I finished primping myself in the bathroom and headed back to the bedroom to change clothes. I found my last pair of jeans and my last fitted button-up shirt. A last day of vacation feeling washed through me, and I smiled at how different this trip was from the last time. I liked it here. I liked being here. I liked watching Teren be here.
Thinking of Teren, I decided to test his impressive hearing. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked down. In a voice so low that the fabric of the bed swallowed it, and I was sure there weren't enough sound waves left to travel to wherever he was, I whispered, "Teren, I need to see you right now. Please come here."
I began to count in my head. I got to five and then the door was swinging inward. His concerned eyes swept the room before focusing on me in the bed. He was wearing a pair of black jeans that nicely set off the gray button-up shirt he had loose over the top of them. It was a yummy sight to see first thing in the morning. His blue eyes sparkled with concern. "Are you okay? What is it?"
I half-smiled as he closed the door and sat beside me on the bed, his face still looking worried. Very seriously, I said, "I missed you. You don't get to just leave me alone in a cold bed anymore without saying goodbye first." I twisted my lips at him. "Especially if there are no roses being left on my pillow."
His face was blank for a minute, then he relaxed into a laugh. Running his hand through his black hair, he shook his head. "I did try and say goodbye." He laughed a little harder. "You grunted at me and told me to go away..." he shrugged his shoulders, "so I did."
I pursed my lips at him. "I did no such thing."
He smiled in a knowing way. "Go ask my mom if you don't believe me. She was laughing about it when I went downstairs to see her this morning."
I clasped a hand over my mouth, embarrassed. Damn those vampire ears. And just when I was feeling so comfortable, too... I straightened my shoulders. It was fine. It wasn't like I'd asked them to take a walk again.
"Your family needs to work on boundaries." I blushed a little, knowing that I'd basically just said that directly to his family...but it was true.
He nodded. "I know. Believe me, I know."
We spent the morning with Jack and Alanna, eating breakfast and having breezy conversations, like no tension had ever filled this little family. It warmed me that whatever awkwardness there had been between mother and son seemed to have faded. Teren seemed to have forgiven her. She did cast concerned glances at the both of us throughout the morning, and I knew that she was desperately hoping Teren would stay near, that we would both stay near, but I also knew that Teren had no intention of doing so, and there was nothing I could say to make him change his mind. For some reason, he wanted to be on his own, and he wanted to stay in San Francisco.
Later, we went upstairs to Imogen's room and I apologized profusely for the subject I had brought up yesterday, when I'd crassly mentioned Halina's eating habits and chastised her for it, therefore also chastising Imogen, who wasn't entirely an innocent grandmother. Imogen shook her head as I said I was sorry for the hundredth time. "Dear, my burdens are my own. I'm not asking you to share them with me."
"I know...I just feel really bad for even bringing it up. I'm sure it was hard for you..." I paused, not sure where I was going with that. Teren grabbed my hand and squeezed it, while Imogen looked over at us from a picture of a blonde-haired, smiling man, who I could only assume was her late husband.
"The act itself was actually very easy," she said softly, and Teren looked up at her with surprise in his eyes. Imogen didn't talk about this, and after that statement, I wasn't sure if I wanted her to. She tilted her head at me and her eyes aged as she reminisced. "It was more like letting go of a wall around me. Letting go of struggling to maintain being decent and normal and...caving into the pure passion and aggression of insatiable hunger."
Teren's eyes danced as he listened to her describe her level of thirst back then. I watched his face with curiosity. Would it be like that for him too? Imogen's eyes flicked to his and then back to mine. "It's the watching them die part that haunts me...that forever stops me from caving again." She closed her eyes and shook her head as a red tear dripped down her cheek. "I can't do it. I can't live with the guilt of it." She opened her red eyes to sadly smile at me. "I can't live with any additional guilt, I guess I should say."
Standing, I crossed the room to embrace her. She returned my hug lightly at first, and then with more pressure. I felt her crying, and I rubbed her back. How odd to be comforting a vampire. How odd to be comforting someone who had lustfully killed on more than one occasion. How nice to know that, even after decades, someone can still feel so badly for taking a life that they never would again. It reaffirmed my decision that I never wanted to be a full vampire. I never wanted the temptation to take a life. I never wanted their level of guilt.
We talked with her a while longer on more pleasant subjects and discovered it was close to dusk when we were through. Teren looked at me as we walked down the stairs. "We should probably leave soon...I've got an early meeting tomorrow."
I sighed as I clutched his hand. "Yeah...okay." It was so wonderful here I almost hated to leave it. Of course, it would be nice to get back to closed doors that actually meant something. Maybe I should work on inventing vampire-strength earplugs.
Teren cocked his head and look distracted for a second. I stopped on the step and watched his face. He seemed to be listening to something. I strained my inferior human ears, but heard absolutely nothing. Finally, he looked over at me.
"Great-Gran wants us to come down to her rooms." He indicated the windows by the massive front doors. "It won't be completely dark for another hour and she wants to say goodbye."
He must have noticed the startled look on my face, even though I had been trying very hard to keep it even. "She really won't hurt you, Emma." He smiled at me reassuringly as he pulled my hand down the stairs.
"I know that," I sullenly muttered. I knew she wouldn't attack me, but I still wasn't relishing walking into her domain. Teren led me through the living room and over to a door that I'd just assumed was a closet next to some built-in shelving. He opened the door and we entered into...a closet. I looked around, confused, as Teren closed the door behind us. It was a walk-in closet with shelves along two of the walls. The shelves were full of women's shoes, jackets and other outerwear. A few of the shelves held mundane home essentials like lamps, matches, blankets, umbrellas, flashlights. There was also a couple of board games, and resting on the very top shelf-a rifle. I swallowed as I looked at that, but then decided that, in this house, that was probably the least harmful thing in the building.
As Teren fully closed the door, darkness engulfed us. His bright eyes glowed in the dark and I had a sudden "Seven Minutes in Heaven" flashback. Amused, I threw my arms around his neck and giggled as I kissed him a few times.
"And what are we doing in here, Teren?" I asked between laughs and kisses.
He returned both my lips and my humor. "Visiting Great-Gran," he casually replied. Then he reached out to the blank wall opposite the closet door and gave it a sturdy push. Something clicked and the wall gave way. I gaped as it swung open to reveal steep wooden stairs.
Evenly spaced lights lined the stone wall that seemed to descend into the middle of the Earth. Bracing myself, I took a deep, steadying breath. Teren laced my fingers in his and gently pulled me down the stairs. The staircase wasn't as long as I'd feared, and at the bottom it turned a corner into a stone hallway.
Now, I'd pictured Halina's lair a million times in my head, and a couple times in my nightmares. I always pictured rough stone walls, with manacles holding barely conscious men, with dripping, bloody wounds. I pictured a dirt strewn stone floor with large, dark stains that no amount of cleaning would wash away. Centered in the room on an obsidian dais, I pictured a massive, black coffin, lined in blood-red velvet. I pictured squeaking rats skittering around the floor, scurrying away to the darkest portions of the near-dungeon. I pictured snow white candles and wrought iron candelabras, straight out of Phantom of the Opera. I imagined a dank, musty odor that reeked of death. What I had never, ever pictured...was what the room actually looked like.
We walked around the corner of the hallway, and entered what I could only describe as a queen's bed chamber. The windowless stone walls were light gray and smooth to the touch. Heavy, beaded tapestries hung around the room, all of them depicting glorious sunsets. The most beautiful, elaborate gold lamps hung between each of the tapestries, providing plenty of light for the room. The floor was a smooth, white marble with thick, padded, burgundy area rugs spaced evenly throughout. Further ruining my dark imagination, Halina slept in a regular bed. It was a beautiful four-poster canopy bed with sage and burgundy satin bedding and romantic, gauzy white curtains along the sides that were tied to the poles in an open position.
The room was well lit from the lamps, but she also had clusters of tall and short pillar candles on her mahogany dresser, vanity and the matching coffee table at the base of her bed. The burning candles made the room smell sweet and spicy, like cinnamon rolls. A couple plush chairs rested on the other side of the coffee table and three doors opposite the wall of the bed led to other rooms that she used. I was pretty sure that at least one of those rooms was a massive closet, holding her wide variety of skintight dresses.
The place was beautiful and majestic and a little heartbreaking, with the multiple reminders of daylight around the room. Aside from the tapestries, there were photos of the sun on her nightstand and dresser, and spectacular canvas paintings that she had created were drying near an easel set up in one corner of the room. Next to that was a tall bookcase, with just about every color of oil paint in the world inside of it.
Taking a final sweep of the room, I noticed a black and white photo on her vanity of an old-fashioned couple standing in front of a house, a house that looked suspiciously like the ranch hand's house. The woman was healthy, happy and obviously pregnant, wearing a long, flowing dress with her hair elaborately twisted on top of her head. The man had his arm around her and was the spitting image of Teren...only years younger. I realized I was looking at a picture of Halina and her husband...when she was human. The photo was a startling contradiction to the vampire, who was coming out of one of the three doors I'd glanced over earlier.
"Thank you for coming down," she purred at Teren as he walked over to give her a hug.
My eyes again flicked to the photo of Halina's husband and I marveled at the resemblance. I'd originally thought Teren looked like the women of his family, but I was wrong. He resembled his great-grandfather. I watched Halina eye him with fondness as they pulled apart from each other, and I clearly saw what Halina saw every time she looked at him-the man she'd inadvertently killed. I instantly ached with sympathy for her.
"Good evening, Halina," I said warmly.
"Almost, give it another fifty two minutes." She smiled over at me with a small half-grin. "Good evening, Emma."
I sort of had an odd desire to hug her. She seemed to sense that and her half-grin twisted to a wry one. I didn't really feel like touching her after that. Sympathy only goes so far after all. She indicated the plush chairs before the coffee table and Teren and I each took a seat. I glanced at Teren and wondered how long he planned on staying down here; I'd been expecting a quick hi/goodbye.