Page 20 of Even Vampires Bleed (Even Ever After #2)

Léandre

I have a weird feeling that I’m forgetting something.

Maybe I got drunk last night, and I’m still recovering—that could explain things.

Some part of my brain is telling me that getting drunk to the point of forgetting things isn’t a habit of mine, but there are always exceptions.

It seems like yesterday was that kind of exception.

I’m sitting on my bed and the room smells like someone else.

I don’t recognize the smell. It smells inherently feminine, but I can’t place it.

It’s sweet and spicy at the same time. A mix of passion fruit and cinnamon.

It should be weird, but it works. Except the smell is everywhere, and as much as I like it, it annoys me because I don’t know where it comes from.

There is a knock at my door.

I finally get my ass off from my bed and go open the door.

“Yes?” I ask.

The woman at my door looks hardened. She has porcelain skin and eyes of the deepest blue. She would look lovely if only her hair weren’t shaved and her pouty lips weren’t drawn in a hard line.

Her eyes look like they’re wet. Like the other woman, she looks like she either has already cried or is about to.

I don’t know what’s going on around here, but there might be something in the air because I barely just woke up, and yet it’s the second person I see that looks emotional.

I’m not sure where I am, though.

Why can’t I remember?

I try, and try, and try. All it gives me is a damn migraine.

I want to close the door in the face of the stranger in front of me and go back to sleep—maybe the headache will finally disappear—but instead, I plaster a smile on my face and wait for the girl to tell me why she’s at my door.

“Léandre?” she asks, and I remember that’s how the other girl called me.

It sounds right.

“Yeah?” I retort, and it seems to illuminate the girl’s face.

“Oh gods, Cassiopé was wrong—you do remember,” she says.

“Cassiopé? Who is Cassiopé?”

I have the vague idea that I might know who Cassiopé is, but it’s a fleeting thought and as soon as it grazes my mind, it’s already forgotten.

The girl’s face falls. She schools herself quickly, but I saw it there on her face for a second—the look of disappointment.

It pinches my heart, but I have no idea why.

“You don’t remember me, either, do you?” she asks cautiously.

I want to tell her that I have no idea who she is, but somehow I feel like she’s expecting more and that it would be rude.

“Should I?” I question as cautiously as she did.

I see her shoulders drop, and it answers my question without her having to voice it.

Maybe it’s not just a nasty hangover.

“Come in,” I tell the girl. “I feel like I’m not going to like what you tell me and that I shouldn’t hear it at a doorstep.”

I sit on my bed, and she pulls the desk chair to sit on it backward, as if she doesn’t want to stay too close, as if she’s scared of what I could tell her or maybe she’s scared of how I’m going to react to what she’s about to tell me.

“What do you remember?” she asks me, and this is such a weird question that I don’t know where to start.

I’m stuck.

She waits for a minute and when I still haven’t answered her question; she starts with another one.

“Do you remember your name?”

“Léandre,” I answer automatically, but I feel the need to correct myself. “You’re the second one to call me like that, and… It feels right.”

“So, you don’t really remember that,” the girl says to herself.

“Do you know what you are?”

“A cockatoo-shifter,” I answer without missing a beat.

I don’t need to wonder because I feel it in my bones, the same way I would know how to fly if I was asked.

“Good,” the girl says. “Do you remember my name?”

I wince. I have no idea and yet, with how cautious she was with the question, I feel like I should know.

She seems to deflate, but then she steels herself as if nothing has happened. This girl is good at showing a face that doesn’t reflect what she feels about the world.

“My name is Angélique. We grew up together.”

There’s a pregnant pause.

I don’t know this girl—Angélique—but she’s expecting me to say something. Maybe that what she just said feels right, but I can’t say that.

It rings hollow.

That’s when it hits me.

I feel hollow, as if I was a blank page.

This is how I feel.

“Do you remember having any family?” Angélique asks again.

It feels like this is a one-way conversation.

This girl keeps asking me questions, and all she has to do is read my face, and she gets all her answers.

I don’t even need to say a word.

I might not be able to read her now that her face is blank, but she seems to know all my tells.

She might very well know me. She might have grown up with me, but I don’t remember it.

“No.” I remember to answer her question and for a second I think I see hesitation on her face, but it disappears so fast that I think I imagined it.

“It might be for the best,” she mutters to herself again.

She stands and puts the chair where it used to be. Tentatively, she approaches me.

“What I have to ask might sound weird,” she says as she looks at me from above, since I’m still sitting on my bed.

“Can you touch behind your left ear?”

“What? What is this about?” I ask.

“Just do it, please,” she pleads.

I want to yell at her that this sounds like a bad joke and that she should stop, but at the same time, she looks so forlorn that I can’t help but comply.

I quickly pass my fingers behind my ear without a thought and stop.

Wait.

What the fuck is that?

I pass my fingers again and they come in contact with a small bump that’s cold under them. It feels like metal, but why would I have metal behind my ear?

Nothing makes sense.

The girl—Angélique, I need to remind myself—seems to see the panic in my eyes because she moves closer to me with her hands in a gesture that can only mean supplication to listen to her, but I can’t.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t think.

“Did you do this to me?” I ask her, but it sounds more like an accusation.

“What? No!” She seems outraged by the idea, and it calms me a bit, but then she talks again.

“I didn’t do that to you. But my father did it to you because of me.” She looks defeated, and this time, she doesn’t bother with hiding what she feels.

“Get out of my room,” I tell her.

I might be wrong, but I don’t feel like talking to her anymore.

If I’m like this because of her, I don’t want her to breathe the same air I breathe.

“Wait,” she pleads again, “just give me a minute to explain. Please.”

I exhale loudly. I don’t want to listen to what she has to say, but at the same time, I have absolutely no idea what happened to me.

I need answers.

“You have one minute, tops,” I say as I launch the countdown on my holo.

“Why isn’t Cassiopé here when we need someone to do a sprint speech?” She mutters to herself once again.

“Fifty seconds,” I tell her.

She takes a deep breath.

“I was raised to be an assassin. A few weeks ago, I was sent here to Notre Dame to marry Elhyor, the dragon who holds Notre Dame, and on my wedding night I was supposed to kill him.”

She fills me in with information about Notre Dame, Elhyor, and the bats.

“Long story short, I couldn’t kill him, but my father, who was the one who sent me in the first place, placed this microchip behind your ear and threatened to erase your memory if I couldn’t complete my mission.”

She seems torn when talking about it and I realize one thing. This girl loves the guy she was supposed to kill.

“We fought my father, destroyed the server who held the code to the microchip, destroyed the holo it was linked to, and I killed my father. We thought any way of activating the microchip was destroyed.”

“But you were obviously wrong,” I say.

She nods but doesn’t add anything.

The minute rings, but I don’t kick her out.

“How come I remember how to function?” I ask instead, “I mean, if my memory is gone, how is it possible that I remember how to fly, how to walk, or how to speak?”

“Because this microchip wasn’t linked to your functional memory. It only erased who you are.” She pauses, before saying, “Who you were , not what you can do.”

I’m silent for a while, processing her words.

“Do you need anything?” she asks cautiously again.

“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.

And it’s exactly how I feel.

I don’t know.

I don’t know who I was.

I don’t know how I lived until now.

I’m a blank page.

And like any writer would be, I’m scared of that blank page.

“I need time alone,” I tell her, but the right answer is “I need time .” Period.

Because I’m missing time.

From what I’ve seen in the mirror in the bathroom earlier, I’ve lost at least two decades.

But that also means that whoever I was doesn’t matter anymore. I can be someone new.

And somehow, this is what I hang on to.

I can be whoever I want.