Jane Goes Batty

Jane pointed a finger at her. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “This isn’t like when you were seven and if your mother said no to something you went and asked your father.”

Lucy shook her head. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “It’s more like if I asked my great-great-great- great-great-grandmother for something and she said no.”

Jane couldn’t help but laugh. She wiped her eyes again and picked up her glass of wine, taking a sip. She felt a little bit better, but the feeling that had started her down this path lingered. Lucy really was going to age while Jane remained the same. Someday they would have to say goodbye. Just as you would have to say goodbye to Walter, a voice in her head whispered.

She brushed it away, or at least tried to. But it buzzed around her head like a bee at a picnic, the ever- present threat of a sting making Jane anxious.

“I should go,” she said, standing up.

Lucy looked at her, a puzzled expression on her face. “Is everything all right?” she asked. “I didn’t mean to —”

“You didn’t do anything,” Jane assured her. “I just had an idea for my new book, and I want to get home and work on it for a bit before my confidence in it wears off.”

Lucy stood up. “Okay,” she said. “But promise me you won’t say a word to Byron about what Ted told me.”

“As much as it would bring me joy to see the expression on his face when he discovered that there’s someone immune to his charms, I promise,” Jane said.

She gave Lucy a long hug, then left the apartment and went to her car. She had no intention of going home and writing anything. Her new book was the last thing she wanted to think about. Well, the second-to-last thing. Lucy dying was the first. Lucy or anyone she loved. Although that list was fairly short, containing only Lucy and Walter. Byron was already undead. Not that I love him, she told herself. But of course she did. Despite everything, she did love him. Just not in the same way I love Walter, she concluded.

Now that she was thinking about what she didn’t want to think about, it was all she could think about. She found herself tearing up again as she imagined attending Lucy’s funeral. The logical thing—the thing almost every vampire she’d ever encountered did—was to move on and leave old friendships behind before the inevitable separation by death. It was only slightly less painful than watching a friend die, but at least you didn’t have to witness the end grow nearer and nearer.

This was something that nonvampires could perhaps never understand, the inherent horror of knowing that you would continue on even as everyone and everything around you turned to dust. Yes, you could turn anyone you loved. There was nothing preventing you from doing that. But there were impracticalities with that as well. For one, where did you stop? Having turned, say, your favorite sister, were you then obliged to turn her husband, or lover, or children if she had them? If you turned your mother, were you then required to turn your aunts and uncles (all of whom she would likely miss when they passed on) as well as their children?

“There really would be no end of it.” That’s what the vampire with whom Jane had first discussed this matter had said. Her name was Olivia Rhodes. When Jane first met her she had been alive for almost five hundred years, having been turned toward the end of the Black Death. Since then she had watched scores of husbands and lovers die. Each time, she told Jane, she’d had to force herself not to turn the man. When Jane asked her why she didn’t turn just one, to spare herself the endless cycle of grief, Olivia had smiled and said, “Eventually we would resent each other for not dying.”

At the time Jane had not understood. Now, two hundred years later, she did. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that there must be exceptions. Surely there were people with whom one could comfortably share eternity. People like Lucy. Or Walter, she thought. Wasn’t it possible that they could continue to find each other interesting throughout centuries? Or would they get tired of telling the same stories again and again, until hearing a phrase such as “Remember that time in Pompeii” made them want to hurl themselves off cliffs?

She started the car. Sitting there in Lucy’s driveway being gloomy wasn’t achieving anything. She could just as easily be miserable at home, where at least Jasper would sit beside her and she could stroke his ears. (Tom, being a cat, was useless as a source of comfort.) But thinking about that brought on another round of tears, as she imagined having to say goodbye to her pets. Animals could not be turned, so there was no question of creating a lifelong companion out of one of them. Jane had always thought this a great pity.

She pulled out of the driveway and headed for home. A few minutes later she found herself approaching Walter’s house. Although she’d intended to pass right by, she felt herself step lightly on the brake to slow the car. Then she was coming to a stop at the curb.

She turned the engine off and sat in the dark, looking at the windows of the house. The lights in the living room were still on, and behind the curtains Jane saw shadows moving. She imagined Walter and his mother sitting, having coffee, talking. Were they discussing her? Was Miriam telling Walter that she didn’t think Jane was suitable for him? Was Walter telling his mother that it was really none of her business?

She thought about trying to go invisible and sneaking up to the windows for a look. But that seemed slightly desperate. Yes, Miriam’s remark earlier in the evening had bothered Jane. But had she really meant something sinister by it? Or was she just being an overly protective mother?

You’re being silly, Jane told herself. You just need to give her a chance.

Suddenly the light in the living room went out. Jane waited, and a moment later a light on the second floor came on. Jane pictured the layout of the house in her head and realized that she was looking at the window to the guest room. Miriam’s room, she thought.

She imagined Miriam getting ready for bed. Washing her face. Brushing her teeth. Putting on her favorite nightgown. Now she would go to bed in her son’s house, a reversal of the years when she had tucked him into his bed in her house.

Jane thought of her own mother, and suddenly she was overcome with stirrings of affection for Miriam. Yes, they had gotten off to a bad start. But they could start again. Jane would just have to be a little more patient and understanding. I can do that, she told herself.

As she gazed up at Miriam’s window the curtains parted unexpectedly. Miriam stood there, holding Lilith in her arms as she looked out at the night. The moon, nearly full, cast its light over the lawn. Jane’s car was sitting in a pool of light, right in Miriam’s line of vision.

Jane ducked down, her heart pounding. Then she remembered: Miriam hadn’t seen her car. She would have no idea that it was Jane sitting there. Slowly Jane raised her head and peered over the edge of the window.

Miriam was staring at her. For a moment their eyes seemed to lock. Then Miriam closed the curtains. Her shadow remained visible for another minute. Then the light went out and Jane was left looking at a black space.

She started the car and drove away, feeling Miriam’s eyes on the back of her head. Or maybe I’ll just stay out of her way, she thought. Just until she warms up to me a little. Or until she dies.

Chapter 8

“Here you are.”

Sherman Applebaum slid into the booth, sitting opposite Jane, who was holding a cup of coffee in her hands and staring at a half-eaten jelly donut sitting on a plate in front of her.

At seven o’clock in the morning the Rise-N-Shine coffee shop was not particularly crowded. The handful of customers were mostly delivery truck drivers, people getting off late shifts, and retired men who dreaded the long days of having nothing to do and came to spend an hour or two among people who would gladly trade places with them. Tired and preoccupied with their own lives, none of them paid any attention to Jane, which is precisely why she had chosen to come there.

Jane looked at Sherman, who even at this early hour was dressed in a gray flannel suit complete with