The adrenaline rush I’d experienced following the Adaption hadn’t subsided. My thoughts continued to swirl, a slurry of competing doubt and certainty. Memories seemed almost tangible, haunting remembrances at my fingertips, so implausibly vivid it felt as though they flashed across a cinematic screen, and I could reach out and touch them. And now the Elders intended to familiarize me with my powers? How could I possibly focus on anything in particular with all those random, chaotic thoughts driving me toward absolute insanity?
I closed my eyes and attempted a deep calming breath. Come on, Celeste. You can do this. After all, hadn’t I survived a myriad of preposterous experiences throughout the years? The fact that Nick and I remotely resembled normal young adults was a miracle. We were four years old when we arrived at the Torok Mansion following the death of our parents. Because Bianca avoided the sun, and we were so young we required supervision, playtime outdoors began long after sunset. During the winter months, the nightly temperature would often hover around twenty degrees, and Bianca would bundle Nick and me in so many polyester layers we resembled the Michelin Man. We couldn’t walk, let alone play.
Because vampires slept during the day and four-year-old mortals didn’t, Bianca soon realized she needed help and hired an au pair. Between Nick’s shenanigans and the unsettling occurrences in the household (vampires floating down hallways, vaporizing from one room before appearing in another, shapeshifting into terrifying creatures—usually to entertain Nick), we went through a dozen in one year alone. The ensuing gossip unsustainable, my father instructed a few of the Realm’s warriors, Trandafira and Yesenia, to watch over us, Tristan often charged with keeping Nick in line as he grew older. I smiled, thinking of the time Trandafira foiled Yesenia’s plan to harm Nick and me, and the two of them began to argue as to which of them played the larger role in the fourteenth-century Battle of Bannockburn. I’d always thought they were sisters, but even Bianca could never say for certain.
Dinnertime at the Torok Mansion wasn’t a family gathering around a table. If our parents did make an appearance, they disappeared soon after. The menu consisted of one, maybe two, wine glasses filled with blood for them, and duck, geese, or thick slices of pork—roasted on a spit within a stone structure—for Nick and me. Smoke habitually plumed from a stack in the roof, seeping into every crevice of the drafty mansion. As a result, Nick and I went to school smelling like either bacon or a barbeque restaurant.
Elizabeth snapped her fingers, and I followed obediently behind the others.
“The notion that a fledgling can pervert any one of our thoughts is positively absurd,” I heard Nostradamus rant, after which the others gathered shoulder to shoulder, their combined arguments a cacophonous and impassioned whisper.
The chatter from the others ebbed when Elizabeth said, “Ah. It would appear we have a visitor.”
I followed her gaze, and I choked on a gasp. My knees buckled, and a flush ignited my entire body.
Elizabeth zoomed in Tristan’s direction. “I thought I’d made it clear that your absence during this time is in Celestine’s best interest.”
Leonardo drifted in her direction. “Perhaps you have forgotten that love knows no bounds, dearest Queen. Do afford the young lovers a few moments together,” he said, clasping her elbow.
“Young, you say?” she said, jerking free. “Surely, you scoff. Need I remind you that Tristan of Tomisovara arrived on this earth twenty centuries before either one of us?”
A pinkish-orange ring encircled the pupils of his eyes, and Leonardo coaxed Elizabeth not nearly far enough to suit me.
“Fine. We shall grant them a few moments,” I heard her growl. “But only a few. Perhaps, we can task Tristan with instruction on matters of teleportation.”
“I should think not,” Nostradamus said. “That would be akin to enlisting a flight attendant to pilot a plane. Only the Ancients have perfected the technique.”
Elizabeth flapped her hand, dismissively. “In that you are correct, sir. Our warrior’s limitations briefly slipped my mind,” she twittered. “Might I then propose he instruct her on her ability to simply navigate through the air?”
The Elders nodded in agreement, directed a stern look at Tristan, then evaporated. He seemed to wait for me to approach, apprehension evident in his eyes. I didn’t know what to say to him, how to undo the damage I’d caused between us. Suddenly self-conscious, my eyes darted over our surroundings, settling on a nearby fruit orchard whose enormous trees bore fruit the size of bowling balls. The moon and the stars hung low in the sky, more a Disneyland-like simulation than the real thing. The stars randomly and sequentially pulsated as if sending out Morse code, the Venus flytraps beneath opening and closing with an identical rhythm.
“I didn’t mean the things I said . . .” I eventually managed, toeing the ground and unhousing a neon crab with a human face.
“You never have to apologize to me, Celeste,” he replied and crossed the distance between us in a blink. He took me in his arms, and a multicolored plume emanated from his body and mine. “Forgive me,” he began, “but I’m not sorry things turned out as they have. The thought I might lose you forever awakened so much I wish I could forget.”
Was he seriously thinking about his dead wife? At a time like this? The question poised on my tongue, I decided I’d rather not know. I had enough emotional shit to deal with. Regardless, I pushed him away. “How long will they keep me here?”
“Until they’re convinced you are no longer a threat.”
I wanted to go home, to sleep in my own bed within the Victorian house I’d put my stamp on, orchestrating every detail from paint colors to period-correct wallcoverings to antique furnishings. “What do I have to do to convince them?”
He pulled me into his arms again, closer this time, and I couldn’t catch my breath. “Accept the hand you’ve been dealt, my love, and spend your time here learning everything you can from them.”
I thought of the beautiful five-year-old girl—taken by the Harvesters when they seized the ship, Grace, off the coast of Australia in the 1800s—left in my care following the most recent battle with the Harvesters. “How is Raina?”
“She misses you, but, much like the rest of us, she understands that your absence is necessary.”
“What about school? Who’s taking care of her when you’re not around?”
He looked away, and I sensed there was something he wasn’t telling me. His finger was hot against my lips. “Relax. Bianca has everything under control.” He pulled me closer, his hipbones digging into my ribs, and whispered through my hair, “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
I was happy to see him! I’d been desperately, sickeningly, in love with him since puberty. For as long as I could remember, I’d linger long past my bedtime, in the hope I might catch a glimpse of him within my father’s study or elsewhere within the mansion.
“Of course,” I said, finding it hard to temper the passion he always inflamed.
“I don’t believe you. You may have to prove it,” he teased, long fingers flirting with the buttons on my blouse, a fevered kiss blistering my lips.
“Not here,” I said, turning a cheek to a second kiss. I could smell his hypnotic scent—musky and feral with an undernote of myrrh and sandalwood. When he persisted, I pushed him away and he sailed against a tree, landing with a thud.
“She is quite right. Now is not the time nor the place,” Nostradamus interrupted, materializing within a burgundy mist. “Come,” he said to me. “You are most welcome to observe, Tristan, though I must warn you that suggestions or criticism are decidedly unwelcome.”
Nostradamus took my hand. “Where are we going?” I asked, sensing Tristan just a few steps behind. He pointed to a mountaintop and transported me there, where he bent to retrieve a large rock. He threw it, his forearm radiating light. Rather than fall, the rock hung in the air. Then it began to spin, increasing its momentum as it traveled in our direction. He zoomed toward it, catching it in midair. As phenomenal as I thought that entire spectacle was, what was I supposed to learn from it?
“Gravity, Celestine, is merely one’s perception,” he said.
Beside me, Tristan grew tense, a sound catching in his throat a split-second before Nostradamus shoved me off the cliff. Sailing headfirst toward a jagged outcropping, my fingers clawed the air. My hair streamed behind me, snagging on spindly branches. The ravine drew closer, closer, so close I could see fish feeding on the bottom.
“Up, up!” they shouted.
I harnessed a scream and rocketed skyward. Dazzling stars surrounded me, the galaxy laid out like an astronomical quilt, and I climbed higher and higher, a smile reaching my ears as I set my sights on the Big Dipper.
Tristan caught up to me, flanking one side, Nostradamus the other. Sailing past brilliant flickering stars, I felt inebriated and giddy, uninhibited, perhaps for the first time in my life. I no longer had to accept the reality that someday I would have to leave Tristan, Nick, Raina, and the Toroks behind and slip through the thin veil separating life from death, whether abruptly or following a debilitating illness, whether whole or crippled or infirmed. I was free! Free of death, the paralyzing apprehension that haunts mortals nearly all the days of their lives.
My eyes met Tristan’s, and I wished Nostradamus would return to the others, leave us to celebrate my awakening, to christen my immortality, to finally make licentious love, unafraid and with total abandonment.
Nostradamus shared a look with Tristan, and I sighed through a whimper, realizing the time had come to return to the palace. Tristan laced his fingers through mine, and soon after our feet touched the ground simultaneously.
“The time has come for you to depart, Tristan,” Nostradamus said, sandaled feet contacting the earth with a swish. “I’ll leave you to your goodbyes.”
Tristan nodded somberly, then stood motionless while he scanned the area beyond, seemingly unconvinced of Nostradamus’s departure. With one last look around, he tugged me close, our bodies melding into one. Then he kissed me, long and hard, tiny explosions arcing from his fingertips as he cupped my face. When I opened my eyes, he was gone, and Leonardo stood before me.