May
Lucy's Age: 19
Venice's text wasn't exactly a surprise. She'd been texting me every four hours like clockwork since just before the last time I'd seen Geoffrey. I should have known even back then that her resuming her old check-in schedule meant that something monumental had changed, but I didn't understand any of that until it was too late.
I'd spent weeks running through memories of my last few moments with Geoffrey, examining them in an effort to figure out what I should have done different to convince him to leave with Venice rather than destroying himself.
Each morning Venice would include a request to meet with me along with one of her check-in texts, and each morning I deleted the text without sending back any kind of response and then went back to wallowing in my despair.
This morning though I realized something new. Venice had promised to kill me if I did anything to stop Geoffrey from getting away from Imastious, with or without her. This was my chance, not only to see someone who still had some kind of tie to Geoffrey, but to have my suffering ended. Geoffrey couldn't bear the thought of going an eternity with no chance of ever being together with me, but that was exactly what he'd sentenced me to.
In a way Geoffrey had reset the clock back to when he'd first been made a vampire, but unlike him I didn't have any faith that things would turn out differently this time around. Imastious had dragged Geoffrey down into the depths of depravity the first time around, back before his soul had been weighed down with all of the murders he'd committed just in the last few years. If anything I suspected that Imastious would find it easier to corrupt Geoffrey a second time.
So Geoffrey had created an illusion of hope for himself, but he'd stolen all hope from me.
I punched in a time and a place that was dangerously close to the apartment, and then sent the text to Venice.
It felt odd to be leaving the apartment again, odd to be sneaking out of the fire escape instead of going out the front door, but I couldn't risk Hal or any of the others being hurt trying to protect me from Venice.
The day had started out gloomy, but it took a turn for the worse as I walked to the tiny park that I'd chosen for our rendezvous. By the time I arrived it had started raining, big, fat, driven drops that soaked me through almost instantly. It was the kind of monsoon-like downpour that seemed to blow through the city a couple of times each spring. It was cold enough to be uncomfortable, but not cold enough to be life-threatening, so I ignored it, picking out a bench that put my back to a neighboring building. I wanted to at least be able to see her coming.
Venice arrived exactly on time and took in my bedraggled state with a shake of her head. In contrast to my soaked t-shirt and jeans, Venice was dressed in a thin, clingy sundress and had a large white umbrella angled to keep the rain off of her.
All of Geoffrey's work had started to pay off. I recognized that the umbrella was too sturdy to be just a normal umbrella. The long central shaft wasn't collapsible, which meant it probably concealed a substantial stabbing blade of some kind. I knew how she was going to kill me, but strangely even that didn't seem to break me free of the malaise that had entrapped me.
"So you're pretty pathetic-looking."
"That's fine, I feel pretty pathetic so it suits me."
"You know you're taking all of the fun out of this. I thought I'd get more a response out of you than I'm getting."
I shrugged. "Sorry, I'm all out of tears and begging. Just end me and let's be done with things."
"I always pegged you as a fighter. I didn't think you had it in you to just give up like this."
"The funny thing is that I always thought I was a fighter too. I guess that was just one of those self-delusions that needed ripped away before I could accept the way things really are."
Venice looked at the bench next to me, grimaced at what the water on it would do to her dress, and just settled for leaning her bare shoulder against a light pole.
"Would you like to hear about Geoffrey?"
"No, Geoffrey might as well be dead. The thing walking around inside of his body isn't him. It doesn't have any of his memories or feelings."
"You're right…and you're wrong, all at the same time. Geoffrey's memories are gone, but before he went he came to my apartment and we talked, I mean really, really talked. For hours. It was like things used to be between us years and years ago."
"I only got a couple of minutes. Just long enough for him to tell me that he was leaving. I guess I should be jealous, but I'm just glad that the two of you got to reconnect, at least a little, before things came to an end."
"Lucy, I'm telling you, he isn't gone, not really. The memories aren't there anymore, but he's still the same person inside. The way he reacts to things, the way he moves and talks, it's all still Geoffrey."
"I'm glad, for your sake, but I don't think that it will matter for me, not in the long run. It's only a matter of time before he ends up just like the old Geoffrey, and if I couldn't bring myself to run away with him before I won't be able to do it later either."
Venice looked at my bench again and then just shrugged and sat down next to me. Once her umbrella was put up her dress soaked through in just a few seconds, but she didn't seem to care.
"He doesn't remember raising you, Lucy. He's even less of a father to you now than he was before."
"I know, but that doesn't change my memories of him. Is he happy at least? Now that he's not burdened by any of his past actions."
"I don't know. He's so disoriented that it's hard to read him in some ways, but in others he's like an open book. He really did love you, you know."
"I know. I loved him too, but it wasn't right for the two of us to run off and leave you here to die. I thought that I had everything figured out, thought that I'd mousetrapped him into leaving with you, but he just dashed all of my plans and went his own way."
"Yeah, he tends to do that. I think that's part of why Imastious is so fascinated with Geoffrey. He has a way of finding unorthodox solutions to problems that can be really enlightening. He told me what he was going to do even before he told you, but I almost didn't believe that he'd really go through with it until I got the text to come pick him up."
My questioning look must have conveyed more even than I'd realized because Venice nodded and pointed off to the west.
"He rented an apartment over on that side of town, but all I knew at the time was that I'd gotten a text from his phone with an address and a plea to come get him. He'd given me a copy of the key before he talked to you, so I went there and found him in one of the bedrooms."
Her knuckles tightened on the umbrella. "He'd locked himself inside with nothing but a cot, and a handwritten sign instructing him to text my number when he woke up. He was crying when I arrived. I don't think I've ever seen anyone so glad to see me in my entire life. He didn't recognize me, but he was so grateful that I'd come and let him out of that room. It felt nice, like we were just two normal people for a few minutes. He didn't remember me again when I saw him next, but at least I got a few minutes with him where all he felt was good stuff towards me."
Venice tapped her umbrella against the pavement a couple of times and then looked up at me, meeting my gaze directly for the first time since she'd arrived.
"Aren't you going to ask what we talked about?"
"No. I honestly came here expecting for you to kill me. I'm not really interested in taking a stroll down memory lane with you, Venice. I'm glad you and Geoffrey have another shot. It's what I was after, if not in the way that I wanted it to happen, but that's all over for me."
"No, Lucy, it isn't. Geoffrey came to visit me so that he could tell me how much he loved you. He told me all about your efforts to throw him and I together again, he told me about all of the little ways that you made him feel human again and then he asked me not to hurt you. I opened my mouth to tell him to go to hell, but then I realized that you were a much better girlfriend to him than I ever was."
"Yeah, some girlfriend. I convinced him to go off and commit some exotic form of suicide."
"No, I'm serious. You wanted what was best for Geoffrey in ways that were somehow higher than the things I wanted for him. I'm not used to taking second place, Lucy, but I took second place to you and it wasn't just because you're a human instead of another vampire."
"I'm sorry, I never meant for any of this to be a competition."
"I know, but I realized that I can either get mad, or I can learn from it. You have a gift that I didn't ever even know existed and I'm going to study you. I'm going to learn from you so that, however all of this turns out, I can be a better person than I have been."
"You're not going to kill me?"
"No. I never really wanted to. Don't get me wrong, I was mad at you and the situation in general, but I do consider you a friend. Besides, I'm going to need your help to figure out how to manage Geoffrey. We need to get him through his first few months with Imastious with the minimum amount of damage possible."