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Somewhere below, Cristofer laughed.

36

Ensley

Epilogue - Six Months Later

Dearest Mother,

Hello from Zermatt! We made it. My god, you would love it here. The village, the atmosphere. The snowcapped Matterhorn is simply breathtaking. The air is cool and crisp. It’s been raining a lot, but that’s typical for May, I’m told. It certainly doesn’t ruin the experience. Is it warm back home yet? Did you plant your garden? How is James? I hope he’s taking good care of my Jeep. I might want it back someday. Is he still teaching tae kwon do? Have you been out on the boat yet this year?

Anyhow, we’ll be in Switzerland for another week or so before moving on to Austria, then off to Hungary, before finally landing in Romania, where we’ll spend a month or so visiting Mordecai’s family. We hope to be back in London for fall.

Don’t worry about my job prospects. Mordecai claims he has a lot of connections, and I’m sure I’ll find something. I’m attaching a few pictures of our travels. Mostly scenic. You know I hate having my picture taken. Mordecai is the same.

Anyhow, I have to cut this short. Dinner plans with a friend.

Phone date on Sunday?

PS: We’ll try to come home for Thanksgiving. If that doesn’t work out, Christmas for sure.

I love you, Ensley.

Begrudgingly, I uploaded a handful of doctored photographs so my mother would believe the narrative I spewed every time I wrote. A friend of Cristofer’s, who had no morals or ethics to speak of, and I’d told him as much, had created very realistic AI images of both Mordecai and me and transposed them onto the landscape pictures we’d taken during our travels.

I would have argued, but convincing my mother I was alive and well was imperative. She didn’t know her only son had died in an underground lair trying to rescue an elder vampire. She didn’t know I would never age and would go on living for who knew how long. She couldn’t know. It would devastate her. It would renew her grief, and that wasn’t fair. My mother had finally found peace and moved on from my father’s death.

I no longer hated James. In fact, I relied on the man to take care of my mother in my long absences.

Six months ago, after finding stability in my new existence, I’d told my mother that Mordecai and I were moving to London. She was heartbroken but also excited by the new adventures ahead of me. I’d never traveled. I’d never been in love.

She was ready to let me go.

I wrote daily and texted often. We spoke on the phone three days a week. Visits home would be infrequent and would require plenty of stage makeup and evasiveness over the years if we were to have any chance of making the story believable, but we would tackle that obstacle when the time came.

As for Ziggy, Mars, and Poet? We kept in touch. We still gamed online, much to Mordecai’s annoyance. He couldn’t understand the obsession. We chatted often through text but rarely called one another. Whether I would see them again in person was another matter.

I checked the time after hitting send on the email. It was near midnight. It would be the dinner hour in Owen Sound. I had time to slip out and feed before our dungeon run. The hunger was insatiable. At times, I thought it might never go away.

I shot a quick text to Mars, making sure we were still on for that night’s dungeon run, as I called over my shoulder, “Cris, are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready for an hour, mate. Your better half isn’t coming. Shocking, I know. I can’t convince him.”

That was no surprise. Mordecai possessed some sort of unnatural ability to go weeks without feeding. I could barely get from one night to the next, which was how Cristofer and I had become such good friends. He’d taken my poor, starving fledgling ass off my boyfriend’s shoulders, much to Mordecai’s relief.

Cristofer snagged the phone from my hand. “Are you talking to Poe-Poe?”

“Do you mind?” I stole it back. “I’m talking to Mars.”

“Have you talked to the sexy Dungeon Master recently?”

“In game.”

“How is he?”

“I don’t know. Fine, I guess.”

Cristofer huffed irritably.

I dashed a glance over my shoulder. “What?”

“Could you be more vague?”

“We don’t carry on lengthy conversations when we play. If we do, it’s about the task at hand.”

A lie, but Cristofer had been annoyingly invasive when it came to Poet ever since we arrived in Europe. He’d become our reluctant traveling companion—read, third wheel—because, well, fledgling.

“Does he ever ask about me?”

He did. Often. But I wasn’t about to tell Cristofer that. “He met you one time. I doubt he remembers you.”

“Oh, duckie. One time is all it takes for some.”

Didn’t I know it. I would never forget the night I’d stood outside Owen Sound’s purportedly haunted mansion waiting for its new owner to arrive. The first time I laid eyes on Mordecai Ashenvale, I knew with absolute certainty that nothing would ever be the same.