Months, Cam said in the consultation room. Best case.
So potentially less. Potentiallyweeks.
Every time I so much as think it, my stomach turns over. I haven’t finished with my life yet. I’ve barely started. I need more than weeks.
‘Not well,’ I admit, looking Florence straight in the eye, hoping I can somehow telepathically communicate the burning ball of anxiety still lingering in my chest.
She hums softly. ‘Yeah, I get it,’ she says. ‘But you know, you have an advantage here. You’re getting something most of us don’t get.’
‘My very own vampire spirit guide?’ I quip, desperate to feel like myself in this new haze of vulnerability. The joke is weak, but it does make me feel better.
She shakes her head at me but her smile doesn’t fade. ‘Time,’ she says, and then, after a beat. ‘Fine.Andyour very own vampire spirit guide.’
That finally makes me smile. Florence studies me, her whisky-coloured eyes looking so intently at me that I feel like she can read every one of my thoughts.
‘I mean it,’ she says, a quiet importance to her words that compels me to listen. ‘I think this time is a gift. I know that months or weeks doesn’t sound like a long time, but for most of us, it’s minutes.Seconds,even. When I was turned, I was human and then all of a sudden I wasn’t. I never got to say goodbye to the parts of me I lost that night. I didn’t get to live any of my human moments with intention, to really appreciate every second, knowing as I did that any of them could be the last.’
Her words punch a cavernous hole in my chest. I’m thirty. I shouldn’t have to think about my last moments, in any capacity. Deep down, I know she’s right, but God, I wouldn’t know where to start.
She shifts on the bench and her knee makes contact with mine, sending a ripple of electricity through me. ‘So, I want you to think about it now.’
I frown, dragging my gaze back up to hers from where our knees are touching. ‘Think about…?’
‘Five things,’ she says, her gaze boring into me. ‘Five things you’d miss if you woke up tomorrow and you’d fully turned.’
‘Garlic bread,’ I reply without missing a beat, and she responds with a look of such horror that I laugh out loud.
Her brow furrows. ‘Be serious.’
‘I’m being deadly serious,’ I say. ‘I don’t know if you had it back in the 1600s?—’
‘In the 1870s,’ she corrects.
‘In the 1870s, fine.’ I wave her away. ‘Anyway, I don’t know if it was around then, but all I’m saying is that it’s the food of the gods and I’d miss it.’
The groove in between her brows eases a little. ‘Fine, what else?’
‘Looking at myself in the mirror,’ I say, only half joking. This time she doesn’t frown at me, but instead I see the smallest hint of a smile catching at her mouth.
‘The mirror thing is a myth.’
I almost fall off the bench. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Yeah,’ she says, pulling her coat more tightly around herself. ‘I mean, the mirror’s not magic, it just reflects what’s there.’ Her shrug is barely there– not much more than a slight hitch in her shoulders. ‘And I’m there.’
I ponder that for a moment. What else do I know about vampires? To be honest, knowing Bram and the others, my knowledge on the undead has been somewhat updated. I know they’re not actually feral creatures who dissolve into dust at the merest hint of sunlight, but some of the legends surrounding them are actually true. Like…
‘How about being able to go to people’s houses when I’m not invited?’
Florence looks at me like I’ve grown another head. ‘Quinn, I don’t want to go to people’s houses when Iaminvited.’ She sighs out a breath that seems to come from very deep inside her. ‘Think bigger things. Things that define human existence.’
Well, that feels like a lot of pressure. I’m not sure I can even think of things that define human existence, much less be able to say which I’d be sad to lose to immortality. The vampires I know have always seemed much more human than not, save for the photosensitivity and occasional poorly timed blood lust.
‘How will I know what I’ll miss until I miss it?’ I’m frowning again. That groove between my eyebrows is going to be permanent at this rate. ‘What do you miss?’
She almost winces at my question and her face falls. I wonder what I’ve reminded her of, which long-lost joys she’s thinking of, and the sudden feeling of protectiveness takes me by surprise.
‘Sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘You don’t have to answer that.’