Calliope #2
“Ophie is…” He smirks again. “My person. Val came home from college, and she just stepped right into a role she never should have had to take. Pearl was in med school and we all begged her to stay.”
“But not Valentina?”
“Oldest daughter syndrome,” he dismisses, but I can tell what happened there still bothers him. And she likely gave up a lot to raise them. “Dot? Well Dot chose violence.”
“What does that even mean?”
“She died.”
“What the fuck, Vex?” Horrified I try to sit up but he tugs me close again.
“Dot came home too but she got into some shit and overdosed a few years later.”
“I’m so sorry.” Because it’s something I understand all too well. “Calypso, there were so many nights I thought I’d get a knock on the door from a cop that she was dead.”
“Sometimes I still wake up screaming at her.”
I hold him a little tighter.
“Ophie is my right-hand man. She’s actually fixing your car.”
“Shut up.”
“Do you want to meet her?” he blurts.
“You want me to meet your favorite sister.”
“Don’t say it out loud.” He pauses. “But yeah I do.”
“Okay.” I chew on my cheek. “What does Valentina do now?”
“Makes my life excruciating.” He groans. “She works at a flower shop. Always in everyone’s business. But if it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t have Sunday dinners. We wouldn’t have a group chat. I wouldn’t exist without her.”
“I’d love to meet her one day.”
“You’d never hear the end of it.” He says it like she annoys him but there’s a deep thread of love there. “Now Pearl? Attending at Penn Med. She’s an emergency room physician.”
“I’m glad she stayed in school.”
“Me too.” His thumbs are back to rubbing circles along my back. “Your turn.”
“I saw something.” Nerves flicker in my stomach, twisting and twisting. “Every person I ever told, they thought I was crazy. They… listen I took a grippy sock vacation and I just… I don’t know why but I have this feeling that you won’t have me institutionalized.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I still believe. And I’ve had to spend years telling my family and friends that I don’t believe in it anymore.” The words tumble out of me like a train car going too fast.
“Tell me.”
“We were sixteen.” I roll my lip in wetting it. “We weren’t rich either. Lived by the train tracks. Some of the neighborhood was separated by these man-made walls. Calypso and I snuck out one night.”
“At sixteen?”
“Don’t judge me.”
“Would never.”
“Mmmhmmm,” except I do believe him. “It was a Friday and there was this party. Calypso was always insisting on bringing me with her to these dumb high school parties. Some frat parties. I never went but this one Friday I just, felt itchy. Like I couldn’t get out of my skin, so I went.”
“Your parents never noticed?”
“Probably but they were often in their own worlds, their own heads. They didn’t have time for us.” Looking back I can see now how hard they worked for us. Maybe I’m still too hard on them. “We went out, Calypso was drunk. We were on the way home and I heard something.”
“See this is the part of the movie where you run home.” He tsks under his breath.
“I left Calypso on the corner. She was puking and I aimed her head at a sewer grate.” The night comes back to me full force. Just like all those years ago. “It was at the end of the street at one of these walls.”
“What did you see?”
“There was a small crack, and I peered through.” Now is when he will probably think I’m insane. “I swear I saw someone…” I groan and cover my face.
Vex slowly peels my hands away. “What did you see?”
“I swear a man was sucking on someone’s neck. There were glowing eyes, like a cat.” Just say it, Callie. “I swear it was a vampire.”
Vex’s entire body freezes.
“See you think I’m crazy.” I all but whine.
“Did you see anything else?”
“It was dark, he was on the other side of the wall. And he was absolutely sucking blood.” But now that I’m dragging the memories forward, they always feel fuzzy.
Like they’re collapsing in on themselves.
“Two people. Then the one fell.” I talk as the memories roll through.
“He fell and then, then he saw me. I swear I blinked and then there were these piercing eyes staring at me.”
I look at Vex whose face is twisted up.
“That’s all I remember,” I finish. “The next thing I recall is waking up. Calypso in her bed. Me in mine. And neither of us have any memory of how we got there.”
Vex’s body goes rigid against mine, his breath catching in his throat. I watch his face transform from casual interest to something darker, more alert. His pupils dilate until there’s almost no iris left.
“Gray eyes?” he asks, his voice dropping an octave.
“Yeah. Like... gray blue. With specks of white.” The memory makes me shiver. “Why? You don’t think I’m crazy?”
He’s silent for a long moment, his thumb still tracing those circles on my back but more mechanically now, like his mind is somewhere far away.
“Vex?”
“I believe you,” he says finally, his voice carefully neutral. Too carefully.
“Really?” I search his face for the joke, the dismissal, but find none.
“I believe you saw something that night.” His jaw tightens, then he drags me closer pressing a kiss to my forehead. “I believe you,” he repeats.
“You’re holding something back.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for not lying.” Even though I really want to know what he’s not saying. But there’s something there I can feel it just as surely as I felt that night.