THEORY
“Can—can i ask just one more?” I stuttered quickly as he accelerated much too fast down the quiet street.
I was in no hurry to answer his question.
He shook his head.
“We had a deal.”
“It’s not really a question,” I argued. “Just a clarification of something you said before.”
He rolled his eyes. “Make it quick.”
“Well… you said you knew I hadn’t gone into the bookstore, and that I had gone south. I was just wondering how you knew that.” he thought about it for a moment, deliberating again.
“I thought we were past all these evasions,” I said.
He gave me a kind of you asked for it look. “Fine, then. I followed your scent.”
I didn’t have a response to that. I stared out the window, trying to process it.
“Your turn, Remus.”
“But you didn’t answer my other question.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m serious. You didn’t tell me how it works—the mind-reading thing. Can you read anybody’s mind, anywhere? How do you do it? Can the rest of your family do the same thing?”
It was easier to talk about this in the dark car. The streetlights were behind us already, and in the low gleam from the dashboard, all the crazy stuff seemed just a little more possible.
It seemed like he felt the same sense of non-reality, like normality was on hold for as long as we were in this space together. His voice was casual as he answered.
“No, it’s just me. And I can’t hear anyone, anywhere. I have to be fairly close. The more familiar someone’s… ‘voice’ is, the farther away I can hear him. But still, no more than a few miles.” he paused thoughtfully. “It’s a little like being in a huge hall filled with people, everyone talking at once. It’s just a hum—a buzzing of voices in the background. Until I focus on one voice, and then what he’s thinking is clear.
“Most of the time I tune it all out—it can be very distracting. And then it’s easier to seem normal”—he frowned as he said the word—“when I’m not accidentally answering someone’s thoughts rather than their words.”
“Why do you think you can’t hear me?” I asked curiously.
He stared at me, eyes seeming to bore right through mine, with that frustrated look I knew well. I realized now that each time he’d looked at me this way, he must have been trying to hear my thoughts, and failing. His expression relaxed as he gave up.
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “Maybe your mind doesn’t work the same way the rest of theirs do. Like your thoughts are on the AM frequency and I’m only getting FM.” he grinned at me, suddenly amused.
“My mind doesn’t work right? I’m a freak?” His speculation hit home. I’d always suspected as much, and it embarrassed me to have it confirmed.
“I hear voices in my mind and you’re worried that you’re the freak.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s just a theory.…” His face tightened.
“Which brings us back to you.”
I frowned. How was I going to say this out loud?
“I thought we were past all these evasions,” he reminded me softly.
I looked away from his face, trying to gather my thoughts into words, and my eyes wandered across the dashboard… stopped at the speedometer.
“Hey!” I shouted.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking right and left, rather than straight ahead where he should be looking. The car didn’t decelerate.
“You’re doing one-ten!” I was still shouting.
I shot a panicked glance out the window, but it was too dark to see much. The road was only visible in the long patch of bluish brightness from the headlights. The forest along both sides of the road was like a black wall—as hard as a wall of steel if we veered off the road at this speed.
“Relax,” he rolled his eyes, still not slowing.
“Are you trying to kill us?” I demanded.
“We’re not going to crash.”
I carefully modulated my voice. “Why are we in such a hurry, Sirius?”
“I always drive like this.” he turned to flash a smile at me.
“Keep your eyes on the road!”
“I’ve never been in an accident,—I’ve never even gotten a ticket.” he grinned and tapped his forehead. “Built-in radar detector.”
“Hands on the wheel!”
He sighed, and I watched with relief as the needle gradually drifted toward eighty.
“Happy?”
“Almost.”
“I hate driving slow,” he muttered.
“This is slow?”
“Enough commentary on my driving,” he snapped. “I’m still waiting for you to answer my question.”
I forced my eyes away from the road in front of us, but I didn’t know where to look. It was hard to look at his face, knowing the word I was going to have to say now. My anxiety must have been pretty obvious.
“I promise I won’t laugh this time,” he said gently.
“I’m not worried about that.”
“Then what?”
“That you’ll be… upset. Unhappy.”
He lifted his hand off the gearshift and held it out toward me—just a few centimeters. An offer. I glanced up quickly, to make sure I understood, and his eyes were soft.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I can handle it.”
I took his hand, and he curled his fingers very lightly around mine for one short second, then dropped his hand back to the gearshift. Carefully, I placed my hand over the top of his again. I ran my thumb along the outside of his hand, tracing from his wrist to the tip of his pinkie finger. His skin was so soft—not that it had any give at all, no, but soft like satin.
Smoother, even.
“The suspense is killing me, Remus,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to start.”
Another long moment of silence, just the purr of the engine and the sound of my hitching breath. I couldn’t hear his at all. I traced back down the side of his perfect hand.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” he suggested, his voice more normal now. Practical. “Is this something you thought up on your own, or did something make you think of it—a comic book, maybe, or a movie?”
“Nothing like that,” I said. “But I didn’t think of it on my own.” he waited.
“It was Saturday—down at the beach.”
I risked a glance up at his face. He looked confused.
“I ran into an old family friend—James, James Potter. His dad, Fleamont, and Lyall have been close since before I was born.” he still looked confused.
“Fleamont’s one of the Quileute leaders.…”
His confused expression froze in place. It was like all the planes of his face had suddenly hardened into ice. Oddly, he was even more beautiful like that, a god again in the light of the dashboard dials. He didn’t look very human, though.
He stayed frozen, so I felt compelled to explain the rest.
“There was this Quileute man on the beach—Sam something. Logan made a comment about you—trying to make fun of me. And this Sam said your family didn’t come to the reservation, only it sounded like he meant something more than that. James seemed like he knew what the man was talking about, so I got him alone and kept bugging him until he told me… told me the old Quileute legends.
I was surprised when he spoke—his face was so still, and his lips barely moved.
“And what were those legends? What did James Potter tell you I was?” I half-opened my mouth, then closed it again.
“What?”
“I don’t want to say it,” I admitted.
“It’s not my favorite word, either.” His face had warmed up a little; he looked human again. “Not saying it doesn’t make it go away, though.
Sometimes… I think not saying it makes it more powerful.” I wondered if he was right.
“Vampire?” I whispered.
He flinched.
Nope. Saying it out loud didn’t make it any less powerful.
Funny how it didn’t sound stupid anymore, like it had in my room. It didn’t feel like we were talking about impossible things, about old legends or silly horror movies or paperback books. It felt real.
And very powerful.
We drove in silence for another minute, and the word vampire seemed to get bigger and bigger inside the car. It didn’t feel like it belonged to hi, really, but more like it had the power to hurt him. I tried to think of something, anything to say to erase the sound of it.
Before I could come up with anything, he spoke.
“What did you do then?”
“Oh—um, I did some research on the Internet.”
“And that convinced you?” he was very matter-of-fact now.
“No. Nothing fit. Lots of it was really stupid. But I just—”
I stopped abruptly. He waited, then stared at me when I didn’t finish.
“You what?” he pushed.
“Well, I mean, it doesn’t matter, right? So I just let it go.”
His eyes grew wider and wider, and then suddenly they were narrowed into little slits, glaring at me. I didn’t want to point out to him again that he should probably be watching where he was going, but his speed had crept up to past ninety-five now, and he seemed totally unaware of the twisting road ahead of us.
“Um, Sirius—”
“It doesn’t matter?” he half-shouted at me, his voice going shrill and almost… metallic. “It doesn’t matter?”
“No. Not to me, anyway.”
“You don’t care if I’m a monster? If I’m not human?”
“No.”
Finally he stared at the road again, his eyes still long slashes of anger across his face. I could feel the car accelerating under me.
“You’re upset. See, I shouldn’t have said anything,” I mumbled.
He shook his head, then answered through his teeth. “No, I’d rather know what you’re thinking, even if what you’re thinking is insane.”
“Sorry.”
He blew out an exasperated sigh, and then it was quiet again for a few minutes. I stroked my thumb slowly up and down his hand.
“What are you thinking about now?” he asked. His voice was calmer.
“Um… nothing, really.”
“It drives me crazy, not knowing.”
“I don’t want to… I don’t know, offend you.”
“Spit it out, Remus.”
“I have lots of questions. But you don’t have to answer them. I’m just curious.”
“About what?”
“How old you are.”
“Seventeen.”
I stared at him for a minute, till half his mouth twitched up into a smile.
“How long have you been seventeen?” I asked.
“A while,” he admitted.
I smiled. “Okay.”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
This was better, though. Easier, with him just being himself, not worrying about keeping me in the dark. I liked being on the inside. His world was where I wanted to be.
“Don’t laugh—but how do you come outside in the daytime?”
He laughed anyway. “Myth.”
The sound of his laughter was warm. It made me feel like I had swallowed a bunch of sunlight. My smile got bigger.
“Burned by the sun?”
“Myth.”
“Sleeping in coffins?”
“Myth.” he hesitated for a moment, and then added softly, “I can’t sleep.”
It took me a minute to absorb that.
“At all?”
“Never,” he murmured. He turned to look at me with a wistful expression. I held his gaze, my eyes getting trapped in his golden stare. After a few seconds, I’d completely lost my train of thought.
Suddenly he turned away, his eyes narrowing again. “You haven’t asked me the most important question yet.”
“The most important question?” I echoed. I couldn’t think of what he meant.
“Aren’t you curious about my diet?” he asked, his tone mocking.
“Oh. That one.”
“Yes. That one,” he said bleakly. “Don’t you want to know if I drink blood?”
I winced. “Well, James said something about that.”
“Did he now?”
“He said you didn’t… hunt people. Your family wasn’t supposed to be dangerous because you only hunted animals.”
“He said we weren’t dangerous?” His voice was deeply skeptical.
“Not exactly. James said you weren’t supposed to be dangerous. But the Quileutes still didn’t want you on their land, just in case.”
He looked forward, but I couldn’t tell if he was watching the road or not.
“So, was he right? About not hunting people?” I tried to keep my voice as even as possible.
“The Quileutes have a long memory,” he whispered.
I took that as a confirmation.
“Don’t let that make you complacent, though,” he warned me.
“They’re right to keep their distance from us. We are still dangerous.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We… try,” he explained. His voice got heavier and slower. “We’re usually very good at what we do. Sometimes we make… mistakes. Me, for example, allowing myself to be alone with you.”
“This is a mistake?” I heard the hurt in my voice, but I didn’t know if he could, too.
“A very dangerous one,” he murmured.
We were both silent then. I watched the headlights twist with the curves of the road. They moved too fast; it didn’t look real, it looked like a video game. I was aware of the time slipping away so quickly, like the black road underneath us, and I was suddenly terrified that I would never have another chance to be with him like this again—openly, the walls between us gone for once. What he was saying kind of sounded like… goodbye. My hand tightened over his. I couldn’t waste one minute I had with him.
“Tell me more.” I didn’t really care what he said, I just wanted to listen to his voice.
He looked at me quickly, seeming startled by the change in my tone. “What more do you want to know?”
“Tell me why you hunt animals instead of people,” I said. It was the first question I could think of. My voice sounded thick. I double-blinked the extra moisture from my eyes.
His answer was very low. “I don’t want to be a monster.”
“But animals aren’t enough?”
He paused. “I can’t be sure, but I’d compare it to living on tofu and soy milk; we call ourselves vegetarians, our little inside joke. It doesn’t completely satiate the hunger—or rather thirst. But it keeps us strong enough to resist. Most of the time.” His tone darkened. “Sometimes it’s more difficult than others.”
“Is it very difficult for you now?” I asked.
He sighed. “Yes.”
“But you’re not hungry now,” I said—stating, not asking.
“Why do you think that?”
“Your eyes. I have a theory about that. Seems like the color is linked to your mood—and people are generally crabbier when they’re hungry, right?”
He laughed. “You’re more observant than I gave you credit for.” I listened to the sound of his laugh, committing it to memory.
“So everything I thought I saw—that day with the van. That all happened for real. You caught the van.”
He shrugged. “Yes.”
“How strong are you?”
He glanced at me from the side of his eye. “Strong enough.”
“Like, could you lift five thousand pounds?”
He looked a little thrown by my enthusiasm. “If I needed to. But I’m not much into feats of strength. They just make Bellatrix competitive, and I’ll never be that strong.”
“How strong?”
“Honestly, if she wanted to, I think she could lift a mountain over her head. But I would never say that around her, because then she would have to try.” he laughed, and it was a relaxed sound. Affectionate.
“Were you hunting this weekend, with, uh, Regulus?” I asked when it was quiet again.
“Yes.” he paused for a second, as if deciding whether or not to say something. “I didn’t want to leave, but it was necessary. It’s a bit easier to be around you when I’m not thirsty.”
“Why didn’t you want to leave?”
“It makes me… anxious… to be away from you.” His eyes were gentle, but intense, and they made it hard to breathe in and out like normal. “I wasn’t joking when I asked you to try not to fall in the ocean or get run over last Thursday. I was distracted all weekend, worrying about you. And after what happened tonight, I’m surprised that you did make it through a whole weekend unscathed.” he shook her head, and then seemed to remember something. “Well, not totally unscathed.”
“What?”
“Your hands,” he reminded me. I looked down at my palms, at the almost-healed scrapes across the heels of my hands. He didn’t miss anything.
“I fell.”
“That’s what I thought.” His lips curved up at the corners. “I suppose, being you, it could have been much worse—and that was the possibility that tormented me the entire time I was away. It was a very long three days. I really got on Regulus' nerves.”
“Three days? Didn’t you just get back today?”
“No, we got back Sunday.”
“Then why weren’t you at school?” I was frustrated, almost angry as I thought of how much his absence had affected me.
“Well, you asked if the sun hurt me, and it doesn’t. But I can’t go out in the sunlight—at least, not where anyone can see.”
“Why?”
“I’ll show you sometime,” he promised.
I thought about it for a moment. “You could have told me.”
He was puzzled. “But I knew you were fine.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know where you were. I—” I hesitated, dropping my eyes.
“What?” His silky voice was as hypnotic as his eyes.
“It’s going to sound stupid… but, well, it kind of freaked me out. I thought you might not come back. That somehow you knew that I knew and… I was afraid you would disappear. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had to see you again.” My cheeks started heating up.
He was quiet. I glanced up—he looked pained, like something was hurting him.
“Sirius, are you okay?”
“Ah,” he groaned quietly. “This is wrong.”
I couldn’t understand his response. “What did I say?”
“Don’t you see, Remus? It’s one thing for me to make myself miserable, but a wholly other thing for you to be so involved.” he turned his anguished eyes to the road, his words flowing almost too fast for me to understand. “I don’t want to hear that you feel that way. It’s wrong. It’s not safe. I’ll hurt you, Remus. You’ll be lucky to get out alive.”
“I don’t care.”
“That’s a really stupid thing to say.”
“Maybe, but it’s true. I told you, it doesn’t matter to me what you are.
It’s too late.”
His voice whipped out, low and sharp. “Never say that. It’s not too late. I can put things back the way they were. I will.”
I stared straight ahead. My neck was a mass of crimson splotches, I was sure.
“I don’t want things back the way they were,” I mumbled. I wondered if I was supposed to move my hand. I held it still. Maybe he would forget it was there.
“I’m sorry I’ve done this to you.” His voice burned with real regret.
The darkness slipped by us in silence. I realized the car was slowing, and even in the dark I recognized the landmarks. We were passing into the boundaries of Forks. It had taken less than twenty minutes. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Do you want to?” he whispered.
“More than anything else I’ve ever wanted.” It was pathetic how obviously true the words were. So much for playing hard to get.
He closed his eyes. The car didn’t deviate so much as half an inch from the center of the lane.
“Then I’ll be there,” he finally said. “I do have a paper to turn in.”
He looked at me then, and his face was calmer, but his eyes were troubled.
We were suddenly in front of Lyall’s house. The lights were on, my truck in its place, everything totally normal. It was like waking up from a dream—the kind you didn’t want to lose, the kind you kept your eyes closed tight for, rolled over and covered your head with a pillow for, trying to find a way back in. He shut off the engine, but I didn’t move.
“Save me a seat at lunch?” I asked hesitantly.
I was rewarded with a wide smile. “That’s easy enough.”
“You promise?” I couldn’t keep the tone light enough.
“I promise.”
I stared into his eyes and it was like he was a magnet again, like he was pulling me toward him and I had no power to resist. I didn’t want to try. The word vampire was still there between us, but it was easier to ignore than I would have thought possible. His face was so unbearably perfect, it hurt in a strange way to look at it. At the same time, I never wanted to look away. I wanted to know if his lips were as silky smooth as the skin of his hand—
Suddenly his left hand was there, palm forward, an inch from my face, warning me back, and he was cringing against the car door, his eyes wide and frightened and his teeth clenched together.
I jerked away from him.
“Sorry!”
He stared at me for a long moment, and I would swear he wasn’t breathing. After a long moment, he relaxed a little.
“You have to be more careful than that, Remus,” he said finally in a dull voice.
Cautiously—like I was made of glass or something—his left hand lifted mine off his right and then let it go. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Maybe—” he began.
“I can do better than that,” I interrupted quickly. “Just tell me the rules, and I’ll follow them. Whatever you want from me.” he sighed.
“Seriously. Tell me to do something, and I’ll do it.”
I regretted the words the second they were out of my mouth. What if he asked me to forget about him? There were some things that weren’t in my power to do.
But he smiled. “All right, I’ve got one.” “Yeah?” I asked, wary.
“Don’t go in the woods alone again.”
I could feel the surprise on my face. “How did you know that?” he touched the tip of his nose.
“Really? You must have an incredible sense—”
“Are you going to agree to what I ask or not?” he interrupted.
“Sure, that one’s easy. Can I ask why?”
He frowned, his eyes tight again as he stared out the window past me.
“I’m not always the most dangerous thing out there. Let’s leave it at that.”
The sudden bleakness in his voice made me shiver, but I was relieved, too. He could have asked for something much harder. “Whatever you say.”
He sighed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Remus.”
I knew he wanted me to leave now. I opened the door unwillingly.
“Tomorrow,” I emphasized. I started to climb out.
“Remus?”
I turned and ducked back awkwardly, and he was leaning toward me, his pale beautiful face just inches from mine. My heart stopped beating.
“Sleep well,” he said. His breath blew into my face—it was the same compelling scent that haunted his car, but in a more concentrated form. I blinked, totally stunned. He leaned away.
It took me a few seconds till my brain unscrambled and I was able to move again. I backed out of the car, having to use the frame for balance. I thought he might have laughed, but the sound was too quiet for me to be sure.
He waited till I’d stumbled to the front door, and then his engine quietly revved. I turned to watch the silver car disappear around the corner.
It was suddenly really cold.
I reached for the key automatically and unlocked the front door.
“Remus?” my dad called from the living room.
“Yeah, Dad, it’s me.” I locked the door and then went to find him. He was on his favorite couch, a baseball game on the TV.
“Movie over so early?”
“Is it early?” It seemed like I’d been with him for days… or maybe it was just a few seconds. Not long enough.
“It’s not even eight yet,” he told me. “Was the show any good?”
“Er, not very memorable, actually.”
“What's with the jacket?”
I looked down to leather jacket I’d forgotten and tried to take it off quickly, but it was too small for me to just yank it off.
“Uh—I forgot a coat—and someone lent me this.”
“It looks goofy.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”
“Aren’t I always kind of pale?”
“Guess so.”
Actually, my head was starting to spin a little, and I was still cold, though I knew the room was warm.
Wouldn’t it be just like me if I did end up going into shock? Get a grip.
“I, uh, didn’t sleep great last night,” I said to Lyall. “Think I’m gonna hit the sack early.”
“’Night, kid.”
I walked up the stairs slowly, a sort of stupor starting to cloud my mind. I had no reason to be so exhausted—or so cold. I brushed my teeth and splashed some hot water on my face; it made me shiver. I didn’t bother changing, just kicked off my shoes, then climbed into the bed fully dressed—the second time in a week. I wrapped my quilt tightly around me and fought through a couple of small shudders.
My mind swirled like I was dizzy. It was full of impressions and images, some I wished I could see more clearly, and some I didn’t want to remember at all. The road whipping by too fast, the dim yellow light at the restaurant glinting in her metallic hair, the shape of his lips when he smiled… when he frowned… Peter’s eyes bugging half out of his head, the headlights screaming toward me, the gun pointed at my face while cold sweat beaded on my forehead. My bed shook under me as I shivered again.
No, there were too many things I wanted to remember, wanted to cement into my head, to waste time with the unpleasant stuff. I pictured his face in my head—every angle, every expression, every mood.
There were a few things I knew for sure. For one, Sirius was an actual vampire. For another, there was a part of him that saw me as food. But in the end, none of that mattered. All that mattered was that I loved him, more than I’d ever imagined it was possible to love anything. He was everything I wanted, the only thing I would ever want.