Mere mortals, p.15
Mere Mortals, page 15
Reg reached a hand forward, as if to comfort Sal, but then pulled it back again awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.
“It’s not that she didn’t love me. Oh, she did.”
I squirmed, trying not to picture whatever Sal was picturing as he reminisced.
“Maybe she still does,” he said. “But she loves life even more. And she just can’t give up the opportunity to keep living it.”
And she shouldn’t, I thought. I didn’t want to kick Sal while he was down, but wasn’t this the twenty-first century, and hadn’t we females been told for decades now to not give up our lives for a man? It wasn’t cool, even metaphorically, but Sal literally asked Lina to die for him. I wondered if he couldn’t see that because he was a slayer . . . or because he was a dude.
Reg waited a tactful moment before asking Sal a question that would have sounded insensitive from anyone but my brother. “But your touch—the power to turn immortals mortal—is it something you can turn off and on?”
I recoiled. “Reg, are you asking how they—”
Sal cleared his throat, and I saw a blush blooming over his mustache. “There are ways to be . . . careful,” he said.
Please no details. Please no details. Please no—
“If I concentrate, I have a degree of control over it.” His expression darkened once again. “But after a time, I pushed hard enough that she began to distrust me. She worried I would turn her against her will.”
“Would you?” I asked.
The darkness in his face blurred to something more like shame. “She was right to fear me.”
“Wow,” I said. “That is so wrong.”
I wanted to feel for Sal, but I was fully on team Lina.
“She thought so too. So, she moved out of the cottage—”
“Wait, Lina lived here?”
“Fifteen years ago. When we first came to Nowhere.”
“Here in this cottage?”
“We split not long after.”
“I just can’t picture her in this—”
“But she couldn’t leave me in peace! She opened that damn coffee shop right in the village, just minutes away. I gave up slaying for her—became a traitor to my own kind to better serve her kind, and she couldn’t just let me be. She stuck around just to torture me.”
“Damn,” I said, impressed.
“Can’t really say I blame her,” Reg said. “Woman scorned and all that.”
“Well, I wasn’t about to turn tail and run,” Sal said. “So I built my fence to make sure she could never come back.”
“You built it for her?” I marveled. No wonder the pickets looked more like stakes.
Reg let out a low whistle.
“Fat lot of good it’d do me anyway,” Sal said. “If the woman can walk on water, she can probably walk through my damn fence.”
He looked toward the window, glowering at the fence outside. “She just doesn’t want to.”
I wondered if an Ancient really would be invincible to slayer powers. It was beginning to seem as though there was nothing an Ancient could not do—except sit on the Elder Seat, but even in that case, the Elders still consulted with Ancients, still afforded them certain privileges, still . . .
“Of course.”
It came out as a whisper, my lips forming around the words, but with barely enough breath to make a sound.
“She can sponsor us.”
I looked at Reg as I said it, hope blooming in my chest. But the light that had just turned on for me seemed dimmer in him. He blinked, as if to hide it from me, and bobbed his head in an overenthusiastic way that was just so not Reg.
“Yeah. Yes! Sure, she can. Great. Great thinking, Charlie.” His words were right, and he even sounded right, but . . .
I pictured the way Reg lit up when he texted Poe or took the stage at school or enjoyed a sunset on the hills behind the cottage. He had none of that glow now, and I felt a pinch of guilt. Maybe it was selfish of me to hurry us home. But the further we got from our vampire lives, the less likely it seemed that we would ever reclaim them, so I hoped he would forgive me if I cut his human vacation a little short.
It was unlike me to spend so much time worrying about someone else’s feelings—even my brother’s. I never used to care what was good for anyone but myself. I didn’t know if that was an immortal thing or just a Charlie thing, and with an inner squirm, I realized that I wasn’t sure which “me” I liked better.
But there was no version of me that could leave Reg behind. Mortal or immortal, Smith or Drake, Reg and I were nothing without each other. For a century, we’d been two halves of a whole, and everyone else was just extra. On that much, we agreed . . . at least for now. But if we were stuck here much longer, I worried Reg might just leave me in the dark and stay in the sunlight forever. And not in a cool way like Lina.
Adelina la Prima. An Ancient. Our ticket back to immortality.
Reg cleared his throat. “So, naturally, we’ll take this slowly—feel her out, earn her trust. Then, when the time is right, we’ll go to her—”
“I’ll go now.” I jumped up from the table and grabbed my jacket from where it was slung on the back of the chair. “I can’t sleep anyway, and she works the night shift.”
Twenty-Three
She Said
A tiny bell jingled as I pushed open the door to All Hours, and a flush filled my cheeks as I traded the night chill for the cozy warmth of the coffee shop.
“This is your third visit today. You may have a caffeine problem, princess.”
Lina was perched on the counter, legs crossed under her, using a rag to polish an antique-looking copper kettle.
“Why do you bother with heat?” I asked, pulling my scarf away from my neck.
“Customers tend to enjoy temperate climates.” She didn’t look up from her polishing, and I found myself irritated that she was doing it so slowly. Still pretending.
The door closed behind me, jangling the bell once more before it sealed shut. I frowned up at it.
“And the bell? You can hear people walk through this door from a block away.”
“Superpowered hearing but no power to outshine this spot.” Lina sighed, holding up the kettle in the dim shop light.
“So you admit it,” I said. Not that I needed her confirmation at this point. “You’re vampire.”
She met my eye finally. “Took you long enough.”
“If you were expecting this, why not just tell us sooner?”
“I try to mind my own business . . . and stay out of Sal’s. I figured it was best to let you come to it on your own. To be frank, I expected you back here ages ago. But I suppose you’re not as quick as you used to be.”
Was she talking about my physical speed, or was that a crack at my intelligence?
The smirk she gave me as she hopped off the counter told me it was probably both.
She was lucky I needed something from her, or I would show her just how quick-witted I could be.
Lina gestured to a table, and we sat in opposite chairs. She leaned forward, eyes alight with both curiosity and invitation. I sensed in that moment that I could ask her anything, but a million questions were competing to get out, causing a bottleneck in my throat so that not one could squeak through.
“Coffee?” Lina asked, and no sooner had she said the word than she was behind the counter, her hands already working the brewer. Once the coffee was poured, I blinked, and two steaming mugs were on the table between us, not a drop spilled. I wondered if I’d have been able to see her move even with my old immortal eyes.
But then she lifted her coffee to her lips, and I could see only a human, because what vamp would drink anything other than blood?
The thought that I might lose my taste for coffee when I returned to immortality gave me a fleeting moment of sadness.
“How do you do that?” I asked, nodding at her cup. “Doesn’t everything just taste like ashes?”
“A little. But after a time, you can sort of taste through that. Same with smells.”
“And do you still drink—?”
“No.”
“But how . . .”
“It’s no longer necessary.”
“And sunlight?”
“Glorious.”
“Stakes?”
“Those still sting.”
I grinned. “As if any mortal could get close enough to try, at your speed.”
“You underestimate humans,” she said. “Even now.”
“I don’t hold them in any estimation at all,” I said, doing my best to channel Reg and sound a little more formal. I needed Lina to think we were mature enough for immortality.
“Doesn’t look that way from where I’m sitting,” Lina said with a deliberate glance to my crew’s usual table.
My crew.
My new clan.
I shook off the thought. Mortal friends were not forever. That was the whole big thing about mortality . . . the un-foreverness of it.
“So, you and Sal,” I said, changing the subject.
Lina sniffed, frowning for the first time. “What about me and Sal?”
“He told us about your history . . . together.”
“He told you his version of history. I’m sure it was spotty. Age addles the brain, you know. The mortal brain, anyway.”
“Now who’s underestimating humans?”
“Touché.” Her smile returned.
“Did you love him?” I blurted out the question, partly out of curiosity and partly to buy time while I worked up the courage to ask the question I’d really come here to ask.
Lina took another slow sip of her coffee. “I’ll never love anything more than I love . . . loved . . . that man. Undeserving of my affection though he may be.”
“I didn’t know we could do that,” I said.
“What?”
“Love.”
Her smile was warm. “Sure we can. It’s like all things with vampires—there, but quiet, buried under the deeper desire—under the thirst.”
“Like coffee.” I held up my mug in a salute. “My one true love, uncovered after a century.”
Lina clinked her cup against mine. “You and me both. But you are not new to love. You have a brother.”
She was sort of right. I cared for Reg, of course, but that wasn’t the kind of love I meant. I had found many . . . many boys attractive over the years—even smooched a few before feeding. But real love . . . Lina was right, the need for blood overpowered all, and I couldn’t say I even knew what love was.
“That’s different,” I said of Reg. “He’s my kin. It’s . . . loyalty.”
“It’s love, I assure you. Just not the sexy, passionate kind.”
I wrinkled my nose. I was warming up to Lina, but grown-ups—even the vampire kind—should never say things like “sexy” or “passionate.” Blech.
She smiled. “You will get more in tune with the many different ways we can love. It’s just harder when you’ve buried those feelings for so long.”
“But you’re still immortal. How do you do it? How do you love?”
She shrugged. “How do I drink coffee? How do I walk in the sunlight? I suppose it’s like anything else: the hunger fades, other things we’ve lost come back.”
Lost love.
Who might I have loved before, when I was human the first time? What love had I lost, and was it a cruelty or a kindness for my maker to erase the memory of that love from my mind? I pictured the matching pain in Sal’s and Lina’s eyes when they talked about each other.
A kindness, I decided.
“Well, I’m on your side when it comes to Sal,” I said. “If you love someone, why ask them to grow old and die when you can live and love forever? The choice is totally obvious.”
I hesitated, and Lina took note.
“But?” she prompted.
I bit my lip. “But you could have gone anywhere. Did you . . . you didn’t really open this shop just to torture him, right?”
“Is that what he said?!” Lina’s coffee mug smashed against the table, breaking in two, as her careful control wavered and she set the cup down a touch too hard. She didn’t flinch at the hot liquid that coated her hand. “That stubborn self-centered, piece of . . . I’ve half a mind to go over there and—”
“No, I’m sorry!” I waved my hands in placation. “I may have misunderstood.”
It was so not my goal to get her angry before popping the big question.
“Torture him, indeed!” Lina snorted, indignant. “I opened this shop to be near him. Even if he never changed his mind, I could at least look after him.”
“Out of love,” I said.
“Out of obligation. It’s partly my fault the old coot went soft on vampires, and a soft slayer is an easy target. I thought he might need my protection. But clearly, I was wrong. He got right to business with his little halfway house for transitioning immortals.”
She sneered as she said the last part, and I felt a touch defensive. Sure, I was on the side of immortality, all the way, but there had to be somewhere to go when mortality was unfairly flung upon a person. Where would Reg and I have been without Sal and his cottage?
“Are there many?” I asked. “Many like me and Reg?”
Lina seemed to finally notice the broken cup floating in a lake of coffee, and she pulled out a rag to mop up the mess. “Many like you and many not like you. Immortals of all stripes come and go through the revolving door of Salvador Sicarius.”
“Why him?” I asked. “Why here? In the middle of, literally, Nowhere.”
The rag that had been in Lina’s hand was suddenly on the counter far behind her, the table between us spotless. Even the fastest vampires I knew would have created a blur while wiping down the table, a glimpse of something in the corner of the eye. But with Lina—there was nothing at all. The ability to manage fine-motor skills at top speed had to be a gift bestowed only on the Ancients. It was disorienting, and a part of me wished she’d go back to being slow and careful.
“Why him?” she said. “Because there aren’t many in the business of rehabilitating the formerly immortal. And why here? Well, that’s a longer tale, but there’s history here for both vampires and slayers.”
“Here?” I raised a doubtful eyebrow. “In Iowa?”
“Both our kind and theirs settled in the area when America was still young, back in the 1800s. But even before that, around the age of—”
“Fascinating,” I interrupted. “But I’m getting all the history lessons I can handle in third period Monday through Friday. Can you skip to the present?”
“Let’s just say, it’s neutral territory. And it has been for quite a long time. Sal’s had that cottage fifteen years, but it was home to generations of slayers before him, and you and your brother are far from the first immortals to pass through Nowhere. People here have grown accustomed to strangers and strange events. Even the humans who live here are a little abnormal, if you ask me.”
“Truth,” I said, and we both laughed.
A quiet moment followed, and in that quiet, I summoned up the courage to make my case.
“Reg and I didn’t ask to be mortal,” I said. “We’re being punished for a mistake.”
“A mistake,” Lina repeated.
“Overfeeding, by accident.” That was as much as I cared to elaborate, so I rushed on. “And not making excuses, because what we did was super uncool, but honestly, I’ve seen other vampires get away with much worse, so I think this whole thing is just a big smoke screen for the truth, which is that the Elders are trying to weed out all the underage immortals. It’s been total discrimination town ever since—”
Lina held up a hand to silence my blabbering. “The Treaty of Annis.”
“Yes,” I said. “They think we’re too young to know who we are and what we want, but I don’t care that my brain got stuck at age sixteen or seventeen or whatever. I’ve been around for a century, and I know exactly what I want.”
“And you’ve appealed?” Lina asked.
“We can’t get a sponsor. We asked every clan, and they all turned us down. But you . . .” I took a deep breath—such a human thing and so natural now, it scared me. “If you sponsor us, the Elders will be forced to hear our appeal.”
“And what does the slayer say?”
“Sal? What do you expect? He thinks we should be throwing him a parade for making us human.”
Though it looked like she was fighting it, the corner of her mouth turned up. “Yes, that sounds like him.”
“So?”
She sat back in her chair and folded her hands on the table. “It’s true I can get you an audience with the Elder Seat, but I hesitate to cross Sal. You are his responsibility.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she was already moving on.
“On the other hand, I also believe we all have the right to choose our destinies for ourselves . . . for better or worse. For ages, I argued that we should not turn humans immortal against their will, and the same goes for turning them human again. It’s not right either way. And that goes double for kids. You ought to have a choice.”
“So . . . you’ll do it?”
“I’ll do it.”
Speechless, I yelped with delight instead.
“You’ll have to make your own case, mind you,” Lina cautioned. “I’ve only known you for a minute, and it’s not for me to testify about what’s best for you.”
I leaned forward, nodding so hard, I thought my head might wobble right off my neck. “Yes, yes, we’ll speak for ourselves. We just need to get in the door. I can convince them.”
Lina reached across the table to squeeze my hand, deliberately gentle so as not to crush my delicate human bones. “I have no doubt about that.”
“You know, we could skip all this messy council business, and you could just . . .” I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial hush. “Change us yourself.”
Lina’s laugh was barking loud after my whisper. “I rather like my own freedom, thank you very much. I am not above the law and am not keen on breaking the treaty myself. I supported the laws against turning children. I just think it should go both ways.”
