‘There’s more?’
He chuckles. ‘Yes, Florence. Believe it or not, I’ve got better things to do with my time than lie about in here all day.’
‘I’m on a scheduled break.’
He ignores me. ‘I’ve just been speaking to someone at the lab in Edinburgh.’
My ears perk up, hope finding its way into the space between my bones. ‘About Quinn?’
He nods. ‘There’s been a development.’
I think I’m holding my breath. I daren’t move a muscle.
‘They’ve managed to track down someone who experienced the same issue,’ he says, his voice low. ‘Records show he died in the early 2000s, but it seems he did not stay dead.’
‘He turned,’ I mutter, more to myself than to Cam. If that’s the case, this is huge. If Quinn is not fading from me, but merely on a slow road to a full transition, then the looming heartbreak I’ve been trying so hard to forget about may not be an inevitability after all. If this is real, there’s a chance we could get our forever, together.
Cam nods, looking at me carefully, like he can track every thought rushing through my mind. ‘He did.’ His tone is as cautious as his expression, and something about it tugs on my optimism, holding it in check. ‘We don’t know anything for sure yet. But we think it may be helpful for Quinn to speak with him. As luck would have it, he lives nearby, and I’m sure he’ll have insight that will come in useful if there are any choices to be made down the line.’
My stomach drops. There’s more to this than Cam is letting on, I’m sure of it. ‘Choices?’
Cam studies me for a moment or two, but he doesn’t elaborate. ‘Just speak with him,’ he says and he stands, slipping a folded Post-it into my hand. ‘I think it will be helpful for both of you.’ And then he’s gone.
I take the note and slip it into the pocket of my tunic. It hasn’t escaped my attention how Cam spoke to me just now. I’ve known him for so long that I’ve become attuned to the smallest of changes: the cadence of his voice, the tiny degrees of tension in the way he holds his hands. Even his posture was different, his spine stacked infinitesimally straighter than his usual laid-back loll.
The way Cam spoke to me just now wasn’t the way he speaks to me, his oldest friend. He spoke as if I were a patient. And I can only see two reasons why he might have done that. Either it isn’t good news, or there’s a difficult choice to be made.
And if I’m being really honest with myself, I’m not sure I’m prepared for either.
* * *
‘I love a train,’ Quinn exclaims a little too brightly as we rattle along the North Yorkshire Moors railway line. His face is practically pressed up against the glass, occasionally cooing with delight as we fly past a field of cows, or a quaint little farmhouse. The route is especially beautiful at this time of year, all lush green fields and brightly coloured blooms. It’s worth the full half hour I took to plaster myself in my super high-factor sunscreen.
Quinn does have a car, but he’s been driving it less and less since his symptoms started, and I think the full loss of consciousness the other day scared him. I suggested the train instead, as the man we’re going to meet happens to live at the end of this heritage train line, and, as Quinn has now told me four separate times, he does love a train.
Our energies could not be more different as we chug towards Pickering station and he points out a particularly good tree. He seems upbeat, optimistic about how the meeting is going to go. He’s going to get answers, he thinks, and for him that feels like a lifeline.
For me it’s a little different. I haven’t burdened Quinn with my fears. If I’m right to be wary, there’ll be time enough for that. Instead, I’m basking in his sunshine while it lasts and trying like hell to push down my fear of the approaching night.
The train lurches to a stop at Pickering and we grab our things, stepping out into an objectively pleasant day, mercifully cloudy but with that faint haze of midsummer that makes everything seem a little oversaturated. Quinn grabs my hand and slips his fingers between mine, and together we walk down the platform and out into the streets of Pickering.
Albert Ackroyd lives a short walk from the station, in alittle cottage that backs onto the castle. It looks like a perfectly ordinary house, though I can’t help but notice small details, like the curtains drawn in the middle of the day and the low-maintenance paved-out yard. There’s a collection of gnomes that mark each side of the path to the front door.
I’m willing to bet that’s deliberate– Albert’s effort to make his neighbours assume he’s just an eccentric old man and never suspect for a moment that there’s a vampire living under their noses. He’s pulling it off perfectly.
I brace myself as Quinn raises a fist to knock on the deep-red door. I’m not sure I can explain the feeling of dread that’s gripped the back of my neck ever since I heard Albert existed. I’ve tried to mask it, to not let on to Quinn that I’m anything but hopeful, but it’s been there the whole time, simmering in the background.
Maybe I’ve been kidding myself, larking around on these perfect summer nights with Quinn, thinking this is the way it’ll always be; that we could stay frozen in time, watching the world change around us.
But the reality of the situation is that the only one frozen in time is me.
We hear a muffled ‘Come in’, and then Quinn turns the handle and I follow him into the unknown.
It’s dimmer than I expected inside the house. There’s only a little light coming from beneath the curtains, and a single lamp turned on in the hallway, its bare bulb gathering a thick layer of dust. The paint is more than a few years past its best, and the flooring creaks and moans as we walk across it.
I hear Quinn’s sharp intake of breath as he spots Albert, even through the cough he tries to mask it with. The old man is sitting in a tattered armchair, knuckles whitening as he grips what’s left of the arms through the fraying threads. His eyes dart to us as we enter the room, one hand going to adjust the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose.
‘Albert,’ Quinn says, striding up to the older man and offering his hand. ‘I’m Quinn and this is Florence. It’s lovely to meet you.’