* * *
They gave me a choice. Live forever as a child of the night (yeah, Esmael used those words exactly), or forget them and live out my days, however many they might be, under the sun.
The next morning I lay down next to my mom and told her everything, just to talk it all out. Mom always said talking something out could point you in the right direction. By the time I’d explained it all, I was thinking that since I’d made such a fuss about not having a choice about who I wanted to sleep with—born that way, etc., etc.—I’d better take this actual choice, about who and what I wanted to be, pretty damn seriously.
* * *
“If you could live forever, would you want to?” I asked Sid as we squeezed through the hallway to our free block. When it was this cold out, we both spent the hour in the auditorium with Ms. Monroe and I usually could get my biology reading done for the week. Then I didn’t have to lug that cinder block of a textbook home.
Sid cocked her head and tugged at the rolled waistband of her pleated skirt. I wore the pants option all winter, but Sid said that edging up her skirt so every teacher considered taking a ruler to test the uniform code against her knee was the only thing that made her actually feel Catholic. “Like some Highlander, or a vampire, or in some kind of relativity loop or something?” Sid knew this game.
“A vampire.” I didn’t bother being casual about it, and I stared at her like I wanted to sink my teeth into her white neck.
Her lips curled in a smile because she liked when I got weirdly intense, said it was my artist look, and she nudged open the auditorium door with her hip. “I think so. Like, a vampire doesn’t have to live forever, so you could just live as long as you wanted to. Do you have to kill people?”
(I’d asked Esmael the same question. He’d dragged his knuckles down my bare leg and said, “No, but you can.”)
I shook my head at Sid.
“Only drawback is the sun?”
We picked a curved row of dingy old theater seats and plopped down far away from most of the juniors sharing our free block. “And holy water and some kinds of magic.”
“Magic, huh, so we’re not some kind of virus vampires, but the demon kind.”
Seti and Esmael didn’t seem particularly demonic to me, but I supposed technically it was accurate. “Yeah.”
“I think I probably would, but maybe I’d want to wait a few years until I’m legal. And maybe try to lose a few pounds.”
My eyes widened. I hadn’t even thought about that. If the transformation maintained my body exactly the way it was, I’d have this belly and fat around my bra for all time.
I slid down in the theater seat to put my skull against the back and stare up at the ceiling.
“Are you going to live forever with me?” Sid whispered in my ear.
That wasn’t part of the choice; the vampires had been clear. Just me, and if I tried to turn anybody for the first fifty years, they’d kill us both. I kissed her quickly. “Of course,” I said. “We’ll rule the night together and rampage across the world.”
* * *
Esmael took me for a long walk that night in the Power and Light District, where the bars shared neon and bass between them like a love language. Cold couples and parties of bros dashed from club to hotel to parking lot with breath fogging heavy around their heads, clapping hands over their mouths, wearing each other’s coats and laughing and cussing at the icy breeze. I had on a long jacket and a scarf, but Esmael had fed me some of his blood for the first time and I barely felt the cold. That magic heated me from the inside. Seven nights in a row, that was the basis of the ritual. He drinks from me; I drink from him. If we broke it after six, I’d be ill for a few days, then fine. But human.
We walked north from the Sprint Center, through dark downtown buildings until the bars distanced themselves from each other and the locals heading home or urging their little dogs to pee on two square feet of frosty grass outnumbered partiers. I tucked my hand in Esmael’s elbow, which he found charming, and didn’t mind my boots tapping the sidewalk while his made no sound at all. He was a sexy shadow and could protect me from anything.
I wondered what it would be like to walk this street alone and still be unafraid. No keys pressed through my fingers like brass knuckles, no heightened pulse, and if somebody called me a dyke, I could flip them off no worries—or better, rip out their goddamn throat.
“You’re excited,” Esmael said softly.
“There’s power in it.”
“Yes. And danger. You must, if you join us, learn to think not only about surviving tomorrow, but the next decade and century. Make plans, a framework for eternity, and then you can afford to live in the moment. You can seem to be human, but only if you think like a monster.”
“What does that mean?”
“There are cameras everywhere and phones listening to us. We survive by never being sought. If someone wants to find you—wants to find a vampire—they will. There is no hiding in this world, no longer, and so you must be a person.”
“That’s why you have a gallery.”
“So that I can pay taxes. I’m in the system.”
“Sounds boring.”
He slid me his real smile, the one too beautiful for words. “Nothing is boring if you understand it.”
“What a line,” I managed; I was pretty breathless from that smile.
“Imagine what you can do with a decade to learn. Imagine your art a hundred years from now, when you’ve lived in Thailand and Germany and New Orleans. Imagine who you can know. What you can experience.”
We neared the Rivermarket, where the restaurants were fancier or at least had names with words like gastropub in them, and I thought of drawing it all: the angle of light from the shop windows ahead and the sheen of starlight—one was warmer than the other. Could I draw something like warmth? “It’s worth the sun?” I asked softly.
“You learn to make your own sun.”
I thought about Thailand and New Orleans, about dancing and twisting my tongue around new languages and new concepts. I thought about all the sex I could have. All the music I could hear. It pinched in my chest.
Suddenly I was crying.
The tears froze a little on my lashes and the smear was cold and dry when I rubbed them away.
Esmael did nothing but hold my hand.
“Take me to my mom,” I said.
His sigh was extremely melancholy, but he whisked me off as requested.
* * *
I told Mom the ridiculous argument that paying taxes kept monsters alive. That was her favorite sort of thing: finding humor in bleakness. Instead of making jokes for her, though, I complained about the unfairness of life. Wouldn’t Mom love all the music of the world and learning every language? It was bullshit that she couldn’t come be a vampire with me.
Or instead of me.
* * *
The next night of the ritual, after I touched a finger to the blood at Esmael’s wrist and dripped it onto my tongue like a designer drug, Seti took me out.
She said, “Esmael is smart, but I know how to live.”
We went to a club that was literally underground. It popped up in the caves under the river bluffs sometimes, Seti explained, and I was definitely too young, but she got me in.