The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten (18 page)

I could tell he was leading me into using another question, but that was okay. “Such as?”

He glanced at the sky, which was pretty much just overlapping tree limbs at this point. “You know we avoid the sun?”

“Yeah, I was going to ask about that eventually, but I had a lot of sex and violence questions to get through first, you know, and I didn’t want you to think I was trying to, like, catalogue your vulnerabilities.”

“Oh, the sun isn’t a vulnerability. Quite the opposite. Listen, I know a meadow nearby. Come with me. It’s a sunny day—I can show you.” He took my hand and led me down a series of deer paths and dry stream beds, up ridges and over hills, until we stepped out of the trees into a vast space, bigger than two football fields, utterly filled with wildflowers, though it seemed pretty late in the year for those. The meadow was warm, too, unseasonably so, and Edwin began shedding his coat—which he only wore for appearances anyway, I’d learned; when you’re cold-blooded, wearing a coat doesn’t
help
you, since coats work by trapping your own body heat against your skin. He stripped off his shirt, too, which was wonderfully yummy of him—he was like an underwear model carved in white marble. Lickable. Extremely lickable. I was hoping he’d go all the way naked, but that wasn’t the plan, apparently. Just as well. Sex in a meadow always seems like it would be so wonderful, right? But meadows just
look
good. In reality, they’re scratchy, itchy, and generally filled with bugs. Avoid.

Edwin put down his shirt and coat in the center of the meadow and stretched out with his upper body on the former, gesturing for me to join him. I lay down beside him on his coat, and took his hand. “Just a moment,” he murmured. We looked up at the sky for a while. A single fat puffy cloud drifted slowly across the face of the sun, and when it moved away, and the sun’s rays shone on him directly—

Well. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Maybe that he’d burst into flames or at least start smoking, despite what he’d told me. Maybe that he’d bulk up like the Hulk, or turn to stone like a troll, or fluoresce like bodily fluids under a black light.

Instead, he didn’t change at all, but there was the most wonderful
smell
. “Oh my god,” I said. “Is that coffee? Who’s brewing coffee out here in the woods? Oh god, it smells
amazing
.” Coffee is my favorite smell in the world. Once when I did ecstasy, I spent two hours making fresh pots of coffee just so I could
smell
them with my senses heightened. (I spent the other five hours having sex, of course.)

“That’s me,” he said.

I leaned in, and sniffed, and yes—his skin smelled
exactly
like a cup of Kona. “You—that’s—wait, what?” I kept sniffing him.

“Argyle thinks it might have something to do with pheromones,” he said. “When exposed to sunlight, there’s a reaction with our skin, and we produce a smell that’s incredibly attractive to humans. It’s not always the smell of coffee—the smell is perceived differently by everyone. Baking bread, fresh cookies, lemon zest—it varies. But they always come running, trying to find the source of the smell.” He shrugged. “You see what I mean? We are ridiculously overengineered to capture prey. Humans don’t stand a chance. But this is why I don’t go to school on sunny days. None of us do. Even if we’re bundled up, the sunlight touching our faces, our hands, any inch of exposed skin, produces a smell powerful enough to be detected hundreds of yards away. Unless we wore full burqas…” He shrugged. “So we avoid the sun, and choose to live in cloudy places.”

“So, if any inch of skin will do the trick, why did you go shirtless just now?”

He grinned. “Well,” he said. “You
are
my girlfriend.”

I licked his nipple, and he gasped. “No fair. You don’t
taste
like coffee.” I paused, then said. “Uh, this is cool and all, but, um, maybe we should get back in the shade.”

He looked at me curiously. “Why? What’s wrong?”

There are certain things a girl doesn’t want to say, but we have a rule about Questions, and while there were certain lies I was willing to tell, I tried to be truthful when it wouldn’t hurt anything. “Edwin, I love the smell of coffee, but coffee… the smell of coffee kinda makes me have to go to the bathroom. I don’t know if it’s just years of associating the smell of coffee with early morning, but it’s…
deeply
ingrained, and if I have to go even a little bit, the smell of coffee makes me have to go a
lot
.”

He looked confused. “Oh. I… vampires don’t have, ah… well. We don’t urinate. Or have bowel movements.”

“Lucky you,” I said through gritted teeth as I ran into the trees for some privacy. Though at least it meant I’d never be forced to share the bathroom with him.

When I got back, he was dressed again, and we went back into the forest. “So,” he said, delicately avoiding the fact that I’d just pissed in the woods. “My family wants to meet you. I know you’ve met some of them, but they’d like to… really meet you.”

“Wow. Big step!”

“Would you be willing to come see us, at home?”

“Is it very gothic? Lots of spiderwebs and coffins and red velvet drapes?”

“Not very. More Danish modern, really.”

“I’d be happy to come,” I said. Becoming friendly with more vampires would be good—if Edwin wouldn’t turn me, it would be nice to have backup plans. Even if one of his siblings was the one who brought me over, and Edwin got mad about it, he’d see reason eventually.

Plus, I still held a grudge again Pleasance and Rosemarie, and seeing enemies at home can teach you a lot about their vulnerabilities.

FOR YOUR OWN GOOD

FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK

“D
arling,” he said that night, as we snuggled in bed. I’d convinced him that I always slept in a thong and a tight little tank top—boys are so credulous, even century-old vampire boys—and he was certainly affected by my attire, but I hadn’t been able to get more than a kiss out of him in any of the nights we’d spent. He didn’t have noticeable fangs—they popped out when he was hunting or feeding, he told me, like a cat’s claws—and his tongue was very talented, and rather cold, too, which made me wonder how that tongue would feel if he went down on me. Of course, he’d probably be terrible at cunnilingus, with the virgin-ness, but he’d also probably be patient, and I suspected he’d be a fast learner. He said it was getting easier, spending time with me, which I took to mean he fantasized less about tearing my throat out and more about tearing my panties off, but he wouldn’t even go to second base.

“Yes, love?” I said back. We didn’t really have pet names for each other—vampires are too cool for that, I think, and I know
I
am—but the occasional “dearest” or “darling” or “love” slipped out. Not “lover” though. He hadn’t earned
that
yet.

“I can’t stay with you tomorrow night.”

I pushed myself up on my elbow and looked at his face, limned and made beautiful by moonlight through the window. “Why?”

He cleared his throat. “Ah… practicalities. I haven’t eaten in a week. I need to hunt.”

“Oooohhhh. I see.” I lay back down with him. “What’s on the menu?”

“Whatever we can find,” he said, with a laugh. “Bears, maybe. They’re all fat on berries and about to hibernate this time of year.”

“You tangle with bears?”

“It’s not much of a tangle, Bonnie. Don’t worry. We move fast enough, they’re dead before they realize what’s happening. Well, usually. Hermet likes to play with his food. He takes his time. Not that I’m a particular fan of bears, really—they’re fine, but not my favorite.”

“Right, you like deer.” I made a face of mock horror. “You eat
Bambi
.”

“I’m just another hunter,” he said, holding up his hands. “It’s good for them. Keeps their population down, so they don’t starve. Everyone’s happy. And being killed by me is probably less traumatic than being shot with a rifle or a bow and arrow. My kills are clean.”

“Hmm. You know, you could make the argument that humans could use a predator or two to keep
our
population down. I was reading an article online that said the world will be unrecognizable by 2050. Ten billion people on Earth. Meat will be a luxury. Everybody will be eating bugs because they’re easy to breed and high in protein.”

“People aren’t animals, Bonnie, to be culled by hunters.”

I disagreed with
that
—obviously we’re animals, what the hell else would we be, plants?—but I held my tongue.

“Besides, there aren’t many vampires. Maybe a few hundred of us worldwide. Even if we were
all
preying on humans, it wouldn’t make much difference to the human population.”

“Huh. Only a few hundred, really? Why so few?”

“We don’t make many more of ourselves. And why would we? It’s just competition for food, after all. We live forever, barring outside intervention, so there’s no pressure to bring a new generation into being. And even when we
do
decide to turn someone… the process is very dangerous. The success rate is hard to determine, but it’s surely less than a third. Argyle has done it several times, he’s quite good at it, but it’s easy for the, ah, victim? new prospect? to die of their wounds before the taint of immortality and bloodlust is passed on and takes hold. That’s
another
reason I don’t want to turn you, Bonnie my darling—what if I did it wrong? What if you died?”

Hmm. I hadn’t realized the odds were so bad, but it didn’t really deter me. “I’ll die eventually anyway, Edwin. Do you want to wait until I’m seventy and try to turn me on my deathbed? Elderly hag vampiress with her seventeen-year-old paramour.”

“Oh, well,” he murmured, “We don’t know if it will come to that… you’re so young, Bonnie…”

“Wait. You think I’m just a dumb kid, don’t you?”

“Not dumb,” he said. “Never that. But… well… you’re seventeen. I
look
seventeen, but I’m really much older. What if you tire of me?”

I laughed. “Edwin. I’m in this for the long haul. I’m in this
forever
. I’m pretty far from being a romantic, but you hit me between the eyes, you
captivate
me. You think I’ll ever meet someone else who overshadows you? Some mortal
boy
? This is eternal. This is hearts intertwined. This is soul mate stuff—and don’t give me any crap about you not having a soul. I know you have a soul. How else could you love me as purely and passionately as you do?” In truth, I don’t believe in souls, but he did, and the sentiment I was expressing was actually true, even if I had to couch it in slightly bullshit terms.

He took my hand, and kissed it. “Bonnie,” he whispered. “You are my everything. You are the answer to prayers I dared not make, forsaken as I must be by God. And yet, I’ve been blessed with you.”

A little too mushy for me. “So is this a Scullen family outing, then? A big hunt?”

He shook his head. “I’m going with Pleasance. She’s the only one I trust to… well… not bother me about you.”

“Oh? Your family doesn’t approve?” Shocker. One of them had sabotaged my truck, I figured.

“I wouldn’t go that far. They just worry about me. Especially now that we’re, ah, seeing each other publicly.”

Light dawned. “Oh, so if I vanish, the boyfriend is the first suspect. If you slip up and eat me, Harry will be all over you, and, what? You’ll all have to flee Lake Woebegotten?”

“That’s about the size of it. They like it here.”

“So you invite me over,” I said, “to a house full of vamps who don’t like me? Hmm.”

“Pleasance likes you.” Huh. Really? “Well, none of them even
know
you, but she’s disposed to like you. And my father and mother, too, are glad I’ve found someone, though they, ah…”

“Wish I was a nice Jewish girl? A nice Indian girl? A nice Irish girl? Oh, right, wait—a nice bloodsucking girl? Well, tell them I’m on board if they want to help me make the transition.”

He sighed. “The only one who’s, I would say, actually hostile, is Rosemarie, and even
she
wants me to be happy. They all do. They’re good people, Bonnie, and after you come with me to visit them, I’m sure they’ll see how wonderful you are, and come around.”

I hoped they’d find me so wonderful that one or all of them would insist on letting me join their undead club.

I went to sleep, while he held me. I woke up in the middle of the night, having to pee, and he was awake, watching me. I wasn’t even sure he
could
sleep—he was usually gone when I woke up, to make sure Harry wouldn’t spot him. I yawned. “You like what you see?”

“You’re a vision of loveliness. I shouldn’t say this, but, the first night after I met you… I followed you home. I came through your window and sat over there, by your desk, and I watched you sleep.”

I paused, seated on the edge of the bed. “Dude. Edwin. Stalker much?”

“I know. I… was trying to decide if I should drink from you. If I could stand to take just a little bit. Our venom acts a bit like rohypnol, it affects short-term memory, and I could have sipped you, made a bite in some… discreet place, perhaps your inner thigh, or under your armpit, the back of your neck where your hair would cover the marks—and tasted just a bit. You wouldn’t have remembered. Just a few strange dreams, perhaps. But I couldn’t trust myself to take just a taste, so I watched you, and then decided I had to leave town. You were too much of a temptation.”

“Okay, but still: if I didn’t like you back, Edwin, you’d be the obsessed villain in a psychological horror movie. Even
without
the whole vampire thing.”

“Then it’s lucky you do like me,” he said. “And what is love, after all, but a reciprocated obsession?”

Edwin drove me home from school—he’d taken to picking me up and driving me home, and while I missed Marmon, his sports car was a much sweeter ride. We lingered in the driveway, him loathe to leave, me loathe to let him go, our fingers entwined. “I really must,” he murmured. “Pleasance will be waiting for me.” He cocked his head. “Harry is coming.” He pulled his hand out of my grasp.

I shrugged. “It’s not like we’re half-naked in the back seat. This car doesn’t even
have
a back seat. And he knows I’m seeing you.”