Be Still My Unbeating Heart

Chapter 1

“I didn’t want to tell you this and ruin your holiday,” the cat said, glaring up from her spot on the doorstep, “but I think it’s important you know that Friday the Seventeenth is a bad omen in Italy.”

Standing in the sun-dappled street, Bastian Emerson pushed a hand through his shoulder-length blond hair and puckered his lips in a knowing smile.

“Will you stop looking for bad omens, darling? We’re here now, so let’s explore! If we hurry, we might even be able to watch the sunset from the beach.”

The cat tutted, her long black tail curled around her feet like a fur stole. “A vampire who loves sunsets. You are nothing if not a walking contradiction, Bastian.”

“Says the talking cat,” he said lightly, nudging his vintage Wayfarers back up to the bridge of his nose.

He turned his face toward the sun, which made his skin tingle.

Before venturing out into the humid August air, he had applied factor seventy to every inch of exposed skin—a necessity even though he was one of the lucky few who could tolerate daylight in small doses.

He’d hate to be one of those eternal night vamps who dwelled forever in darkness.

That kind of existence surely went hand in hand with an eternal case of S.A.D, and that would be a fate worse than death.

“Every day is a gift,” Bastian said, fixing the cuffs of his coral-colored linen suit, “and should be treated as such, even if one is going to live forever.”

“Listen,” the cat said, “I read this online. It’s worse than Friday the Thirteenth. Italians don’t leave their homes on Friday the Seventeenth. They carry around lucky charms to ward off ill fortune. If anything bad is going to happen, it’ll happen today.”

“Whitby, we saw plenty of people on the way here who weren’t hiding away from a superstition they read about on the internet.”

The cat’s yellow eyes shone up at him from the apartment doorway, unblinking, like she was casting a spell. Her black coat was sleek and well groomed—because Whitby bathed roughly ten times a day, and Bastian had cleaned up enough hair balls to know it.

“I’m telling you, we should stay indoors,” Whitby said, whiskers trembling. “I could use the time to perfect my first incantation. I’m so close to shifting this block and unleashing my full magical potential.”

Bastian tilted his head in thought. The cat had insisted on packing half a dozen books about conquering the dark arts, plus an assortment of crystals, herbs, ointments, and tokens, all of which were stored neatly in a 1940s doctor’s bag with leather straps and a bronze clasp.

Naturally, he’d had to carry it for her.

He didn’t mind, though. He was glad Whitby had ambition, because an individual without ambition was even deader on the inside than, well, him.

Sometimes, though, he wondered if the cat was overreaching. I mean, who ever heard of a feline who casts spells?

“Darling,” Bastian said, warm but firm, “we’re not spending our first night in Vernazza indoors. Now come on. You’re going to love it.” He reached inside and tugged the door shut, forcing Whitby off the step.

“Heathen!” she yowled. “Were you raised by wolves?”

“No, I was raised by the dead.”

“You’re not funny, Bastian.”

He smiled as he ambled down the cobbled street, admiring the terracotta-and-pastel-pink houses that rose on either side of them.

The sounds of laughter and television sets slipped through the green shutters that checkered the buildings, and here and there, olive trees grew in rough-hewn pots, their branches weighed down by a succulent, pearly crop.

Bastian smelled lobster, fresh-brewed beer, charred steak, black coffee, and the sweet bouquet of bougainvillea, which bloomed in purple flourishes along the terraces above them.

Beneath his linen suit, he wore a floral blue shirt, his trousers folded to midcalf.

He savored the warm air on his ankles. Contrary to popular belief, vampires needed heat.

The cold slowed them down, stiffened their joints.

He had almost tied his hair back and out of his face, but he liked the way the breeze tangled in it, like a playful Italian fantasma.

“What does a vampire need a holiday for anyway?” Whitby muttered, puttering along beside him, a shadow hugging the side of the road.

“Everybody deserves a little time away,” Bastian said. “Besides, haven’t we earned a few weeks of fun after the past few years we’ve had?”

Whitby grumbled something he didn’t catch even with his vampire hearing, and Bastian knew he’d won with that particular point.

Five years really was a long time to spend cooped up together in his Shoreditch flat.

Just long enough for Bastian to get clean, which was to say he’d given up drinking human blood.

As his familiar, Whitby helped him through the whole excruciating ordeal, cleaning up the pig’s blood he’d hurled at the wall in disgust and kneading his back while he retched and sobbed, his body racked with convulsions so crippling it felt like he was dying a second time.

It was a miracle they hadn’t killed each other.

Instead, their bond had been cemented.

He had done it for her: gotten clean, sworn off killing. She made him want to be better, in the way that a best friend often did. He had no reflection, but he saw himself in the way the cat looked at him, and he didn’t want to see a monster. Not anymore.

He wanted Whitby to be proud of him.

“Look out!” a woman cried in Italian. She leapt back into the man behind her, staring at Whitby in horror. “Black cat! Where did it come from?!”

“Buonasera,” Bastian said, but the woman was too busy fumbling with her purse to respond. She tossed a coin at the ground and fled down a side street. She and her companion were long gone by the time the chiming metal disk stilled.

“She threw a coin at me!” Whitby wailed.

Bastian chuckled, recognizing the custom. Drop a coin to cancel bad luck.

“Looks like you’re the real bad omen around here,” he said.

“I’m going back to the apartment.”

Cats hated being laughed at.

“You’re not,” Bastian said. “Look, we’re almost at the harbor. If you’re lucky, somebody might drop some fish. Hey, there’s that word again.”

“Fish?”

“Lucky.”

They reached the Piazzetta del Porto, with its many restaurants and bars.

Beneath the chatter of diners and drinkers came the tantalizing roar of the sea.

The sound crashed in Bastian’s ears, and he found it soothing.

His heart rate would slow, if it could beat at all.

He loved the water and the ocean always made him feel free. It filled him with the need to dance.

The town square brimmed with colorful umbrellas and glowing lanterns.

It faced the Ligurian Sea, above which the sinking sun resembled a split blood orange, its ruby innards painting the sky.

The sight filled Bastian’s chest with joy, the way an Aerosmith song cranked up to eleven always did.

He smelled basil and rosemary pasta, and sandalwood cologne, and noted a couple of handsome Italian men amid the al fresco diners.

The thought of a warm body in his bed made him quiver.

Perhaps he’d have a holiday romance. He just had to trust that he wouldn’t lose himself so completely in a heated moment that he ended up sticking his fangs in a guy’s neck.

It was difficult, navigating that line between horny and hungry.

For years, they had been inseparable in his mind.

He supposed it was because both involved penetration.

He’d lost count of the number of times when, before he got clean, he had been necking with a hunky guy, only to realize he had torn out a hunk of the hunky guy’s neck.

“They’re looking at you,” Whitby warned as they wandered through the piazzetta, an edge to her tone.

He spotted a couple of diners who were watching him.

It happened sometimes. People turned and looked at him, almost subconsciously, not knowing why their heads rotated or their eyes glazed over, like deer sensing the attention of a lioness.

When they emerged from the daze, most forgot they had even seen him.

Others decided they had been distracted by his height, his hair, his style.

Bastian knew he looked like he’d stepped out of a 1980s music video, but why mess with perfection?

People could stare all they liked, so long as they didn’t slip a stake from their sleeve.

On the far side of the piazzetta, the cove spread out to either side of them, laden with treasures. The sea glittered, the sun melting into a golden pool on the horizon.

“Now that’s magic,” Bastian said.

He drank in every detail like he was sipping sunshine itself, and he felt the past five years begin to slip away.

The dark days were behind them. He was calm now. He had turned a corner, and his old self was nothing but a distant memory. A faded photograph consigned to the back of a closet.

Now, he was ready to cut loose in Vernazza, a place they had chosen for one specific reason: It was vampire-free. The European Accords protected tourist hot spots like the Cinque Terre—any vampire discovered to be hunting there would face the True Death.

Bastian was just glad it meant he could go outside without worrying he’d bump into the more bloodthirsty of his kind and be ridiculed for his new diet plan. If he was careful, he might even pass as human.

Whitby’s yellow eyes seemed distant as she observed the sunset, her expression as unknowable as any cat’s.

She hadn’t wanted to leave London, had argued against it, but despite her protests, Bastian knew this was what they needed.

Time spent together, away from the memories of Shoreditch and that stuffy flat where they had been confined too long.

Proof that he had changed. A chance for her to have a good time.

Finally, the cat blinked and said, “Can we go now? I really must practice that incantation.”

Bastian expelled the air from his lungs in a fair approximation of a sigh and pushed his Wayfarers into his hair.

The light didn’t sting his eyes now that it was fading from the sky.

The sun had set, emboldening the moon, which gleamed like a silver coin pressed into the fabric of the darkening sky.

“All right, darling, if you insist.”

They took the walkway that ran alongside the water, between the church and the sea.

It was dotted with rocks the size of stingrays.

The path led to smaller, more secluded patches of sand, mini-beaches off the beaten track where Bastian imagined scenes of secrets being shared and lovers embracing. Damn, Italy was already romancing him.

At the farthest beach, he stopped to admire the view again, savoring the moment before he was forced back indoors.

He didn’t trust himself to be out alone at night yet, so he would have to accompany Whitby back to the apartment.

The thought caused his neck to twinge with irritation, but he tried to be understanding.

Whitby would set the pace. Baby cat-steps.

It was quieter away from the restaurants. The sea crashed against the cliff, spraying the air with salt that he tasted on his lips.

“More people drown on holiday than at any other time,” Whitby said.

Bastian chuckled. “Your optimism is infectious, Whitby.”

“People get relaxed, forget about safety—”

“I hear you, love. No swimming.” He cocked his head. “But how about a quick sandcastle?”

“So long as you’re quicker than the hookworms that live in most tidal sands,” Whitby called as he tromped down onto the beach.

She sat on a low wall, watching Bastian scoop up wet sand and mold it with his hands.

He lost himself in the task, enjoying the feel of the thick clumps, taking the form of his choosing.

“There,” he said, spreading his arms to show off his creation. It wasn’t a castle, but a cat. A pretty good likeness of Whitby. “And not a hookworm in sight.”

“It can take a while for symptoms to show,” Whitby said.

“Tell me you like it, or I shall be heartbroken.”

The cat wasn’t looking at his creation anymore, though. She was squinting at a shape at the other end of the beach. A bumpy object laid out on the sand.

“What is that?” she said.

Bastian puffed hair from his face and was about to tell Whitby to stop looking for trouble, but then he smelled it: a rich, velvety scent that roved into his nostrils like perfume, causing the skin around his eyes to tighten and his throat to swell, as if he were in the grip of an allergic reaction.

Something beyond his control because the thing he smelled was—

Blood.

Human blood.

His vision distorted. Everything around the object in the sand faded to monochrome, leaving only that curious shape in vivid color.

Through the insistent thumping in his throat, Bastian noted the strange angles of the body. The arms were bent up and over the head, the legs twisted out either side like a child’s discarded doll. And there was a stillness that Bastian recognized. The kind of stillness that spoke of oblivion.

He tried to blink his gaze away, but he was transfixed by the thing in the sand, a thing he recognized with lethal clarity.

A dead body on the beach.