Sunshine

“But together,” he continued, “we may have a chance. It is not a good chance, but it is a chance. I do not like it. You cannot like it. I do not understand what it is that you do, and have done. I am not sure we will be able to work together, even if we attempt it. Even if we are each other’s only chance.” He was sitting in the darkness beyond the moonlight, and I could not see his face. I could—a little—see movement as he spoke; vampires also speak by moving their mouths. But this conversation was a little too like talking to a figment of your own imagination. Your darkest, spookiest, most bottom-of-your-unconscious-where-the-monsters-lurk imagination. Even the shadow in the chair was half-imaginary.

No it wasn’t. There’s really no mistaking the presence of a vampire in the room.

“Will you help me?” he said. It is very peculiar being asked a life-or-death question in a tone of voice that has no tone in it. Emotionally speaking the response feels like it ought to be something like passing the salt or closing the door.

“Oh,” I said intelligently. “Ah—er. Well. Yes. Certainly. Since you put it so persuasively.”

There was a pause, and then there was a brief noise that, mercifully also briefly, unhinged my spine. He had laughed.

“Forgive my persuasiveness,” he said. “I would spare you if I could. I do not wish this any more than you do.”

“No,” I said thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you do.” If I’d been honest I suppose what I’d really wanted him to do was say, “Oh don’t worry about it. This is vampire business and I’ll take care of it.” Dream on. “So,” I said. I didn’t want to know, but I guessed I should make an effort. “What do we do now?”

“We start,” he said, and paused. I recognized this as the middle of an unfinished sentence, and not one of his cryptic pronouncements, and waited. Then there was a funny breathing noise that I translated provisionally as a sigh. Vampires don’t breathe right, why should they sigh right? But maybe it means vampires can feel frustration. Noted. “We start by my trying to discover what assistance I can give you.”

Somehow this didn’t sound like the usual movie-adventure sort of “I’ll keep you covered while you reload” assistance. “What do you mean?”

“We must face Bo at night. Your abilities would not get us past the guards that protect his days.”

I didn’t even consider asking what those guards might be.

“Humans are at great disadvantage at night. I think I may be able to grant you certain dispensations.”

Dispensations. I liked that. Vampire as fairy godmother. Or godfather. Pity he couldn’t dispense me from getting killed. “You mean like being able to see in the dark or something.”

“Yes. I mean exactly that.”

“Oh.” If I could see in the dark I would never again have to trip over the threshold of the bathroom door on the way to have a pee at midnight. If I lived long enough to need to.

“I will have to touch you,” he said.

Okay, I told myself. He’s not going to forget himself and eat me because he comes a few feet closer. I thought of the second night in the ballroom: Sit a little distance from the corner—yes, nearer me. Remember that three feet more or less makes no difference to me: you might as well.

And he’d carried me something like forty-five miles. And only about the first forty-two of them had been in daylight.

And somehow pointing out that I now was in bed and wearing nothing but a nightgown and would like to get up and put some clothes on first, please, was worse than not mentioning my inappropriate-for-receiving-visitors state of undress. So I didn’t mention it.

“Okay,” I said.

That fluid, inhuman motion again, as he stood up and stepped toward me. I’d forgotten that too—forgotten how strange it is. How ominous. Too fluid for anything human. For anything alive.

He sat down near me on the bed. The bed dipped, as if from ordinary human weight. I pulled my feet up and turned toward him, but I did it carelessly, more conscious of him than of anything else— which is to say, more carelessly than I had learned to move over the last two months, carelessly so that the gash on my breast didn’t just seep a little, but cracked open along its full length, as if it were being cut into me for the first time. I couldn’t help it: it hurt: I gave a little gasp.

And he hissed. It was a terrifying noise, and I had slammed myself back into the pillows and headboard before I had a chance to think anything at all, to think that I couldn’t get away from him even if I wanted to, to think that he had declared us allies. To think that there might be any other reason for a sound like that one but that he was a vampire and I was alive and streaming with fresh blood.

“Stop,” he said in what passed for his normal voice. “I offer you no harm. Tell me about the blood on your breast.”

He didn’t linger on the word “blood.” I muttered, “It won’t heal. It’s been like this for two months.”