lingered, and I frowned, racking my memory. Then I caught a glimpse of myself and groaned out loud—my skin had an unhealthy nightclub pallor, my lips were practically as pale as my skin, my eyes looked weird because of my blue contacts, my spiky black hair was lopsided and stiff. I was his antithesis: He was the perfectman, while I was the least perfect of women. Strung out, unhealthy. Well, what did I care? I didn’t care.
Four minutes of rutted road later, I finally pulled up in front of a long two-story building that looked more like a school or a dormitory than someone’s home. It was large and rectangular, painted a severe, pristine white, with dark green shutters on each precise window. There were at least three more outbuildings off to the sides, and a stone fence that might enclose a large garden.
I parked my car on autumn-dry grass next to a beat-up red truck. It felt like the next few minutes were monumental, as if they would decide my whole future. Getting out of this car would be admitting that my life was a waste. That I was a waste. It would be admitting that I was scared of my friends, scared of myself, my own darkness, my history. Everything in me wanted to stay in this car with the windows rolled up and the doors locked, forever. If I’d been a human, and forever meant only another sixty years, I might have actually done it. However, in my case, forever truly would have been unbearably long. There was no way.
I’d come here for a reason. I’d left my friends and disappeared to a different continent. On the plane coming over, I’d realized that besides Incy crippling the cabbie, despite my disgust at my lack of action, despite my paranoia about Incy’s seeing my scar, it had been a hundred, a thousandother things leading up to that, chipping away at my insides until I felt like a shell with nothing alive left in me. I hadn’t been going around killing people and setting villages on fire, but I’d been cutting a destructive path through my existence, and I’d realized, with nauseating honesty, that everything I touched was harmed. People were hurt, homes broken, cars wrecked, careers destroyed—the memories just kept trickling in like rivulets of fresh acid dripping into my brain until I wanted to scream.
It was in my blood, I knew. A darkness. The darkness. I had inherited it, along with my immortality and my black eyes. I had resisted it when I was younger. Had pretended it wasn’t there. But somewhere along the way, I’d stopped fighting, given in to it. For a long time, I’d run with it. But that last night, the darkness that had been following me for more than four hundred years had come crashing down on me with a suffocating weight, and now I hated the horrible thing I’d become.
If I were a regular person, I’d be tempted to kill myself. Being me, I had almost collapsed with hysterical laughter when I realized that even if I managed to cut off my own head, I wouldn’t be able to make sure it was far enough away from my body for long enough to actually kill me. And what was my other option? Throwing myself headfirst into a wood chipper? What if it jammed when only half my head was through? Can you imagine the regrowth process of that stunt? Jesus.
My life suddenly felt like I’d fallen off a cliff and would fall forever toward ever-increasing despair, never to be happy again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt truly happy. Amused? Yes. Diverted? Yes. Happy? Not so much. Couldn’t even remember what it felt like.
The only person who had ever offered to help me, who had ever seemed to understand, was River. She had invited me here so many decades ago. And here I was.
I glanced around again, and this time I saw her, standing on the wide wooden steps of the house. She looked just the same as I remembered, which was unusual. We tend to alter our appearances
Four minutes of rutted road later, I finally pulled up in front of a long two-story building that looked more like a school or a dormitory than someone’s home. It was large and rectangular, painted a severe, pristine white, with dark green shutters on each precise window. There were at least three more outbuildings off to the sides, and a stone fence that might enclose a large garden.
I parked my car on autumn-dry grass next to a beat-up red truck. It felt like the next few minutes were monumental, as if they would decide my whole future. Getting out of this car would be admitting that my life was a waste. That I was a waste. It would be admitting that I was scared of my friends, scared of myself, my own darkness, my history. Everything in me wanted to stay in this car with the windows rolled up and the doors locked, forever. If I’d been a human, and forever meant only another sixty years, I might have actually done it. However, in my case, forever truly would have been unbearably long. There was no way.
I’d come here for a reason. I’d left my friends and disappeared to a different continent. On the plane coming over, I’d realized that besides Incy crippling the cabbie, despite my disgust at my lack of action, despite my paranoia about Incy’s seeing my scar, it had been a hundred, a thousandother things leading up to that, chipping away at my insides until I felt like a shell with nothing alive left in me. I hadn’t been going around killing people and setting villages on fire, but I’d been cutting a destructive path through my existence, and I’d realized, with nauseating honesty, that everything I touched was harmed. People were hurt, homes broken, cars wrecked, careers destroyed—the memories just kept trickling in like rivulets of fresh acid dripping into my brain until I wanted to scream.
It was in my blood, I knew. A darkness. The darkness. I had inherited it, along with my immortality and my black eyes. I had resisted it when I was younger. Had pretended it wasn’t there. But somewhere along the way, I’d stopped fighting, given in to it. For a long time, I’d run with it. But that last night, the darkness that had been following me for more than four hundred years had come crashing down on me with a suffocating weight, and now I hated the horrible thing I’d become.
If I were a regular person, I’d be tempted to kill myself. Being me, I had almost collapsed with hysterical laughter when I realized that even if I managed to cut off my own head, I wouldn’t be able to make sure it was far enough away from my body for long enough to actually kill me. And what was my other option? Throwing myself headfirst into a wood chipper? What if it jammed when only half my head was through? Can you imagine the regrowth process of that stunt? Jesus.
My life suddenly felt like I’d fallen off a cliff and would fall forever toward ever-increasing despair, never to be happy again. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt truly happy. Amused? Yes. Diverted? Yes. Happy? Not so much. Couldn’t even remember what it felt like.
The only person who had ever offered to help me, who had ever seemed to understand, was River. She had invited me here so many decades ago. And here I was.
I glanced around again, and this time I saw her, standing on the wide wooden steps of the house. She looked just the same as I remembered, which was unusual. We tend to alter our appearances
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