Page 17

17

RAHIL

“Well, fuck.”

“Not again!”

Sheanna and Avery shouted in unison from opposite sides of the house as the lights all flickered off at once. Downstairs, Tim cursed.

It figured that the only functional part of the entire building would fail. Rahil rolled off his mattress with a grunt and trudged his way down the hall.

His usual fatigue was doubled by his lack of a recent blood meal, but he hadn’t felt up for asking his housemates for yet another feeding, especially when the thought of sinking his fangs into their skin made him yearn for Mercer instead. He was regretting letting his thirst grow like this now, though, the stairs creaking under his feet as he held onto the railing.

“Who forgot to pay?” he shouted, receiving two instantaneous responses of “Wasn’t me!” and Sheanna’s muffled groan.

“It was my turn? Fucking hell. I’m an ass. I’ll fix it tomorrow.”

Rahil made a noncommittal sound. It wasn’t the first time, and if she stayed for another year, he was sure it wouldn’t be the last. “Fridge?” he called. There was hardly anything in it to spoil, but just in case.

“Already on it,” Avery replied through a mouthful of something.

Rahil grunted again. He fumbled through the closet for candles, his monochromatic night vision doing nothing for his tired limbs and groggy mind. He hadn’t even been playing the loneliest whale’s song, but he found it calling in his mind all the same. The lighter wouldn’t start. He flipped through two empty matchboxes—why were they even in there still?—before finding a half-full one.

“I’m going to the café,” Tim called.

Avery jogged down the hall after him. “Oh, can you drive me?”

“Me too,” Sheanna added. She popped her head around the corner. “Do you want to come?”

“Go on.” Rahil sighed, waving her off.

He felt too old for this. Too old, too worn, too many other things crowding for his attention. For a while, he’d assumed there was a point where things got easier—kids grew up, retirement money came in, life was more reward than burden—but that was the compensation for people who weren’t him. People with living families and rounded teeth, who knew how to fix their sons’ worst days and pull their spouses out of addictive spirals. People who did right by the ones they loved.

Instead, he was doing mediocre by the ones he’d kept at an arm’s length and wishing he could sleep through it all.

Rahil lit one of the candles.

It was useless to him now that he was alone, transforming his perfectly good night vision into an awkward mix of drained colors and shadowed edges, but the dancing flame gave him something to focus on. He cradled the little light between his palms. It too could so easily transition from a life-giving source to a deadly terror.

Suddenly, Rahil couldn’t stand to be there anymore, in the empty, crumbling space with only that tiny light as his companion. He put on his shoes and slipped out the backdoor, past the long, shallow pit dug for a future flowerbed and down his rock-lined path, holding his palm over the candlelight as it wavered. His legs kept moving, carrying him along a familiar—if infrequent—path, through the little forest that surrounded his house, down the adjacent street, another forested path, then a rabbit trail behind the back fence of a large house, a left and then another right, and up and over the wrought-iron fence.

He landed like a ghost between the graves. His candle flickered out.

Rahil’s vision quickly adjusted to the darkness, the outlines of modern headstones popping in monochromes, but he didn’t need sight to know where he had to go. He could feel their resting places like they were engraved into his heart, one searing coordinate after the other: Jonah’s headstone weathered on one side where Shefali would lay her head on it, plucking apart jasmine flower petals as she tearfully told him how his family was doing, and Shefali’s tall, proud gravemarker with her favorite Mary Oliver poem carved in tiny letters, and Matt’s, so fresh that it still felt like a foreign object, even if Rahil had, in many ways, lost his younger son years before his actual death.

If he could only lie beside them long enough to sink into the grass…

Rahil began to follow the path toward them, toward that place that felt like the inverse of home: gaping, waiting. From the other direction came an awkward clatter.

Rahil nearly dropped his candle with a start. He clutched its base, his ears perked for another noise. This was not a spot many frequented after dark—there were far older graveyards in the city’s center for those who simply wanted a place to explore. His mind jumped to William Douglas, trying to supply a logical reason why the man might have tracked him here. But that was ridiculous.

Another noise followed the clatter, this one more a snuffle, then a sob.

Ah, definitely not a malevolent hunter then.

A fellow mourner would usually have made Rahil turn tail, but the closer the sounds came, the more familiar they grew. His heart twisted in on itself, calling for the rest of his body to respond. It couldn’t be, he tried to argue. But it could—this was the nearest graveyard to them both. Of course Leah’s body would be here too.

That settled it. He’d check, keeping his distance, and then text Mercer if need be.

His candle still tucked against his chest, Rahil crept through the tombstones. As he neared the location of the sobbing, he tried to work his way around behind the small person crouched over one of the gravestones. A bike hurled onto the ground beside the grave. The toe of his boot caught on something in the grass. He scuffled forward, stepping on it instead—was that a goddamned sprinkler?! He cursed.

Lydia tore to her feet, shrieking.

Rahil should have known better than to have good intentions. He swore again. “Shh, it’s all right.”

Her eyes widened. Beanie tucked to her chest, she took a step forward. “Ray?”

Rahil tried to smile. “Hey, Lydia. You visiting someone, too?”

She sniffled, glancing back toward her mother’s grave, but she managed to draw herself to her full height, her chin in the air as she replied, “My vampire name is Violet .”

How could he ever have not realized she was Mercer’s daughter? Merc might have built up his stony facade like a wall, while she sharpened hers into a barb, but they shared the same fierce brow and harsh jaw, detached gaze and unfazed posture. Only Lydia’s was clearly about to crack. Rahil frowned, stepping back enough to look her in the eyes, though he wasn’t sure how much of his face she could make out. “Violet Demondza-Bloncourt, does your father know you’re here?”

Her braids trembled as she shook her head. She kneaded her fingers into the beanie she held. “Don’t you dare tell him.”

“Because he’ll come get you?” Rahil guessed.

Lydia made what had to be the most miserable sound any intelligent species on the planet was capable of. “He wants to send me away .”

“Away where?”

“To Los Angeles. For the whole week .”

“Ah, so two and a half hours away for less time than a single vacation. I see, I see.”

“You don’t get it!”

“Maybe I don’t. A week in Los Angeles with old friends who care about you sounds really nice to me.” As he said it, though, he recalled every time this decade his extended family in Palm Springs had offered to let him stay, to coordinate their activities around when he would be able to join in, to adjust their busy lives for his vampirism just so he could participate.

And every time, he’d said no.

Something stung in the center of Rahil’s chest. Carefully, he placed a hand on Lydia’s shoulder. “But I do get that staying here, with him, means a lot to you. You want to be there for him, because he’s your dad, and you love him.”

“He’s so—so stupid ,” Lydia said, like she was agreeing with him. She seemed about to add more, but a sob wracked through her instead, and she pressed both hands to her eyes. Rahil could see the tears all the same.

Yesterday, it would have felt like an overstep, but this was Mercer’s daughter—his friend’s daughter—and she was crying in front of him, had come to her mother’s grave for comfort. So gently, carefully, he wrapped his arm around her back, offering an awkward side hug. “Do you want…?”

Lydia managed to look up at him through her reddening eyes and sniffle once. She ignored his attempt in favor of crashing into him, both arms wrapping around his waist as she sobbed quietly into his vintage shirt, her knees giving way as she clung there. Rahil wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that , but he knew he couldn’t let go.

She deserved never to be let go of, dammit.

Rahil wrapped Lydia up, sinking to the grass with her. He held her like he had his sons at her age, just before Matt decided he was too cool for that, and Jonah... He wasn’t sure that Jonah had decided much of anything up until the end, just wandered off. Rahil hadn’t known how to stop it then, and he was sure he wouldn’t know if it happened again either, and that—that made him hold on to Lydia all the tighter, as though the sheer force of the hug could keep Mercer from experiencing the same pain and loss that Rahil had.

But it would not be enough.

There was no hug he could give that would keep a child out of danger, no compliment from him that could make them love themselves, no forgiveness he could ask that could take back the cruelty of past actions. He just had to be here long enough to direct Lydia back to a proper father—one who was surely panicking over his daughter’s disappearance right now.

Still rubbing Lydia’s back as she cried, Rahil sent off a quick text: She’s safe. I’m with her at the cemetery. Don’t come .

He muted the chimer after and slid the phone away. “There there,” he muttered, brushing his hand over Lydia’s braids.

Her crying turned to the occasional lingering sob, and she wrapped her arms around herself, but didn’t pull away. Slowly, Rahil detached enough to relight his candle. The faint orange glow of it flickered over Lydia’s tear-stained cheeks. She wiped them, one side after the other.

Rahil offered the candle to her. She took it, cradling it between her hands.

Finally, she asked, “Dad didn’t send you here?”

“No. I came to visit my family.” Family . The sound of that word in reference to himself felt like he’d stabbed a blade into his own chest. It had been something like two decades since he’d used it out loud. Like a solid point. An eternal connection.

“Where?” Lydia glanced around, like a group of people might appear between the tombstones, but Rahil pointed across the graveyard.

“They’re buried on the far side. My sons, and my—my wife.” Ex didn’t seem important right now.

“Oh,” Lydia said. She had sad eyes, Rahil thought. Whenever the intensity left them, that was what they seemed to become. Sad. It reminded him too much of Jonah. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry for you, too.” Rahil nodded toward Leah’s grave. “Do you talk to her?”

“Twice a year,” Lydia recited, a bitter edge to her voice. Anger, over sadness.

“Except tonight?”

Lydia looked down at the candle in her hands, twisting it to spill the melted wax over the sides. “I don’t know,” she said, finally, and Rahil thought he understood.

“You just needed someone who wasn’t your dad, and you didn’t know where else to go.”

She sniffled and tossed her shoulders. The candlelight danced. “Well, yeah, but you’d make up some reason I can’t be a vampire because I cry too much, so—!”

It took a moment for Rahil to piece together the logical jump in her response, but then he got it, and he almost wished he hadn’t: she’d thought about coming to him . She’d wanted to, and something had held her back, maybe the excuse she’d given or maybe the simpler reason that she hadn’t known if she’d be accepted. But she had needed a place to go and decided Rahil felt nearly safe enough to be that place. Rahil’s chest ached. He wanted to wrap her up in a second hug, while knowing that what she truly needed was the opposite of that. Even her mother’s grave was a better parenting substitute than him.

There was one thing maybe he could do, though.

Soft but firm, trying to withhold any judgment—or worse, pity—Rahil asked, “Why do you want to be a vampire, Violet?”

Lydia dug one of her fingertips into the spilled candle wax hardening on the side of her hand. “If I’m a vampire,” she said, carefully, “then I can’t be a fae.”

Ah . “Is this because of your spark?”

She nodded her head, a tiny motion that made her braids jiggle. “If I turn, my dysfunctional spark will go away. I’ll be strong instead, and maybe I won’t be able to do everything I could before, but there’s lots of things I already can’t do, and I won’t need meds and be worried about missing them or losing them or the dog eating them and—” She drew in a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “It’ll be better. For everyone.”

“I see you’ve put a lot of thought into this.” Rahil didn’t agree with her conclusion—he knew the grass was not always greener on the other side—but he understood where she was coming from. He’d been in a similar position himself once, though he’d been twice her age with far fewer options. “Does that everyone include your dad?”

Lydia nodded again, this time with more assertion. “He worked so hard to get me my meds, but he’s sad they aren’t perfect, and he’s always scared they’ll run out, or they won’t work like they used to. Without my spark, Dad can relax.”

Ah, there it was—the deeper reason. Rahil could hear it in her voice, the sureness of her words and the fire beneath them. Not shame or guilt, but anger. Mercer was tearing himself apart trying to ensure his daughter had the easiest and safest life possible, when all she wanted was to just live—inconveniences included. Vampirism seemed like an easy way to make those inconveniences less reliant on him, less stressful to him.

It wasn’t true, though.

If only Rahil had a way to convince her of that. But he was pretty sure that was something only Mercer could do.

“You won’t tell him?” Lydia asked, turning stonier as she added, “You can’t .”

Fuck. Rahil did not like this, no more than he liked not telling Mercer why he’d started meeting with Lydia in the first place. He groaned. “I won’t tell him yet.” It was the most he felt comfortable agreeing to. “Because you should be the one to do that.”

“No!”

“He’s your dad , kiddo. He loves you—even more than you can possibly imagine ever loving him.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “And so what? What’s it gonna change if I tell him ‘hey, Dad, I don’t care if I die’?”

The way Rahil’s throat closed at the sound of those words felt like being back in the hall of the house he’d raised his boys in, opening the bathroom door as water spilled across the floor. He curled his fingers around Lydia’s shoulder, holding himself to the present. There was nothing in the past that could help him now. No one left there.

Only mistakes.

Through the ringing in his head, he managed to say, “No. Under no circumstances are you going to phrase it like that, you understand?”

Lydia nodded, looking at her beanie, now discarded into her lap in favor of the candle. It had droplets of wax scattered across it.

Rahil felt like he was the one who wanted to die now. “Violet, do you…” Fuck, he didn’t know how to say this.

“I want to live,” she said, and he believed her. Thank god, he believed her. “It’s just if I did die in the process of living, I think I’d rather have done that, then done nothing at all? Whether it works or not, or lasts or not—whatever happens—I want to do something . That’s all I can do, right?”

Rahil had witnessed both sides of that equation end in death, and he didn’t know how to answer her, except perhaps, to tell her there was no answer to any of it.