Chapter 27 – Luna
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Luna
The next night, Paco got up before I did, so I switched rooms, because finishing sleeping on a bed seemed better than on the couch, and there was nothing else for us to do but rest and wait anyhow.
And when I did bother to get up, Jack’s living room was almost spotless, far beyond the perfunctory job I’d done before going to bed, and I found Paco gently steaming wax up from the carpet with an iron.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, because I was fairly sure Jack didn’t own one.
“ Prime,” Paco said, looking up. He was wearing new clothes now. He’d probably had those delivered, too. “Unlike Jack, I have a bank account.”
“This is the real reason Jack never invited you over,” I said, coming over to watch him in awe. “He knew you would clean.”
Paco snorted. “Probably.”
He was much more independent than Rosalie had been, and three times as functional as Jack.
If things with Jack didn’t work out . . . would he really need me?
He eyed me. “What’re you thinking?”
“Wondering how long your job will last. Considering,” I said, waving my hand up and down him, indicating his vampiric nature.
“I’m mostly self-employed.” He shrugged. “And I recently finished a rather important contract at the Fleur di Lis. I’ve still got connections, I’ll be fine.”
“And the rest of your life?” I said, crossing my arms, feeling slightly disappointed with his general competency.
“I broke up with my other boyfriend, if that’s what you’re asking.” He turned the iron off. “It was either that or explain everything. I felt like an asshole, but I know it’s better that he tells all our friends I’m having a mid-life crisis, as humiliating as that may be.”
And then the doorbell rang. I went to open it, with the slight hope that it was someone for me, like a hot-yet-dangerous fallen angel, only to discover a delivery guy outside holding two bags of hamburgers. I took them from him and turned around.
“You still enjoy eating?” I asked Paco. Rosalie never did, and it didn’t really matter. All the women in the circles she ran in were painfully thin, so whenever she was out in public no one judged her for eating like a bird.
“No,” he said, taking them from me, and then into the kitchen to unwrap what were indeed hamburgers and put them on plates like a grown-up. “For you. And for Zach.”
“Zach?” I said, my voice rising.
“Yeah. I’m not an idiot. I got his number last night.” Paco arranged the other burger and fries neatly on a plate and grinned when the doorbell rang again.
I wasn’t sure just how much of a third wheel I’d be, but it turned out that I shouldn’t have worried, mostly because Zach was too nice for that to happen, and there was a sports-ball event of some kind on TV.
I would’ve complained at being forced to watch it, but they seemed perfectly happy, and since I knew how rare that was I didn’t want to mess it up.
Then then it was halftime, the burgers were gone, and we were all one beer down.
“So how bad is it, being hungry?” Zach asked, worrying the corner of his lower lip. He’d accidentally offered Paco his fries more than once already.
“Pretty bad, I’d imagine,” Paco said, taking point as the only resident vampire. “But Jack’s more stubborn than anyone else I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll say,” I muttered.
“How did you meet him?” Zach asked.
Paco inhaled and hesitated. “I’ve never really gotten to tell anyone that story.”
And then I remembered that he was like me in that way, in that there was no one else he could tell things to, who could fully understand or believe. It’d never been safe for him.
Until now.
So he went and told Zach . . . everything.
About how they met, how he’d had to fight to get into Jack’s real life, him telling Jack he loved him in some snowy mountain cabin, the time his other boyfriend had gone off on a cruise and Jack had even gotten to come over and play house with him, and Zach listened, rapt, until Paco fell apart near the end when we caught up with recent history.
I had never seen a vampire truly cry before.
I’d seen Paco two nights ago, yes, on his knees in the mud and screaming, but that’d been more of an anger scenario.
This was just sheer emotion, and I wasn’t prepared to deal with it.
I could barely cry for myself, I certainly wasn’t prepared to shepherd anyone else through their sorrow.
But then Zach was there, saying the right thing, slinging an arm around his shoulders, and Paco was holding on and—
“I’ll be in the other room,” I said, excusing myself quickly, going into Jack’s bedroom.
I’d already snooped through Jack’s belongings the prior night: a few books, a laptop with a passcode I didn’t know, the coffin, his bed, sheets, clothes—none of the accoutrements that Rosalie had possessed that spoke of a life well lived over the course of centuries: jewelry, important objects of art, weird magical knickknacks.
If you’d were inside Rosalie’s very nicely appointed bedroom suite below Vermillion with a light on, you would think she had had a life well lived.
But when Rosalie had died, not a single person had cried for her.
Whereas Jack had been sleeping in a plywood coffin, just one step up from a refrigerator-box-hobo, and there were two reasonably intelligent men—one of whom was a vampire—out there crying for him.
I waited and waited, and when I didn’t hear anything that sounded like crying or fucking I finally crept back out. Zach was sprawled out on the couch asleep very comfortably, and by then Paco had regained his composure.
“Sorry. I’m allergic to tears,” I said quietly, sitting down on the floor.
“It’s all right.” He shrugged a shoulder then gave me a soft smile. “How are you holding up? I should’ve asked sooner.”
For a hot second I scanned myself internally, wondering if I’d exhibited some weakness that would make a someone else ask. Then I realized he was being genuine.
“This whole thing is weird and I don’t really like it.” The words were on the tip of my tongue, so I just blurted them out.
“Me either. Sorry for calling you Renfield, by the way. I didn’t mean to touch a nerve—and I know I don’t really know you.”
I raised my hands up and slowly clutched them into fists before putting them back down. “As someone who’s been around vampires for almost a fourth of my life now, can I give you some advice?”
“Sure.”
“Vampires don’t apologize. And they don’t cry. And they usually don’t”—I waved a hand at the two of them on the couch—“fraternize. Or whatever this is.”
Paco frowned “You were with Jack that long and he never told me?”
“What? Oh—no. Noooooo. Jack and I were never,” I said, making a firm chopping motion between us, and then I decided to come clean.
“I’ve really only known him for two weeks.
Well, of him, before that, but I’d never met him, ’til the moment I came to the door to tell him that Rosalie had caught you, and that he needed to get over there. ”
“So you—” Paco’s eyes squinted, somewhat confused.
“I was hers. Not his. And right now—I’m not anyone’s. I just don’t know what else to do. He was supposed to turn me, for helping him take care of you your first night.”
“And he didn’t?” His tone was surprised. “Jack would never go back on a deal.”
“It wasn’t him,” I said, as my shoulder’s slumped. “The same thing that was telling you to hate him told me I couldn’t let him do it.”
“So—that wasn’t all me? Just making the worst decision of my life, repeatedly?” he asked, then quietly hissed, “Fuck! I can’t believe I let myself get played like that!” He looked down at himself, dumbfounded by his own betrayal. “I—I should’ve been stronger.”
“No—I think if you had, it would’ve just killed you. It wanted to hurt Jack, and if you didn’t help it, it would’ve taken matters into its own hands. You hurt him, I was bait, and now he’s out there somewhere.”
“We’ll find him,” Paco said with determination. “We’re one night down. He just has to make it one more.”
“I really hope he does. But, Paco—there’s no guarantees. Which is why I want you to promise to change me, no matter what.” For all of Paco’s many other apparent flaws, I absolutely believed he was a man of his word.
“No. Jack was right. This is no way to live—”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I said, fighting not to mock him. “But if I don’t get changed, I’m going to die of an incurable disease, and I’m not ready to give up just yet. I’d rather be one of you than be under the ground. So—whatever else happens—you have to make good on his promise to me.”
He was taken aback at that. “Sure—fine. If you know that’s what you want,” he finished up with his whammy.
It wasn’t the first time a vampire had demanded I tell them the truth—but for some reason when I answered I stuttered. “I—think so.”
I knew my uncertainty was earnest, and then once the words were out there, it was impossible to take them back.
I felt like a cat that’d harfed up an unexpected hairball.
“That’s not good enough for me, Luna.” His expression clouded with concern on my behalf, which was entirely misplaced, and I wished there were something on the floor with me that I could throw at him. “But if I ever ask you that and the answer is yes, I’ll do it.”
“You’re smarter than Jack,” I complained.
“Only in certain ways,” he said, then put his hand to his chest. “I can still feel him, Luna. Now that I’m quieter on all fronts—he’s still a part of me. And I know it’s not because I’m lovesick, although I am—but I’m not crazy. We’re going to find him.”
All I could do in the face of so much sheer persistence was nod, and then he reached over to wake Zach up, moving to pick the other man up easily. “I’ll go get him home now, so you can have your couch back.”