I snorted. “Okay, so you don’t get caught up in the pleasure of it and accidentally drain somebody dry. What about garlic and crosses and shit?”
“Garlic gets into the skin and blood and can be overwhelming, but it’s not dangerous. Crosses, salt, holy water, those types of things can be imbued with magic that disrupts ours, hurting us, but rarely these days. Almost nobody practices that sort of magic anymore. Just general protection spells and the evil eye and blessings.”
“Are there, like, slayers?”
“Sure, but you’re more likely to be struck by lightning.”
“Would that kill us?”
“I bet so.”
Seti charmed the bouncer and stole a table, and we perched on high stools drinking smoky cocktails out of little crystal coupe glasses.
“And the sun?” I asked.
“Deadly.”
“Why?”
“It breaks the magic, or kills the demon in our blood, I suppose. You won’t burst into flame, but all your blemishes and wounds since you died return with a vengeance, and you age. The sun breaks the spell, and you’re as dead as you should’ve been.”
“Direct sunlight? Or any?”
“Direct, or we’d be toast under a full moon, too.”
“Do you ever watch the dawn?”
“At the movie theater.”
“I should paint it while I can.”
Seti grinned slowly. “So you’ve decided?”
In that moment, I wanted to run.
* * *
When we returned to the gallery apartment, a little boy was there with Esmael. Eleven or twelve, white with rusty-red hair, cherubic is what his cheeks are called, and dressed like an adult in tight jeans, polished loafers, a blue button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and a vivid teal tie with tiny yellow flowers.
“This is Henry,” Esmael said, two spots of actual pink on his cheeks, so he was either elated, furious, or very full of blood.
The boy bowed at me like in a costume movie and lifted his huge, light brown eyes. Then he smiled, and the fangs that seemed tiny in Esmael’s mouth completely overwhelmed the delicate lips of that little boy. “Greetings, miss.”
“A little kid vampire!” I couldn’t help being rude.
Seti snorted. Esmael touched my cheek with one hand and put his knuckles to Henry’s lightly curling hair. “It’s a sign, darling: Henry is my oldest living progeny. He came to see me, just in time to speak with you.”
“So much for teenage girls being your biggest successes,” I said, laughing a little. I was stunned, as well as nervous. Here was such a little kid, who could rip my throat out in a snap.
“People raised as girls is exactly what I said,” Seti corrected me, grinning. “Isn’t that right, Hen?”
The little boy sighed like an old man and went to the sideboard to pour a glass of whiskey.
Esmael said, “I was living as a priest in France in the fifteenth century—within the Church was the safest place for monsters in those days—and served the family of a minor lord. Henry, my lord’s fifth child, came in to confess that he was angry at God and terrified to grow breasts and hips and belly like his sisters. He knew he was supposed to be a man, that’s what he dreamed, over and over again, even though it was a sin. I said, ‘I cannot make your body into that of a man, but I can make you as strong as one and keep you from ever growing into a woman.’”
“I thought it was a miracle, and Father Samuel an angel,” Henry said, heavy with irony.
I sat down on the chaise lounge. Henry brought me his glass of whiskey and allowed me a sip. I stared, and then asked a million questions about living almost five hundred years as a kid. He answered some of them.
Several hours later, I let Esmael give me the sixth seed.
* * *
I stared at Sid in Biology, feeling extremely old. I’d apologized to her, and she’d shrugged it off. “Make it up to me,” she’d said, and I’d promised. But I stared at her, wondering what she’d say and if she’d miss me for long. Would it be like I’d died? What would any of them say?
My mom told me that how people talk about you when you’re dead is your only real legacy. I hadn’t wanted to hear it then. I wanted more than anything to hear it now.
* * *
The seventh night—the last night—I went to the cemetery. It was easy, as always, to sneak in after dark.
Esmael knew somehow, the bastard, and was waiting for me. He leaned against a small granite obelisk several graves away from Mom’s. Wind fluttered the tails of his coat and the curls of hair at his temple.
I stopped, hugging myself.
“What’s holding you back?” he murmured. The night sky seemed to take his voice and carry it gently toward me.
“She deserved to live forever,” I whispered, trying not to cry.
For a long while, Esmael said nothing. Then he only gave me one word: “Deserved?”
“She wasn’t angry, she wasn’t a bitch, she always tried to help people. I’m nothing like that, so why me, why not her? Anger shouldn’t be the key to immortality, you dick. Shouldn’t it be compassion or kindness or something good?”
“Seti would say use your anger to make that true. Change the world, she says.”
“What do you say, Esmael?”
He stepped closer to me, silent and gray against the night sky. “I say anger is just as valuable as compassion, if it makes art like yours.”
I groaned, curling my hands into fists. I shoved them against my eyes until I saw red-sparking stars.
“Tonight,” he said, too close now, his words hardly more than a breath. “Tonight is the last night. If you come to me, all I have will be yours. If you do not, you’ll never see me again. Though I cannot promise I won’t look for your art, out in the world.”
I opened my eyes, but he was gone.
* * *
Back in September, swaddled in a blanket we’d stolen from the hospital, Mom had said, “You keep me alive, baby.” She’d shivered, eyelids paper-thin as she closed them and leaned into the wingback chair. “The things you say about me. How you remember me.”
“That’s too much pressure!” I’d yelled—actually yelled at her. “Too much responsibility. I’m just seventeen, Mom.”
“You carry the world on your shoulders,” she murmured, falling asleep. “You all do.”
* * *
All right, I was angry.
No, I was furious, curled against Mom’s headstone, legs up and arms hugging them against my chest. I knocked my forehead against my knees, face scrunched up.
It hurt how much I missed her. Actual, physical pain. What if becoming a vampire preserved that, too? This ache was just there, all the time. A part of me, in my bones.
“It’ll get rid of the zits on your forehead, but not the fat on your belly,” Seti had said when I asked. She was laughing at me. “The magic preserves us as we are, at our most ideal. Sorry you think that chubby roll isn’t ideal, but you’ll learn better. Trust the blood, the magic. Whatever it leaves you, belongs.”