I let myself out of the apartment, my heart racing with excitement as the door clicked shut. Eager to stretch my legs, I took the stairs instead of the elevator, marveling at all the sounds a sleeping building makes. Water shushed through pipes. Beds creaked as sleepers turned over. Refrigerators sighed open, yielding up their leftovers to nocturnal predators. I stepped into the empty lobby as though I was stepping onto a stage. I should have felt exposed; the front and back walls were glass, and anybody passing on the street could seeme. Instead I felt confident. Confident enough to walk out into the soft dark of sleeping Paris. I strode toward the door, and my gaze snagged on the bank of mailboxes, each with a keyed lock. Martine had told me to practice picking locks whenever I could, and in between grammar exercises and printmaking I’d been practicing with an old padlock until I could open it in seconds. Here was a new challenge: a whole wall of locks. I reached into my pocket; the picks were still there. It took me a long time to get the first mailbox open, but I wasn’t frustrated or nervous about the possibility of being caught. Instead, I focused on the tiny sounds each lock made as I worked it. The moment the pins lined up and the cylinder turned, I could hear it all click into place. When the little door swung open, I rode a sweet golden surge of confidence.
I moved on to the next one and opened it. Then I opened another one. I continued like that until every mailbox gaped at me. I reached into one and pulled out its contents, flipping through the ad flyers and magazines—nothing interesting—and stuffing them back into the nearest empty spot. I stared at my handiwork, restlessness itching under my skin. I felt powerful. So if I could do anything, I wondered, what would I do?
I pulled the front door open and stepped out into the night, which welcomed me with its shadows and mysteries and stories. The city’s heartbeat, strong and steady, thrummed through the pavement. I sniffed a watery mix of mud and old fish with notes of diesel—the Seine. Stronger aromas—vanilla, sugar, chocolate, and crushed grass overlaid with the metallic scent of iron—said the Eiffel Tower and theChamp de Mars. And underlying all the other scents, the faint sour odor of limestone—the bones of Paris. How had I never noticed all these smells before? They made a mural of bright aromas and dark, as clear and colorful as a painting and more enticing.
Then a sublime scent brushed my nose—malt, salt, and butter—and without hesitating or even thinking I turned and followed its path, my mouth watering. The smell pooled and concentrated just as I stumbled over something on the sidewalk. I looked down, annoyed, and saw our neighborhood unhoused guy, asleep with one arm flung out—that’s what I’d tripped over. He groaned and shifted, tucking the arm next to his chest, but he didn’t wake.
During the day, he walked the main streets of the neighborhood. “You wouldn’t have a euro or two to spare?” he’d ask as people passed. Dad had told me never to open my pocketbook on the street, so I tried to remember to keep a euro coin in my pocket in case I saw him. I felt bad when I gave him money—the odor of alcohol enveloping him told me he wouldn’t spend it on food—but I felt worse when I didn’t.
I bent and tucked a coin into his loosely cupped hand. His fingers curled around it automatically, but he didn’t wake. I moved on, my belly growling. I hoped the smell I was following led to a late-night café or a food truck, because I was starving. Did they do food trucks in Paris? If Dad hadn’t locked me up, I’d know. The scent was fading, though, so I reversed my steps until I found it again. It was definitely near where the unhoused man was sleeping. It filled the street like the aroma of roasting meat fills a house. But I saw nothing that could be the source of the delicious odor—no café, nolighted kitchen window where an insomniac whiled away the restless night with cooking. There was only the empty street and the sleeping man. The man who, I suddenly realized, smelled so very…edible.
I stared hungrily at his vulnerable throat. His stained beard. His scabbed and crusted face. I wanted to fling myself on him, tear his neck open with my teeth, and slurp up his warm blood as it pumped out of his body. But I hesitated. If I wanted to feed, I’d have to touch him. I’d have to put my mouth onto his filthy skin. The thought repulsed me, yet I was so ravenous I was drooling. My hunger warred with pity and disgust. I knew I shouldn’t attack him. I knew how wrong it was. But I was famished. I dropped to my knees next to him. As I reached out to push his beard aside, I heard the soft squish of sneakers on a sidewalk not all that far away. I smelled cigarette smoke, and in the time it took me to wonder whether the late-night smoker would turn down this street and see me crouched over a defenseless man and what they would do if they did, my vision shifted: Outlines softened, the night got darker, and I had to concentrate to see things that’d been clear moments ago. My sense of smell changed, too, coarsening and retreating so that all I could now smell was a boozy outhouse odor, strong enough to make me cover my nose and back away. The marvelous, delicious food odor was completely gone.
I stared at the sleeping man. I’d looked at him and thoughtfood. I’d imagined the way his bright blood would spray out, warm and delicious, from his neck when I tore it open. I’d felt powerful and ruthless. How could I have thought somethingso horrible, so inhuman, especially after what had happened to me and Noor? I backed away, shaking.
“Coward,” said a voice directly behind me. I yelped in surprise and whirled, knowing even before I saw the voice’s owner who it was.
“What are you doing here, Le Bec?” I whispered. I tried to stand tall and take up space. I didn’t want him to know how terrified I was. He could probably smell it on me, though.
He barked a laugh. “I have been waiting for you to come out into the night. To join me.”
“No.” I shook my head, trying to get rid of the image of him lurking every night in the shadows on my street.
He scoffed. “I made you. Do you think I cannot smell your hunger?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice was scratchy and ragged. I wondered where that delicious feeling of power had gone. I cursed myself for walking out into the nighttime city like it was my backyard, for not even considering the danger that I knew was here. I’d felt so powerful, though—invulnerable. But that feeling was gone now, and I just felt insubstantial and human.
“I. Made. You.” He spoke deliberately slowly, and there was an edge of contempt in his voice. “I bit you; I drank your blood; I made you a vampire.”
“I’m not a vampire.” This much I knew. Madame Dupuy checked every day.
“You are. I smell it on you. Your senses are heightened. You have lost your fear. You feel powerful. Predatory. You long for blood.” Shame burned over me. It was true; Ihadfeltlike that. I wouldn’t have left our apartment if I hadn’t. Had Madame Dupuy had been wrong about the transfusion? Had it not kept me human? I felt human enough now—scared and vulnerable and trying not to relive Le Bec’s attack. What if he bit me again? What if this time he killed me? He circled me, sniffing. I turned with him, keeping my eyes on him, watching every movement, every shift of expression. “Do you know what else I smell?” He breathed me in like I was perfume. I flinched. “Ambition. You want to be important.”
“Everyone wants to be important.” I needed to keep him talking. Every minute he spent yapping about vampires was another minute for me to figure out how to save myself.
He laughed. “Iwas already important. I created beauty from nothing. But to change someone into a dangerous and elemental creature—that is real art.”
“That’s not art; that’s assault. You ‘change’ people without their consent—and sometimes you just plain kill them. You’ve left a body trail across Paris.”
He grinned. He was proud that he was a predator. “Those lives were not important.”
“You don’t get to make that decision.” I slid one foot back half a step, moving slowly, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“Oh, but I do. My power gives me the right.” He stared down at the unhoused man, still asleep. “Do you thinkheshould decide? He’s barely human.”
“Yes, he should. You aren’t the arbiter of who’s human enough. Nobody is. Nobody should violate someone else’s autonomy.”
“And yet it is done all the time, with laws, with prisons, with schools.”
I relaxed a little. He wanted to argue with me, and that put him in my world. “You’re going off topic. Let’s reestablish the parameters of the discussion.”
He sighed dramatically. “Let us not. I do not care about your parameters. There is a meal in front of us. Join me.”
“I don’t want to be like you.” I edged back a little more.
“Of course you do. You want power, self-assurance. You want to punish your enemies. You can do that and more. You can be a goddess.” He poked the sleeping man with his boot, hard. The man grunted and rolled over. “Go on—bite him. Feed on him. He is food; he has no other value.”
I shook my head. “He’s a human being.”
