“Well,” I mutter. “What else do you call taking what isn’t yours?”
Julian doesn’t respond right away. I hear him shift, the creak of his bed, the gentle pats of his footsteps, first one, then the other. Despite myself, I think of how easy it would be to reach for him now. If I put my hand out, it would hit torso, maybe chest, and he would hold it to him, press it against his heart like he once had.
“I meant it when I said it was an accident, with you,” he says raggedly. “If I could take it back. Go back in time and never speak to you at that wedding. Keep you out of this. I would. You have to know that.”
The edge in his voice squeezes me around the middle, and I grit my teeth against the pang of longing that courses through me. Implicit in his pleading is another truth:I would’ve taken from someone else.
“Why do you do it?” I ask. It’s an impossible question, but it’s the first that comes to mind, bypassing thehows andwhats and the other metaphysicalmaybes for the thing that I want to understand about Julian most. The reason he has subjected me to the agony of denying him.
“It’s simple, really,” he says. “I’m afraid of dying, same as most everyone else.”
His answer strikes me still with its simplicity, and its veracity too. I finally lower my chin to look at him. Kneeling for me, like he is prone to do, his hand over his heart like he’s pledging himself to me. A part of me wonders if it’s his way of lessening the power differential between us, of average-sized woman and large man, of fragile human and eternal being.
“How long have you been alive, Julian?” I say, my voice shaking. The paintings go back four hundred years, maybe even longer, and the more I stare at him, the larger that number seems to loom. “Is…is Julian even your name?”
“It’s what I’ve been called, or at least something close, for as long as I can remember,” he says truthfully. “We’re not as different as you think. You don’t remember how you came to be either. Just one day, you woke up and just…were. You were a child, with a name not of your choosing, a family, a context. It’s the same for me. I had no parents, but I did have a family—three others, just as desperate, just as hungry to survive. And so we did.”
Three others.
“Alphonse. Rose.” I swallow. “And Leila.”
Julian nods solemnly.
“And what happened last night,” I say. “Has it happened before?”
Julian doesn’t answer for a long time. When he does, he speaks so softly that I almost don’t hear him over the hum of the hotel mini fridge.
“You live as long as I have, and everything repeats itself eventually,” he says cryptically. He stands, reaches over me, turns off the light. “Try to get some sleep. We have an early morning tomorrow.”
The next morning, Julian leaves the hotel room early. I hear him get up, rummage around, and shock myself by drifting back to sleep before he returns. When he does, it’s with a duffel bag full of clothing and toiletries for me.
“I found the body butter you like,” he says soberly. “And I’m not sure what you use for your hair these days, but YouTube told me that this brand would probably work for your texture.”
He’s also managed to pick out comfortable clothing, sneakers in my correct size, and a coat that is both functional and nips at the waist. It’s striking how he seems no different from the man I thought I knew: still so attentive, so considerate, if a little more murderous than previously thought. And still so irritatingly delightful to look at. I’m starting to understand why characters in postapocalyptic TV shows are constantly sleeping together in dire situations; knowing the truth about Julian doesn’t stop my urge to trace a finger down the tense muscle in his neck.
We eat breakfast in the room because Julian’s too worried about being recognized outside it, a mélange of fruit, yogurt, and plasticky croissants from the hotel lobby’s free continental offerings.
“So what’s your plan for today?” I ask. Thesince I know I have no say in itis silent, but Julian is smart enough to pick it up.
“We have a long trip ahead still,” he says after a large swig of his burnt coffee. “I have a lot of safe houses scattered around the States. A few that Leila won’t know about. We’re heading to one of them.”
“And then what?” I ask. “I live out the rest of my life in the middle of nowhere? Take up homesteading?”
Julian’s expression darkens. He doesn’t know what comes next, and my pointing it out clearly frustrates him.
“And then we figure it out,” he says. “I try to talk Leila down—”
I let out a bark of laughter. I see Harold’s face again, his wide-eyed terror. He’d gone to the gallery to see his favorite artist and paid for that indulgence with his life. The staccato of my heartbeat reminds me of gunshots.
“Onix is in daycare for two more days,” I tell him. “When the staff realizes they can’t get hold of me for pickup, they’re going to call Winona. She’s going to call my job, realize that I didn’t show there either, and then she’s going to figure out that I’m missing.” I pretend to examine my nails, French-tipped press-ons that I’m surprised survived last night’s ordeal. “All I’m saying is that it won’t just be Leila who’s out there searching for me.”
By the look on Julian’s face, he hasn’t yet considered that my absence will be noted.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he says.
“We get there in under forty-eight hours,” I remind him.
Julian scowls, then snatches the remote from the desk and turns on the television. He flips through channels—Hallmark, Cartoon Network—before settling on the weather. A man in glasses announcesthat it’s going to be a balmy twelve degrees out today and advises us to bundle up. Then a bar falls across the screen:Breaking News.