Chapter 20
If a slayer falls in love with a vampire, the slayer loses their power?!
After hearing this, I hightailed it home and put out the 911 to Heather and Liv. It was time for an emergency girls’ night.
A little later, Heather arrived at the door with an excessive amount of wine plus an overnight bag, indicating that she wasn’t planning on staying sober enough to drive back to West Hollywood this evening. Liv dug through the fridge and found the cheese plate and assortment of sandwiches that she brought home the other night, leftovers from her job’s catering table. I got the wineglasses, plates, and napkins. Then we carried everything through the sliding doors to the balcony, settled on the mismatched outdoor furniture, and kicked off this special edition of girls’ night several hours before actual nightfall.
Over our first glass of wine, I filled my friends in on the latest. Since then, our conversation has been going around in circles, the circles getting wider and a little wonkier with each successive round of drinks.
“But you have to admit,” I say, “the timing is a little sus.” I take a sip of my… pinot grigio? Sauvignon blanc? At this point, I’ve kind of lost track of what we’re drinking. “I worked side by side with Nick for a whole year, and he never once so much as flirted with me. But I become his slayer, and boom ! He’s all of a sudden interested?”
“Well, to be fair,” says Heather, “I do think he was interested before.”
“But he never acted on it before,” I argue. “And then, when it looked like it was too dangerous for us to be together, he was the one who pushed it. He was the one who suddenly came up with the whole bondage thing.”
“He may have been interested in that before too,” says Liv.
“Come on,” says Heather. “Do you really think he’s just playing you?”
Do I?
When I left Nick a little past sunrise, my answer would have been an unequivocal no . Our night together felt magical—and not in a supernatural way. Magical in a real way. Magical in a this-could-be-the-one way.
But what Jenn told me earlier today has got me questioning everything. In the span of just a few short days—or should I say nights ?—I’ve gone from wanting to kill Nick to just plain wanting him. And sure, I thought it was because I was finally getting to know him. But could it be that I still don’t know him at all?
“I don’t know,” I say with a frown. “Ever since Nick told me what I was, I’ve been wondering why he’d want to help me. I finally let myself believe it was because he cared about me, but…maybe he’s just been trying to get me to care about him .” I take another sip of my wine, trying to take the edge off the pain of this possibility. “Maybe he really has just been trying to take my power away. Maybe that’s been his plan all along.”
“But he has a cat,” says Liv through a mouthful of Gouda and prosciutto.
Heather and I give her a quizzical look.
Liv swallows, washing down the food with a big gulp of wine. “He took in a stray cat and named it Eddie Van Halen,” she says, explaining her reasoning. “Does that sound like the kind of guy who would be playing you?”
It doesn’t. But there’s a problem with her logic. A problem Nick himself has alluded to more than once.
“He’s not a guy though,” I say. “He’s a vampire, and I’m a slayer. There are other things at stake.”
Heather bursts out laughing. Liv and I shoot her a look.
“ Stake ,” she explains. “Sorry,” she adds, reaching for a sandwich. “I’m a little tipsy.”
I’m also tipsy, tipsy enough that it takes me a moment to make the stake-vampire-slayer connection. When I do, I don’t find it funny though. Right now, I’m not sure I’d find anything funny.
“It’s just…I really trusted him, you know?” I say glumly.
“And now you trust this Jenn person more?” asks Liv.
I shrug. “Why would she lie to me?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Heather. “Maybe because she’s a fucking serial slayer? And she’s saying whatever she can think of to turn you into a fucking serial slayer too?”
I swirl my wine around and think about this. I can’t deny that Jenn does seem to want me to be a ruthless vampire killer. But I remember the sound of her voice as she shared this particular bit of slayer lore with me. Her tone wasn’t full of bravado and rage, the way it was before. It was soft and reverential, like she was revealing one of the world’s great mysteries. Like she was imparting something true, something passed down to her by her mentor. Her slain mentor.
I shake my head. “It didn’t sound like she was making it up,” I say. “Honestly? I don’t think this is something she could make up. It’s too… poetic , you know? That a bond created by hate could be undone by love. She didn’t really strike me as much of a poet. Like you said, she’s kind of a—”
“Fucking serial slayer,” finishes Heather. She takes a big bite of her turkey and Swiss on a mini croissant.
“Well,” says Liv, “maybe Jenn and Nick are both telling the truth. Maybe a slayer does lose their power if they fall for a vampire, but Nick doesn’t know that. And maybe he’s genuinely falling for you.”
We’re all quiet as we contemplate that for a bit.
“Let me ask you something,” says Heather as the sun slips below the horizon. “Would it really be so terrible if you weren’t a slayer anymore?”
The question takes me by surprise. I realize that as much as I’ve been struggling with my new slayer body and instincts, I haven’t even considered what it would be like to be completely free of them. I didn’t even know it was a possibility.
Would I like to go back to being just a plain old ordinary human being and not have vampires stalking me, out for my blood? Of course! Would I rather not be spending so much time and energy wrestling with this vampire killer inside me? Hell yes! Would I prefer to have full control over my own body again? Abso-freaking-lutely! But by controlling my alter ego, I’ve also started to get in touch with my own strength. I’ve found the courage to stand up for myself in situations where, before, I would have just rolled over. And I definitely don’t want to lose that.
Really, it comes down to a question of will. To surrender my power freely, like I did last night with Nick, is one thing. That felt empowering in its own way. But the idea of having my power stripped away from me? Under false pretenses? That’s something else entirely.
If it’s my body, what happens to it should be my choice.
“I guess it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I fell in love with Nick and lost my power,” I say slowly. “The worst thing would be finding out that he’s been actively trying to take my power away. The worst thing would be if our relationship just turned out to be one big con.” I pause for a moment. “The worst thing would be if I fell in love with Nick, but Nick didn’t love me back.”
Just then, my phone pings .
I check it, and I feel even more conflicted than before.
“It’s a text from Nick,” I tell my friends.
Heather glances up at the dusky sky. “He messaged you as soon as the sun set,” she says. “As soon as he woke up.”
“What does he have to say?” asks Liv.
I hesitate. Then I turn my phone so my friends can see the screen.
Hello, sunshine
“Aww,” they both say in unison.
“That doesn’t sound like a guy who’s playing you,” Liv says quietly.
Except I remember Jenn’s assertion that Nick was pulling out all the stops and running every play in the romance playbook.
“Or it sounds like a guy who’s playing me really well,” I say.
My phone pings again. It’s a longer message this time. The alcohol is starting to do a number on my vision, so I have to squint to read it.
“He says he can’t get together tonight,” I say once I make out his text. “He has band practice. They haven’t rehearsed in a while, so they need to prepare for their gig at the Whisky on Wednesday.”
My phone pings once more.
Miss you
But does he? Does he really?
I start to type.
“What are you doing?” asks Liv.
“I’m texting him back,” I say. “I need to ask him about—”
“No!” says Heather, snatching my phone out of my grasp.
“Hey!” I say. “Give that back.”
“No,” says Heather sternly. “No tipsy texting.” She deletes what I started to write.
“But—”
“Heather’s right,” says Liv. “You don’t want to get into this over a text chain. Especially not when you’re…um…”
“Shit-faced,” supplies Heather. She types a short message and hits Send.
“Heather!” I say. “Did you just text Nick from my phone?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But you said no tipsy texting,” I say.
“Exactly.”
“You’re just as tipsy as I am,” I say.
Heather stops and thinks about this. Or thinks about it as much as her wine-muddled mind will allow. “True,” she admits. “But in this situation, unlike you, I can be unemotional.”
She hands me my mobile. I squint down at the screen and read the very unemotional response that my friend just sent Nick.
K. Later.
***
I wake up Monday morning with a screaming headache. My throat is like sandpaper, and my eyeballs hurt. When Jenn said slayers weren’t immune to aging or disease, she left something else out. We’re also not immune to the effects of way too much under-ten-dollars-a-bottle wine.
I crawl out of bed and stagger into the living room. Heather is there, folding the sheets that I vaguely remember us using to make up the sofa for her last night. Incredibly, she doesn’t appear hungover at all. In fact, she looks the opposite of hungover. With a little help from cosmetics, her green eyes are bright and her complexion is fresh and rosy. Her long hair is expertly twisted into a stylishly messy topknot. And she’s already dressed in a nautical-themed outfit of white jeans, a navy-and-white-striped tee, and green Top-Siders.
I sweep my hand from the top of her head to the toes of her Top-Siders. “How is that all possible?” I ask in a voice that practically croaks.
“Good morning to you too,” she says with a grin. Then she reaches into her bag, withdraws a packet of something powdered, and tosses it over to me. By some miracle, I manage to catch it. It’s strawberry flavored. “Mix it with twelve ounces of water,” she tells me. “It’ll give you triple the hydration. You’ll be fine in no time.”
Just then, Liv’s bedroom door opens. My roommate stumbles out, minus her fuzzy slippers, in a mismatched ensemble of SpongeBob SquarePants pajama bottoms and a Scooby-Doo shirt. She has the imprint of sheet wrinkles on her left cheek, and both her ponytail and her glasses are lopsided. She looks exactly how I feel.
Liv catches sight of Heather, then reels back, covering her eyes like she just stared directly at the sun and burned her retinas. “Ugh! How is that possible?”
Heather laughs and digs out a second packet. “I have one for her too,” she says, tossing it to me.
This time, I fumble the catch a little. Lemonade flavored.
“I need to get to work,” says Heather.
As she gathers her stuff to leave, I send up a silent prayer of thanks that I’m not on the schedule at Pete’s tonight.
“Let me know how everything shakes out with Nick,” adds Heather. “Okay?”
Nick. Right.
As we say our goodbyes and the front door shuts behind my friend, I remember everything Jenn told me yesterday. I recall talking it all round and round with my besties although, I admit, there are a few fuzzy patches in my memory. But I know for sure that Heather at least stopped me before I got into it with Nick over a tipsy text.
Then I remember my friend’s tipsy text.
“Uh-oh,” I mutter.
I give Heather’s parting gifts to Liv. “Here,” I say. “Mix these up for us.”
I go off and hunt around for my mobile. Eventually I find it out on the balcony, along with three empty wineglasses, too many empty wine bottles, and the leftover food that’s quickly becoming ant fodder.
Making a mental note to clean up, I check my text messages. After Heather’s short and not-so-sweet text back to Nick, there are no additional messages from him. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
But before I can ponder that too much, I see that I have another text message, received earlier this morning. It’s from a contact I hear from so infrequently that it takes me a moment to truly comprehend the identity of the sender.
I read the words. Then, just to be sure, I read them again. And again.
A little dazed, I head back into the apartment. I cross over to the kitchen, where Liv is busy at the sink.
“I got a text from my agent,” I say in a voice that reflects the amazement I feel. “I have an audition for the new ADA role on Robbery-Homicide Division tomorrow.”
Liv looks at me, and her bloodshot eyes brighten. A slow smile spreads across her face. She lifts up two tall glasses filled with pastel-colored liquid—one pink, one yellow—the product of Heather’s hydration powders.
“It’s not exactly champagne,” says Liv.
“Not a problem,” I say, taking the pink one. “I don’t think I’m ever drinking alcohol again anyway.”
“Then you will be absolutely no fun to watch when you accept your Golden Globe for Best Television Actress in a Drama Series on Robbery-Homicide .” Liv clinks her glass against mine and broadens her grin. “Salud!”