven. Julian is thirty-five.”

I frowned. “I thought he was nineteen. And who’s Lucian?”

“He looks nineteen. But he’s thirty-five. Lucian is my little brother.”

“And your aunt?”

“Mariana is one hundred and fifty-three. And she’s not my aunt, she’s my sister. Well, half sister. Julian and Lucian are my half brothers.”

“Is your mom super old or something?”

“My mother is dead,” he said flatly. “So is Mariana’s, and Lucian’s, and Julian’s. They all die after they give birth.” He cleared his throat. “But the rest of us can live indefinitely.”

I stared at him. “Indefinitely.”

“Forever,” he amended. “Unless we’re killed. But we’re pretty hard to kill.”

“So,” I said slowly, mind racing with the ramifications, “you can’t die.”

“Nope.”

“What if you get sick?”

“I don’t get sick.”

I stared at him. He wouldn’t die. He
couldn’t
die. “So I’m not dead. This isn’t some bizarre hallucination.”

“No.”

I thought about it, then nodded.

He looked surprised. “That’s it?”

I shrugged. “I can scream if you’d like. Maybe faint.”

He smiled and shook his head. “There’s more to tell you, but it’s getting dark and we should probably get somewhere warm. I think you’ll have to put your sweater back on if you don’t want your aunt to freak out.”

He let go of me. It occurred to me that I had basically wrestled with him half naked in the snow, and now that I was neither ambivalent about dying, nor delusional about already being dead, I couldn’t decide if the whole thing was funny or humiliating. I skimmed off his sweater and handed it to him. He dropped his coat and we both put our clothes back on.

It was a weird moment.

His blush finally brought to the front of my brain a thought that had been nibbling at the back of my mind. I turned slowly and stared at him, horrified.

“Oh my God, you’re not gay. You’re a vampire. You’re not gay, you’re a
vampire
.”

“I am not gay,” Adrian confirmed. “Though your promise to keep it a secret was very kind.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Does it disappoint you, that I’m straight?”

“I—what—no?” I stuttered, mind exploding with the implications.

Holy mother of Santa Claus. He wasn’t withdrawn and secretive because of his sexual orientation, he was withdrawn and secretive because he
wasn’t human
. I had slept next to a not-gay Adrian de la Mara in his own bed.

I had snuggled him against his will.

Trying, and failing, to suppress a smile, Adrian wound the scarf around my neck.

“My family has … resources,” he explained. “I’ve always had nice things. I believe you made a comment about my shoes costing more than your laptop? All I can say in my defense is that everyone in my family is a bit fashion conscious. I adopted their tastes to fit in. As for why I’ve never been on a date, I think you can see why that might be difficult. I’m afraid Trish will lose the pool.”

I choked. “You know about the pool?”

“I
started
the pool.”

Oh my God, of course he did
.

“One more thing,” Adrian said as he stepped close to me again. He put his hands on either side of my face and looked me in the eyes with his burning silver ones and for half a second I thought he was going to kiss me. But his eyes began to swirl, and I realized what was happening.