How it Works

“Um, the curriculum?” The word sounded even more out of place in the scenario than “dead skin cells” had. “Meditation, martial arts, a hundred years or so of intensive interpersonal training.”

“No, I mean, I got that. But how does this work?” She was looking at, touching, and licking the skin of my belly. “How does that equal this?”

“It just does. That’s—that’s how it works. Mind and body becoming one. Even just saying that one is ‘that’ and the other is ‘this’ is contradictory.” The explanation, at least, was too automatic, too ingrained, to feel dissonant to me, any more than saying my own name might have been.

“So when I touch you here—” the spot she chose brought the generalized shivering and tingling she’d been effecting to a concentrated center of intensity. I let out an involuntary gasp and bit my lip. “—I’m really touching your mind.”

I’d never thought of it that way, but it worked for me. “Sure,” I answered, though it was becoming harder to articulate intelligible syllables as her fingers continued caressing and massaging my, um, mind. Her attitude was oddly clinical while she did, as if she were conducting an experiment, which actually aroused me further.

“And yeah, your body changes, but your mind just keeps developing. You’ve been you for—god, longer than I can imagine. And that’s inscribed on your skin, no matter how many layers you’ve gone through, no matter how flawless your complexion is. Your body reflects your mind. I guess you’d say it is your mind. And that I’m fucking your mind right now?”

My breathing had accelerated, and I had no way to voice agreement with her. It would have to wait a few minutes. Damn, but had she ever been so good before? It was hard to say. Anything was hard to say. Hearing her describe me in words I’d never thought to use only made the sensations stronger, more stimulating. I’ve had partners who felt that too much talk during sex spoiled the mood, unless it consisted of interjections and exclamations like Oh, yeah, and Right there!, but I find language the sexiest means of sexual communication. When finally her beautiful fingers had completed their research project and I was coming down from a most exquisite high, she answered her own speculation. “Good. That means we’re even.”

She neither rolled over nor pulled me in closer. She just moved her hand to a more chaste spot on my shoulder, and in a matter of minutes her breath had taken on the regular rhythm of sleep. Before, I had thought I was too tired to be a good lover, and now I was kept awake by a sense of awe at Jeanine’s genius. Of course, an almost literal mindfuck was not equivalent to the figurative mindfuck I had dealt her earlier in the evening. On that level, we were certainly not even, at least not without the promised pancakes and mimosas. But as far as living lessons were concerned, I was impressed. For this woman, I would take a stake in the heart every night of the week.

The Same Skin

It was nearly three in the morning, and I was tired enough just to collapse. I undressed without turning on the light, slipped between the covers, and was momentarily surprised to find Jeanine already there. I had actually forgotten about her and about leaving my drama with her behind in pursuit of non-Jeanine-related drama a couple of hours ago. I had so thoroughly expected her to be gone by now that when I pulled the sheets apart and felt her warm body roll toward me, I had to remember for a second who it might be. Her shape and her feel were unmistakable, though.

“You’re still here,” I said softly.

“Mm. And you’re back.” She wrapped her arm around me and coiled a leg around one of mine. This was not the distraught girlfriend I had abandoned. I got the feeling I wouldn’t have to butter her up, but it still wouldn’t hurt. I found her waist with my hand and felt the outline of her ribs underneath her t-shirt.

“Yeah. I’m sorry about before. You know that, right? I’m gonna make it up to you tomorrow with a huge brunch and—ooh, how about mimosas? And I can tell you what happened tonight.”

“You can make it up to me right now.” Her hand had found my face, and she was running her fingers down from my forehead to my throat. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I could see her studying my features in a way I wasn’t used to from her.

“I can,” I agreed. Ordinarily, I hate making love when I’m sleepy, but I knew this was Jeanine’s time. I also knew that either my guilt about before or my confusion about her change of temperament would keep my energy up. “What did you do while I was gone?”

“Went through your stuff. Books, journals, that album—”

“My genealogy?”

“Must’ve been. I got to know you while you were out.” And she was getting to know me now. Her hands, now tracing determined paths in every direction along my unclothed body, were touching not in order to pleasure me but to learn me. “I couldn’t wait for you to come back.”

“So you’re not mad anymore?”

“Oh, of course I am. I stayed because I wanted to feel you.” I began to move my own fingers along her sensitive areas, to reciprocate, but she said, “No. I want to feel you.” She pulled my hands away from her body and lifted them above my head. Gently, she held my fingers with one hand while the other resumed its exploration. “I want to touch your skin and its five hundred years.”

Knowing it would compromise the moment but not knowing what else to say, I pointed out, “Well, you know, it’s not the same skin I had…”

“Oh, I know. Dead skin cells slough off, get replaced, I know. Mine’s not the same I always had either. But you know what I mean. It’s still you.” Her lips had begun to assist her hands, and I lost all reason to complain. “How does it work?” she paused to ask.

I was not alone, however. Dennis and Moshe sat on a bench opposite the art history building, watching me brush the dirty snow off of my pants and replace the grate with a few token twists on the screws.

“We were heading toward Main St, but then he just stopped,” Dennis said. “A few minutes ago, he stopped in his tracks, turned around, and came here.”

“I guess it’s cuz I found this.” I held up the charm. “But I didn’t use it. It hasn’t even been pulsing on its own.”

“You sure it works the way you think it does?”

“I wonder.”

Just then, the charm began its rhythmic throbbing. Although it was nowhere near my wrist or my heart, I recognized immediately that it was nonetheless in sync with my pulse. Moshe began to speak:

“Tomorrow night. Sunset. The diner in Applewood. Bring that.” He nodded at the charm. Then he closed his eyes and slumped down in the bench, unconscious. The charm, too, lay still.

Dennis and I looked at each other. “What was that all about?” I asked rhetorically.

“Patrick,” Dennis said.

“It’s about Patrick?” I was confused.

“Oh, I don’t know. But we haven’t found him yet.”

Previously, he seemed devoted. Now, with so many other things going on, it began to feel more like clinginess. He would need to get over this if he wanted to make any progress with me. Still, I didn’t want to minimize his concern. “He left this behind where I could find it. That suggests he knows what he’s doing—or he thinks he does. I bet we’ll get answers tomorrow night.”

“About Patrick.”

“About Patrick, about these things, about him,” meaning Moshe. I pushed at the vampire’s shoulder. There was no response. I shook him more forcefully, but still there was no movement.

“Check if he’s breathing,” Dennis suggested.

I could barely keep from snorting, in the humiliating laugh sort of way, not the holding in a sneeze way. “He’s not breathing.”

Dennis’s eyes became wide, and he said, “He’s not?” I stopped prodding Moe and looked Dennis in the eyes until his face turned red and he said, “I’m glad you were the only one here to hear that. How can you tell if he’s dead then?”

“He’d already be decomposing. It happens real fast with these guys. In an instant, if they’re completely depleted. Hey, do you have room in your house for him?” Dennis and Patrick don’t have a huge home, but they do have one more bedroom than I have.

“I guess,” he agreed. He didn’t sound very happy about it, though. Getting Moshe there wasn’t fun—it would have been much easier just to drag him downstairs and let him wake up in the tunnels—but so much was at stake now that we needed to keep him nearby. Eventually, we did manage to schlep his unconscious body all the way over. I left him in Dennis’s care and headed home.

Past Life Reflection

Her lips relaxed into a very subtle smile and her eyes narrowed. It was an expression of confirmation. “From what I’ve seen and heard, I wonder if maybe I trusted too much.”

“How are you here?”

“I never said you’d be alone.” Her Caribbean accent used to be so pronounced that I learned to use words with her that I’d understand when she spoke them back to me; now, it was barely present. In fact, her phrasing had taken on an almost Californian quality. Again I thought of Medusa.

“You’ve been here the whole time?”

“Some.”

“But how? The charm? Is this voodoo?”

She chuckled in the way grandmothers do, patiently, because the child only needs to learn. I chuckle that way sometimes. “It is the godparent of Voudou, the cousin of what you call your energies. I am here on earth but not where you are.”

Remembering against this bizarre turn that there was someplace else I needed to be, I decided that a fuller comprehension of the situation could be postponed. “I don’t get it, but Bella, I need to go. Can you come?”

“Your needs are urgent, I can see, and I can’t stay long myself. This is my first time trying this. You are registered with Chris, no?”

“Chris McGuire? Yeah, of course.”

“Good, then I will find you soon.”

Her image began to flicker again and, finally, to fade. When I became aware that I was still staring at the air where she had been, thinking about the Cheshire Cat, I started backtracking through the series of hallways to where I’d last left Dennis and Moshe. There was no time to wonder how she was still around, let alone how she'd appeared before me. If what had just happened was real, if I had not imagined it, she would be finding my contact information through Chris McGuire, the living Yellow Pages of the amortal community, and coming here soon. I could ask her then.

I reached the end of the long corridor under the quad but didn’t know where to go next. I was probably only a few minutes behind them, but a wrong turn could cost me more.

“Dennis!” I called. No answer. I checked my cell phone signal. It was there but very, very faint. I speed-dialed Dennis and wasn’t surprised that he didn’t pick up. The charm was in my pocket, but I couldn’t try summoning Moshe with it: if it broke the spell someone else had on him, it would defeat the purpose of letting him lead us there. I was wasting more time in my indecision than I might be with a wrong choice; if they were going to Applewood, as I suspected, then they’d have to surface eventually. I turned down the left fork to head toward the nearest access point.

An air vent runs along the ceiling here. It opens out onto a patch of foliage, alongside the art history building, containing a tree and some seasonally rotated fauna. In the winter, it contains decorative cabbage. A very observant person might notice that there is a space near the wall where air blows upward, sort of like a fan amid the cabbages. It is possible to enter the air vent only a few feet down from where it turns upward and opens into the planter. I took a moment to listen for the sound of anyone passing by before climbing through the vent, lest anyone catch a glimpse of a rather undignified assistant professor crawling out of the ground. Hearing nothing but the wind, I unscrewed the loosely fastened grate and pulled myself up.

Oh Yeah, That Thing

“Um, can you do it? Follow Moshe? I need to check on something. Dennis nodded and began speedwalking to keep from losing the vampire, who was about to turn a corner. “I’ll try to catch up. Don’t let him talk to you,” I called after him.

I darted in the other direction. Each time I neared a light, the image would flicker out and reappear under the next one, but it seemed to be growing more and more substantial, more fully there, with each reemergence. By the time I got to the end of the main corridor, it was definitely resembling a dark-complexioned woman. I turned in each direction to see where she would lead me next, and I found myself navigating through the passages I’d been one of the few to explore in recent months, until I arrived at Trudy’s last interim abode, the one she’d taken up residence in after her first encounter with Moshe and before they’d become friendly. The one where the coral charm was supposed to be stored over winter vacation.

I looked around, but my ghost was nowhere to be seen. Using a shelf as a ladder, I reached my arm up into the ceiling cubby and searched by touch. At first, I only felt the rough plywood panels stretched between rafters, coated with a light layer of dust and a sprinkling of mouse droppings. I climbed up one more shelf, and immediately felt my fingertips bump against something more solid. I grasped it, jumped to the floor, and felt some relief to see that it was, indeed, the coral charm.

Then I realized that relief was not the appropriate emotion. Not right at all. Where the hell was Patrick?

“Thank you!” I said out loud, hoping there was someone listening who in fact deserved my thanks. “Wherever—whoever—you are, this is what you wanted me to find, right?”

“You said you’d take care of it.” The voice was loud, clear, and coming from just behind my shoulder. It nearly made me jump out of my skin. I spun around to face a pair of eyes that had once read mine regularly with the intensity of a seer, now as corporeal as they had been when last I accepted their recognition of responsibility. I was momentarily reminded of Medusa. But this was not Medusa.

“Bella,” I whispered.

That Thing

Trudy’s room was unoccupied when we arrived, leaving us to discuss whether to stay and see if the others returned or to travel to Applewood in case they were looking for clues or—it was Friday, after all—to head to the Crypt. Within a few minutes, though, we did that thing where one person says, “Do you hear that?” and the conversation stops, both people listen, and the other person says, “It’s probably the wind/the house settling/the rats/etc.,” but then it sounds louder and the two people, now in agreement, decide to investigate. It turned out to be nothing mysterious or shocking or even, really, intentionally hidden from view. It was Trudy’s police radio, significant merely for being there. It ruled out Applewood and possibly the Crypt. Dennis and I did that other thing where you exchange worried looks.

Moshe appeared in the door.

“Oh! I’m glad you showed,” I said. “I need to find Patrick. Do you know where he is?”

He said nothing at all. He looked at me and then at Dennis. Then he turned and started walking out again.

I followed him out to the hall, calling, “Moshe! I’m serious. This isn’t a good time for grudges. Come back.”

“Maybe we’re supposed to follow him?” Dennis offered.

“Oh, shit. I think he’s under again. Yeah, we’d better.” We started trailing him down a main artery that, I knew, ran underneath the quad the long way.

There were lights on at intervals—this hall actually received occasional traffic of the buildings-and-grounds sort—as far apart as they could be and still prevent people from bumping into walls. The dimness is hard on the eyes; you would have to squint to see your own feet. We were approaching the next light, yellow from the layers of dust accumulating on the bulb, about halfway down the corridor, when I thought I saw someone standing underneath it. The figure was blurry and seemed to flicker in and out of the beam. I glanced over at Dennis, but he didn’t seem to notice it.

As we came nearer, it didn’t come any more into focus, even appearing to fade. When finally we were within feet of the light, I felt a strong but concentrated disruption in the air around me. It wasn’t a draft, exactly, but a patch of atmosphere that had taken on a vibration out of sync with the air around it. For a moment it pressed against my chest, as if to prevent me from moving forward, and the next moment it expanded, lost density, and coiled its way between my molecules and out the other side. When I stumbled back a couple of paces, Dennis finally noticed; Moshe, of course, continued on his oblivious path. I turned to face the way we’d come and saw, some distance down the corridor, the same dark image barely visible in the last lamp’s light.

“You all right?” asked Dennis. He was following my gaze back down the hall, apparently not seeing the shadowy form.

Pit Stop

The boys rent half of a duplex in an older part of town. Their apartment was dark, not unexpectedly since it was nearly midnight, but I knocked anyway. I heard the slightest movement behind the door, the squeaking of old hardwood. There was a pause in time between the squeak and the voice about the length of a heavy breath. “Patrick’s not home.”

“Dennis, are you OK? Do you know where he is?” I answered through the closed door.

“I… no. I don’t know.”

“Dennis, can I come in?” When he hadn’t opened the door at first, I figured I’d caught him at an inconvenient time and he needed to throw on a bathrobe or something, so I wasn’t surprised when a lengthy moment intervened before the bolt and chain locks disengaged and the door creaked open a small space. But that would not explain why there was no sound of motion in the meantime, nor the fact that he appeared fully clothed and groomed when he came into view.

“I don’t know where he is,” he repeated.

“I understand. I wanted to make sure you’re OK, too.”

“Me? Why? Um, I’m fine,” but his forehead and the muscles around his reddened eyes looked tense.

“If you say so. Mostly I meant alive, and you’re that, at least.” I smiled in that way you do when you’re trying to inspire someone else to reciprocate. “Uh… you are, right?” Of course, the question turned the original statement from a light joke to morbid reality. Fortunately, it went somewhat over his head.

“Huh?”

“Dennis. Did you ever meet Richard?”

His mind was apparently someplace else, since this was plainly not the direction he expected me to go. “I, uh, don’t think so. Museum guy, right?”

“Right. So consider this a public service announcement. He’s become a vampire sometime in the past couple of weeks. And he’s looking for that coral charm Patrick’s been hanging onto. He got mine.”

“Vampire? But how? I thought he was supposed to have a—whaddyacallit—transitive soul? Wouldn’t it be too sticky for that?”

Well, at least the kid could focus. Something was bothering him but apparently he can sublimate with the best of us. “Actually, it’s cuz he’s sticky that he must have transformed completely right away. No grace period. His energy wasn’t gonna deplete in small portions, so it’s probably found a new body already. Whoever he is now, he doesn’t even remember Richard’s past lives.”

“Oh. So he’s a dangerous vampire.”

“Which is why I came by. You think Patrick’s with the other, uh, non-dangerous vampires?”

Dennis looked like he’d rather talk about the dangerous one. “I don’t… I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since….”

Not too hard to follow this train now. “Saturday?”

It was easier for me to say it than to wait for him to try, but as soon as I did, the same tiny muscles that had briefly relaxed were tightening again, between his eyebrows and around his mouth, and his handsome, shy-boy visage was about to become less so. “He was home Saturday night, but then he went back again on Sunday.” As if to defend him, he added, “He’s been texting.”

“Texting what, hon?”

He shrugged and dug out his phone. I scrolled through the saved messages. “‘Miss U.’ ‘Thnkng abt U.’ ‘Out in Aplwd.’ ‘Wnt B home 2nite.’”

I handed it back to him. “You haven’t gone to Trudy’s?”

He shrugged again.

“You don’t want to be, like, stalker boy, huh?”

He lifted his eyebrows and grunted. I think it was a confirmation.

“And you figure if he wanted you there, he’d’ve said so. And you know he’s OK, so…. Hey, can I see that again?” This time I took note: no messages in the past twenty-four hours. “Dennis, sweetie, I gotta go. You wanna come with?”

A look of hopefulness appeared but then he said, “No, I, uh, have a lot of work I should do.”

“Please? I could use your company. Maybe your help, too.” It wasn’t totally untrue, but I suspected it applied to him at least as much as it did to me.