“What if I wanted you to turn me?” Lucy asked.
Jane looked at her friend. “I’ve never turned anyone,” she said.
“That’s not what I asked you,” said Lucy.
“I know what you asked,” Jane snapped.
Lucy looked stung. Jane got up, went to the couch, and sat beside her. She took Lucy’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sound so angry.”
“It’s all right,” Lucy told her. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No,” Jane said. “You have every right to ask. You’re my best friend. I suppose that’s why I reacted as I did.”
“I don’t understand,” said Lucy.
Jane continued to hold Lucy’s hand as she spoke. “I’ve had many friends over the past two centuries,” she said. “Many of them I liked very much, and I was sad to lose them. But the only person I’ve missed every single day is Cassie. She’s the only one I’ve ever even thought about wishing I’d turned.”
Jane stopped speaking and looked down at the floor. She felt she was going to cry, and she didn’t want to. Only when she thought she could continue without weeping did she speak again.
“Then you came into my life,” she told Lucy. “And you’ve given me back a part of my sister. When I think that someday I might lose you too …”
Her voice trailed off as the tears began to flow. Lucy sat up and hugged her, holding Jane tight. “It’s all right,” she said softly.
“I don’t know what I would do if you asked me,” Jane whispered. “I don’t know that I would be able to refuse. And that frightens me.”
They held each other for a long moment and then let go. Lucy too was now crying. She got up and went into the kitchen, returning with a box of tissues. She held the box out to Jane, who took two tissues and blotted her eyes.
“I won’t say I haven’t thought about it,” Lucy said as she sat down. “But I promise not to put you in that position. Besides, I’m sure Byron would do it if I asked.”
Jane looked at her, horrified. Then Lucy smiled. “Joking,” she said.
Jane pointed a finger at her. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “This isn’t like when you were seven and if your mother said no to something you went and asked your father.”
Lucy shook her head. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “It’s more like if I asked my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother for something and she said no.”
Jane couldn’t help but laugh. She wiped her eyes again and picked up her glass of wine, taking a sip. She felt a little bit better, but the feeling that had started her down this path lingered. Lucy really was going to age while Jane remained the same. Someday they would have to say goodbye. Just as you would have to say goodbye to Walter, a voice in her head whispered.
She brushed it away, or at least tried to. But it buzzed around her head like a bee at a picnic, the ever-present threat of a sting making Jane anxious.
“I should go,” she said, standing up.
Lucy looked at her, a puzzled expression on her face. “Is everything all right?” she asked. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t do anything,” Jane assured her. “I just had an idea for my new book, and I want to get home and work on it for a bit before my confidence in it wears off.”
Lucy stood up. “Okay,” she said. “But promise me you won’t say a word to Byron about what Ted told me.”
“As much as it would bring me joy to see the expression on his face when he discovered that there’s someone immune to his charms, I promise,” Jane said.
She gave Lucy a long hug, then left the apartment and went to her car. She had no intention of going home and writing anything. Her new book was the last thing she wanted to think about. Well, the second-to-last thing. Lucy dying was the first. Lucy or anyone she loved. Although that list was fairly short, containing only Lucy and Walter. Byron was already undead. Not that I love him, she told herself. But of course she did. Despite everything, she did love him. Just not in the same way I love Walter, she concluded.
Now that she was thinking about what she didn’t want to think about, it was all she could think about. She found herself tearing up again as she imagined attending Lucy’s funeral. The logical thing—the thing almost every vampire she’d ever encountered did—was to move on and leave old friendships behind before the inevitable separation by death. It was only slightly less painful than watching a friend die, but at least you didn’t have to witness the end grow nearer and nearer.
This was something that nonvampires could perhaps never understand, the inherent horror of knowing that you would continue on even as everyone and everything around you turned to dust. Yes, you could turn anyone you loved. There was nothing preventing you from doing that. But there were impracticalities with that as well. For one, where did you stop? Having turned, say, your favorite sister, were you then obliged to turn her husband, or lover, or children if she had them? If you turned your mother, were you then required to turn your aunts and uncles (all of whom she would likely miss when they passed on) as well as their children?
“There really would be no end of it.” That’s what the vampire with whom Jane had first discussed this matter had said. Her name was Olivia Rhodes. When Jane first met her she had been alive for almost five hundred years, having been turned toward the end of the Black Death. Since then she had watched scores of husbands and lovers die. Each time, she told Jane, she’d had to force herself not to turn the man. When Jane asked her why she didn’t turn just one, to spare herself the endless cycle of grief, Olivia had smiled and said, “Eventually we would resent each other for not dying.”
At the time Jane had not understood. Now, two hundred years later, she did. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that there must be exceptions. Surely there were people with whom one could comfortably share eternity. People like Lucy. Or Walter, she thought. Wasn’t it possible that they could continue to find each other interesting throughout centuries? Or would they get tired of telling the same stories again and again, until hearing a phrase such as “Remember that time in Pompeii” made them want to hurl themselves off cliffs?
She started the car. Sitting there in Lucy’s driveway being gloomy wasn’t achieving anything. She could just as easily be miserable at home, where at least Jasper would sit beside her and she could stroke his ears. (Tom, being a cat, was useless as a source of comfort.) But thinking about that brought on another round of tears, as she imagined having to say goodbye to her pets. Animals could not be turned, so there was no question of creating a lifelong companion out of one of them. Jane had always thought this a great pity.
She pulled out of the driveway and headed for home. A few minutes later she found herself approaching Walter’s house. Although she’d intended to pass right by, she felt herself step lightly on the brake to slow the car. Then she was coming to a stop at the curb.
She turned the engine off and sat in the dark, looking at the windows of the house. The lights in the living room were still on, and behind the curtains Jane saw shadows moving. She imagined Walter and his mother sitting, having coffee, talking. Were they discussing her? Was Miriam telling Walter that she didn’t think Jane was suitable for him? Was Walter telling his mother that it was really none of her business?
She thought about trying to go invisible and sneaking up to the windows for a look. But that seemed slightly desperate. Yes, Miriam’s remark earlier in the evening had bothered Jane. But had she really meant something sinister by it? Or was she just being an overly protective mother?
You’re being silly, Jane told herself. You just need to give her a chance.