It’s Saturday, almost night. The night of the ball. I slept a little but it wasn’t completely restful as I was always aware Vance was in bed next to me. Scratch that. Not in bed. We were on the bed. In our clothes. It still felt intimate though. Rosanna was in her room, behind a closed door, under the closed lid of her casket.
When the sun was still in the sky, Vance sent a series of messages.
I’m glad you came, Orly.
I know you’re asleep right now.
When you wake, we’ll have our first dance.
My heart smiled and I thought of letting him go on believing he was texting me while asleep, wondering if that looked adorable in his mind. But I quickly gave in and sent him three messages back.
I’m awake.
I’m resting but having a hard time falling asleep.
Are you gonna nap before tonight?
Three more from him.
I’m trying to sleep too.
But my mind is racing.
Wondering what details I’ve forgotten.
Then three from me. I wondered if I was the only one consciously playing this game of three texts.
Come back.
We can be restless together.
We’ll just lie side by side and close our eyes.
His time to respond wasn’t lengthy, but it was long enough that I knew he had to think about it. But then he texted.
O
M
W
And then I knew for sure he was playing the game with me and it made me happy he noticed and continued it intentionally. OMW was the same thing he had captioned in his IG pic of my grave, letting me know he was coming, the night we had our rendezvous in the cafe. Had he made that connection too?
From my bedroom, I heard the elevator door open, outside our suite. Mentally, I unlocked and cracked our door open for him. I heard Vance nudge the door open further, step inside, then shut it softly behind him. Soon after, he was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, hair sweetly messy, wearing black harem pants, black tabi socks, and a black t-shirt with the words NYU DROPOUT written in violet letters. He was my cute little slacker ninja. But I didn’t say that.
I patted the pillow beside mine and Vance crawled onto the bed and lay down, facing me. I rolled onto my side to face him. His shiny brown eyes all up close. We smiled at each other. Vance wasn’t wearing his fangs. He exhaled as if trying to calm himself.
“You don’t need to worry about tonight. You put so much effort into this. Everything’s gonna be just perfect.”
“Thank you. I hope so.”
He tucked his hand under the pillow and closed his eyes. I let mine close as well and we lay there, eyes shut, but I couldn’t fall asleep. Quietly, I broke the silence, and our voices throughout remained subdued.
“Are you sleeping?”
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“I need to, but I can’t.”
“What’s on your mind? Still thinking about the ball?”
“That’s some of it. But I’m also wondering what you’re thinking.”
“What I’m thinking? I’m thinking I wish you hadn’t left so soon last time.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just had so many things and things started to get—you know—and then we got interrupted.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. I understand.”
“Where did we leave off?”
“You said you’re trying to love me.”
“I did say that.”
“Why do you want to love me?”
“Does there have to be a reason?”
“No, but is there a reason?”
“What you really mean is, do I only like you because you can turn me?”
“Well, if you can’t be attracted to me naturally, how can it be anything else?”
“It’s hard to put into words.”
I opened my eyes. “Try. For me. Please.”
His eyes then opened as well. He thought for a moment as if trying to find the right words. “I have a fascination with you. I’m fascinated by you.”
“Because I’m a vampire?”
“It’s more like because of the vampire you are. You’re so exceptional, Orly. You were expected to die as a child from cancer until Yelena turned you and when she was killed you avenged her by killing your bloodline’s ruler who was thousands of years older, took her power and her place and then destroyed a coup to overthrow you and fought a war to save the Cob?lcescu from being completely wiped out. You did all that and you’re not even twenty-five.”
He knew more of my history than I thought even if some of it was exaggerated. I thought back to Mirela. When she confessed her love, she told me she was in love with my youth, or even the folly of my youth. That had felt specific to me. But what Vance had just said was even more specific. Was he telling the truth? And if he was, could I accept fascination in place of attraction?
“What do you know about my scribbles?”
“Not much. And I don’t know what to believe. I’ve heard you can draw people and know what they’re thinking or also just if they’re lying. Someone else said you can see their whole life story. But I’ve also heard you see what the person dreams of, but it wasn’t clear if that meant dreams as in aspirations or the kind when they’re asleep. And I’ve also heard none of it’s true and that it’s all just some kind of trick to scare the other bloodlines. So which is it?”
“You’ll have to let me scribble you to find out.”
I gave him time, but he didn’t respond, unless blinking was a response. So without looking away from him, I willed the pad of paper and a single black crayon slipped from the closed, now open, crayon box to levitate from a table in the far corner of the room and lower onto the bed between us. Still laying on my side, I picked up the crayon and held it. Still he didn’t say anything. He looked into my eyes, at the crayon, at the blank paper, at the crayon, and back into my eyes. Not taking my eyes off him, I made the first stroke of his scribble. Then the second.
“Stop. Please.”
I didn’t make a third stroke.
“If you can see my whole life, I’d prefer you don’t. I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”
I set the crayon down on the pad. “Same,” I said, and the pad of paper and black crayon were pulled, as if being unzipped, down the length of the bed, between our bodies and fell onto the floor.
We lay there, apart. “Can you hear the rain?” I asked. He nodded.
Finally, he said, “With all the powers you have, couldn’t you give yourself an adult body?”
“No such power,” I answered, thinking of Mirela’s promise to give me a woman’s body, a promise she knew she couldn’t fulfill but made anyway in order to pry open my heart. And for a moment, I lay there thinking that even if the power was not in Mirela’s scribble, it doesn’t mean it couldn’t ever be in mine. Maybe it remains undiscovered. Maybe powers only need to be thought up and then willed into being. Someone as beautiful as Mirela probably never went looking hard for a way to transform her appearance, not permanently at least. Yet if I can change into a bat why not into a grown woman? But those thoughts were fleeting. I have little confidence in there being many undiscovered but possible useful abilities that hadn’t been imagined and tried in the thousands of years since the Brood of Nightmares came into being.
“Can’t you hypnotize me to see you as someone else? I’m sorry, is that cold?”
“A little, but I get it. And if I did that, how would you feel afterward, knowing what we had done?”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“It’d be more considerate for me to just charm you into making love to me and forgetting or never knowing it happened. But that’s still rape. And even if you somehow agreed to it because I promised to make you forget you agreed, I don’t want it like that. Even if I could force myself once or twice just to experience it, I couldn’t do that always. Always would break my heart. When you love me Vance I want you to know that it’s me that you’re loving.”
His eyes averted from mine.
“Do you believe I’m twenty-four?”
“Yeah. I know you are. But you are and you aren’t. And that’s why.”
“Yeah. That’s why. That’s fucking why. Will you still dance with me? Out in front of everyone?”
“Of course.”
“Then look at me.”
His eyes met mine.
“Sleep.”
His eyes closed and I watched him sleep a little before shutting my eyes. We lay together under three hours. I don’t believe I dreamed. Vance slipped out even before Rosanna woke.
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