Infinite Days (17 page)

That next morning, I could feel the chill in the air even in the bundles of blankets on the guest bed. I turned over on my stomach and lifted myself onto my knees. There was a small window behind the head of the bed, and I lifted the curtains with the tips of my fingers. The sky was the color of baby’s breath, so I knew it was too early for the Enos family to be up and debating breakfast. I decided to go for a walk in the neighborhood alone. I pulled on my jeans, didn’t bother to brush my hair, and wore one of Justin’s Wickham sweatshirts.

I walked down the driveway and stepped onto the street. The sky was now a blue-gray, and a thin mist hung over the trees. Justin’s sweatshirt smelled like him. Sweet and woody, a comforting smell now.

I glanced back at Justin’s house once I had walked a few feet down the street. I wasn’t planning to walk very far—just enough to explore the neighborhood while his family was still sleeping.

My stomach did that lurching thing and I thought about eggs and coffee, something that I was sure Justin’s mother would make. I smiled. Rhode Island. Of course I had to be in
Rhode
Island. These days all I wanted was to stop thinking about Rhode and my vampire life. And I had, in some respect. My ESP was gone, my vampire sight had started to wane, and I wanted more than ever to move forward and be the human I was always meant to be and perhaps was finally becoming. Without my ESP, I was able to forget how separate I once was and participate in my life without knowing everyone’s emotional intentions. Just when a glimmer of a smile spread across my face—

Something moved behind me.

There it was—the inherent feeling that I was being watched; no, let me make the distinction clear: the feeling that I was being followed. There is a sweeping realization when a vampire is present around another vampire. A hush of silence, like going deaf, and the sudden feeling of being covered in icicles. The hair on my arms rose, and I found it difficult to swallow. I spun around.

There, in the middle of suburbia, underneath a streetlamp, stood Suleen.

I gasped. The air whooshed into my lungs. I held it, and then there was silence. He was so still, unmoving. Suleen wore a white tunic, white pants, and gold leather sandals. A white turban covered his hair. He had a round face, and though his cheeks were full, he did not nor could he ever look nubile. He almost seemed like a ghost in that morning light. He was so holy, so untouched by everyday worry, that he didn’t have a wrinkle on his face. This is a man who existed before Christ’s birth.

How Suleen knew I was in Rhode Island, I would never know, but there he stood. Instantly I felt safe, protected, as though a great white light circled us on that quiet street. Suleen is known in the vampire world for transcending evil, for living a life without the need to feed off humans. “Only the weak,” Rhode once told me of Suleen’s life. “He only drinks the blood of the reprehensible.” Suleen walked toward me, both of us silent, and he cupped my right cheek with his hand. He had no smell, and his touch was perfectly lukewarm. His dark brown eyes gazed warmly into mine, and he smiled.

“I am pleased with your transformation,” he said. His voice was slow, like molasses. From his pocket he pulled out a single flower, thyme. Little, purple flowers smaller than the tip of a finger attached to a long, green stem. Thyme is used in rituals meant for the regeneration of the soul.

I gently took it with my thumb and index finger. “To what on this good earth am I allowed this honor?” I asked, stunned. Even in the highest days of my ranking as queen of a coven, Suleen never visited me. He took a step back so there were a couple of feet between us.

“I come with a warning,” he said in his languid tone.

I slapped my hand over my mouth. My heart pounded with such a force that Suleen looked at my chest because he could hear it.

“
Nuit Rouge.
My God. I completely forgot,” I said. “Last night was the final night of
Nuit Rouge.
Today is November first.
Nuit Rouge
has ended,” I said, and looked to the ground, to the trees, to the sleeping houses that I wished I was in, and then back at Suleen. “Vicken has discovered I am not hibernating?” Suleen nodded once slowly in response.

I looked back toward Justin’s parents’ house in the distance. It was still dark.

“As a unit your coven is unstoppable. Separate as they are now, they will not succeed.” Suleen paused. “The hunt for you has begun.”

It was back. My vampire extrasensory perception was overtaking my human conscience. I assumed it was because of my close proximity to Suleen’s power. An image, not from my own mind but from Suleen’s, came to the forefront of my sight: Rhode’s fireplace in my home in Hathersage.

“There is something else…,” I whispered, looking at the fireplace in my mind. A waver in my tone gave away my fear. “Something else you came to tell me.”

“They have found a clue in the embers. Rhode burned all his evidence of your transformation minus one. One word left on a charred and blackened piece of paper.”

“Wickham,” I said. I saw the image in my head. A tiny jagged piece of paper from the school’s brochure. The ESP connection with Suleen was extremely strong. I could feel Suleen’s compassion, which surprised me—as I believed all these years that he cared nothing for trivial matters such as these. I felt my human and vampire connection to the event and somewhere through the images from Suleen I could almost feel Vicken’s rage.

I had to catch my breath, but I couldn’t. I bent over and placed my hands on my thighs. Suleen cocked his head to the side to watch me. My reaction must have been interesting.

“So—” I said between breaths. I stood back upright, holding a hand over my chest. “They’re coming for me.”

“They will come to reclaim their maker. They do not know you are human, Lenah.”

“That will be a surprise.”

Suleen’s gentle eyes smiled, though his face remained stoic. His eyes traveled to the vial of dust on my neck. In a flicker of an instant, I thought I saw sadness in Suleen’s eyes. He took a step forward and reached for the vial. He gently held the pendant in his hands.

“They have to figure out which Wickham and where, right?” I asked. Suleen let go of the vial and cupped his hand on my cheek again. He did not say anything in response. I knew as well as he did that it was only a matter of time before they found me. I was trying to rationalize.

“You were Rhode’s brightest day,” he whispered. There was a stab in my chest when Suleen said Rhode’s name aloud in the quiet street. “Close your eyes,” he whispered next to my ear, and I did. After a moment he said, “Go forth, Lenah, in darkness and in light.”

When I opened my eyes, the street was empty and Suleen was gone.

After a couple of days, the Halloween decorations came down and were replaced by the most ridiculous decorations I had ever seen. Shops on Lovers Bay’s Main Street were covered in turkeys. Pumpkins were still all the rage, but there were also cardboard cutouts of tall ships, strangely dressed people in high, black boots and top hats, and, of course, more turkeys.

“Thanksgiving,” Justin explained. We were walking through campus on our way to the library to study for the math SAT. Justin went into a long explanation of his family’s Thanksgiving. I listened, though my mind was running in circles as it had been ever since Suleen disappeared on Justin’s street.

Truth be told, I wanted to believe that Suleen’s visit was some kind of apparition. That I had made it up. Despite Justin’s attempt to study for the SAT, he couldn’t distract me anymore. All I could see and think about was Suleen’s warning. I carried the thyme with me everywhere, always in my pocket.

“Look. The square root of eighty-one is nine, right?” Justin asked. We were walking up toward the library to work in one of the private study rooms. Justin had gotten to enjoying those rooms because he could pull the shades and kiss me for a half hour instead of working on square roots.

“But I don’t understand why we need to be able to answer these questions and then be tricked with other possible answers,” I replied.

“That’s why these tests are evil. We have to take them….”

Justin could have been talking about anything and as he kept talking, I was back on his parents’ street in Rhode Island. Suleen was cupping my face and I was imagining Vicken researching every possible explanation for Wickham that he could. I had let my new life distract me for too long. I was so foolish.

“You just concentrate on the problem and then look to the answers.” Justin was still explaining the best way to take the test as we walked up the pathway and toward the library. I watched his mouth move, the way his hard, structured jaw was oddly juxtaposed to his pouted mouth. His profile was relaxed, and his hair had grown out a bit, so the clean-cut sports boy was just a little bit messy.

It was time to tell him the truth.

“Let’s go to my room,” I said, pushing the door to the library closed. Justin had one hand on the door handle to pull it open. “To study,” I clarified.

Justin turned his head to look at me. “Your room?” His eyes were a mix of shock and utter excitement.

“Not like that,” I said, and pulled him out of the doorway of the library so the students behind us could walk inside.

“I thought you didn’t want anyone to see your room. Privacy, or whatever you said.”

“Come on,” I said, and led Justin back on the path toward Seeker. I wasn’t exactly sure what to say or how I was going to say it, but it was time he knew what I had been hiding.

We climbed up the stairs toward my apartment.

“Hold on,” Justin said, and stopped in the middle of the stairwell. “Is this why you haven’t shown me your place?” He put out his hands as a gesture of disbelief. It was darker in the stairwell than it had been outside. The hotel-like lamps with their blue shades highlighted the stairs and his light green sweater with a golden glow. “Because you live in Professor Bennett’s old apartment? I knew that already.”

“It’s scared everyone else,” I said, and continued up. The rosemary and lavender were still tacked to their usual spots. I could smell both of them as I unlocked the door and walked inside. Justin walked into the apartment behind me.

“This is amazing,” he said. “You know, despite being a dead guy’s place.”

I decided to give Justin time to take in the decorations of my small apartment, so I walked toward the balcony door. I pushed aside the curtain and looked outside. I watched the swaying trees with their falling leaves and some of the scattered and smashed pumpkins that were left over from Halloween celebrations.

“Whoa,” I heard, and assumed Justin saw Rhode’s sword. I turned and found that I was right. Justin stood a foot away from the distinguished metal. I walked back in and stood on his right side.

“Is that real?” Justin’s voice was filled with awe and his eyes danced up and down the sword. Then he glanced at the iron wall sconces. They were made to look like roses and wire, bound together in a small circle.

“I need to talk to you,” I said, and took hold of Justin’s warm fingers.

“I’ve never known a girl who was into weapons,” Justin said as he continued to look at the sword. He wasn’t paying attention to me.

“Okay,” I said. “We need to talk.”

“Is this about Tony?” Justin said, and finally turned to me.

“Tony?”

“The fact that you guys aren’t talking. I noticed. Everyone’s noticed.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Or why you haven’t shown me your room before? I didn’t want to press it because it seemed so important to you to, like, keep it a secret.”

“Secret?” I asked.

“Yeah. Tracy kept saying how you’re a millionaire or your family’s royalty or something.”

I shook my head again and put my hands out so my palms faced Justin. “I want you to look around this living room. I mean
really
look. And tell me what you see.”

“I did look. Kinda Goth, but that makes sense. You always wear black.” Justin smiled, but the mischievous tone in his voice made me realize how little he actually understood about my true nature. “Come on, are you royalty?” he asked, just compounding his ignorance.