Page 11

11

RAHIL

In some ways, Mercer’s anxiety was a blessing, because it meant Rahil had something to focus on—something that wasn’t the dead bat, or the way Merc’s wife had been killed, or how Rahil could just as soon be that vampire the smith hated so badly, if the life his own fangs had taken had been a little less unexpected, or his part in it more egregious. He patted Mercer’s shoulder, reminding him he was safe, and reminding himself in the same breath. But just as quickly as Merc had fallen into his stiff state of shallow breathing, he seemed to pull himself back out of it, shaking his head as he apologized, all his attention on his phone as he reset his traps and locked up the shed.

“Will you be all right?” Merc barely looked at him, his gaze still distant.

“Fine,” Rahil answered, because he always was, one way or another.

It seemed like the words were just out of his mouth before Mercer was sliding closed his house’s back door and scooping up his dog for kisses behind the glass, leaving Rahil with only the midday sun and his own thoughts as his companions.

Mercer had asked if he would be okay—might have even let Rahil hide out inside the barn—but the knots in Rahil’s gut were too tight and numerous for him to consider invading the man’s privacy any further. It was clear both of them had their own internal battles to fight. Rahil jogged home through the heat, almost wishing the shakes and pain would come sooner so he’d have something else to think about but the past and the future. The future, at least, he could change, if he had the guts. He could just stay away from Merc after this; hope that William Douglas would never follow through on his threats and Mercer would finish his project without a holy silver immune vampire’s help.

Could , was the opportune word there.

He could have done many things in the past, could have lived a life that wouldn’t fill him with so much guilt and grief now. Yet here he was, mourning a woman from his past who he’d barely known, all because Mercer—a man Rahil also, technically, barely knew—had lost his wife to similar circumstances. Not the same circumstances, thankfully. A different victim, a different vampire, but both had ended in death.

Rahil’s tragic woman had been so distressed when she’d come to him, her eyes red and her ponytail lopsided. “Are you a vampire?”

It was so different from the way Violet had demanded to know last week, this woman’s voice small despite its strength and her apology after an awkward mess. When she’d asked Rahil to turn her, he’d known she’d needed this, even before she’d explained why, a folder of scans and doctors’ notes at the ready.

“You know that even if this ends the way you want it to, you’ll be undergoing a tremendous amount of pain for a life filled with difficulty.”

“I want to live,” she said, hard in ways her initial request hadn’t been, nearly as fiercely as Rahil’s ex-wife had snapped the opposite the last time he’d seen her alive. “If I stay human, I will be dead in under two months, but if there’s a chance I can go on kissing my spouse and holding my kid, then give me that chance.”

He should have said no, should have sent her back for a few more weeks of kisses and a final goodbye. But her request, her desire to live, to love, regardless of the risk, was everything he’d wanted to hear months before, and all he could see in her place was his ex-wife, standing in his kitchen with the same packet, and asking for one last night, one last night that had turned into one last year, and then a death bed he couldn’t stand beside and a funeral he couldn’t bring himself to attend.

So instead, he’d told this woman—this partner, parent, lover—simply, not here . If this went wrong, he couldn’t have anyone banging down his door. He hadn’t truly believed it would go wrong, even then. He’d made it through his transformation—painfully, but still. If he’d managed to convince his dear Shefali to take that same risk, she’d have had a similar outcome—a life. And so would this woman.

When the blood had started dripping down the back of her throat and oozing around her teeth as they were pushed aside for spiny fangs, when her eyes shot edge to edge in black, it had finally set in that he’d made a mistake. He should have known better—deadly errors were his forte after all.

Every wrong decision had seemed right to him in the moment.

Which was just another reason not to return to Mercer Bloncourt’s. Or was staying away the mistake? He’d left Matt alone, and Rahil’s abandonment hadn’t saved his youngest son any more than his meddling had saved his eldest decades before.

The shakes and aches that hit Rahil by the time he reached home didn’t help distract him from his emotions after all. Neither did the fruitless exhaustion that succeeded them, cruel enough to make his mind and body both absolutely useless while still denying him the deep sleep he desperately needed. He wallowed around the house for the rest of the day, too worn out even to fiddle with his pile of electronics, and avoided Sheanna and Tal when they appeared in the afternoon to crash for a few hours before heading out again—Tal to a night shift and Sheanna to check in on her great-aunt. There was food in the cupboards, at least, even if most of it was from the discount outlet. Rahil slipped a few fives in the communal grocery fund and cooked himself some noodles, drowning them with enough nearly expired butter to kill a weaker man.

For once, Violet didn’t come. Rahil hoped his talk of support systems had truly scared her off, though the later the evening got the more he missed her snarky banter. Without her or Mercer to talk to, he found himself despondently in his family’s group chat, scrolling back through the last week of muted messages, complete with pictures of his nieces’ pets, his sister and auntie’s champagne brunch, and his only nephew’s kids, all five teenagers wrangled together for a mix of goofy faces and disinterested scowls, with sweet little Naddy—now suddenly no longer an adorable eight year old—still smiling just as brightly as she had every time she’d asked Rahil if he wanted to help her make tea.

Fuck, did he miss them.

But he’d already taken up enough of their love—and far too much of their time and money, especially since Shefali passed away. Every time he saw them, there was another round of “Are you sure you’re okay?” s and “What can we do?” s and offers of everything from meals and their “extra” supplies, to loans they all knew he’d never repay, to a place to live for a few months or years or decades. Watching their self-imposed responsibility for him move from his parents to his siblings and now shift gradually toward the younger generation as his body aged slightly slower than the rest of his family was a misery he had made the deliberate choice not to let anyone bear.

Even if some of them hadn’t accepted that yet.

As the last of the light faded from the sky, Rahil sat on the front porch. He yawned sporadically, his brain somehow fuzzier after the day’s rest than it had been at the start. Every time he started to drift off, though, his mind would yank him back with intrusive thoughts of the woman his venom had killed, placing her face over the mysterious outline of Mercer’s wife, turning her choice into a violent lack thereof. He was about to go back inside for a cup of herbal tea despite the heat, when Violet came creeping up the front steps.

Rahil stared at her with one eye closed. “You’re here late.”

“Dad’s in a mood.” Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body, her usual outfit traded for a baggy t-shirt and pj shorts. She still wore a beanie. “He thinks I went to bed.”

Rahil glanced at his phone. It was past midnight somehow. “You should be in bed.”

Violet made a show of rolling her eyes. Then she flipped him the bird.

“Fair.” Rahil nodded. Stretching his arms over his head, he stood. His body almost gave out on him, sleep threatening to come for just a moment before it veered sharply back into ruthless fatigue. “You want some chamomile tea?”

“I thought it was the cold that vampires didn’t feel, not the heat.”

“I figure heat stroke probably makes a person fall asleep.”

Violet shrugged. “Count me in then.”

They made the tea in a communal silence, Violet picking the mug with a curse word on it despite the chip in the rim. It reminded Rahil of himself. And Matt. He didn’t want to think about his sons right then, though—he’d done plenty of that already for the day—so as they finished, he gave Violet a tap on the head. “Follow me.”

She didn’t even question him, which was probably a bad sign on her part, letting him lead the way up the stairs. He grabbed the pillow from his room and another from Avery’s—they were at their boyfriend’s in LA for the night—and headed up the second story spiral staircase.

“Watch the fourth step,” he instructed, even though he was fairly certain the wobbly wood could hold Violet’s weight.

Once through the trap door at the top, Rahil turned the opposite direction from the main attic space, handing Violet the mugs and opening the large back window under the low eaves. It creaked, stuck, then gave, swinging out onto the second story’s roof. Rahil stepped through.

“Careful,” he instructed, taking the mugs back so Violet could follow him. “And grab that blanket on the floor there.”

Beneath the layers of disinterest and annoyance, she seemed mildly impressed. “This is almost cool.”

“It’s a roof. Of course it’s cool,” Rahil replied, and spread the blanket on the lightly slanted portion above the master-bedroom, tossing the pillows onto it before settling down. “Fun fact about vampires—we love stargazing.”

“Ha ha,” Violet grumbled, but she tipped back her head. Her eyes grew wider and her shoulders more relaxed as she stared up into the cloudless summer night. The moon was still somewhere beyond the horizon and the city lights just far enough away to allow for the distant starlight to pierce the vale of endless emptiness, creating a kaleidoscope of glittering constellations.

Rahil sipped his tea despite how ruthlessly hot it was against the balmy night and took in the stars with her. “I wanted to build a patio up here. Put up a couple hammocks…”

Violet nodded. Slowly, without taking her eyes off the sky, she sat down too. She wrapped her hands around her mug, holding its warmth without drinking it, her expression as distant as the stars she gazed at. “Do you sleep up here?”

Rahil shrugged. “I don’t sleep much anywhere.”

“Oh.” Violet nodded again. “Me neither.”

“Insomniac?”

“Something like that.”

Poor kid; Rahil’s heart broke a little for her—a little more than it already had. He tried to ignore that tug in his chest, the temptation to do something for her—to be someone for her. Like his partnership with Mercer, this was a waystation. Violet deserved better than anything he could offer her. That was the point, after all: to convince her that it was best to leave him—and vampirism—alone.

The light of Violet’s phone flashed on, washing her face in an odd glow. She opened a music app. A gentle noise started up from the speakers, slow and melodic. She set the phone between them. “When I can’t sleep, sometimes this helps.”

“It’s very soothing.” Rahil drained his tea and leaned back, letting the sound roll over him. After all his years forming an endless list of things that wouldn’t put him to sleep, he knew nothing so simple could magically cure his wakefulness, but it was incredibly relaxing.

“It’s the song of the loneliest whale,” Violet explained. “He makes a call that’s 13 hertz higher than anyone else in his species, so none of the other whales respond to him. They can hear him, but they choose not to.” She took a sip of her drink, quiet and thoughtful as she stared out to space. “He keeps calling anyway, though.”

That made something in Rahil’s chest ache that was too close to home to be safe. “What a sad fellow.”

Violet hummed and pressed the rim of her tea to her chin. “Maybe he’s not just sad, but hopeful too. He has to keep believing that someday, it’ll work. That’s bravery.”

“Or stupidity.”

“I thought adults were supposed to encourage positivity, not nihilism.”

“I live in a house that’s falling apart, with a bunch of freeloaders, in a society that hates me, trading blood for sex.” Was that too much? Ah, fuck it. “Some adults can be positive because good things eventually happening to them is a genuine possibility, maybe even a definite one.”

Violet didn’t look disappointed at that, only thoughtful. She glanced at him, like she was trying to decide where to place him in her zoo catalog of adults. “At least you have a thrall now?”

The sound that burst out of Rahil was so similar to the laugh Mercer had inspired earlier that he almost choked on it again. He smiled at the end, giving Violet a little nudge in the shoulder. “You’re a good thing, kid. I don’t know if you have people in your life telling you so, but you’re a damn good thing, and you should have hope.”

The little twist in her lips was oddly familiar, there for a flash, then gone again. “Dad tells me that, sometimes.” She sighed. “But I don’t know if I should believe him. I don’t think he has hope either—not for me, and certainly not for himself. He’s kind of… stuck.”

“I’m sorry.”

Violet’s shoulders bounced. She leaned back, tucking her pillow under her head. The music that had been reverberating softly between them went quiet. “You missed the entire song.”

“Fuck, you’re right. Restart it.”

Violet did so with the utmost seriousness, settling back in after, stoic and serene. “Goodnight, Ray.”

Rahil closed his eyes. “Goodnight, you little creep.”

He swore the tiny snort she made was a disguised laugh.

Rahil gave it a count of thirty before he started to fake-snore.

This time Violet’s sound was certainly a kind of laughter, followed by a shove at his shoulder as she snapped, “Quit that! It doesn’t work if you’re just goofing off.”

Rahil grinned. “You sound like my mother.”

“ Someone needs to.”

“You’re not wrong there.”

Rahil closed his eyes again, focusing on steady inhales and low exhales, and let the whale song wash over him. It was slow and melancholic, with a yearning that seemed to sink into his bones the longer he listened. He imagined the lonely whale drifting behind his eyes, eternally calling for a partner he would never find; the light rippling off his back and the empty ocean stretching before him.

With the song playing, Rahil felt hazier, his mind drifting as though through the same water. A yawn broke out of him. He found his thoughts sinking. He was pretty sure Violet’s breathing had slowed beside him, and his own fought to stay in time, until he was the whale, and the whale wasn’t quite so alone.

~

Rahil snapped awake to the sound of his morning alarm. He scrambled to grab it, only to realize it wasn’t his at all as he slammed his chin into the top of Violet’s head.

“Fuck-shit.” He jerked back, sliding a few inches down the roof. The stars had faded, the treeline a visible set of peaks behind the house as the sky began to lighten. Goddamn. How many hours had it been—five?

And he’d let a child sleep on his roof. A child whose father was probably going to have an anxiety attack over her whereabouts once they realized she was gone.

Violet rubbed her bleary eyes and grumbled curses under her breath.

Rahil tried not to panic too hard. “You okay, kid?”

“My back feels like shit,” she muttered, but a crook came into her lips. “We’re still on the roof.”

“Luckily. If you’d rolled off, I’d have been forced to bury your body beneath the roses.”

Violet snorted. “You don’t have any roses. Unless you mean your rocks and the weird pit.”

“That pit is for the roses—or some flowers, anyway. I just have to find a fertilizer first…” Preferably a cheap or free one. Perhaps the house could start composting. He poked Violet in the shoulder. “You should get home. I should get you home.”

“You and what car? Sun will be up soon, too.”

Rahil groaned.

Like she was moving on autopilot, Violet pulled a little container out of her pocket and dug two pills from it.

Rahil narrowed his eyes. “Those aren’t drugs, right?”

“Of course they’re drugs.” Violet rattled their case. “Doctor-prescribed.”

They didn’t look illegal, but then Rahil wasn’t actually sure what illegal drugs looked like these days. She was already swallowing them anyway, making a face after.

Rahil stood. He stumbled on the uneven surface of the roof as he collected their pillows and one of the mugs—he didn’t want to know where the other had ended up. If it was the only thing that emerged broken in the yard, he’d be relieved.

Violet immediately tempted that hope by slipping on an ungainly roof tile.

Barely thinking, Rahil secured her by the undersides of her arms with a stabilizing “whoa there, champ,” as he guided her into the windowsill. Not until after she was safe, rolling her eyes and detangling herself from his grip, did it occur to him: Violet was not his kid. She was not his clumsy little Matt, or his over-adventurous Jonah—and thank god, because at least whatever happened to her after she’d forgotten him wouldn’t be his fault. Probably.

Unless he fundamentally screwed her up too.

Rahil’s body reacted so physically to the thought of Violet suffering the way his sons had that he felt himself jerking back from her, hitting the lip of the open window pane and—fuck. But then it was Violet’s fists grabbing onto him—a little more pathetically for her much smaller weight—as she struggled to keep him from falling backwards. They both stumbled forward, knocking side-by-side into the windowsill.

“Ah, fuck,” Rahil slid again, and it took the better part of his vampiric agility to right himself.

Violet groaned. She dropped onto her butt and plopped her pointer finger in her mouth.

Rahil narrowed his eyes. “Let me see.”

“S’fine,” she muttered through the bleeding finger.

“I’m a vampire, remember. I can smell the blood.”

Violet grumbled under her breath again and held it out to him. A line of red quickly appeared in the small cut. “You want?” she asked.

“From you?” Rahil made a face. “Has anything I’ve taught you sunk in past that beanie?” He gave the top of her covered head a little rub.

Violet complained and batted him away with her uninjured hand, but Rahil was oddly flattered to notice how half-hearted the protest was. He should not have cared what a random preteen thought of him. Even if she had played him the lonely whale song and reminded him of his sons. She had a home to get back to and a completely normal human life to keep living, with parents who would probably be worried sick if they knew she was here. Or at least a father, since it sounded as though her mom was mostly out of the picture.

Rahil brushed past her with a tsk tsk sound. “Come on, let’s get a band-aid on that before you leave. I can’t send you home cut up.”

Violet whined some more, scowling all the way to the kitchen, where Rahil dug the little case of band-aids out of the house’s stash of expired medicine. He found one with stars on the back of the plaster.

Peeling off the sticky sides reminded him, painfully, of the year that three-year-old Matt had been obsessed with the healing power of band-aids. Jonah had never failed to help paste them over little Matt’s bruises and bumps and bug bites, taking each prepped plaster from Rahil with the serenity of a hardened nurse.

Rahil turned away quickly, shoving the trash into the bin so he wouldn’t have to keep looking at Violet and seeing his own children. By the time he finished, she was already standing by the hall to the door, both hands in her pj pockets as she rocked from heel to toe.

“Hey, master-vampire-Ray?” she said, and grinned. “You’re a good thing too.” With that, she left.

Rahil was too stunned to follow her out. The sudden weight in his chest felt about the same size and shape as a heart, like a dead muscle trying to sink its way into his gut. You’re a good thing too.

He wished he was, for her sake, and the sake of everyone who wasn’t here to tell him so any longer.

Rahil Zaman was not a good thing. If he was lonely, it was for a reason.