to think not only about surviving tomorrow, but the next decade and century. Make plans, a framework for eternity, and then you can afford to live in the moment. You can seem to be human, but only if you think like a monster.”
“What does that mean?”
“There are cameras everywhere and phones listening to us. We survive by never being sought. If someone wants to find you—wants to find a vampire—they will. There is no hiding in this world, no longer, and so you must be a person.”
“That’s why you have a gallery.”
“So that I can pay taxes. I’m in the system.”
“Sounds boring.”
He slid me his real smile, the one too beautiful for words. “Nothing is boring if you understand it.”
“What a line,” I managed; I was pretty breathless from that smile.
“Imagine what you can do with a decade to learn. Imagine your art a hundred years from now, when you’ve lived in Thailand and Germany and New Orleans. Imagine who you can know. What you can experience.”
We neared the Rivermarket, where the restaurants were fancier or at least had names with words like gastropub in them, and I thought of drawing it all: the angle of light from the shop windows ahead and the sheen of starlight—one was warmer than the other. Could I draw something like warmth? “It’s worth the sun?” I asked softly.
“You learn to make your own sun.”
I thought about Thailand and New Orleans, about dancing and twisting my tongue around new languages and new concepts. I thought about all the sex I could have. All the music I could hear. It pinched in my chest.
Suddenly I was crying.
The tears froze a little on my lashes and the smear was cold and dry when I rubbed them away.
Esmael did nothing but hold my hand.
“Take me to my mom,” I said.
His sigh was extremely melancholy, but he whisked me off as requested.
* * *
I told Mom the ridiculous argument that paying taxes kept monsters alive. That was her favorite sort of thing: finding humor in bleakness. Instead of making jokes for her, though, I complained about the unfairness of life. Wouldn’t Mom love all the music of the world and learning every language? It was bullshit that she couldn’t come be a vampire with me.
Or instead of me.
* * *
The next night of the ritual, after I touched a finger to the blood at Esmael’s wrist and dripped it onto my tongue like a designer drug, Seti took me out.
She said, “Esmael is smart, but I know how to live.”
We went to a club that was literally underground. It popped up in the caves under the river bluffs sometimes, Seti explained, and I was definitely too young, but she got me in.
I danced and panted, kissed and screamed and let that music crash through me. She gave me a shot of expensive tequila that tasted like almond candy and let me press up against her like a promise. When Seti dug her nails into my palm I went with her, and I watched her drink blood from a woman’s inner elbow while the woman was grinding back against Seti. Then Seti kissed me, lips tangy with blood, and it was a little horrifying, to be honest.
“When you’re one of us, that will be the only glorious taste in the world,” she whispered later, sprawled on Esmael’s bed. “I know it disgusted you. Do you want to be the thing that craves it? You can’t survive forever if you hate yourself.”
From the chair by the fire, Esmael huffed slight disagreement. Naturally.
I sprawled on the bed, too, my head dangling off and my legs stretched across hers, but I could see him upside down. My pulse throbbed pleasantly in my skull, and in a few other places.
“Why me?” I asked.
“Your art,” Esmael said distractedly, staring dramatically into the fire. The same answer he’d given when I asked why he thought teenage girls make the best vampires.
“Ugh,” I said.
Seti laughed.
Esmael glanced at me. “I think art should be developed. You’re fine now, but as I’ve said, imagine what you can make in a hundred years.”
Suddenly Seti was on her knees, crouched over me. She reached, grabbed my hair, and dragged up my head. Her vivid brown eyes were alight with passion. “Imagine what you can change in a hundred years!”
I sat as best I could, still in her grip. Her intensity transferred through her hands into me, and I felt like I was trembling at the edge of something important.