I hadn’t shut the door to Eli’s bedroom. If the sister had returned home, she would discover me in moments. I found it unlikely Eli himself would be back so soon.
I focused on the living room. Vampiric hearing is sharp, but it requires intentional focus. Otherwise, it’s merely a backgroundhum, easily ignored—an adaptive advantage, given that hearing everything at full volume at all times would be maddening.
I heard footsteps padding through the living room.
They froze.
Then, a soft gasp.
The sister. No doubt she had seen the back door—splintered and ajar.
She must have realized she was likely alone in the house with an intruder.
I waited, utterly motionless, not bothering to breathe, and listened for her reaction.
If she was foolish, she might search the house. Or call the police.
And if she, like her brother, was immune to my power… she would be able to describe me. She would be able to tell her brother. And if he was more dangerous than he seemed, that meant trouble for me.
However, I doubted I would kill her, even if it came down to that. She was almost certainly innocent, and as a rule, I didn’t take innocent lives. Still, she was a liability.
If she was wise, however—
Footsteps again. Then the creak of the front door. Then more footsteps—faster and further away, slapping against the sidewalk as she ran.
Well, then. She had made the smart decision.
I relaxed.
With her out of the house, it was easy to leave. I exited through the rear door, hopped the fence, and made my escape.
I was burning with curiosity. I made it to my car a few blocks down—a slate-gray Mercedes sedan, less than a year old and purchased outright in cash. No paperwork. No questions. Naturally, I had ensured that the man who sold it to me wouldn’t be able to describe me in any detail—but it pays to be careful.
Usually.
Breaking into Eli’s home had been a mistake. He would know someone had been there. But he lived in Los Angeles. Surely, break-ins weren’t uncommon.
There was no reason for him to believe it had been me.
I drove to my home in West Hollywood.
My three-story, five-bedroom house was a sprawling, ultra-modern affair, with walls more glass than anything else. It was only six blocks from Sunset Boulevard, but the street itself was quiet. After Eli’s suburban coziness, it seemed even larger and emptier than before.
Odd.
I settled on my sofa, legs curled underneath me, and opened the notebook.
It wasn’t a ledger.
Instead, it was a journal.
I flipped to the latest entry, eager to finally learn Eli’s secrets. The words he had written stopped me cold:
I dreamed of him again. It was the same dream as always. His eyes, so blue that they always seem lit from within, locked with mine. And the way he touches me, the way he forces his name from my lips, over and over again, has left me feeling even more alone and empty than before. I know he can’t possibly exist, but I still can’t help but grieve his absence. I don’t even mind the pain I feel upon waking. If it’s the price I must pay, I will welcome it. I never want the dream to end.
My lips parted and my eyes widened. Something clenched tight in my chest, and I couldn’t look away from the words Eli had scrawled on the page.
I’m waking back up into a nightmare. What am I even still doing here? Why can’t I seem to breathe properly anymore? Why does it feel like I’m always waiting for something to change? Like I keep expecting something irrevocable tohappen, some sort of tectonic shift, so that my life can finally begin?
