“Radiance?”
She said, “Yeah,” like it was obvious. “That’s what I’ve been calling the inn.”
“Heaven, I’m glad you’re excited, but we’re vampires,” I said, stating the obvious. Sometimes hearing it out loud helps. “We can’t run a bed-and-breakfast. Although Radiance Bed-and-Breakfast sounds kind of good.”
“No. Bed-and-breakfast isn’t us.”
At least she knew that much. “Radiance Hotel?”
“Just Radiance.” Her voice had a strong note ofduhto it.
“How’s anyone going to know what it is?”
“They just will.”
“How much are your followers sending?”
“Twenty thousand. Well, at least, that’s what the fundraising goal is. They’re already at three.”
“Dollars?”
“Three thousand.”
I started choking on my coconut water. If they were going to pay for the inn, we could figure it out. Maybe a familiar could make breakfast? “Radiance it is. Order a sign.”
Twenty minutes later, I was sweeping up around the hearth like I used to when I was a young girl, except I was playing “Listen to Your Heart” at top volume. My heart wanted a Christmas tree farmer. I used the broom as a mic and belted out the chorus. Just as the song ended, I heard Heaven’s voice carrying from the foyer.
“Come on in,” she said, in the same casual tone that she’d use when she asked me to feed her parakeet back in LA.
“Nooooooooo!” I dropped the broom and turned to the front door. “Don’t invite anyone in, Heaven!” I called, although it was already too late. I’d heard the invitation pass her lips myself. If it had been the middle of the day, fine, but it was four in the morning. Who dropped by at four in the morning? The list was short: emergency services (we hadn’t called), serial killers (NBD), another vampire (bad news).
In my haste to get settled in town, I hadn’t talked to Heaven aboutanyof the vampire rules. Not one.
My skin prickled with fear. This was a vampire. I knew it in my three-hundred-year-old bones.
Vampires can’t enter private spaces without being invited in, whichis one of the only defenses available to a weak vamp like me. I couldn’t turn into a bat, or glamour, or even pay my credit card off. I was at the mercy of whoever this was. You shouldn’t invite a vampire in unless youknowthey aren’t an asshole—or from Parliament. Uninviting them is a pain in the ass. Once they’re in, they’re in.
Heaven shouted, “Tiff, someone’s here for you!”
“It’s Vlad,” a voice I would recognize anywhere said.
“Vlad’s here!” she called, as if she had just ordered a pizza.
How? I hadn’t told him my address. Everything was vague. I had intentionally kept every mention of Vermont from him. All he should have known was that we were in the northern hemisphere.
“Tiffenie.” My name rolled off his tongue like it was meant to be said, temporarily stopping my panic.
“What are you doing here?” I took in his physical form. It had been twenty-five years since I’d last seen him. Physically, he was broad shouldered and virile, the kind of guy humans often assumed played football. It wasn’t football Vlad had played but war. No matter how many meditation apps he tried, he still carried a lifetime of danger and violence within him. My skin prickled with awareness at his presence.
Vlad was the kind of man who drowned out everyone else. Just being in a room together, others faded into the background, leaving just him, with his Hollywood looks and charisma. In the movies, sometimes they blur out all the other actors to focus on the two lovers, usually at a pivotal romantic moment. That’s how I felt whenever I was with Vlad—everyone else faded away. At the drugstore shopping for Q-tips, at the bowling alley, at the movie theater—it didn’t matter where we were. He was a sun that never dimmed, his light too bright for others to shine around him. And it wasn’t cool. When I was young and impressionable, I was bowled over by his charisma. Now I knew it was not to be trusted. That kind of charisma left a woman powerless.Do you want to fight the Ottoman Empire?Sure.Do you want to watch another action movie even though we haven’t seen a rom-com in a year?Anything you say, Vlad.Would you bemy vampire bride?Of course.
I had been so young, so naïve. We had been walking through the forest in spring. The world was lush with new growth. He and I had been meeting every night I could sneak away for what was probably only a month. He was my refuge from the chaos of my family: my parents, my sisters, my babies, my grief after losing a husband and child, my hopelessness that anything would ever change. Even as a grown woman, there was no space for me to have ideas that weren’t about what was for dinner and how I would serve God.
Vlad didn’t have me at hello—shout-out toJerry Maguire—he had me atHave you read Voltaire?I hadn’t, but the fact that he looked at me and thought I might have read anything, in particular a scandalous book that questioned the accepted order of things…that was the world I wanted to live in.
When he asked me to marry him, I knew I had found my happily ever after, no matter that it involved approval from the parliament and candlelit rituals I didn’t understand at the time. That added to the excitement.
Here I was, three centuries later, still trying to find my way after agreeing to that one. What a stupid girl I’d been.
