Page 4

You’ve never done anything on your own. My mother’s voice, and she isn’t even here.

Willow’s message is still open on my phone.

It’s your life, E. Take it back

I book it with my miles. The confirmation email lands in my inbox, heavy and final.

There’s nowhere to stay.

Some music festival has the whole town full, except for a bougie little eco-lodge called Haven’s Rest. The photos show a cedar log building draped in fairy lights and glass wind chimes, an inky sky, and a bright green aurora behind a steaming hot tub. It’s the kind of place that has its own hashtag. The price takes a brutal chunk of my budget, but I reserve three nights. I’ll work out the rest when I get there. Defer grad school, find a job. Sit with myself for a while and maybe figure out what I want.

I haul my biggest suitcase down, throw in every warm thing I own, and the hiking boots from senior-year summer camp. The girl in the ad had a red puffer. I don’t own a puffer. But my green wool coat will do, and it’s the only thing in this apartment I picked out myself. It’s also the first coat I’ve ever owned that buttons right, which took five stores and one very patient saleswoman on Madison.

On the kitchen counter, I leave Jenny a note:

Going out of town for a while. Ellery, xo

Suitcase in hand, I stop with one foot at the threshold.

The credit card is in the side pocket of my purse. The one they gave me. The final tether. I drop it in the drawer of the console table.

I close the door behind me.

Chapter 3

Nick

“Is Lucille leaking again?” I lean farther into the chassis, checking the hoses are securely attached. Filling her with gas and oil is the extent of my engine knowledge. My little brother is the whiz with machines, though I hope he eventually uses that brain for something more than patching up my van. Where the hell is he?

“Luca?”

I wipe my hands on a rag and grab the tablet from the workbench. Eight booked, first pickup at seven. I need to be out of here by six, which is fine if I have a working van.

Work’s getting busier as we head into peak season, shorter days and longer nights, before the snow sets in. Nightwatch Expeditions was my dad’s, now it’s mine. Some of the guests are a trial, but the aurora sweeping across the sky never is.

“Luca!”

He moved in with me last year. Said he wanted out of the family home to get some independence. Though I suspect Mom put him up to it. To watch over me, or because she thinks I’m lonely. Knowing her, probably both.

The shed in the backyard is empty. Dad’s boots are still lined up by the door on the porch. I keep meaning to get rid of them. Paperwork’s piled on the small table in the corner of the kitchen, where it’s been building since June. Nothing in there’s urgent. I don’t think. Mom’s offered a hundred times to bring over some pictures from the house, and a hundred times, I’ve said not yet.

I’m dialing his number when he wanders in with grease on his shirt.

“Van’s fixed. No need to yell.” He scratches his chin, leaving a smudge. “Weather forecast’s sketchy. You sure you don’t want to cancel tonight?”

“It’ll clear up by the time we get out there.”

I open the fridge, hand Luca a soda, and heat a bottle of blood in the microwave for myself. Dad used to do this in a saucepan on the stove. Insisted that the microwave heated it unevenly. He was right, but I do it anyway.

The smell brings my fangs down. I take a sip and let my hands warm around the glass.

I took my Blood Rites four years ago when our father died. I was twenty-four. Halfway into my doctorate, with an apartment in Palo Alto and a girlfriend I was serious about, right up until I called her from Mom’s front porch and told her I wasn’t coming back.

Luca turns twenty-one in seven weeks. He’ll be able to take his Rites whenever he wants after that, if he ever does, activate his bloodline, and give up his mortal life for an immortal one. Most do. I hope he waits. An eternity of microwaved blood isn’t going anywhere.

“Can you send the confirmations for tonight?” I toss the empty bottle in the trash and hand him the tablet. “I’m going for a run.”

“Why bother? You already run faster than a caribou, and it’s not like you’re going to age into a dad bod.” He grins and pinches my side.