Chapter 27 #3
Julian isn’t deterred by my declaration. “You are now,” he says and whatever the dead thing he is, he keeps walking towards the door. I dig my heels in and it doesn’t slow him down. He just wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. My feet don’t even touch the floor the last few steps.
“You said you would stay.” Julian looks like he’s pouting. The slight downturn of his lips and furrow of his brow are the hallmarks of a pout, so yes, he’s fucking pouting.
I shove his chest. “That was before you said you were dead and called me your wife.”
“So you can handle mate but not wife?”
I gesture towards the door weakly. “I didn’t say that. Just open the door before they start recording us.”
“As you wish.”
I cross my arms over my chest. My feet are still off the ground when he opens the door for the delivery driver.
I almost groan when I see that it’s Maxine.
She’s going to blab. She’s the daughter of the owner and I was a grade ahead of her in school.
I think the reason why her family’s restaurant still delivers to me is because of Maxine.
She was quiet in school and I was nice enough to invite her to the parties we had.
It’s not like Vesper Point High is huge, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to not invite everyone.
Who wants to have a bonfire with the same five people you see every single day?
A lot of places in town don’t deliver when I call.
They say it’s because I live too far away because I’m at the top of the hill but I’ve seen them deliver to my neighbors plenty and they never had an issue with where I lived before… well, just before.
“Oh wow. It really is the doctor.” Maxine looks between Julian and I with wide eyes and holds out the bag to him. “Um, here you go or do you want me to put it somewhere since you’ve got your hands full.”
I want this interaction to end as quickly as possible so I hold out my hands to her. “I’ll take it.”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. It’s easy to see I’m sour about how I’m being held.
I don’t miss the quick look she gives Julian.
The universal sign in girl code for ‘are you good?’ not to be confused with ‘do you want me to hit him with my car so we can ditch?’ but both have the same desired end game.
Safety.
She’s a good person to even think about checking on me. We’re not friends and I’m me.
I give her a slight nod when she hands me the food to signal I’m fine even if I look pissed hanging from Julian’s arm as he gives her a hundred from his pocket.
“No change.”
Maxine’s eyes light up and she smiles wider. “Really? Thank you! It’s been such a slow night. We almost closed up early. Guess it’s a good thing we didn’t though.”
“Very fortunate. Maris told me how much she enjoys the dumplings. I’ve been looking forward to them.”
“They’re the best,” I deadpan and hold the bag up.
I don’t know where the adrenaline and fear have gone.
Just a few minutes ago I was convinced he was going to kill me.
I even asked him if he was and now I’m acting like a surly teen.
I have no fucking sense of self-preservation.
I can’t help it though. I feel like a sponge that’s been wrung out and left to dry in the sun.
I don’t have anything else in me to give.
I’m exhausted. The energy I woke up with this morning is gone and if I wasn’t so hungry, I might fall asleep even with being held the way I am. I’m too tired to be scared anymore, I guess.
Maxine looks between the both of us while she pockets the money and I see the exact moment that she realizes Julian is bare-chested. I see it because her eyes go big as saucers and she stares right at him like she’s trying to take a picture.
I don’t like the way that makes me feel. Not even a little bit. She might be a good person but she doesn’t need to stare at my-I stop myself before I think one more thought about how Julian could be my anything.
“Um, well, you two have a good night. Give us a call if you need anything else, and I’m-I can give you my number if that makes it easier. Like, my personal number.”
I glare daggers at Maxine. She’s trying to pick Julian up right in front of me. So much for fucking girl code.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary.” Julian takes a step back and I see my opportunity to at least end one thing I don’t like.
“Good night, Maxine,” I tell her and kick the door closed with both feet. It slams shut so hard that it rattles in its frame. I’m lucky I didn’t put my foot through the damn glass panel. I almost did. I jerk the curtain shut before Maxine can get another eyeful of Julian.
“Put me down.”
Julian puts me down. I don’t even look behind me to see if he’s following.
I start marching towards the kitchen when there’s a thump and a roll above us.
Julian goes on high alert instantly. I know it because he grabs me and slows me down, puts himself in front of me and looks up at the ceiling like he’s expecting someone to drop through the ceiling from the second floor.
Thud. Thump.
Hmm, maybe it’s on the third floor, sometimes it echoes.
Julian looks from the ceiling to the stairs. “Someone’s here.”
I shake my head. “No one’s here.”
There’s another thud, this time louder and above us. Definitely second floor.
“Then what is that?” Julian asks, stopping me again with a sweep of his arm.
“The house,” I answer, nudging his hand aside. “It’s just the house. I promise. No one is here so get that look off your face.”
“What look?”
“The kind that tells me you’re thinking about playing the hero.
There’s no one here but us. Now come on.
I’m hungry.” I head for the kitchen and this time Julian doesn’t stop me.
He follows me, just a step behind. I guess he’s worried that I’m wrong and something might come out of nowhere and get me.
We leave behind the thumps and thuds and walk into the kitchen.
I put the food on the counter and start to get plates but I only get a hand on the cabinet when Julian stops me with a touch on my wrist.
“You do know a house isn’t supposed to sound like this, right?”
I look at him. He looks concerned. A step up from pouting for sure.
His handsome face is so expressive. There’s a way he looks at me, like he’s looking up at me even though he’s taller than me.
I don’t know how he does it but I like it, or at least I normally do when it doesn’t have the tinge of disapproval it has now.
“Yes, except for this house. My house is different and that’s the way it sounds. It’s always sounded that way. It’s just shifting.”
“That’s a person up there, Maris.”
“Maybe,” I say. It’s the truth. It could be. I don’t know. “Granny said to never go look. To just let it do its thing and the house would settle again and it always has.”
Julian growls. “Let it do its thing? There’s someone living in your house and you-anything could happen to you with someone here.”
I grab the plates and put them down on the counter with more force than I mean to. One of them chips and the piece goes skittering across the counter and onto the floor.
“Anything? Anything did happen to me here and it wasn’t because of some sounds,” I remind him and rip open the drawer to hunt for silverware.
“I’m safe. Those sounds won’t hurt me. It’s just the house.
There’s no one up there. I should be more afraid of you.
You’re dead.” I’m grabbing forks and knives blindly when Julian speaks.
“I’m a vampire, Maris.”
I freeze. The silverware in my hand falls back into the drawer. For a second it’s like I’ve forgotten how my hands work. I have to remind myself to breathe.
“What?”
“A vampire.”
I shake my head and look down at the drawer in front of me. “Vampires aren’t real.”
“They’re plenty real. I’m standing right here and you are my mate.”
I shake my head and hold up a finger. “I’m not your mate and you’re not a vampire.
You’re just someone who’s having a psychotic break and I’m having one with you because that’s kind of my thing.
I bet everything that happened today is all in my head.
” I nod and rub my arms. I’m trying to get the feeling back into my hands but it’s not working.
I feel like I’m split into two. Disconnected.
My entire body made of phantom limbs that ache and scream at me even though they’re long gone.
“None of this is real,” I tell him and shove myself past him.
“Maris, it’s real.”
“You’re probably a hallucination. I bet I’m locked up in a mental hospital and y-you’re what happens when I mix my pills to cope.
You’re not a vampire.” I’m walking blindly, just one foot in front of the other.
I don’t know where I’m going. I should probably revisit the running for help thing, but what good would that really do?
If I’m right and I’m locked away that’s not going to be any good.
And if Julian is telling the truth how can anyone stop a fucking vampire?
It’s only when I’m standing in front of the dining room doors that I realize where I’m going.
I hesitate for just a second before I open the doors and step inside.
It’s cool and quiet in the dining room. The silence feels thicker here.
After Mike wrecked it, I did my best to work with conservationists, interior decorators, historians, anyone that could help me put this room back the way it was.
It wasn’t easy, not when everything was an original but I’d managed it.
The money in the trust I had was more than enough to refurbish the dining room. You’d think with the amount of time and money I put into setting it back to rights that I’d be in this room all the time.
You’d be fucking wrong.
After the last decorator had left and the floors had been swept and polished for the tenth time, I’d shut the doors and never set foot in here again.
It was around the time that everything had settled with what happened between Mike and me.
The trial that never happened was over, I was declared innocent of any wrongdoing and Sheriff Dayton started stalking around town asking me if I was all right and like he was going to deck the next person that looked at me funny.
“We all have a right to the liberty of a safe home. It is within her right to defend her home from an intruder.”
That’s what I heard him saying in The Perky Perch one morning when I was trying to convince myself that I still had a soul.
He was right about what he was telling the concerned townsfolk, the people that had watched me grow up, and had in some small way helped raise me were now acting like I was the boogeyman just waiting for nightfall to appear in their bedrooms to drag them to hell.
Sheriff Dayton was right. I did have the right to defend myself and my home but that wasn’t what I did that night. He knew it, they knew it, I knew it.
“This is where it happened,” I tell Julian.
I don’t have to look to know he’s listening.
Vampire or not, the man is tuned into every little move I make.
I walk into the room with a shaky breath and look around.
“I used to love this room. I spent every holiday here when I was a kid helping my granny decorate.” I pointed to a seat at the table, the third from the head on the left. “I used to sit there. That’s my seat.”
“Maris.” Julian’s voice is soft. I don’t even hear him approach until he’s right behind me. He puts a hand at my back and stands beside me.
“He came through the front door,” I tell him.
“He broke the window and let himself in.” I walk away from the maybe vampire at my back and grab the doors that lead into the parlour.
“He didn’t touch anything in the rest of the house.
He came straight here. He destroyed this room and then he went into the parlour.
” My hands shake. I don’t open the doors fully, I just open them just a crack the way they were that night.
“I saw him through here. I could have left but I didn’t.”
I don’t finish the rest of the story. Julian knows what I’m not saying. I stay facing the doors as I speak.
“Do you have a soul?” I ask him.
“No,” Julian says. “At least, I don’t think so. Maybe I do.”
“Maybe…” I trace a finger along the dark wood in front of me. I haven’t been in here for over two years but it feels like I was just there. Like what I did just happened. I look down my hands to remind myself there’s no blood on them. “You’ve done bad things, haven’t you? Killed people?”
“Yes.”
“Is it because you don’t have a soul that you did them or would you have done them as a human?”
Julian hesitates. It’s just a split second but I hear the pause. “If I were human…No, I wouldn’t have.”
I smile at the door in front of me. “That’s where we’re different, Julian. I’m human and I don’t have a soul. I’m human and I’ve done bad things too.”
“They deserved it,” Julian says.
“Did Father Paretti deserve it when you killed him?”
I might think this is all a hallucination but I know it was Julian who did it.
“I know it was you that I talked to that night.”
“He pissed me off,” Julian answers me, “so yes, he did.”
“He pissed everyone off sometimes. You don’t kill people for that.”
“I thought you didn’t have a soul. Why does the reason matter?” I fall silent and Julian keeps speaking. “You’re lying to yourself, Maris. You have a soul. I see it. I can fucking smell it from here. I tasted it. It’s sweet.”
I put a hand to my neck. “You fed on me.”
“Just a taste. Nothing to change you. You’re still human, for now.”
The for now hangs heavy in the air. I turn to face Julian. He’s closer than I thought he was. Just a step away. “I thought you weren’t going to kill me?”
“Killing you is one thing, but this is another. I’d be changing you.
Making you like me and that soul you think you don’t have?
I’d take that. You’d finally know once and for all that you don’t have one.
” He reaches out and runs his fingers down the side of my face.
“The difference between you and me is light years, Maris. When I turn you, you’ll be free. ”
Free.
I don’t know what it is that makes me do it but I step forward and kiss him.