Vigil (23 page)

with high tech digital imaging equipment. A photograph of Bran

was placed into a highly official-looking US passport along with

other papers, a birth certificate, and an identification card for

the state of Utah. When Adin asked why Utah, the girl there

simply gave him a Gallic shrug, but apparently a highly detailed

identity had been constructed for Bran, including a social security

card, school and health records, and family ties. Adin was even

provided with a signed and notarized permission from Bran’s

very fictitious parents to see to his care while he was in Adin’s

custody.

Adin had to wonder—or worry, really—how often adults

took children illegally into the United States and required such

documents. Boaz’s expression told him not to ask.

They headed back to Santos’s place where they dropped

off the car and then had a taxi pick them up. Boaz lugged their

baggage from inside, gave the driver instructions to take them to

Roissy/Charles De Gaulle, and off they went.

Adin checked his phone obsessively, giving in to the urge at

smaller and smaller intervals. By the time they were getting ready

to board, he was fully beginning to panic.

Bran stopped him from rising so he could pace for the third

time. “Adin. You need to go back and find Donte.”

“He’s a big undead boy.” Adin stopped his hand when it crept

toward the cell phone in his pocket again. “He can take care of

himself. I just wish I knew why he isn’t answering his phone.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe he’s not getting a signal or the

battery is dead.”

“I’m sure that’s it,” Adin replied absently. It wasn’t as if the

battery could go dead on Adin’s internal sense of Donte, and

that’s what had Adin most worried. Since they’d been together

he’d never had a loss of connection of this magnitude.

Bran caught Adin’s good hand between his. “
Adin
. I’ll be fine.

Boaz and I can leave on this plane, and you can follow when

you’ve found Donte. I hate that you’re leaving without knowing

he’s all right because of me.”

154 Z.A. Maxfield

Adin shook his head. “It’s important to get you someplace

safe, Bran. Trust me, if I didn’t know this before, then my visit

with Harwiche nailed that right down for me.” Adin pulled his

hands back. “Donte lived for five hundred years without my help.

He can go another few days.”

“But what about you?”

Adin bit his lip. Donte—all vampires—would see his concern

as a weakness. They’d pull at it like a snag in a sweater to see if

they could exploit it. Vampires didn’t think like humans. Selfless

devotion was an unknown quantity in the vampire world. Even

Donte’s desire to turn Adin, as nice as it felt, wasn’t really based

on seeing Adin live forever, but on the very real and painful loss

Donte would endure when Adin died.

And therein lay one of the reasons that Adin fought it.

Just as surely as prolonged sunlight would burn out every

trace of Donte’s existence, being turned—if he allowed it—

would eradicate the human side of Adin. Adin didn’t want that.

Protecting Bran, caring for anyone, even Donte, required that he

be human for it to have any meaning at all. Donte might throw

his considerable power into taking care of Adin, might accede

to his whim regarding Bran and back him in a fight to keep the

boy from Harwiche’s schemes, but he did so only because Adin

asked him to.

Adin’s thoughts were too difficult to explain to Donte, much

less to Bran who stood before him with earnest eyes, sharing that

very trait, his own humanity, by putting Adin’s need to see Donte

before his own desire to feel safe.

Adin took a final look at the busy airport. He was leaving

France, and Donte, behind. But not forever. Wherever Donte

was, whatever he was doing that Adin couldn’t be a part of, Adin

would
return. They would be together again.

That had to be enough
.

Once the plane was aloft, Adin took his pain medication with

a bottle of water and settled in as comfortably as he could. Bran

sat on his right against the window and allowed him to pillow

his soft cast on the armrest between their seats. Across the aisle,

Boaz flipped the pages of a magazine.

Adin tried to get a sense of Donte, but came up with nothing

except the guilt he felt for leaving Donte behind. The soothing

motion of the plane and the medication wiped out even that,

until he was drifting, floating off to sleep.

“This is a very, very serious accusation, Adin.” In Adin’s experience

among department chairs they fell into one of two categories, the

Machiavellian and the hopelessly obsessed. As department chairs went,

Historian Evangeline Chandler fell neatly between the two. No one doubted

her sincerity, but everyone trod carefully around her desire for acclaim. Even

knowing this, Adin had pulled her out of a cocktail party designed to give

her just that.

Adin’s ears were still ringing with the scorn Charles and Shep heaped

on him.

“I’m well aware of that,” Adin replied. “I’m trying to prevent a huge

embarrassment.”

“I see.” Chandler looked at him thoughtfully. “It will be very difficult,

if not downright impossible to prove that anyone is perpetrating a fraud.”

“I know that.” Adin’s heart thudded painfully against his ribs.

“At the very worst, Shep and Charles will claim ignorance. They’ll act

the outraged consumer, and blame it on the seller.”

“Yes, they will.” Adin told her. “And of course, that could certainly be

true. If, right now, they reveal it to be a fraudulent document even as they’re

accepting a cocktail party in their honor for finding it. So many experts said

it was the genuine article that this all goes away if they tell the truth now,

before they announce their find.”

156 Z.A. Maxfield

“You say that Charles was aware of the problem when you confronted

him with it?”

“Yes.”

“But they found the problem after they purchased the documents?”

“That’s what they said, yes.” Adin didn’t meet Chandler’s probing gaze.

He wasn’t sure he believed that anymore. He didn’t know what to believe.

“I doubt we’ll ever know.”

“I don’t suppose we will. They’ll know I spoke to you, though. They saw

us leave the room.” Adin tried to get Charles’s angry glare out of his mind.

Charles would hate him for this. Irreversibly.

“What a mess.”

“If I try to go public with what I know on my own they’ll find a way to

fail me. Accusations of cheating or plagiarism or some such thing. I’ll be an

object of scorn for my disloyalty. Tossed from academia forever for my lack of

tact and everyone will think it’s because of some sexual melodrama between

happily monogamous gay men and a boy who has a hopeless crush.”

“Is that what they told you?”

“In a nutshell. I left out the part about never getting a job at MacDonald’s.

I don’t care that they used me. I saw that coming and let it happen. But I do

care about the truth. About letting people think that I looked the other way

and allowed them to pass off a forgery for a grade.”

Chandler didn’t speak for a very long time. Adin knew she was calculating

the odds, going over all the possible outcomes as if she were playing chess. It

took her a little time to decide which way to spin the situation, but when she

had her answer he could see it on her face.

“That’s not true,” she said, finally.

“What?” Adin blinked in surprise. “I know those papers are fake.”

“Of course they’re fake, but truth isn’t the only thing you care about.

You’re angry that they’re trying to make a fool of you, reacting quite naturally,

I think, to their blackmail, and outraged by their callous treatment of you,

both within the boundaries of your education and outside of it, in bed.”

Adin blanched but didn’t deny it. “There was a moment when they treated

you as an equal. And you liked that. They treated you as a peer, a person

Vigil
157

with a brain and a heart and value, and that’s over. It makes you sick to

think you allowed any of this to happen. It makes you sick to lose that

cachet.”

Adin blew out a long held breath. When she put it that way it was a

heady kind of freedom to blow it all up behind him. “Fuck, yeah.”

Chandler smiled at him for the first time, and it was a genuine, indulgent

kind of thing. As if she had simply waited for him to say the secret word.

As if confetti were going to fall on him along with the warmth of that

smile. He followed her back into the ongoing soiree with the sure and certain

knowledge that she would do whatever was right. That would be enough for

him.

When Chandler reached the podium, Adin held his breath. Charles

and Shep remained together, holding cocktails, pressing the flesh. If Adin

didn’t know them so well he would say they hadn’t a care in the world. But

when Adin looked closely, a muscle bunched beneath Shep’s high cheekbone.

Charles held his drink in a death grip, his knuckles white, and there was

a sheen of sweat on his upper lip. They’d avoided looking at him when he’d

returned to the room at Chandler’s side, but now the promise of terrible

retribution animated both their faces. Adin knew he had only a few more

days to enjoy this particular institution, then he’d head home during the

winter break and look for another. Or make plans for something else entirely

if another university was truly out of reach for him. Only a few more very

tense days, and he could go home.

Chandler could project her voice, and did, silencing everything in the room

but the footsteps of the wait staff and the rattle of ice. “As many of you

know, our visiting professors Dr. Holmesby and Dr. Edgerton are the guests

of honor this evening. Their dedication to finding and preserving documents

from the past has been admirable to me since I arrived here. Their passion

is obvious, their delight in making each new discovery has always been based

on the principle that it provides a snapshot of the past and sheds light on

the players of history, and not their own aggrandizement. We are so lucky

to have such devoted professionals affiliated with this university. Likewise

during the time that it’s been my pleasure to preside over this department, I’ve

seen some fine students come and go.

“That’s why it’s with mixed emotions that I have to announce that the

papers that Drs. Holmesby and Edgerton purchased for the university have

158 Z.A. Maxfield

been found to be forgeries.” Everyone looked at Charles and Shep whose

faces never gave up their frozen smiles. No sound could be heard as Chandler

continued. “Doctors Holmesby and Edgerton asked me to postpone this

event, or to cancel it altogether under the circumstances. Their disappointment

has been profound. Naturally they came to me to explain the situation fully,

highlighting the participation of one of their students, Adin Tredeger, in the

discovery and I must say, all three men stand as beacons of integrity in a

truly difficult situation.

“So tonight, instead of congratulating Charles and Shep on their

discovery of the Mary Stuart letters, I’d like to congratulate them on their

passionate pursuit of truth, and their mentorship of a young man who is a

credit to this University and to the study of history in general.”

At this, Chandler motioned Charles and Shep to join her. She placed her

arm around each of them. The three of them seemed to wear the mantle of

academic pride. Only Adin knew the reason for her carefully blank smile and

their nervous acceptance of her praise. When they invited Adin over for a

photograph of the four of them, he went reluctantly, half expecting Charles’s

eyes to bore holes in him like lasers when they shook hands. Chandler cleared

her throat for silence again and Adin no longer felt all the eyes in the room

on him.

“As a special announcement, though, I thought this would be a fine time

to reveal that Adin Tredeger will be leaving us as he’s privately discussed with

me his desire to attend, and his acceptance by Williams College, where he

hopes to become part of the Williams/Exeter program. As disappointing

as this is for me personally and for this institution, we wish him all the best.