Epilogue
“Ms. Astaroth.” A gentle voice from my left. An older gentleman. He reminds me of the grandfather I never had but drew fantasies over. “We will be descending within the next half hour.”
“Thank you.” I force myself to look at him. To meet his gentle gaze and smile.
“You should eat before we land,” he says it to my window, not to me. “Long flights have a way of catching up to a person.”
He also reminds me of George at the front entrance of the Penn. The same trained warmth. The same eyes that miss nothing. I understand now that the kind older men in my life have not been random.
He nods and walks off. The window and I are alone again.
Out the window the vast blue ocean stretches to the horizon. Eighteen hours in the air. I have not slept. I have eaten what the man with the gentle voice put in front of me because not eating would have made Judy worry and I don’t need Judy worrying about me right now.
The clothes I am wearing are not mine. The Ellenburgs had them waiting on the plane.
I took the job. Obviously. I’d be a fool not to.
And Angela was in my ear the whole time reminding me that no is a complete sentence.
The other voice—the one telling me there are a million ways to live if I only said yes—that voice is not Angela. I know this. Angela said she chose her life. She regretted it. The voice telling me to eventually say yes is something else wearing Angela’s voice.
I just had to say no first.
But for right now, vampires are real. Two want me as their Bride. And I almost said yes.
Now every conversation I had with Angela replays in my head on a loop. Some conversations wake me at night, and I swear I can hear the echo of her voice.
The Sanguine Agreement.
She said it once. Over tea. In the solarium six months before she died. I thought she was rambling. The way I thought she was just tired.
She was telling me what was coming.
I thought she was senile, the ramblings of an old woman. Instead I should have listened to what she was telling me between her words. Between those last breaths.
Vampires need humans.
They need the agreement to bind them.
And they will do anything in their power for you to say yes.
Angela said no and they still kept her.
I know I’m just buying myself time before they find me. I know I’m delaying the inevitable.
The only regret I have is Callie. And I hope like hell she’s okay.
My hand moves toward the pocket where my phone is not, because I left it in Philadelphia. I do this every twenty minutes. I have done it the entire flight. I don’t know how to stop doing it.
I had to leave her behind, with them. She might never forgive me and that’s something I have to learn to be okay with.
I’m not okay with it.
Callie loves everything supernatural, unreal, fringe.
And I left her in Philadelphia, under the nose of a house of vampires while I ran.
I didn’t check to see if she was marked with a birthmark like mine. The odds said it was unlikely anyway. I stood over her bed.
I packed instead.
I packed in the middle of the night and ran.
Not from her. From Leif, Enzo, and Davi.
They think I don’t remember. I need them to keep thinking that.
“We’re close,” Gerald says, tossing himself into the seat across from me. “If you look out the window, you’ll see it. The research vessel.”
“Really?” I peer out the window, looking down at the ocean and the land coming in closer.
“Right there.” He points out the window. “Hawthorn and Hemlock.” He smiles fondly as Judy walks up.
“Our first home.” Judy clutches her whisky to her chest. “The big house on the corner.”
Gerald holds his hand out to her. “Named the boat after it.”
Judy takes his hand but keeps her eyes on me. “It can be yours, darling. As long as you need it to be.”
I look back out the window as we fly over their boat. Toward New Zealand. Toward my new home, for now.
Hidden on Hawthorn and Hemlock.
Bonus Epilogue
What does Leif think?