January
Lucy's Age: 18
"Lucy, are you paying any attention at all?"
"Hmm? Sorry, it's getting late enough that I'm starting to get a little punchy. What was it that you asked?"
It wasn't a bad excuse as things went even if it was a total lie. Geoffrey and I were running through possible investment targets again, but this time we were meeting during what was late evening for me and early morning for him.
I actually was tired, but it had less to do with the lateness of the hour and more to do with the fact that I had just spent the last hour on high alert, all the while trying not to let on to Geoffrey that I was on high alert.
It was pretty obvious that Venice was a vampire, maybe not in the traditional sense of combusting in sunlight or turning into a bat, but she was faster and stronger than any human and her first instinct when she'd been injured had been to try and feed from me.
If Venice was a vampire then Geoffrey almost certainly was one too. It explained so many things that I'd never thought to question. Venice didn't look any older than me, but she talked like she and Geoffrey had a really long backstory. I'd always assumed that she was just exaggerating slightly, but for all I knew she was thousands of years old and they'd been together for centuries.
Venice's powers as a telekinetic and Geoffrey's powers as a mentalist weren't because they had some unique ability present in small quantities among the general population, it was because they were vampires.
Even the fact that Geoffrey didn't look any older than when I'd been a kid made sense now. I'd never really thought about it because we'd never had pictures of each other around the house, but I should have noticed some gray hair and wrinkles somewhere along the way.
"I asked you what you want for your birthday next week."
I shrugged. "I'm actually not feeling very excited about this birthday. Maybe we should just skip celebrating it this year."
Geoffrey shook his head at me. "We're celebrating it and that's final. You only turn nineteen once."
"We never celebrate your birthdays."
I'd caught him by surprise, I could see that much, but I wasn't sure what was going on inside of his head. It was stupid to do anything that might tip him off to the fact that I knew about him and Venice, but I couldn't seem to help myself. The effort of trying to stay on a hair trigger for so long was taking even more out of me than I'd realized.
It was a pointless thing to be doing anyway. Based on what I'd seen out of Venice, Geoffrey was so much faster and stronger than me that nothing I could possibly do would save me. I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax as I waited for Geoffrey to respond to my last question.
"You're right, Lucy. It's a bit hypocritical for me to insist on celebrating your birthday when we don't ever celebrate mine. To be honest, I don't even know when mine is."
There was a level of vulnerability there that two days ago would have made me jump for joy. Geoffrey was more in touch with his humanity than I'd ever seen before, but I couldn't seem to muster any excitement over that fact.
"I haven't had a very good life, Lucy. My childhood and the years that followed were…difficult. I've got a lot of sins hanging over my head that I rationalized away at the time, but which I regret now. I can't go back and fix any of those things, but maybe I can redeem myself a little bit through my actions with you."
"Is that all I am to you? Am I nothing more than a ticket up to the pearly gates?"
Geoffrey shook his head. "You're not any kind of ticket, you're Lucy. You're someone I care about deeply, you're…well, you're my daughter."
There was something else there that he'd been about to say, but he didn't give a chance to dwell on that fact.
"What's gotten into you, Lucy? This isn't like you."
I opened my mouth, not sure how I would respond, and words just poured out. "I don't know how I fit into the world. You took me in, saved me from freezing to death, but then I hardly saw you for years. You'd show up for a few months and then just as I'd start to feel close to you, you'd leave."
Geoffrey tried to interject something, but I barreled right on through, determined to get my say in.
"I've hardly ever even been allowed to leave the house. You've paid a small fortune educating me, but now I don't even know what to do with myself. Most kids my age are headed off to college, but I don't even know if I'll ever even be able to leave the apartment!"
Geoffrey's mouth snapped shut in shock. Silence hung in the air for nearly a minute before he nodded. "You're right. I've never been there for you when you needed me."
He paced over to a window and looked down at the people on the street below. "I'm sorry if I've smothered you. I've seen so many bad things happen that I've had a hard time letting you go out there and be exposed to them. Do you really want to leave? I thought you were enjoying the work we do together."
I wanted to be angry, wanted to yell and scream at him, but seeing him like this, completely vulnerable, thawed something inside of me. He wasn't pretending—I knew him too well for that. No, he was genuinely sad at the prospect of me leaving, and it wasn't because of some ulterior motive, it was because he would miss me.
There wasn't any way for me to be certain of that, but somehow I knew it was the case. A part of me argued that Geoffrey's vulnerability shouldn't be any more valuable than anyone else's vulnerability, but somehow it was more important. The very fact that I knew what he was capable of—that I knew of some of the terrible things he'd actually done—made the fact that he was standing there, waiting for me to crush him, intoxicating on levels that I'd never even known existed.
"I do enjoy it, Geoffrey, I just wish I felt like I had a choice in where I went and what I did."
He nodded. "I can understand that. I guess I didn't keep up. For so long you were a child who needed protecting, but now you're an adult and you need to be able to go your own way."
He took a deep breath, like it was costing him more than I could understand to make his next statement. "I'll need a couple of weeks. Given the way that you came to live with me, I don't exactly have your real birth certificate. I have a set of good forgeries put together for you though, they just need some updating. You'll need to take one or more of the standardized tests and then get your applications into your top couple of choices. I don't know when any of the deadlines are, but you'll want to move quickly on everything. Most kids your age are already in their first year of school. I'm sorry I've put you a year behind everyone else."
I shook my head at him and willed the tears that were waiting in the wings not to make an appearance. "You haven't put me behind everyone else, not in any way that matters. I won't be leaving tomorrow or the next day, or even next month, but I do appreciate you giving me the option."
"You're welcome."
Geoffrey's motions were jerky as he gathered up his things and placed them inside his backpack. "I need to be going actually. I'll see you next week."