neatly behind his ears; green eyes. Like, actually green. Ocean-green. Green-like-a-mermaid-tail green. And his hands were so deliberate. He had a weird shiny black ring on his forefinger that seemed to float there when he gestured or handed me cash and when he tucked a ten into the tip jar.
(That was the first thing that caught me like a warning flag.)
Also he was old. Thirty, I’d have guessed, or maybe twenty-five before I saw his eyes, which aged him because he didn’t blink or look around much. That gaze just held on to me, or my art, or the register. Whatever he looked at, he looked at.
He said he liked my style and asked how I did it—with ashes in the dark, I said—and he laughed softly, not really making an expression. Then he asked if I was interested in having a show at his gallery. If so, I should come by, see the space, and we’d talk.
I got out my phone and said, “I need a picture of you to send to the police if I go missing.”
When I held it up he smiled, and Mary Mother, was it a smile. I took the pic and texted it to Sidney: If I disappear this guy named Esmael Abrams wants to show my art at a gallery. She texted back: I hope he wants you to put out for it and a line of eggplant emojis.
* * *
The first time he bit me it was right in the groin, and I didn’t give a fuck because he’d just ruined me for all other guys. Not all other girls—girls are better at that, especially Sid.
Anyway, I guess there’s a vein down there.
* * *
This other vampire, Seti, agreed that teenage girls definitely make the best vampires, but not for the reasons Esmael thinks. She said it’s because teenage girls are both highly pissed and highly adaptable, and that’s what it takes to survive the centuries.
I asked what Esmael’s reasons were and he said, “Your art,” like it was obvious. He lounged against the tinted window of his apartment, which was the whole floor over the gallery (yeah, he did have a gallery). His robe was silk, and it draped around him in proper vampiric fashion. He reached for the hose of his hookah, took a slow drag, and let the smoke trickle out around his tiny little fangs like a fucking dragon. (It was rose tobacco and apple juice in the base, too sharp for my taste.)
Seti rolled her eyes and her head, too, so her fat henna-red curls dripped down the back of the chaise lounge. She had a foot up on the cushion and another pressed hard to the tile floor; both were clad in army boots. Otherwise she was mostly naked, except for red velvet shorts and a camisole that looked like it was made of spiderwebs. Even the firelight touched her tawny skin carefully, like maybe it would be burned by the contact. I really wanted to have sex with her, too. She said, “Esmael, you’re such a Victorian waif.” To me, she said, “It’s your frontal lobe, not quite fully developed. So you mostly know who you are, but you take big risks for not much reward. And people raised as girls in this shitbag of a country are raised to be adaptable. So you come out ambitious—or useless.”
I was pretty sure Seti was from the Middle East somewhere, but a long, long time ago. Her nose was what I imagine the Sphinx’s nose should look like, and there was something about her eyebrows. Plus the name she was using. I looked it up and it was some pharaoh’s name. She was younger than Esmael, both literally by about a century and by her looks, too—seeming maybe nineteen or twenty. I asked her where she was from and she said her people were gone, so it didn’t matter. “I don’t waste that story. I’ll tell you if you live to be a hundred.”
* * *
They gave me a choice. Live forever as a child of the night (yeah, Esmael used those words exactly), or forget them and live out my days, however many they might be, under the sun.
The next morning I lay down next to my mom and told her everything, just to talk it all out. Mom always said talking something out could point you in the right direction. By the time I’d explained it all, I was thinking that since I’d made such