Chapter 46
I wake up breathless. What did I do?
Because last night I fed on a man. Willingly. I can still smell his deodorant in my hair, taste the whisky of his blood on my tongue. He wasn’t a good man though, and I didn’t kill him, I tell myself. But still, I liked it. A lot. And I loved Oscar once. And I cheated on Jonathan.
Argh.
I pull the covers over my head and clench my eyes shut to make it all go away, but now all I can see is: URGENT LONDON MEET-UP. RE: KENNETH brAWLEY . . . It’s flashing in neon lights in my mind.
They’ll be meeting tonight.
I throw the covers off and go over to the bathroom to check the mark on my neck.
It’s gone. Finally healed. One good thing.
But Oscar’s necklace is still there on the dressing table.
And so is the memory of everything I found last night.
I don’t want it. Don’t want whatever feeling reignited inside me as I held that little box.
But it doesn’t matter what I want, it’s there now.
A little ember burning deep inside me that I need to stamp out before it turns into anything bigger.
I turn on the water and splash my face, thinking: Snap the hell out of it. Just forget.
Because this is just like when Eric got amnesia in True Blood season four, and for a moment it looked like he was cute and not evil at all.
It’s confusing, but it’s not real. Jonathan is real.
And that’s who I love. Things might not be great between us right now, but he’s my soulmate, we’ll get through it.
I pull open the bedroom door and hear voices downstairs. I move into the hallway and over to the banister, then look down. Oscar, Carmilla and Rupert are standing just outside the open front door, chatting. There’s something on the ground near Rupert, I can just see the edge of it—grey, scalloped.
Umm . . . is that a suitcase?
I quickly pull on my robe and slippers and go downstairs to see what’s going on. But as I step into the grey dusk light, I see Oscar. As he looks up at me my breath catches and I look away; I focus on Carmilla and Rupert instead.
What are they doing?
They’re standing by Carmilla’s black BMW and . . . oh no. It was a suitcase that I saw. Two suitcases, in fact, and they’re putting them into the boot. I plaster on the counter-smile I use at work and rush over to them.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ I ask, struggling to hide the panic in my voice. Because I don’t want to be left alone with him.
‘Back to London, to see if Felix has been at his place,’ Carmilla says.
NO. PLEASE NO.
‘But we’ll be back for New Year’s,’ Rupert adds. ‘You did good last night, Baby-V,’ he tells me with a wink.
I watch helplessly as they both get into the car and the engine turns over.
As I watch them drive away, their red taillights flaring in the dusk light, Oscar is right there beside me, the air charged between us.
My head is full of static; I can’t think straight.
I don’t know what to say to him. It’s like there’s this enormous elephant in the room now, so many questions I want to ask, but how will I explain knowing about those photographs?
He won’t be pleased that I went through his study. What do I say?
But then he speaks first. ‘Right, well, have a good night, Aubrey. I have plans but we’ll start lessons again tomorrow.
You can watch a film in the winter drawing room if you get bored.
The remotes are all there.’ He looks at me the same way he’s always looked at me, with no hint that he’s been secretly stalking me for 150 years.
* * *
I sit in the drawing room for a while, watching the fire crackle and the Christmas tree lights flicker, expecting Oscar to come out of his study looking annoyed and saying something cruel or sarcastic at any moment, and wondering how I might broach things.
I have to ask him somehow.
But he doesn’t emerge. And every time I go to check, his library door is still closed.
I’ve been trying to find a movie to watch, but I can’t focus. How does one watch a movie when there is so much drama going on in their own life? Jonathan. Oscar. And tonight is the VHC meet-up.
I let out a big breath, press pause and look out of the misted-up windows. It’s not raining, not snowing.
I’ll go for a walk. Clear my head. That will help.
The air is icy and smells of pine needles and moss, and I hear the faint buzz of insects as I look around.
It’s like stepping into a melancholic postcard: bare trees, probably even older than me, set against a dark and starry sky.
I look to the right, but memories of Felix lie that way.
Instead, I go left, around the side of the house, to the garden I’ve only seen through the windows.
In the distance, I can see the silhouettes of trees and what looks like a guest cottage.
But as I walk through the manicured garden with its well-trimmed lawns and immaculately shaped hedges in huge, ornate pots, beneath a sky so dark I can see every single star, and a moon that for the longest time was my only confidante, everything is so beautiful, beautiful in a way I don’t recall it being before.
Like I’m seeing it for the very first time.
Is this because of the blood I’ve been drinking?
Or is it because I know I can die now? That all this could disappear?
And everything is always most beautiful when you know you can lose it—cities, centuries, people.
Is it because I finally have what humans have: the poetry of a ticking clock and moments that pass and can never be retrieved, the trimmings of mortality?
I can feel that changing me in ways I didn’t expect.
I could feel it last night with Red Flannel Jeff.
If I hadn’t known that I could die—that the consequences, whatever they might be, could end—I would have rushed out of that pub, too scared to see where it led.
But it seems there is a lightness, a boldness that comes with mortality.
I finally understand what carpe diem means, why humans say life is short and then do something reckless. It’s the ultimate freedom.
But I fear this shift inside me is from something else entirely. Someone else.
Oscar.
Because I can deny it as much as I want, force myself not to feel whatever it is that sparked within me last night, but something profound changed when I found those pictures and my box of love.
It was as if I’d been looking into that kaleidoscope on Oscar’s desk my whole life, certain that the pattern I was seeing was the only pattern, the right one. With one little click, it all shifted. The sands stayed the same but a new pattern emerged. And everything was different.
Suddenly, I hadn’t spent 150 years all alone, abandoned, unlovable. Suddenly Oscar was there all along, helping me, albeit from a distance.
And I think that’s what’s confusing my heart.
Because Oscar is everything I loathe. He’s cruel and a killer and manipulative and he lies. He’s as close to pure evil as I’ve ever met.
But also, he knows me. All of me.
He knew me as a human, and he’s watched me the whole time that I’ve been a vampire. He’s seen me at my saddest, when I wasn’t performing for the world; he knows my deepest, darkest, most shameful parts, and to him they aren’t shameful at all. There’s something healing in that.
That’s what I’ve always dreamed of.
For someone to know me—all of me—and love me anyway.
I just don’t want it to be him.
Because while Jonathan could tether me to my humanity, my light, keep me good, Oscar could only take me deeper into the darkness.
Besides, could I really call whatever it is he feels for me love? Or is it merely a sense of ownership? Possession? Why am I even allowing myself to think these things? It can’t lead anywhere good.
Now I’m standing by a bed of roses, the same ones as those near the greenhouse.
Winter roses, the kind which can survive in snow when every other flower might wilt.
They’re the same ones I saw in my room and in the entry hall.
I go over to them, wondering what this garden looks like in spring, when all the other flowers are out, and none of the trees are bare.
I bend down to one of the roses, smelling it.
It’s so rich and deep and sweet; like roses used to smell before genetic modification created the bland versions you get in supermarkets.
The beds look well tended. I glance across at the bed beside the roses, and there are tiny little plants in there, like they’ve only just been sown. The earthy scent of mulch in the air. Like someone has been gardening despite the ill weather.
Oh god.
Is this where Oscar buried Felix?
I step away from the roses and head back to the house, quickly.
* * *
When I walk inside, the library door is still closed, so I go upstairs. I go over to the bookshelf and pull out a copy of Wuthering Heights—it’s dusty, like it hasn’t been read in years—then I lie down and read.
But half an hour later, I’m barely ten pages in. I’ve been reading and re-reading the same line fifty times and this is ridiculous.
I put the book down, grab my eye mask and earplugs and try to sleep, even though it’s far too early.
I toss and I turn.
After about an hour of that, I let out a big breath and sit up and think: I’m going to ask. About all of it.
I have to.
So I pull on my dressing gown and slippers and edge open my bedroom door.
A faint murmur floats across the entrance hall—from the floor above the left-hand staircase.
I tiptoe down the stairs and up the ones on the other side of the foyer, my heart a little quicker than usual in my chest. I’ve never been up here before.
I look around and see light spilling out of a room towards the end of the hallway.
I move towards it. That must be where he is.
I’m just going to knock, have a quick chat, and ask him.
I’m almost at his door when I hear a slight moan.
I creep forward until I’m standing at the door. It’s ajar, and I can just see inside.