Ezra gave me the window seat and buckled me in, which I think made both of us feel a little better. I closed my eyes tightly, and I tried not think of Jack. He was lurking painfully in my thoughts, and he only made my bloodlust increase. The whole situation felt very precarious, and I was starting to think that maybe I wasn’t ready for this trip. When the engines of the plane started revving up, Ezra leaned over and whispered, “This time, if the plane crashes, it’ll be in the water. The ocean’s full of sharks, and well, they can kill us. So you actually have something to be afraid of this time.” “Is that supposed to comfort me?” I asked through gritted teeth as a new fear started to take hold. “No, not at all. I wanted to scare the hell of out you so you’d stop thinking about… things.” Ezra squeezed my hand back, and that felt reassuring somehow. “But it’s still true. Sharks are brutal.” The instant we were free to move about, Ezra grabbed the duffle back full of blood from the overhead bin and led me back to the restrooms. We got a lot of weird looks from the other passengers and the flight crew, but nobody stopped us. I doubted that any humans ever stopped Ezra. He was too beautiful and confident and imposing. He didn’t even try to mask the fact that we were going into the bathroom together, and for some reason, I admired him for that. Ezra didn’t care at all what people thought about him as long as they didn’t think he was a vampire. There was hardly enough room in the bathroom for one person, let alone two, so he swiftly lifted me up and set me on the sink. Then he clunked the duffel bag on my lap and tore it open. When he pulled out a can, I imagined that I could smell it, and I actually started to shake with hunger, but he stopped to look at me. “You are so pale,” Ezra murmured more to himself than me. He pushed a strand of hair out off my face and looked at me fully in the eyes, inspecting them for their level of hunger. “Hmmm. I’m going to give you two cans, okay?” “Yeah, whatever, fine,” I nodded quickly. I didn’t care at all what he said as long as I got the blood. It was so close and my body was going completely insane for it. “Put your hair back,” Ezra commanded.
It didn’t make sense to me, but I did what he said. I had a hair tie around my wrist, and I pulled my hair up in a messy bun. He was eyeing me up still, trying to figure something out that I didn’t understand, and the cans of blood were in his hands. There was a bag full of cold sitting on my lap, and I bit my lip, hard. “This is gonna hit you hard, but I need you to walk back out to your seat, okay?” Ezra continued. “And you can pass out as soon as you sit down.” “Okay!” I snapped. He pursed his lips, but unscrewed the can. The small room was instantly full of the scent, and I practically ripped the can from his hands. A small drop splashed out onto my dark green sweater, but I doubted that anyone would notice. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been so positively obsessed with it. Greedily, I guzzled it down. As soon as I felt the cold sliding down my throat, I felt an ease growing in my muscles. Even though it was very cold, it spread warm over my body. Before I had even finished the first can, Ezra had unscrewed the second one. He wanted me to get them down me as fast as possible, so we had a chance of me making it to the seat before I looked totally blitzed out. I drank them both, and Ezra shoved them back in the bag. I licked my lips clean, but he inspected me for any signs of his blood on my face. The world was already starting to get that hazy glow to it, and that wonderful relaxed feeling wanted to take over. With Ezra so close to me, I had the strangest urge to kiss him. That was just the blood talking, so I lowered my head before I could accidentally act on it. We walked back to our seats, him with his arm on me to steady me. It took all my strength to keep from stumbling or doing anything ridiculous. All the colors seemed to shine brighter. My shirt looked like grass, and I wanted to pet it, but Ezra was sliding me into the seat. “How are you feeling?” Ezra whispered as he buckled me back in. “Dreamy,” I murmured with a hazy smile on my lips. Before he had even put the bag back in the overhead compartment, I had passed out. It was that wonderful really heavy, deep sleep that most people only dreamed about getting on an airplane. Even with Ezra’s new threats about sharks and this gnawing ache for Jack, I slept soundlessly the entire way to Finland.
Ezra started to gently shake me awake, and somewhere while I had been sleeping, he’d gotten me a pillow and blanket to sleep with. He had a blanket folded on his lap, and I wondered if he’d slept at all. I had managed to sleep through an entire eight hour flight, but I’m sure he barely closed his eyes. “We’re about to touch down in Helsinki,” Ezra informed me quietly. “Really?” I yawned and stretched a little, then looked out my window. It was dark out, but the city was aglow with twinkley lights. “What time is it?” “It’s ten o’clock, Wednesday,” Ezra answered. “Oh.” My brain scrambled to figure when we left, but it didn’t seem right. “Wait. Did we leave at ten on Tuesday? We haven’t been en route for twenty-four hours.” “There’s a time change. It’s only two pm in Minneapolis. You might suffer a bit of jet lag, but then again, thanks to that nice nap you had, you might not,” he smiled at me. “I hope not.” In truth, I didn’t even really know what jet lag was, but from what I heard, it didn’t sound like something I’d want to suffer from. A flight attendant came to collect our blankets, and the captain came on, saying things about making the descent into Helsinki. Then he repeated the same message in Finnish, or at least I assumed he did since I didn’t understand a word of it. As we got closer, I realized the city was much more stunning than I had expected it to be. In my mind, it had been more of a cold, desolate looking place, but in reality, it looked kind of glamorous and historical, like the way I imagined Paris or London to look. Not that I had ever seen either of them to have any real comparison. “This is where Peter went to live off the grid?” I asked skeptically as I admired the architecture. “No, he’s not here,” Ezra shook his head. “We have one more flight to make.” “Really?” I wrinkled my nose. Even though I had slept through this flight, my body felt stiff, and I was sick of sitting around waiting. “Just up to northern Finland, in the Lapland,” Ezra said as if that meant anything to me at all. “I’ll explain more once we land. We have another layover.” “Fantastic,” I sighed.
Getting off the plane, I noticed for the first time how well everything must sit with Ezra. He hadn’t slept in I don’t know how long and he’d just been sitting on a plane the entire time, but his clothes weren’t even wrinkled. He wore a buttoned down white shirt with some kind off shiny white pattern hidden on it, and as always, he left a few of the top buttons on done, as if he wasn’t tantalizing enough. He wore fitted jeans, as had I, which looked out of place when he got off the plane. Most people wore much more comfortable clothes for a long flight, but neither of us really seemed to mind. Everyone was looking at him, noticing how stunning he looked, and I realized belatedly that they were looking at me the same way. Being really attractive is a weird thing to get used to. Ezra got everything sorted for the next flight, and then we prepared ourselves to wait for our flight out. This time, I made sure to hang out by a window. I had missed all of New York City, and I was determined to at least admire the view of Helsinki. Not that there was a view from the airport. It was mostly planes, landing strips, and some traffic. But that was more than I had seen in New York. “It really is a beautiful city,” Ezra admitted, coming up to stand next to me. We watched as plane taxied down the runway, and I knew that wasn’t he was referring to. He knew that I was trying to catch a glimpse of something that I was going to miss entirely. I sighed but refused to leave my post at the window. Besides, standing up for a change felt good. “You’ve stayed here before?” I glanced him out of the corner of my eye even though I thought I knew the answer. “Many times, mostly before Mae,” Ezra nodded. “I’ve managed to drag her out here a few times, but she doesn’t like to leave the city very much. But Peter loves it here.” “How come?” “The cold, the dark, the wilderness, the seclusion. He stays up further north mostly. There’s a couple really fantastic national parks and some ski resorts, and that’s where he spends most of his time. And Helsinki, Stockholm, Amsterdam, they’re all not that far away, whenever he requires bustling city life,” Ezra explained.