She answered slowly. “That’s a good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others—the vast majority of our kind who are quite content with our lot—they, too, wonder at how we live. But you see, just because we’ve been… dealt a certain hand… it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose to rise above—to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can.”
I lay still, feeling kind of awed. She was a better person than I would ever be.
“Did you fall asleep?” she murmured almost silently after a few minutes.
“No.”
“Is that all you were curious about?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not quite.”
“What else do you want to know?”
“Why can you read minds—why only you? And Archie, seeing the future and everything… why does that happen?”
I felt her shrug under my arm. “We don’t really know. Carine has a theory… she believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified—like our minds, and our senses. She thinks that I must have already been very sensitive to the thoughts of those around me. And that Archie had some precognition, wherever he was.”
“What did she bring into the next life, and the others?”
“Carine brought her compassion. Earnest brought his ability to love passionately. Eleanor brought her strength, Royal his… tenacity. Or you could call it pigheadedness,” she chuckled. “Jessamine is very interesting. She was quite charismatic in her first life, able to influence those around her to see things her way. Now she is able to manipulate the emotions of those near her—calm down a room of angry people, for example, or excite a lethargic crowd, conversely. It’s a very subtle gift.”
I considered the impossibilities she described, trying to take it in. She waited patiently while I thought.
“So where did it all start? I mean, Carine changed you, and then someone must have changed her, and so on.…”
“Well, where did you come from? Evolution? Creation? Couldn’t we have evolved in the same way as other species, predator and prey? Or, if you don’t believe that all this world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is it so hard to believe that the same force that created the delicate angelfish with the shark, the baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our kinds together?”
“Let me get this straight—I’m the baby seal, right?”
“Correct.” She laughed, and her fingers brushed across my lips. “Aren’t you tired? It’s been a rather long day.”
“I just have a few million more questions.”
“We have tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.…”
A feeling of euphoria, of pure bliss, filled up my chest until I thought I might explode. I couldn’t imagine there was a drug addict in the world who wouldn’t trade his favorite fix for this feeling.
It was a minute before I could talk again. “Are you sure you won’t vanish in the morning? You are mythical, after all.”
“I won’t leave you,” she promised solemnly, and that same feeling, even stronger than before, washed through me.
When I could speak, I said, “One more, then, tonight.…” And then the blood rushed up my neck. The darkness was no help. I was sure she could feel the heat.
“What is it?”
“Um, nope, forget it. I changed my mind.”
“Beau, you can ask me anything.”
I didn’t speak, and she groaned.
“I keep thinking it will get less frustrating, not hearing your thoughts. But it just gets worse and worse.”
“It’s bad enough that you eavesdrop on my sleep-talking,” I muttered.
“Please tell me?” she murmured, her velvet voice taking on that mesmerizing intensity that I never could resist.
I tried. I shook my head.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume it’s something much worse than it is,” she threatened.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said, then locked my teeth.
“Please?” Again in that hypnotic voice.
I sighed. “You won’t get… offended?”
“Of course not.”
I took a deep breath. “Well… so, obviously, I don’t know a lot that’s true about vampires”—the word slipped out accidentally, I was just thinking so hard about how to ask my question, and then I realized what I’d said and I froze.
“Yes?”
She sounded normal, like the word didn’t mean anything.
I exhaled in relief.
“Okay, I mean, I just know the things you’ve told me, and it seems like we’re pretty… different. Physically. You look human—only better—but you don’t eat or sleep, you know. You don’t need the same things.”
“Debatable on some levels, but there are definitely truths in what you’re saying. What’s your question?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Ask me.”
I blurted it all out in a rush. “So I’m just an ordinary human guy, and you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I am just… overwhelmed by you, and a part of that, naturally, is that I’m insanely attracted to you, which I’m sure you can’t have helped but notice, what with your being, like, super aware of my circulatory system, but what I don’t know is, if it’s like that for you. Or is it like sleeping and eating, which you don’t need and I do—though I don’t want them nearly as much as I want you? You said that Eleanor and Royal go off and live like a married couple, but does that even mean the same thing for vampires? And this question is totally offside, completely not first date appropriate, and I’m sorry and you don’t have to answer.”