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Chapter Eighty-Four

CARMINE

My New York bedroom looks like any other from the era when it was designed.

But that was where I fucked. Behind a thick, sealed door almost indistinguishable from the wall it’s set into, is the room where I sleep.

Unlike the large mattress in the outer bedroom, the inner has a narrower bed meant for one person.

There’s a lamp on a table. The walls are painted a purple so dark, it’s almost black. Books are stacked from the floor to the height I can reach.

“Carmine,” Luna says when I lead her in. “What does that mean that you still love me?”

We are both still naked. I don’t want her to be cold.

“It means I still love you.” I take an old shirt from the dresser I keep in here.

“So, it didn’t work?”

I stretch the neck and hold up the shirt. She bows her head so I can get it over. I don’t know how to explain to her what I can’t explain to myself. Something changed. It was so subtle, I didn’t recognize it until she mentioned it. But everything is the same.

“It worked. Put your arms through.”

My first wife never gave me the opportunity to love her.

My relationship with Paolina, the first Strega I ever knew, could have grown into love.

My feelings for the handful of people who were important to me drove me to do wise and foolish things, but this is different.

With Luna, it is gentler, deeper, heavier.

She is, in her way, wildly unstable, but the feeling is an anchor at the end of a rope so long, I didn’t notice it was there. I can only drift so far from her.

She’s a complication. I wish I didn’t love her, but I can’t imagine not loving her.

“Talk to me,” she demands when I push my legs through sweatpants.

“What do you want me to say?” I tie the string around my waist. “That what you did made me love you forever? Even after it’s ‘fixed?’ I can’t, Luna. If you were different… maybe I could. But you’re…” I let the ends of the string drop and hold my hands toward her, the direction of the obvious.

“I’m what?”

“Insistent!” Barking at her doesn’t help.

She’s going to cry and, Goddess help me, she will never shed another tear because of what I say or do.

“You’re tenacious. Fair. Generous with your compassion.

Shameless with your love. Sensitive and thick-skinned at the same time.

If I had been like you when I was changed…

” I run my hand through my hair to stimulate my brain to think of something different to say than the idiocy that’s about to come out of my mouth. “I wouldn’t be…”

The brain stimulation didn’t work.

“I have Ario and Viaro. I have Ferrante. Laro was…” I shake my head against the distraction.

“When I woke up, I saw what was left of my colony and all I wanted to do was build it back up to what it was before. I was, I admit, scared. There it is. I was scared I’d be as lonely as I was before I took that villa and brought in the Strega.

And nothing’s changed from then. I don’t rule a settled kingdom of family.

Everything is a mess, but I have you. I have Luna, and that’s more than enough.

You surprise me when I’m sure nothing can surprise me anymore.

You fill a need inside me. It’s you. There’s no grand plan for any of us, but I am sure the only reason I lived this long is to be with you. ”

“Okay, I get it.” She lays her hands on my chest as if that’s going to stop me.

“I’m a vampire, Luna. Never forget that. My very existence is evil. But if you told me right now to give up the knife, give up immortality to be with you, I would.”

“I don’t want that. I want you to be your full self. The immortal Carmine. I want to see how incredible you are when you don’t have this thing in you.” She lets her fingers drift over the stake. “I never felt like I was everything to anyone before. Not until now.”

“I’m not done.” I take her by the shoulders and sit her on the edge of the bed. She looks up at me with wide brown eyes. “You deserve the whole truth, which is everything I said, and this… You’re fucking stunning.”

“Whatever.” She drops her gaze to her lap. “Are you done?”

“You wanted to know.”

“My mistake.”

“This makes you uncomfortable.” I kneel in front of her and pull her knees apart to wedge myself between them.

“Little bit.”

“Finding out this is real for me? It’s uncomfortable, and it changes everything. I wanted my immortality back because I was greedy, and to live to protect you. You pushed out the greed. I knew it, but I couldn’t admit it. All I want is more time with you.”

“You’re killing me.”

“This isn’t what you wanted?”

“I figured you’d start from scratch.”

“I’m too efficient for that.”

She laughs to herself and sniffs, looking around the room. “How many disco chicks did you bring back here?”

“You are the first chick.”

“Really?”

“This is the safest place I know.” I get up and hold out my hand.

She stands to take it, looking down at the shirt I put on her for the first time. “Grateful Dead. 1973. You were a fan?”

“I was attracted to the name.” I pick her up, and she wraps her legs around my waist. “The music was okay, but the shows? Excellent.”

“I hear they were a vibe.”

“Definitely a vibe.” I take her two steps to the bed and sit her on it.

“Were you into pot or LSD or both?”

“Drugs have no effect on me whatsoever, unless they’re in the blood I’m drinking.”

“How could we have gone through so much together already and I don’t know that?”

“Here’s another thing.” I pull down the sheets. “Alcohol, I drink directly. And I metabolize it differently. Get in.”

“How so?” She tucks herself under the sheets.

“You will experience it and know.”

“I like being prepared.”

“You’ll never be prepared for me after half a bottle of wine.”

“Is it scary? I’m really good at making survival kits if I know what to expect.”

“You can expect me to like the wine of today better than the wine of my childhood. Past that, I will maintain the mystery.” I slide in next to her.

She closes her eyes when she draws close, but opens them again. “I’d rather know you. Like, I should be able to say ‘He’d never do that’ and mean it.”

“About what? What would I never do?”

“Well, like with Richie?—”

“Are we talking about Richie now?”

“Only to say I know what he’d do and not do.”

“Did he make you happy?”

“Well, at first, yeah. But then, if someone said to me, ‘He went grocery shopping,’ I’d be like, ‘He’d never do that.’ At least not without being asked ten times.”

“And you expect me to go grocery shopping?”

“I don’t know what to expect. Like, would you wipe the counter after you ate chips and salsa? Or would I be, like, what gremlins slid under the door with paper towels?”

“My love, I’d wipe the counter after you ate chips and salsa. I’d wipe it after I fucked you on it. I’d make the bed. I’d put away the cups.”

“You’d do all that to make me happy?”

“I can’t believe it was always that easy.”

I shut the light. The room is pitch black, but I can see her putting her hand over the hard disc of the stake.

“I can feel something happening in there. I’m not sure if it’s a heartbeat or a lawnmower that won’t start,” she says.

“Yes to both. Close your eyes.” She does it, but with a cringe. “What’s wrong?”

“I still see all the bad things. And it’s so quiet in here.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Is this what it’ll be like when this is all over? Just you and me in a dark room?”

“I’d let you out sometimes.”

“Your generosity has no bounds, Raven King.”

“It has bounds.” He kisses the healing wound on my throat. “I have not found them with you. You can have anything, because you are my everything.”

“I don’t want anything. I want something, but whenever I look directly at that something, it disappears before I clock it. It’s a quantum desire, I guess.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll show you a video tomorrow, okay?”

“On the phone?”

“Your TV is too old for screen mirroring so…” She ends in an exhausted sigh.

I smile in the dark. She’s everything I want, and when I look at her, she’s looking right back at me. I am not worthy of her, of this moment, of a love that’s inexplicably real.

“Go to sleep, my everything.”

And because she is in thrall, her fears leave her and she drops off to sleep.