It takes me the better part of the afternoon to finish unpacking my things, and when I’m done, it’s nearly dinner time. Fortunately, I’m prepared with some frozen butter chicken from the Food Lion. It’s not exactly the sambar I used to get from the south Indian takeout place by my apartment, but it still fills my kitchen with the earthy, fragrant scent of coriander and turmeric. I dump it in one of the nice ceramic bowls that were stacked in the cupboard, pour myself a glass of Riesling, and go out on the patio to eat.
The house, like all the houses in the subdivision, juts right up against the lake, with the big wooden patio narrowing to a short pier that stretches over the water. I walk down to the edge and sit there, my feet dangling off the side so the cold, steely water splashes around my ankles as I eat. It’s golden hour, the sun just starting to sink into the treeline, and the lake looks like something off a postcard. I can almost pictureVisit Scenic North Carolina!hanging above the golden-glimmering waterline in the same cheery red font that was on the Verity Hollow welcome sign. On the other side of the lake is a wild tangle of trees and overgrowth that suggests we’re more isolated than we are.
Because I may be in the middle of nowhere, but my house isn’t exactly isolated. There are mirrored piers on either side of me; the one to the left, the one that belongs to the Jenkins family, is only about fifty feet away. There’s a little wooden boat tied to the pier, and it bobs on the water and clacks against the post, soft and rhythmic. Didn’t Oliver say something about wanting to be out on his boat? I can’t imagine letting a ten-year-old row around on the lake by himself.
The thought gives me a tightness in my chest, remembering how his mom talked about him.You don’t have to do that. He can hear just fine.
I tell myself it’s none of my business. He’s not my kid. The idea of having kids at all actually fills me with a vague sense of existential terror. All that responsibility on your shoulders, to make sure they turn out decent.
I put the thought of kids out of my mind and focus on the lake, the golden sunlight, the pretty scenery. Still, though, as I finish my meal and the wind picks up, blowing through the uninviting thicket of pine trees on the opposite side of the lake, the boat bangs harder against the pier, and a tight, chilly uneasiness creeps over my skin.
2
THEO
There’s someone new in Veritas.
Well, not Veritas anymore. I still think of it that way, even though it’s been twenty years since that shithole town dried up for good. It didn’t take much. That transcendent blood-soaked killing spree in ’65, after I revived for the first time, and then three smaller ones over the next four decades. Four times the killing moon called me across the lake, and each time, Veritas got a little bit smaller. It wasn’t just because I was killing off the population, either. It was the fear I sowed, and it grew like the forest, choking out any humans I left alive. More houses emptied. Old Frank’s grocery store boarded up. Then the post office closed, sometime after the turn of the millennium, and everything went quiet.
Veritas was finally dead. I was free.
That freedom has lasted for seventeen years, just me and the woods and my cabin. When hikers come through, I kill them, and that’s enough to sustain me. I don’t even have to die, like I did whenever the killing moon called me into Veritas. Small kills, simple kills. They’re enough.
Even though the houses have come back.
I watch them being built through the trees. They’re going up one by one, even though they all look the same: big, glittering houses with walls of windows like eyes that look out at the lake. I realized quickly enough that it’s not a town. Just a single row of houses, so unlike any of the houses I’m used to seeing this high up in the mountains. Vacation homes.
I can sense the humans moving around them, though. I can sense their comings and goings, all their unique, human scents on the wind. I’ve mostly been able to ignore them. They’re strangers, and they aren’t trespassers, since they all stay on their side of the lake. Most importantly, they aren’t Veritas, and it was Veritas that killed me. It was Veritas that killed my mother.
It’s a particular scent that alerts me to the newcomer. I’m making my rounds along the edge of my territory, looking for signs of hikers or campers or other would-be explorers—anyone I might need to watch out for over the next few days. I don’t find anything, but when I make my way toward the eastern side of the lake, the wind gusts, and it brings a scent like a rose garden. Sweet and honeyed, with an underlying storminess like freshly fallen rain.
I stop, sniffing the air, and turn toward the lake. I’m still safely hidden in the woods, but I can see glimmers of the water through the trees.
The wind gusts against, bringing another wash of that oddly appealing scent. This second time, I sense the humanity within it. Someone new is out on the lakeshore, over in the place that’s no longer Veritas.
Although I shouldn’t—it’s still daylight—I creep forward and stop just at the edge of the treeline, scanning the horizon to see if I can find the scent’s origin. The other side is far enough away that it’s hard even for me to see, despite my excellent vision—vision made for predation, as my father told me when I finallyfound him. Not in Ohio, like my mother’s letter said, but farther north, in New York. That was a long, long time ago.
Still, my excellent predator’s vision sweeps along the glossy toy houses and then settles on my target.
A woman.
At first, I think she’s sitting on the pier of my young friend Oliver, who lives across the lake with his family and is the only human I let roam around on my territory. But then I realize, no, she’s next door. She has her feet in the water, and her head tilted back, like she’s looking at the clouds striating across the sky. The wind blows her brown hair away from her shoulders, and when it moves into the light, it flames copper, like sunset on the water. I suck in a breath.
She’s beautiful.
When was the last time I considered a human beautiful? Not since I was a human, or thought I was one. Not since a beautiful human girl smiled at me and told me there was a party and then laughed as I slid into the darkness.
My skin tightens. This woman—who is not Maggie Stone, who in fact looks and feels nothing like Maggie Stone—pushes herself up to standing but keeps squinting out at the water. Her legs are long and shapely, leading up into lush, curved hips. I feel something ache in the back of my jaw. I don’t know how to put a name to it.
The woman turns away, ducking down to pick something up from the pier. Trash, it looks like. A bottle of something. Then she walks back down the pier to the house it’s attached to. This house has been empty for a while, as I remember. To be honest, I don’t pay that much attention to which human lives in which house. I only know that they’re there, the houses and the humans. And I only care that they stay on their side of the lake, away from me.
Still, I feel something like longing as the woman walks away, hips swaying a little, bare legs gleaming in the soft-falling sunlight.
For the first time in decades, I want to know a human’s name.
3
THEO
