TWELVE
Letter from Mr. Frederick J. Fitzwilliam to Miss Esmeralda Jameson, dated November 7
Dear Esmeralda,
I am in receipt of your most recent correspondence. As a rule, I am loath to repeat myself, as doing so is generally a waste of time. However, your latest missive shows me I have no choice.
As I have said multiple times before, to both you and my mother: I do not believe a marriage in which one partner is an unwilling participant would be a happy one. Additionally, since my last letter to you, I have developed feelings for someone else. I doubt anything will come of them for a variety of reasons I will not bore you with. Either way, you deserve far more than marriage to a man who pines for someone else. I will not sentence you to a life of that kind of misery.
It has been over one hundred years since we last spoke in person, but I remember you not only as a reasonable woman but also as an admirably independent one. You cannot possibly want an arranged marriage to a man who doesn’t love you. Please help me convince our parents this plot of theirs is the mother of all bad ideas.
With kind regards,
Frederick J. Fitzwilliam
ART TEACHER WANTED FOR UPPER SCHOOL—HARMONY ACADEMY
Harmony Academy, a K–12 coeducational private school located in Evanston, Illinois, dedicated to fostering moral integrity, intellectual vitality, and compassion among our diverse student body, seeks an art teacher for its Upper School. Position to begin in the fall semester. Qualified applicants will have a BA in an art discipline from an accredited university, 1–3 years of experience teaching fine arts in an educational setting, and excellent references. MFA strongly preferred. Working artists are especially encouraged to apply.
The ideal candidate will, through their professional history and art portfolio, demonstrate sincere commitment to Harmony Academy’s above-stated values. For consideration, please email your CV, cover letter, and portfolio to Cressida Marks, Harmony Academy Head of School.
I stared at the Harmony Academy job description, trying to decide what to do with it.
Ordinarily, I would just delete it—the way I deleted all emails from my alma mater’s career office. A one hundred percent rejection rate from all Younker-referred jobs I’d applied for my first two years post-MFA had taught me that continuing to beat my head against that particular wall wasn’t worth my time.
But I was feeling good. I’d spent most of the day in the studio working on my project for the art exhibition. It was exciting how quickly it started coming together once I realized the found object materials needed for it were wrinkled cellophane and Christmas-colored tinsel glued together with epoxy. The piece’s working title was Manor House on a Lake, and though I was seldom satisfied with my oil paintings I felt this project represented some of the best work I’d done in years. The cellophane-and-tinsel mixture emerging from the canvas made the water look like a three-dimensional neon-colored fever dream—and in a good way.
Overall, I thought Manor House on a Lake—by marrying traditional paints and modern synthetic materials—was at once classic and postmodern. It was the perfect subversion of the exhibition’s Contemporary Society theme.
It had been a while since I could truthfully say I liked what I was creating.
So, yes. In general, I was feeling optimistic.
Optimistic enough that I decided I might as well apply for this Harmony Academy job. I couldn’t see a downside. The worst thing that could happen would be I wouldn’t get the job—but I was basically a professional at not getting jobs. Given everything else that was happening, that near-constant voice in the back of my head that told me I was doomed to fail was easier than usual to ignore.
A good old-fashioned rejection letter might be just the thing to get me to stop ruminating on what had happened with Frederick at Nordstrom the other day. To stop thinking about the feel of his solid, broad chest beneath my fingertips. To stop reliving his raveling composure as I touched him.
Yeah. Maybe applying to Harmony Academy was exactly what I needed.
Determined, I pulled up the last cover letter I’d written for a teaching position and gave it a quick once-over. My job situation hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d applied to a job like this one, so updating it took less than ten minutes.
Before I could talk myself out of doing it, I emailed the cover letter, my CV, and photographs of several recent projects—including an in-progress shot of Manor House on a Lake—to Cressida Marks, Harmony Academy’s head of school.
There. Done.
With that out of the way, hopefully I’d be able to dedicate the rest of the evening to drawing and mindless television.
I leaned back against the black leather couch, where my sketchpad rested beside me. Before finding out about the Harmony Academy job I’d been half watching an old Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode on Frederick’s new flatscreen television, letting it play in the background as I drew. I’d seen this episode already—in the days since finding out Frederick was a vampire, I’d binged most of the first two seasons—but it was comfortable background noise, helping me focus as I thought through some final fiddly details to Manor House.
“May I join you?”
I startled at the sound of Frederick’s deep voice, accidentally jostling my notepad off the couch with my knee. It fell with a loud rustling of pages, landing upside down on the floor.
I hadn’t even heard him enter the room.
In fact, before now, I hadn’t seen him at all since our shopping trip a couple days earlier. Part of me suspected he’d been intentionally keeping his distance after that moment we’d shared outside the dressing room. But I couldn’t let myself think about that. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that I had enjoyed touching him as much as I did.
Or that it had even happened at all.
He was looking directly at me with a laser-sharp gaze, wearing one of the sweaters we’d picked out at Nordstrom. The pale green pullover perfectly accentuated his broad chest, and the dark-wash jeans fit him just as well.
I swallowed and fumbled for my notepad, willing my suddenly racing heart to slow. Could he hear my heart beating? The way his eyes flicked down to my chest before quickly shifting back up to my face made me wonder.
“Of course you can join me,” I mumbled to the floor. I motioned to the spot next to me on the couch without looking at him.
He hummed, then sat down, leaving enough space between us that no parts of our bodies were touching—but not so much space that I couldn’t smell the lavender soap he liked to use in the shower.
We sat together in silence for a long moment, watching as Buffy Summers single-handedly beat up and then staked a string of vampires, one right after the other. This was one of the earlier episodes, back when Sarah Michelle Gellar still had some roundness to her cheeks and the show’s special effects budget was lower than Xander’s IQ.
Buffy’s fighting moves and her outfits were something to behold, as always. Even still, it took more concentration than it really should have to keep my eyes trained on the screen rather than on the person beside me.
“Have you ever seen this show?” I blurted out. It was a dumb question. Frederick had been asleep for a century and had only gotten Wi-Fi a few days ago; surely he hadn’t found the time to watch a campy show from the nineties about fictional vampires. But I was desperate for something to say to break the awkward silence.
He ignored my question. “Do you think Angel or Spike is more handsome?” he asked instead, with all the seriousness of an NPR journalist. His eyes were on the screen, not on me—but his tone, his ramrod-straight posture, and the steady, rapid way he drummed his fingers on his thigh gave away his keen interest in my response.
I was completely thrown. Whatever I’d expected him to say when he joined me on the couch, it wasn’t that. I had no idea how I was supposed to answer it—partly because it felt extremely loaded, but mostly because I’d never been particularly into either of Buffy’s bad boy vamps.
After a bit of somewhat frantic consideration, I gave him the truth.
“Giles is the hottest man on this show.”
“Giles?” Frederick spluttered in what sounded like genuine surprise. He turned to face me, eyes boring into mine with an expression that bordered on outrage. “The librarian?”
“Yeah.” I pointed to the screen, where Giles was presiding over a meeting of teenagers in the high school library. He looked supremely put upon and hot in his unique, middle-aged, glasses-wearing librarian way. “I mean, look at him.”
“I am looking at him.”
“He’s objectively attractive.”
Frederick grunted something unintelligible. He folded his arms tightly across his chest, his mouth turning down in a scowl.
“Also, of all the men on this show—alive and undead—he’s the only one who’s already processed and dealt with his shit.” I shrugged, turning back to the television. “Everyone else has way too much baggage.”
Frederick looked unconvinced. “But Giles is just so . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head and closing his eyes. His scowl deepened.
“He’s just so what?”
“Human,” he spat, the single word laced with bitterness and disapproval.
I gaped at him. But Frederick wasn’t looking at me anymore. His eyes were back on the television, staring at it with an intensity that could burn a hole through paper.
Was Frederick jealous of a fictional librarian from an episode that aired almost twenty-five years ago? Was that what was happening here?
Impossible.
Stupidly, my heart sped up a few beats at the idea of it all the same.
“What’s wrong with being human, Frederick?”
He muttered something under his breath I couldn’t make out but didn’t otherwise acknowledge he’d heard me.
“To answer your earlier question,” Frederick said eventually, sidestepping the issue of hot librarians, “I have seen this show. Reginald recommended it to me.”
“Really?” That surprised me.
“Yes. Although the version we watched at his home had frequent interruptions from companies wanting to sell things. Commercials.” He shook his head. “Annoying.”
I guess Reginald didn’t spring for commercial-free streaming platforms. “They usually are,” I agreed.
“I couldn’t even tell what I was meant to buy half the time,” he complained. “Though I did enjoy singing along to some of them. The music was often quite good.”
The idea of buttoned-up Frederick singing along to a car insurance ad—or, god, an ad for one of those sexual enhancement meds—was so ridiculous I nearly burst out laughing.
“What . . . what did you think of the show itself?” I asked, trying to recover.
If Frederick noticed I was on the verge of dissolving into giggles he showed no sign of it. “It’s a bit silly,” he said, thoughtfully. “Though I enjoyed what I saw.”
“How accurate would you say it is?” I was probably crossing a line, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d been wondering this ever since learning he was a vampire.
He hesitated, pondering the question. “The show’s writers got a few things wrong about my kind. For example, I have no penchant for leather jackets, and I don’t burn to ash when exposed to sunlight. Additionally, my face doesn’t change in a cartoonish way before I feed. But they also managed to get a number of details correct.” He paused, then added, “Which is surprising. As far as I know no one on the writing team was a vampire.”
My eyes widened. I hadn’t expected this much honesty when I’d asked the question. Was this my chance to finally get more information about him?
“What did they get right?” I prompted, unable to hide my eagerness.
“I, like Angel, do enjoy a good brooding stare.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“I’d imagine it would be hard to miss,” he conceded, his eyes twinkling.
“Anything else?”
He considered that. “I require express permission before entering someone’s home. Some vampire legends are nonsense and others are legitimate, and I have to say the show handles that detail quite well. Also, I cannot sweat, I never blush, and my heart hasn’t beat since I turned.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “You likely noticed I had no heartbeat when we . . . when you touched my shirt at the department store.”
He might not be able to blush anymore, but at the reminder of that moment we shared outside the dressing room I was blushing more than enough for both of us.
“Oh,” I mumbled. “Yes. I . . . I noticed.”
He nodded, his eyes inscrutable as he held my gaze. “If you ever find yourself lacking in diversion you could do worse than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Especially if you wanted to know more about me.” A pause. “Not that you would necessarily want to know more about me, of course. I am . . . merely stating a hypothetical.”
“I will,” I said, the room feeling suddenly a bit too warm. “I mean . . . I do want to know more about you.”
On screen, Buffy’s mom was lecturing her about staying out all night again, but I wasn’t paying attention to the show anymore.
I didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch beside him.
One minute Spike and the other monsters from Sunnydale were getting up to their usual antics. I’d been laughing; Frederick had been staring intently at the screen, as if he were watching an important university lecture and didn’t want to miss a word.
The next minute I was blinking up at the side of Frederick’s face from where my head rested on his shoulder.
Instinct told me to move away. Frederick would be horrified when he realized what had happened. But as consciousness slowly returned, I realized he had to be fully aware of the situation. He might be a vampire, but as far as I knew he had nerve endings in his shoulder. Surely he could feel it when a heavy object like my head was resting there.
I looked down. The careful inches he’d left between our bodies when he joined me on the couch had evaporated as I slept. Our thighs were pressed together now, knee to hip.
My hand rested lightly on his upper thigh, just above his knee. His leg was muscular and solid, his body unnaturally cool beneath my palm.
My mind raced through all options available to me. Jumping away from him and apologizing was appealing. But so was staying right where I was, admiring the sharp angle of his jaw, and the way his shirt smelled enticingly like laundry soap and cool, male skin. It felt good, being close to him like this. Exciting, yet comfortable. Our bodies fit together so perfectly.
Just as I’d decided to stay right where I was, Frederick spoke, his voice a low rumble against the top of my head I could feel more than hear.
“Your art is remarkable, Cassie.”
That was unexpected enough to make me forget about this awkward situation. I shifted away from him—and noticed the soft, resigned sigh that escaped his lips when I did.
Maybe he’d enjoyed my falling asleep on him as much as I had.
The idea thrilled me. But unpacking that would have to wait. I had too many questions about what he’d just said.
“My art?”
“Yes.” He pointed to the glass-topped coffee table beside the couch. My notebook was spread open to a page of doodles I’d made early in the planning stages for Manor House on a Lake. “Your art.”
A flare of something—part embarrassment over someone seeing my incomplete sketches, part genuine irritation at his intrusion—shot through me.
“That’s not for you to look at!” I leaned forward and flipped the notebook closed. I knew he didn’t understand my art. His earlier abject confusion over my Saugatuck piece rang in my ears. Was he making fun of me now when he said my art was remarkable?
“I apologize for invading your privacy,” he said sheepishly. He sounded genuinely sorry, but that didn’t excuse his snooping. The cuddly feelings from a few moments ago were gone. “I should not have looked through your notebook.”
“Then why did you?”
He said nothing for so long I assumed he wasn’t going to answer my question. When he finally did, his voice was quiet and a little strained. “I have grown . . . curious about you and the inner workings of your mind. I thought looking through the sketchbook you spend so much time with would provide insight with relatively minimal disruption.” He paused. “I should have asked your permission first, and I apologize for not having done so.”
Confusion mixed with my irritation. “You’ve been curious about how I think?”
“Yes.”
The single word hung in the air between us. I paused, feeling as if the ground were shifting beneath my feet. “You’ve been curious about how I think because you . . . want to learn as much as you can about the modern world and . . . learning more about how I think will help on that score.” I paused, evaluating his reaction. “Right?”
He didn’t answer me right away. His dark eyes grew pensive, his face adopting an odd expression I couldn’t read.
“Of course.” He nodded brusquely. “That is the only reason why I’ve been curious about what’s on your mind.”
But his eyes were so soft, his voice a gentle caress, belying his claim. My heartbeat kicked up and . . .
Frederick’s eyes flicked down to my chest again, the same way they had the last time my heartbeat started racing when I was with him.
Maybe he could hear my heart beating.
My cheeks grew warm again at the thought of it.
“I apologize again,” he said. “But please believe me, Cassie. Your drawings are excellent.”
“They’re just rough sketches.”
“Do not downplay your talents,” he said, scowling as though the idea of me selling myself short was offensive to him.
He leaned forward to grab the notebook, then paused, looking back at me over his shoulder before his fingers closed around it. “May I?”
I nodded, unable to think of a reason to tell him no when this time, he was asking permission.
He opened the notebook to the page I’d been working on when he joined me on the couch, moving a little closer to me in the process.
Our thighs were touching again. My insides were quivering at his nearness, at the solid musculature of his thigh beneath his clothes. It didn’t seem to have the same effect on him that it had on me, though. His eyes were fixed firmly on the art on the page.
“This is fascinating,” he breathed, gesturing to my designs. This early version of Manor House was nothing but the barest outlines of a house and the general impression of a lake. Arrows pointed from the middle of the lake out to the edge of the page to represent motion and modernity; the idea of combining tinsel and cellophane had not yet occurred to me when I’d drawn it.
“You don’t have to say that.” Years of kind words from Sam and other well-meaning friends who didn’t get what I did made it so that false compliments hurt almost as badly as negative—but honest—feedback. “I know you don’t understand what I do.”
“That . . . might be true,” he admitted. He touched the top of Manor House’s roof with his right index finger. “But that does not mean I do not find it fascinating.”
I watched as he traced over every single line on the page, from top to bottom, not skipping over any part of it, with deliberate care. The house. The lake. The barely intimated trees blooming as rough graphite swirls on either side of the page. The memories of his large hand covering mine as we explored Instagram together—the way my hands had looked pressed up against his chest in the Nordstrom dressing room—rose unbidden, sending a delicious shiver down my spine.
I’d always felt my art was an extension of my innermost self, and the sight of his large, graceful hands touching every single part of this early drawing felt almost unbearably intimate.
“What do you find fascinating about it?” I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sight of his hands touching my work. I felt moments away from melting into a puddle at his feet.
“All of it.” His hand left the page. I felt him withdraw as much as saw it and exhaled for the first time in what felt like minutes. An unexpected, indescribable feeling of emptiness coursed through me. “I do not claim to understand what you see when you draw and build these things. But the intricacy of your detailing suggests that whatever it is, it is big and deliberate. This is intentional. It means something to you. I cannot help but respect it.”
His eyes met mine, his gaze so piercing it punched the breath from my lungs.
It took a moment for me to remember how to form words.
“Yeah,” I said. Like a moron.
His expression went suddenly distant and wistful. “There was an artist in the village where I was raised. She drew the loveliest things. The sunset in winter. A child playing with a small toy.” He paused. “Me, when I was just a child myself, laughing with friends.”
I bit my lip, trying to ignore the sudden stab of irrational jealousy that went through me at hearing the word she.
Get a grip, Cassie.
“Your girlfriend?”
His smile slipped. “My sister.”
I winced, feeling like an asshole. She had to have been dead for hundreds of years.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He shook his head. “Mary lived a long, rich life, full of art and other beautiful things. The village she married into was small and close-knit. I don’t doubt she lived happily until the end of her days.”
These details about his sister were the first personal details about his life he’d given me, beyond the basics of how he’d ended up in his current situation. I wasn’t sure why he’d chosen to share this with me now—but the decision felt momentous.
In truth, I still knew almost nothing about my weird, fascinating roommate. This small tidbit was like a dam breaking on my curiosity about him.
Suddenly, I was greedy to know more.
“Where did you grow up?”
“England.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, his eyes distant as though he were picturing the town in his mind’s eye. “About an hour south of London by car if you were to make the journey today. When I lived there, though, the journey to London involved nearly a full day of travel.”
England? That surprised me. “You don’t speak with an accent at all.”
“I have lived in America for much longer than I lived in England.” He gave me another small smile. “It doesn’t matter where you were born, Cassie. After you’re gone from a place for a few hundred years the accent’s barely detectable anymore.”
After you’re gone from a place for a few hundred years.
I bit my lip, gathering the courage to ask something I’d wondered about ever since I found out what he really was.
“You’ve . . . been gone from England for a few hundred years?” I asked, dancing around it.
He nodded. “I have not been back to where I was born since just before the American Revolutionary War.”
“How old are you, exactly?”
He looked at me for such a long, heavy moment before answering that I began to worry I’d overstepped. Before I could apologize for prying, though, he said, “I am not entirely certain. My memories before I turned in 1734 are . . . opaque.” He swallowed and looked away. “There was a vampire attack on my village that year. Most of us were either killed or turned. I believe I was in my mid-thirties when it happened.”
1734.
My mind was reeling as it tried to process the fact that the man sitting beside me on the couch was more than three hundred years old.
“And that is precisely why I have not returned in so long,” he continued. “All the people I knew from before I turned are long gone, except for—” He abruptly cut off, as though he’d been about to say more but decided against it at the last minute. He shook his head. “All the people I knew and loved from my childhood are dead.”
The firm set of his jaw told me there was more he wanted to say, but he simply pressed his lips together and looked again at the art notebook spread open before us on the coffee table. For the first time, it occurred to me that it must be incredibly lonely to live forever while everyone around you aged and died.
Maybe this was why he kept Reginald around. Having one constant from his past must be a comfort to him—even if said constant was also kind of an ass.
“What was your hometown like?” I asked.
He’d already shared more about his past in these few minutes than he’d done the entire time I’d known him, and part of me wondered if asking for more was pushing it. But he was still such an enigma, even after all these weeks with him. Now that we were talking about his past, I couldn’t help myself.
If he minded my question, he didn’t act like it.
“I don’t remember much,” he admitted. “I remember feelings. My family, some of my closer friends. Some of the things I liked to eat. I used to love food.” He smiled wistfully. “I remember the house I lived in.”
“What was it like?”
“Small,” he said, chuckling. Looking around his spacious living room, he added, “You could probably fit three of them in this apartment. And there were four of us living there.”
“No McMansions in England three hundred years ago?”
He shook his head, still smiling. “No. Certainly not in the small village where I was raised. No one had the money or the resources to build anything bigger than what was absolutely required to keep a family protected from the elements.”
I thought of what little I’d learned of the architecture in eighteenth-century England from my art history classes. I could almost picture Frederick’s little house in my mind’s eye. A thatched roof, possibly. Floors made of simple wood.
How did a boy raised in a place like that end up here—in wealth and splendor, in a fabulous apartment across the ocean—hundreds of years later? The details he’d shared with me only whetted my appetite for more information about him. But he leaned back against the couch cushions then, arms folded across his chest, signaling that he was done sharing for the evening.
I didn’t have to be done talking, though. After sharing with me what he had about his sister, the urge to reciprocate and share something of my own life was too strong to resist.
“I’m glad you had your sister, for a time,” I said gently.
“Me, too.”
“I don’t have any siblings.”
His eyes—which had once again been resting on my opened art notebook—flicked to mine. “You must have been very lonely growing up.”
“I wasn’t.” It was the truth. “My imagination and my friends kept me company.” The only real problem with having no siblings was there was no one else around to distract my parents from me—and my many failings. But I wasn’t about to complain, given what he’d just shared. My dumb only-child guilt was more than Frederick needed to know.
We sat together in comfortable silence after that. Frederick’s eyes drifted once again to my art notebook, but his gaze was unfocused.
“I would like to hear more about your life, Cassie.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I wish to know more about you. I wish . . . I wish to know everything.”
The quiet intensity of his tone shot straight through me. The atmosphere in the room seemed to shift, the nature of what we were to one another suddenly tilted on its axis.
I looked at my notebook, which had suddenly become the only safe place in the room for either of us to rest our eyes.