Chapter V
V
She knows now that she is being hunted.
She cannot stop. She cannot rest.
For months she wanders in a daze, hollowed out by death, and yet, propelled to live.
And so, she lives in constant motion, never stopping long enough to learn the layout of a place, let alone put down any roots, beyond the nightly wards that keep her safe.
And yet no matter where she goes—Oslo, Prague, Berlin—she is certain she can feel Sabine trailing in her wake.
Silly Charlotte. Let me in.
There are nights when she wonders what would happen if she did.
Whether Sabine would kill her quickly or take her time, though she suspects she knows which one it is.
She has never longed for death, but what Charlotte fears more is that Sabine doesn’t mean to kill her.
After all, there are worse things. She can still remember their anniversary in London, the way Sabine’s teeth sank down to bone.
The aching pain of being emptied. Over and over again.
Still, it is not the pain that scares her most of all.
It is the fact she can’t fight back.
That violence is a one-way road, thanks to her promise. If Sabine gets her hands on Charlotte, she can peel her like a piece of fruit. And Charlotte cannot even lift a hand to stop her.
So she drifts.
For months. For years.
She moves, and moves, and moves, Sabine’s promise hanging like a guillotine over her head.
It is enough to drive her mad.
Perhaps it does.
She feels like she is cracked inside, broken edges scraping at her heart, her lungs, all her brittle feelings leaking into one another. The sight of happy couples makes the splinters spread.
Charlotte watches the fifties end, a new decade ushered in, and cannot take it anymore.
She has never been so lonely.
So alone.
She longs for company, for comfort, for the simple warmth of being held, of being seen, and known. She thinks of going back to London, but does not dare return to Antonia and Jack, much as she could use a friend, lest she carry Sabine to them like a sickness.
And so, at the top of 1961, Charlotte Hastings boards a ship and sails for Boston.
She stares at the retreating line of English coast and reminds herself how much Sabine hated the idea of crossing oceans. How often she declared that she would never leave, that all she could ever want or need was there in Europe.
How eager Charlotte is to see it go.
Still, it is not an easy journey. A week on the water, hunger digging its teeth into her bones, the subtle wrongness of the sea to every side.
The days spent locked inside her cabin, the sun beating against the boat.
The nights spent drifting round the ship, counting the heartbeats, and clinging to the memory of Sabine’s reluctance, her disdain.
The promise of a place where she is not already waiting.
Charlotte clutches the small black business card Jack gave her, rubs the emblem with her thumb until it starts to fade. Memorizes each printed letter of the city name, and tells herself it will be the place her story starts.
And then, at last, the sight of land ahead.
The ship dragging slowly into the port.
Charlotte nearly flings herself ashore, makes it a few uncertain steps before she crumples to her knees, palms flat against the dock of this new country, this new life.
“Miss, are you all right?” a stranger asks.
Another, “Miss, are you unwell?”
But it is dusk, and she is shaking not with fear or illness, but relief, and hope.
And cold.
Charlotte thought she knew winter well enough, but here it is so brutal even she can feel the frigid burn. The streets are covered in a mess of ice and slush, the parks clad in snow.
Her papers declare her Mrs. Charlotte Hastings.
A widow, a word that seems to free her from a multitude of inquiries when she takes a room in a shared house.
They do ask what brings her all the way to Boston, why she would cross an ocean all alone, if she has any family here.
And she tells them she does not, but she has a friend.
Ezra.
She runs her fingers over the letters, follows the lines of Antonia’s neat but sloping script, wishing the card had more than a name, a city, a symbol.
It takes her nearly a month of asking pedestrians and waiters and hotel concierges before one directs her to a bar with an emblem matching the one on the card.
A narrow brick front, a set of steps leading down to a sublevel door, a small bronze placard to one side declaring it the White Thorn Club.
Charlotte shudders in relief and goes inside.
It is not what she expected—she imagined something like the Way Down, with its dreamy atmosphere, its ageless grace—but this club is small, made smaller by the curtains hung around, stifling the light from the candles on each table.
And yet, there is an energy she recognizes, an air that puts her anxious heart at ease.
A handsome human in a tailored suit greets her by the door.
“Ezra?” she ventures, to which the man guffaws. Charlotte frowns, confused, but he just shakes his head and gestures to a corner table.
“You take a seat,” he says. “I’ll find the man in charge.”
She sits and waits, smooths her skirt and studies the coaster on the table, runs her fingers over the hollow curves of the rose, the two pale spikes on the stem.
Soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.
A man clears his throat, and she looks up.
Charlotte doesn’t know what she expected from Ezra—someone with Antonia’s elegance, perhaps, or Jack’s charm, but this man has neither.
He’s vaguely disheveled, his sleeves shoved up to his elbows and his collar open, hair a mop of brown that looks in desperate need of a cut.
He doesn’t even greet her, just drags up a chair, spins it round, and flops down, arms crossed against the back.
Charlotte would honestly suspect she’d found the wrong man, if not for the perfect quiet of the air around him and the faint glow behind his eyes.
“Can I help you?” he asks, a phrase Americans seem to hand out as casually as Hello, but he sounds like he means it.
And Charlotte, who has spent a fortnight thinking of what to say, finds her mind gone blank. Her eyes begin to burn. The stranger sits there, waiting for her to speak, amusement tugging at his mouth when the seconds pass in silence until finally she finds her voice and says, “Antonia.”
His brows go up in obvious surprise.
“She sent me,” explains Charlotte. “That is, she told me I should find you, if I ever found myself in Boston, and in need of a friend.”
Friend —why does the word lodge in her throat? Why does it ache behind her ribs? Perhaps she doesn’t know how true it is, how badly she needs it, until it’s said.
Ezra leans forward, resting his chin on top of his arms. “That does sound like her. How is our dear Antonia?” he adds, slipping into a Southern accent as he says it, and Charlotte is forced to admit she doesn’t know, that it’s been nearly twenty years since she gave her the card with Ezra’s name.
“I didn’t know,” she says, “if you would still be here.”
“Oh, you needn’t have worried about that.
” He rakes his fingers through his hair, only for it to fall again across his forehead, somehow messier than before.
“Boston and I go hand in hand. I’ve been here since the Revolution.
And I know what you’re going to say,” he adds, holding up a hand to stop her. “I do look good for my age.”
When Charlotte fails to laugh, Ezra sighs dramatically. “You know, I’m always amazed when vampires take themselves so seriously.”
Vampire. It’s an odd word, one Sabine disdained, even before Bela Lugosi with his widow’s peak and overly affected speech.
As if Ezra senses her distaste, he says, “Let me guess, you prefer the metaphor of gardens, and roses.”
She glances pointedly at the coaster, printed with the bar’s emblem, and Ezra holds up his hands. “Guilty. But you have to admit, calling it Bloodthirst might render me too niche.”
Charlotte almost smiles, then. It feels like stone splitting. Like her body has forgotten how.
A waiter appears and puts two cups and a porcelain pot of coffee on the table. He leaves without pouring, which she thinks odd, until Ezra takes the liberty, and though the liquid is thin, and dark, the aroma of roasted beans doesn’t quite cover the unmistakable scent of iron.
She takes a cup, curls her fingers around it as if for warmth.
“So, Charlotte,” he says—which is when she realizes she never told him her name. “Ah, I tipped my hand. The world is smaller than it used to be. Antonia did call me,” he says, nodding at a phone on the bar. “To say you might be coming round.”
Charlotte sets the cup down. “Did she tell you why?” she asks, unsure which is worse, if he already knows about Sabine, or if she’ll have to tell him.
He shakes his head. “Not her story,” he says.
And Charlotte knows he’s giving her a choice. To tell or not to tell. To share the burden or keep it to herself.
But she is so tired of carrying the weight alone.
And what is a friend, if not someone willing to share it.
It’s hard at first, every word takes something with it, but then it is like running downhill—she cannot seem to stop.
Ezra’s expression darkens only once—when Charlotte recounts the night she tried and failed to kill Sabine—though she doesn’t know if it’s the act that upsets him, or the fact she couldn’t do it. He never says.
By the time she’s done, the other tables in the place are empty, the waiters gone, the doors to the White Thorn Club closed for the night.
Ezra sits in thoughtful silence for some time, and then he asks.
“Why didn’t you turn her?”
The question hangs on the air, the way it has hung on Charlotte since that night. Sabine, pinning Giada to her. So fragile. So human.
“You could have made her like you. But you didn’t.”
Charlotte bites her lip, stares down into her empty cup. She could say that she wanted to surround herself with life, not death. Or that she couldn’t bear the thought of someone loving her the way she loved Sabine and being forced to watch her wither.
Both of them are true, but in the end she just shakes her head and says, “I loved her as she was. Besides,” she adds, “it wouldn’t have saved her from Sabine.”
“Probably not,” says Ezra, rising to his feet. “But it might have given her a fighting chance.”
Charlotte frowns, remembering her ex-lover on the threshold. That smile, like a cat toying with its food. “No,” she says, pushing herself up. “It wouldn’t have.”
Ezra nods thoughtfully. And then he does a stunning thing. He hugs her. Folds his arms loosely around her shoulders, the simple, solid weight of him more welcome than a heart, a pulse.
“I’m sorry, Lottie,” he says, and the nickname, the easy way he says it, makes her smile. A piece of her old self, perhaps the only one that survived Sabine.
He leads her to the door. Unlocks it for her, letting in the winter wind.
Charlotte pauses there, staring into the dark. “What if the ocean wasn’t enough?” she whispers, as if saying it too loud will make it real. “What if she follows me?”
Ezra leans in the doorway. “She probably won’t,” he says, taking a card and pen from his pocket, and scrawling something on the back. “But I’ll keep my ears and eyes open.”
He hands her the new card, the club’s number printed in his messy hand.
“If you’re worried, just call,” he says. “But I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
She takes the card, and steps out into the dark, hoping that he’s right.