“I remember.” The lessons had been difficult. She’d had to learn to see the world with new eyes.
Alette smoothed Emma’s hair back from her face and arranged it over her shoulders—an uncharacteristic bit of fidgeting. “I know you do. And I know you’ll be fine. But if you need anything, please—”
“I’ll call,” Emma finished. “You won’t send anyone to follow me, will you?”
“No,” she said. “I won’t.”
“Thank you.”
Alette kissed her cheek and sent her to hunt alone for the first time.
Alette had given her advice: go somewhere new, in an unfamiliar neighborhood where she wasn’t likely to meet someone from her old life, therefore making her less likely to encounter complications of emotion or circumstance.
Emma didn’t take this advice.
She’d been a student at George Washington University. Officially, she’d taken a leave of absence, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to continue her studies and finish her degree. There were always night classes, sure…but it was almost a joke, and like most anything worth doing, easier said than done.
There was a place, a bar where she and her friends used to go sometimes when classes got out. They’d arrive just in time for happy hour, when they could buy two-dollar hamburgers and cheap pitchers of beer. They’d eat supper, play a few rounds of pool, bitch about classes and papers they hadn’t written yet. On weekends they’d come late and play pool until last call. A completely normal life.
That was what Emma found herself missing, a few months into this new life. Laughing with her friends. Maybe she should have gone someplace else for this, found new territory. But she wanted to see the familiar.
She came in through the front and paused, blinked a couple of times, took a deep breath through her nose to taste the air. And the world slowed down. Noise fell to a low hum, the lights seemed to brighten, and just by turning her head a little she could see it all. Thirty-four people packed into the first floor of this converted townhouse. Twelve sat at the bar, two worked behind the bar, splashing their way through the fumes of a dozen different kinds of alcohol. Their sweat mixed with those fumes, two kinds of heat blending with the third ashy odor of cigarette smoke. This place was hot with bodies. Five beating hearts played pool around two tables in the back, three more watched—these were female. Girlfriends. The smell of competing testosterone was ripe. All the rest crammed around tables or stood in empty spaces, putting alcohol into their bodies, their blood—Emma could smell it through their pores. She caught all this in a glance, in a second.
She could feel the clear paths by the way the air moved. Incredibly, she could feel the whole room, all of it pressing gently against her skin. As if she looked down on it from above. As if she commanded it. There—that couple at the table in the corner was fighting. The woman stared into her tumbler of gin and tonic while her foot tapped a nervous beat on the floor. Her boyfriend stared at her, frowning hard, his arms crossed, his scotch forgotten.
Emma could have him if she wanted. His blood was singing with need. He would be easy to persuade, to lure away from his difficulty. A chance meeting by the bathrooms, an unseen exit out the back—
No. Not like that.
A quartet of boisterous, drunken men burst into laughter in front of her. Raucous business-school types, celebrating some exam or finished project. She knew how to get to them, too. Stumble perhaps. Lean an accidental arm on a shoulder, gasp an apology—and the one who met her gaze first would be the one to follow her.
Instead, she went to the bar, and despite the crowd, the press of bodies jostling for space, her path there was clear, and a space opened for her just as she arrived because she knew it would be there.
She wanted to miss the taste of alcohol. She could remember the taste of wine, the tang on the tongue, the warmth passing down her throat. She remembered great dinners, her favorite Mexican food, overstuffed burritos with sour cream and chile verde, with a big, salty margarita. She wanted to miss it with a deep and painful longing. But the memories turned her stomach. The thought of consuming anything made her feel sick. Anything except blood.
The glass of wine before her remained untouched. It was only for show.
She never would have done this in the old days. Sitting alone at the bar like this, staring into her drink—she looked like she was trying to get picked up.
Well, wasn’t she?
When the door opened and a laughing crowd of friends entered, Emma turned and smiled in greeting. Even before the door had opened, she’d known somehow. She’d sensed the sound of a voice, the tone of a footstep, the scent of skin, a ripple in the air. She couldn’t have remembered such fine details from her old life. But somehow, she’d known. She knew them.
“Emma!”
“Hey, Chris.” Finally, her smile felt like her old smile. Her old friends gathered around, leaned in for hugs, and she obliged them. But the one who spoke to her, the one she focused on, was Chris.
He was six feet tall, with wavy blond hair and a clean-shaven, handsome face, still boyish but filling out nicely. He had a shy smile and laughing eyes.
“Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in weeks. The registrar’s office said you took a leave of absence.”
She had her story all figured out. It wasn’t even a lie, really.
“I’ve been sick,” she said.
“You couldn’t even call?”
“Really sick.” She pressed her lips in a thin smile, hoping she sounded sad.
“Yeah, I guess.” He took the cue not to press the question further. He brightened. “But you look great now. Really great.”
There it was, a spark in his eye, a flush in his cheek. She’d always wondered if he liked her. She’d never been sure. Now, she had tools. She had senses. And she looked great. It wasn’t her, a bitter voice sounded inside her. It was this thing riding her, this creature inside her. It was a lure, a trap.
Looking great made men like Chris blush. Now, she could use it. She knew how to respond. She’d always been uncertain before.
She lowered her gaze, smiled, then looked at him warmly, searching. “Thanks.”
“I—I guess you already have a drink.”
The others had moved off to claim one of the pool tables. Chris remained, leaning on the bar beside her, nervously tapping his foot.
Compared to him, Emma had no trouble radiating calm. She was in control here.
“Let me get you something,” she said.
For a moment—for a long, lingering, blissful moment—it felt like old times. They only talked, but the conversation was long and heartfelt. He really listened to her. So she kept talking—so much so that she almost got to the truth.
“I’ve had to reassess everything. What am I going to do with my life, what’s the point of it all.” She shrugged, letting the implications settle.
“You must have been really sick,” he said, his gaze intent.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie. She didn’t remember much of it—the man, the monster’s hand on her face, on her arms, pinning her to the bed. She wanted to scream, but the sound caught in her throat. And however frightened she was, her body responded to his touch, flushed, shuddered toward him, and this made her ashamed. She hoped that he would kill her rather than turn her. But she awoke again and the world was different.
“You make it sound like you’re not coming back.”
“Hm?” she murmured, startled out of her memory.
“To school. You aren’t coming back, are you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, wanting to be honest, knowing she couldn’t tell him everything. “It’d be hard, after what’s happened. I just don’t know.” This felt so casual, so normal, that she almost forgot she had a purpose here. That she was supposed to be guiding this conversation. She surprised herself by knowing what to say next. “This is going to sound really cliché, but when you think you aren’t going to make it like that, it really does change how you look at things. You really do try to live for the moment. You don’t have time to screw around anymore.”