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Melting
Finishing up a few things on Gale before I go to tackle the two other books in the series. I've come to the conclusion that Jenna, the next and last book, will be the only one in the series that is properly plotted out, chapter by chapter. I'm still pretty amazed that these three books did so well with no planning at all. Literally I had a basic idea, sat down, and just started typing. Of course the document of notes is pretty impressive now.
I think the best preparation for me is simply being able to bounce my ideas off of my editor, and to top it off editing one of the books at the same time allows me to bounce even more ideas off of her, but more complex ideas.
The editing for Bastian is coming along okay so far, we've come to the conclusion that we'll be going over the books at least three times not including how much I go through before sending it to her. Basically I want this to be immaculate by the time it goes to print. I can't afford to have too many mistakes or continuity issues on my debut, it just looks bad on me as a writer. In the meantime, I'm learning all sorts of particulars about the English language, random stuffs too like dove v. dived (both are correct but dived irks me for some reason). I'm feeling a little strange about the idea that I have a particular writing style, I don't know if I'm proud of it or what, but its something that will be interesting to see in the future.
And so, here's the excerpt that makes my editor "aww" every time. God, I'd be lying if I said I didn't like that scene in the rain, Gale's three word line is the best.
Chapter Two
The year was nineteen twenty-six, and I was in Paris once more. I had been moving from the States to Britain and back for fifty or so years prior and was looking for a change of pace. Parties were the easiest place to hunt, and France was a beacon of light in prohibition; all were valid arguments for me to visit my “friends”, more specifically Marley and his recently sired Adam.
Adam was lean and sinewy, a young fellow that could not even have hit twenty years of age when sired, he was native to Paris, lightly tanned with a very tidy and neatly cropped head of black hair, always to be kept out of his grey eyes. I still do not quite understand Marley's interest in him, as far as I delved I had only gathered that Marley had merely made a sireling to prove that he could.
I could not contain my amusement with Adam and his flaw. Unable to stand the sight of gore and blood, he fed very rarely, and took so long to pick out a victim suitable that he on several occasions had to deal with whatever prey Marley chose—indisputably the worst thing that could happen for the fellow. I do believe, however, that I may have angered him slightly in my jesting, and I soon found that he was particularly troublesome for me. Adam’s gift allowed him to manipulate numbers, amounts, a sort of quantakenesis that took advantage of my own classical flaw of arithmomania. As amused as I was with Adam’s flaw, so was Marley amused with Adam’s ability to send me into fits of counting. It is with this relationship that Adam and I shared that allowed me to become quite fast about dealing with my flaw, I soon learned the easiest way to count even the smallest and most tedious of items, rice, seeds, and the like.
It was a chilly night in March when our arguments came to the culmination of the year.
Adam had not fed in over a week, and seeing his sireling’s plight, Marley pulled the whelp out for an early hunt. When they returned—Marley simply dandy and Adam completely disturbed—I learned that Marley in his lack of conscious had gone to the red light district and found the most used harlot of the block. Now vampires can smell venereal diseases, it makes the blood sour and burns slightly as it is ingested, but our expedited healing grants us immunity from whatever diseases a human would come into contact with through blood. A vampire who is a complete mysophobe however has a bit of a different opinion on the matter as I found out that night.
Now Adam argued with Marley over the kill, argued fiercely for over an hour, and practically begged on hands and knees to at least wash the whore, and he lost. Upon hearing the tale I gave both Marley and Adam what was the first smile that either of them had ever seen from me, and emitted a chuckle. The chuckle was first directed to Adam, who was so distraught that his inability to create tears had caused his eyes to become so dry and red and puffy that he looked as if he had gone rolling in thistles. Marley found my amusement so amusing that he failed to realize that I was laughing at him as well, wondering if he had become desperate himself in his own hunting to the point of even knowing which whore in the red light district was next on the list.
The first thing I noticed was the livid expression directed at me from Adam, and then came the lint. Just a small white speck on the shoulder of my coat (as I was on my way out for hunting of my own), but it quickly began to multiply. I brushed off the specks at first, not paying much attention to them, but they quickly multiplied once more and taking over more and more space to the point of making a trail down my sleeve.
Then came the counting. Oh, the counting. I felt the indescribable desire to know exactly how many of those blasted specks there were present above my elbow, below my elbow, above my shoulder, and as a whole, and the numbers kept changing.
I fled. For the first time in my existence I had lost control of my surroundings, and what was worse was a sireling was responsible, and relished his ability to get his hooks into me. I do not doubt that Marley had never been as proud of Adam as he was in that moment.
I had been on my way out the door before the ordeal, and other than gravely wounding my pride Adam’s prank had been nothing more than a hindrance.
I was not hungry that night, well not particularly, in those days kills were few and far between for many and I enjoyed that my gift allowed me to be able to wait until the last possible moment before lashing out irrationally, knowing that I would be able to seduce whatever prey I desired.
I did not prowl my usual spots; I deviated to a much more uptown vicinity, a taste in my mouth more for culture than nourishment. In my search I stumbled upon the club that I would frequent for many nights after. In the States prohibition was in full swing and I would never have been able to walk into an establishment such as the one I found in Paris. I would have had to track down a speakeasy and even then the bathtub gin carried a strange odor that bothered even those of us with no taste for human food.
Inside a plethora of beauty waited: the dim lights, smoke, mirrors, and others like me. A human-owned club, and somehow overrun with vampires. I sat at a table with them, spoke with them, and created many relationships that I keep up with to this day. When they left me to prowl the streets I settled back into my chair, waiting for the next performer to take the stage.
Her vocal range was impressive, letting herself hang at a subtle alto in juxtaposition to the ever so slightly un-tuned saloon piano. When I looked up at her from the tasteless drink on the table I was taken aback.
She was an albino, and as adorably eerie as a rabbit with her large pinkish-red eyes, pale skin, and short white curls pinned to her head and held in place by white peacock feathers. I stayed at that club that night until they closed, vicariously watching her from all angles of the room, and finding myself absolutely enchanted.
I returned every night that week, staying until the club closed in the early morning before hunting. By the seventh night I had been conditioned into such a good mood that I barely noticed the lithe and curvy figure until it had collided with me and I had grasped onto it to keep the creature from falling.
Then, there, in my arms was the same petit albino that I had been utterly infatuated with, and every bit of the human warmth that came from her alighted my senses in ways I cannot describe.
“Oh! Pardonnez-moi!” Forgive me! She seemed in a daze and grasped onto my arms while she found her footing.
“Je ne regardais pas.” I was not looking. Despite telling the truth about the moment prior it was nothing but a complete lie immediately after.
She stood on her own and the warmth of her touch left me colder than before. She smiled wide and pointed an index finger to me casually, “Oh! It’s you! You’re the American that has been coming.”
I was pleasantly surprised, “You speak English?”
“Yes, I speak wonderful English!” She most certainly did, and she seemed quite proud of this fact, so despite being fluent in both French and English I allowed her to continue on however she wished. I soon found her mouth switching back and forth, and I relished whatever language caught her fancy in that moment. She held out her hand to me now in a friendly gesture, and I could not help but struggle to keep my mouth closed as I smiled, not wanting to scare her away with a view of my fangs.“Je m’appelle Renée. Renée Bordeaux.”
“Gale DeWinter.” I grasped her hand, “You have a lovely voice.”
“Oh, merci.” She glanced past me to a girl who had caught her attention, a friend that had been waiting for her, and I was given one last kind smile, “It was good to meet you.”
Before I continue I should explain the trouble with tastes that befalls vampires. With the exception of garlic all taste of food is lost to us. I lost my ability to taste when I gained my bloodlust; the only things that have any taste to me anymore are the different variations of blood.
But then, after that chance encounter a taste that I had thought was long lost to me returned. Sweet and sugary, it intrigued me with the way it left a perfect imprint of where she had bumped into me. The scent lingered on my coat, making me almost dizzy with a warm sort of happiness that I had not felt in ages. It was there every time I turned my head, the soft sugary fragrance that wafted over my shoulder, and with each simple inhale I felt my resolve slowly melt and a strange craving set in that was anything but hunger.
I did not hunt that night, I returned directly to the abode I had been residing in with Marley and Adam. In retrospect I ought to have gone out and procured a kill, it might have helped to clear my head, but instead I stood with my back against the door in the house for quite a few moments before realizing that I had caught Adam’s attention.
“You smell like sugar.” He said evenly.
I nodded, “You recognize it?”
I will tell you something more about Adam. Whereas Marley and I and countless other vampires lost our sense of taste he retained it, albeit muted. When alive he was quite the chef and Marley and I had come to the conclusion that his retention of taste was a result of a career that he had been passionate about.
“Cake icing. Butter cream.” He squinted at me, “You were at a bakery.”
I shook my head, amused at the idea that Adam probably was well acquainted with every single baker and chef in Paris and would be quite upset to hear of any of them becoming my dinner. “I was not. Nor have I devoured any of your friends. Do they taste as pleasant as this smell?”
I kept up my routine for the next few days, but this time adding in an increasing attempt at a friendship with the one who called herself Renée, and an exchange of pleasantries became common between us.
She had been born in Nice, a city far to the south and close to Italy that I had visited before. The only daughter of a wealthy family that had sent her to the finest schools only to have their daughter reject their proper and well-to-do ways, refuse a marriage to a boy of equal social standing, and run away to Paris. She had fled their company as a siren would flee the deaf, a well-educated girl whose only desire was to sing and would rather die than do so in a convent.
But she told me none of this. These are things I learned from her as she thought them with the use of my gift.
It had been over a month since our first meeting when I stopped her on her way home to request her company for coffee and rather than respond to me with the same kind smile she stared at me as if I had broken her heart.
“I will not.” She said to me slowly.
It caught me off guard, to be sure, but the pain of the rejection was a new feeling entirely, and just before I went to inquire her reasoning verbally, I discovered the bit of truth I had been apprehensive of. She knew what I was, and she had known all along.
“You know what I am?” I realized aloud, my voice in a low shock.
She pursed her lips and took a step back, unwilling to state it outright, but giving away even more that she did indeed know. “Of course, an American.”
That she knew was intriguing enough, but how she knew was something that she would not divulge, of course, if I were in the presence of someone that ought to consider me prey I might have the same reaction. Still, I did not want her to fear me the way she seemed to at that moment and I began to explain myself, starting awkwardly, but wanting to tell her everything; the way she smelled, how her presence satiated my soul, and how ending a life such as that would be a crime. “No, that is only where I have been the longest. I am from Wallachia originally; I was born before it was called that.”
“Romania?” She asked feigning ignorance of what I was really telling her; she readjusted her coat around her shoulders, and tucked a stray strand of white hair into her hat.
“As it is now, yes.” She was looking down at my hands now: I could have told her they were simply gloved from the still chilly weather, but she knew better. It was early April and not as cold as would have been convenient. “I lived in France years ago, long before you were born and took my surname during that time.”
She looked up at my face slowly, “Monsieur DeWinter, you are positively frightening.”
“An almost welcome observation my dear.” I should not have smiled, but years of being quite a facetious fellow had made such gestures habitual, and she took yet another step backwards with my small laugh.
She was not at the club the night following, and I immediately felt as if I had caused her such discomfort that she would move from the city entirely. My fears were eased upon finding from a few employees of the club that she had simply taken ill, and rather than staying until the close of the vicinity that night, I left almost as soon as I had arrived with Renée’s home address engraved in my mind.
Amaryllis belladonna, a beautiful flower with a name curiously similar to deadly nightshade, somehow it seemed to be the most fitting flower that one such as myself could bring a living being. Flowers were quite a bit different from the grapes that I had lured women away with in Britain years before, but a welcome and sophisticated sort of change for me and I accepted it with nothing but the warmest of smiles. No sooner had I touched the flowers at the shop did their color fade slightly, as flowers always do when touched by a vampire. All flora seems to shrink from us, as if our touch drains a different sort of vitality from them rather than the sanguine.
It had been raining, something that I had long since shrugged off. I could not catch any illness from the rain, it was merely the smallest of hindrances, but Renée came out of her small apartment with an umbrella as if I were about to fall over.
“Monsieur DeWinter, you will catch your death!” She rushed over to me with the umbrella, coughing on her own the entire way over to me in the downpour.
“If only.” I said slowly. She smiled at me, and I could not help but smile back, happy that she seemed to have either forgiven me or forgotten entirely about our conversation the night prior. Either way, I was glad that she was not cross with me. “I am melting,” I managed.
“I can see that.” She took my arm and began to pull me towards her door.
“Not in the physical sense.”
Whether or not she understood was of little difference at that moment, and once inside she took to the belladonna with a light hearted smile before turning an eye to me, drying from the downpour already, and saying with an almost vacant expression:
“Paris is overrun with vampires for the same reason it is overrun with dreamers.” She set the amaryllis onto the table, “You flee here in the same way I did, and with America so against alcohol you come screaming.”
“It is like water. Like nothing.” I said while watching the rain drip from my coat at the door, “Salt, spice, all lost to me years ago.” The smell of butter cream was everywhere around me and I sat in the wooden chair at the table. On the table, atop a lovely cake stand and under a glass was a round white cake, a single slice missing from it and I immediately assumed that she had just finished making it. “Do you bake?”
“Bake?”
“Ne que vous faites des gâteaux?” Do you make cakes?
“I only tried it once. Ce n'était pas bon.” It was not good. She smiled and giggled, “My friend, Brigitte made this for me.” She pulled a plate down from the cupboard and pulled the glass from the cake before gingerly cutting into it and placing the moist slice onto the plate for me. I had no real desire to eat it, I gain no nourishment from food, but I accepted the fork from Renée not wanting to be rude.
On my tongue the icing melted in just the same way as Renée’s scent had, but the taste was missing. For a moment I imagined the smooth sweetness from the woman now sitting at the table with me as the taste of the food, and for a moment I was human.
“You smell just like it. Sweet.” It was a bad choice of words; her eyes widened and she went pale. I made the same wide-eyed look at myself as I touched my hand to my forehead, “Pardonnez-moi, I do not mean it in that way.” She seemed to relax a bit, but still looked at me cautiously. “I would like to see you more, outside of the club.”
It was at that moment that what I was asking, and the comments that I had made set in to her. Renée turned pink immediately, but would not accept any invitation for coffee that I offered for another week regardless of the bouquet of amaryllis that awaited her each night at the club.
I only hoped that Marley would not become curious of the flowers in my hand that I left the house with and butter cream on my coat that I returned with. He never used his gift of invisibility to follow me, and I was overall grateful for his lack of observation.
Marley would have attacked Renée without a second thought; my interest in her would have only fueled him on.
I think the best preparation for me is simply being able to bounce my ideas off of my editor, and to top it off editing one of the books at the same time allows me to bounce even more ideas off of her, but more complex ideas.
The editing for Bastian is coming along okay so far, we've come to the conclusion that we'll be going over the books at least three times not including how much I go through before sending it to her. Basically I want this to be immaculate by the time it goes to print. I can't afford to have too many mistakes or continuity issues on my debut, it just looks bad on me as a writer. In the meantime, I'm learning all sorts of particulars about the English language, random stuffs too like dove v. dived (both are correct but dived irks me for some reason). I'm feeling a little strange about the idea that I have a particular writing style, I don't know if I'm proud of it or what, but its something that will be interesting to see in the future.
And so, here's the excerpt that makes my editor "aww" every time. God, I'd be lying if I said I didn't like that scene in the rain, Gale's three word line is the best.
Chapter Two
The year was nineteen twenty-six, and I was in Paris once more. I had been moving from the States to Britain and back for fifty or so years prior and was looking for a change of pace. Parties were the easiest place to hunt, and France was a beacon of light in prohibition; all were valid arguments for me to visit my “friends”, more specifically Marley and his recently sired Adam.
Adam was lean and sinewy, a young fellow that could not even have hit twenty years of age when sired, he was native to Paris, lightly tanned with a very tidy and neatly cropped head of black hair, always to be kept out of his grey eyes. I still do not quite understand Marley's interest in him, as far as I delved I had only gathered that Marley had merely made a sireling to prove that he could.
I could not contain my amusement with Adam and his flaw. Unable to stand the sight of gore and blood, he fed very rarely, and took so long to pick out a victim suitable that he on several occasions had to deal with whatever prey Marley chose—indisputably the worst thing that could happen for the fellow. I do believe, however, that I may have angered him slightly in my jesting, and I soon found that he was particularly troublesome for me. Adam’s gift allowed him to manipulate numbers, amounts, a sort of quantakenesis that took advantage of my own classical flaw of arithmomania. As amused as I was with Adam’s flaw, so was Marley amused with Adam’s ability to send me into fits of counting. It is with this relationship that Adam and I shared that allowed me to become quite fast about dealing with my flaw, I soon learned the easiest way to count even the smallest and most tedious of items, rice, seeds, and the like.
It was a chilly night in March when our arguments came to the culmination of the year.
Adam had not fed in over a week, and seeing his sireling’s plight, Marley pulled the whelp out for an early hunt. When they returned—Marley simply dandy and Adam completely disturbed—I learned that Marley in his lack of conscious had gone to the red light district and found the most used harlot of the block. Now vampires can smell venereal diseases, it makes the blood sour and burns slightly as it is ingested, but our expedited healing grants us immunity from whatever diseases a human would come into contact with through blood. A vampire who is a complete mysophobe however has a bit of a different opinion on the matter as I found out that night.
Now Adam argued with Marley over the kill, argued fiercely for over an hour, and practically begged on hands and knees to at least wash the whore, and he lost. Upon hearing the tale I gave both Marley and Adam what was the first smile that either of them had ever seen from me, and emitted a chuckle. The chuckle was first directed to Adam, who was so distraught that his inability to create tears had caused his eyes to become so dry and red and puffy that he looked as if he had gone rolling in thistles. Marley found my amusement so amusing that he failed to realize that I was laughing at him as well, wondering if he had become desperate himself in his own hunting to the point of even knowing which whore in the red light district was next on the list.
The first thing I noticed was the livid expression directed at me from Adam, and then came the lint. Just a small white speck on the shoulder of my coat (as I was on my way out for hunting of my own), but it quickly began to multiply. I brushed off the specks at first, not paying much attention to them, but they quickly multiplied once more and taking over more and more space to the point of making a trail down my sleeve.
Then came the counting. Oh, the counting. I felt the indescribable desire to know exactly how many of those blasted specks there were present above my elbow, below my elbow, above my shoulder, and as a whole, and the numbers kept changing.
I fled. For the first time in my existence I had lost control of my surroundings, and what was worse was a sireling was responsible, and relished his ability to get his hooks into me. I do not doubt that Marley had never been as proud of Adam as he was in that moment.
I had been on my way out the door before the ordeal, and other than gravely wounding my pride Adam’s prank had been nothing more than a hindrance.
I was not hungry that night, well not particularly, in those days kills were few and far between for many and I enjoyed that my gift allowed me to be able to wait until the last possible moment before lashing out irrationally, knowing that I would be able to seduce whatever prey I desired.
I did not prowl my usual spots; I deviated to a much more uptown vicinity, a taste in my mouth more for culture than nourishment. In my search I stumbled upon the club that I would frequent for many nights after. In the States prohibition was in full swing and I would never have been able to walk into an establishment such as the one I found in Paris. I would have had to track down a speakeasy and even then the bathtub gin carried a strange odor that bothered even those of us with no taste for human food.
Inside a plethora of beauty waited: the dim lights, smoke, mirrors, and others like me. A human-owned club, and somehow overrun with vampires. I sat at a table with them, spoke with them, and created many relationships that I keep up with to this day. When they left me to prowl the streets I settled back into my chair, waiting for the next performer to take the stage.
Her vocal range was impressive, letting herself hang at a subtle alto in juxtaposition to the ever so slightly un-tuned saloon piano. When I looked up at her from the tasteless drink on the table I was taken aback.
She was an albino, and as adorably eerie as a rabbit with her large pinkish-red eyes, pale skin, and short white curls pinned to her head and held in place by white peacock feathers. I stayed at that club that night until they closed, vicariously watching her from all angles of the room, and finding myself absolutely enchanted.
I returned every night that week, staying until the club closed in the early morning before hunting. By the seventh night I had been conditioned into such a good mood that I barely noticed the lithe and curvy figure until it had collided with me and I had grasped onto it to keep the creature from falling.
Then, there, in my arms was the same petit albino that I had been utterly infatuated with, and every bit of the human warmth that came from her alighted my senses in ways I cannot describe.
“Oh! Pardonnez-moi!” Forgive me! She seemed in a daze and grasped onto my arms while she found her footing.
“Je ne regardais pas.” I was not looking. Despite telling the truth about the moment prior it was nothing but a complete lie immediately after.
She stood on her own and the warmth of her touch left me colder than before. She smiled wide and pointed an index finger to me casually, “Oh! It’s you! You’re the American that has been coming.”
I was pleasantly surprised, “You speak English?”
“Yes, I speak wonderful English!” She most certainly did, and she seemed quite proud of this fact, so despite being fluent in both French and English I allowed her to continue on however she wished. I soon found her mouth switching back and forth, and I relished whatever language caught her fancy in that moment. She held out her hand to me now in a friendly gesture, and I could not help but struggle to keep my mouth closed as I smiled, not wanting to scare her away with a view of my fangs.“Je m’appelle Renée. Renée Bordeaux.”
“Gale DeWinter.” I grasped her hand, “You have a lovely voice.”
“Oh, merci.” She glanced past me to a girl who had caught her attention, a friend that had been waiting for her, and I was given one last kind smile, “It was good to meet you.”
Before I continue I should explain the trouble with tastes that befalls vampires. With the exception of garlic all taste of food is lost to us. I lost my ability to taste when I gained my bloodlust; the only things that have any taste to me anymore are the different variations of blood.
But then, after that chance encounter a taste that I had thought was long lost to me returned. Sweet and sugary, it intrigued me with the way it left a perfect imprint of where she had bumped into me. The scent lingered on my coat, making me almost dizzy with a warm sort of happiness that I had not felt in ages. It was there every time I turned my head, the soft sugary fragrance that wafted over my shoulder, and with each simple inhale I felt my resolve slowly melt and a strange craving set in that was anything but hunger.
I did not hunt that night, I returned directly to the abode I had been residing in with Marley and Adam. In retrospect I ought to have gone out and procured a kill, it might have helped to clear my head, but instead I stood with my back against the door in the house for quite a few moments before realizing that I had caught Adam’s attention.
“You smell like sugar.” He said evenly.
I nodded, “You recognize it?”
I will tell you something more about Adam. Whereas Marley and I and countless other vampires lost our sense of taste he retained it, albeit muted. When alive he was quite the chef and Marley and I had come to the conclusion that his retention of taste was a result of a career that he had been passionate about.
“Cake icing. Butter cream.” He squinted at me, “You were at a bakery.”
I shook my head, amused at the idea that Adam probably was well acquainted with every single baker and chef in Paris and would be quite upset to hear of any of them becoming my dinner. “I was not. Nor have I devoured any of your friends. Do they taste as pleasant as this smell?”
I kept up my routine for the next few days, but this time adding in an increasing attempt at a friendship with the one who called herself Renée, and an exchange of pleasantries became common between us.
She had been born in Nice, a city far to the south and close to Italy that I had visited before. The only daughter of a wealthy family that had sent her to the finest schools only to have their daughter reject their proper and well-to-do ways, refuse a marriage to a boy of equal social standing, and run away to Paris. She had fled their company as a siren would flee the deaf, a well-educated girl whose only desire was to sing and would rather die than do so in a convent.
But she told me none of this. These are things I learned from her as she thought them with the use of my gift.
It had been over a month since our first meeting when I stopped her on her way home to request her company for coffee and rather than respond to me with the same kind smile she stared at me as if I had broken her heart.
“I will not.” She said to me slowly.
It caught me off guard, to be sure, but the pain of the rejection was a new feeling entirely, and just before I went to inquire her reasoning verbally, I discovered the bit of truth I had been apprehensive of. She knew what I was, and she had known all along.
“You know what I am?” I realized aloud, my voice in a low shock.
She pursed her lips and took a step back, unwilling to state it outright, but giving away even more that she did indeed know. “Of course, an American.”
That she knew was intriguing enough, but how she knew was something that she would not divulge, of course, if I were in the presence of someone that ought to consider me prey I might have the same reaction. Still, I did not want her to fear me the way she seemed to at that moment and I began to explain myself, starting awkwardly, but wanting to tell her everything; the way she smelled, how her presence satiated my soul, and how ending a life such as that would be a crime. “No, that is only where I have been the longest. I am from Wallachia originally; I was born before it was called that.”
“Romania?” She asked feigning ignorance of what I was really telling her; she readjusted her coat around her shoulders, and tucked a stray strand of white hair into her hat.
“As it is now, yes.” She was looking down at my hands now: I could have told her they were simply gloved from the still chilly weather, but she knew better. It was early April and not as cold as would have been convenient. “I lived in France years ago, long before you were born and took my surname during that time.”
She looked up at my face slowly, “Monsieur DeWinter, you are positively frightening.”
“An almost welcome observation my dear.” I should not have smiled, but years of being quite a facetious fellow had made such gestures habitual, and she took yet another step backwards with my small laugh.
She was not at the club the night following, and I immediately felt as if I had caused her such discomfort that she would move from the city entirely. My fears were eased upon finding from a few employees of the club that she had simply taken ill, and rather than staying until the close of the vicinity that night, I left almost as soon as I had arrived with Renée’s home address engraved in my mind.
Amaryllis belladonna, a beautiful flower with a name curiously similar to deadly nightshade, somehow it seemed to be the most fitting flower that one such as myself could bring a living being. Flowers were quite a bit different from the grapes that I had lured women away with in Britain years before, but a welcome and sophisticated sort of change for me and I accepted it with nothing but the warmest of smiles. No sooner had I touched the flowers at the shop did their color fade slightly, as flowers always do when touched by a vampire. All flora seems to shrink from us, as if our touch drains a different sort of vitality from them rather than the sanguine.
It had been raining, something that I had long since shrugged off. I could not catch any illness from the rain, it was merely the smallest of hindrances, but Renée came out of her small apartment with an umbrella as if I were about to fall over.
“Monsieur DeWinter, you will catch your death!” She rushed over to me with the umbrella, coughing on her own the entire way over to me in the downpour.
“If only.” I said slowly. She smiled at me, and I could not help but smile back, happy that she seemed to have either forgiven me or forgotten entirely about our conversation the night prior. Either way, I was glad that she was not cross with me. “I am melting,” I managed.
“I can see that.” She took my arm and began to pull me towards her door.
“Not in the physical sense.”
Whether or not she understood was of little difference at that moment, and once inside she took to the belladonna with a light hearted smile before turning an eye to me, drying from the downpour already, and saying with an almost vacant expression:
“Paris is overrun with vampires for the same reason it is overrun with dreamers.” She set the amaryllis onto the table, “You flee here in the same way I did, and with America so against alcohol you come screaming.”
“It is like water. Like nothing.” I said while watching the rain drip from my coat at the door, “Salt, spice, all lost to me years ago.” The smell of butter cream was everywhere around me and I sat in the wooden chair at the table. On the table, atop a lovely cake stand and under a glass was a round white cake, a single slice missing from it and I immediately assumed that she had just finished making it. “Do you bake?”
“Bake?”
“Ne que vous faites des gâteaux?” Do you make cakes?
“I only tried it once. Ce n'était pas bon.” It was not good. She smiled and giggled, “My friend, Brigitte made this for me.” She pulled a plate down from the cupboard and pulled the glass from the cake before gingerly cutting into it and placing the moist slice onto the plate for me. I had no real desire to eat it, I gain no nourishment from food, but I accepted the fork from Renée not wanting to be rude.
On my tongue the icing melted in just the same way as Renée’s scent had, but the taste was missing. For a moment I imagined the smooth sweetness from the woman now sitting at the table with me as the taste of the food, and for a moment I was human.
“You smell just like it. Sweet.” It was a bad choice of words; her eyes widened and she went pale. I made the same wide-eyed look at myself as I touched my hand to my forehead, “Pardonnez-moi, I do not mean it in that way.” She seemed to relax a bit, but still looked at me cautiously. “I would like to see you more, outside of the club.”
It was at that moment that what I was asking, and the comments that I had made set in to her. Renée turned pink immediately, but would not accept any invitation for coffee that I offered for another week regardless of the bouquet of amaryllis that awaited her each night at the club.
I only hoped that Marley would not become curious of the flowers in my hand that I left the house with and butter cream on my coat that I returned with. He never used his gift of invisibility to follow me, and I was overall grateful for his lack of observation.
Marley would have attacked Renée without a second thought; my interest in her would have only fueled him on.