Love Me Madly Read online

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “It’s the game Mom tells Thom to play in the backseat so he shuts up,” Jie said.

  “If you call me ‘Mom’ one more time I’m pulling the car over and killing both of you,” Silvus said, a dry but half-serious threat.

  “It’s easy, darlin’, you just watch the other cars on the highway and try to find all the states’ license plates. Give me some paper, Rayner. There’s a Maryland, a Virginia, and a Delaware, right off, but of course we’re near all those so that’s a giveaway.”

  “How many states are there?” I asked. “They’re the lines on the map, right?” In my school, I remembered the map of the USA that hung on the wall with the country marked in pastel colored blocks. I knew my own state of Pennsylvania. But our teachers never taught us anything about the country. They didn’t even really consider themselves Americans. One of the oldest teachers just referred to all of Earth as “the human lands”. The human land of America, the human land of France, the human land of India, and so on.

  Thom looked almost offended. “They sure didn’t teach you shit, did they? Well, now, I’ll tell you all you need to know. You know we’ve been in Maryland, so that’s this…and Pennsylvania’s north of it…then you got Virginia. Virginia’s where you start getting into the south and they’ve got a real good gun show there but one time I got into a fight there so I haven’t gone back. I guess that was about forty years ago. It’s a big state—well, no, maybe a medium one. Anyway, they’ve got mountains in the west and the girls have the cutest little accents and they know how to cook and that’s all down into North Carolina and Tennessee, not that I pay much attention to those girls because I only have eyes for you, just a little.”

  “Sure,” Jie said.

  “Shut up, Jie, I’m a tame cat; I don’t prowl around. Richmond’s the biggest city and you can see the homes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson themselves. You know who they are, right?”

  “Presidents?”

  “That’s right.” Thom had sketched out Virginia. “Now Delaware…what happens in Delaware? Not much. They’ve got some beaches but vampires don’t hang out at the beach—why not? The sun doesn’t actually kill us, not like the stories. It’d actually be a darn good place to kill people and make it look like an accident. But we don’t do that sort of thing.”

  “Geography with Thom,” Silvus said.

  “Maybe we could pitch it to PBS Kids,” Jie said.

  Thom really did help me get through the car ride without too many tears. Every state we spotted was a reason for them to tell me stories about their life together. They had been to every state in the country and much of Canada, too, and they had seen the country and the world change, but also the ways it stayed the same. Through it all, they had each other.

  “Michigan.” Thom sounded wistful. “I was born there.”

  “I thought you were from Texas.”

  “I was born in Michigan, it’s just that when I came to Texas I was just at the right age, and just the right temperament I guess, to sink into that place down to my bones. But I was born in Michigan and that’s where my family laid to rest. When my ma died, I was a little boy, and we were dead poor because my father had three little kids to raise. So when I was near fifteen, his friend Clem came and said, I’m going to Texas because I’ve got good work out there and I want to take Thom with me. I’ll send you enough money to keep those girls of yours in style, that’s what he said. My sister Eliza made all our clothes and she took care of us like a mother but she was only nineteen. My dad had known Clem since they were boys and he did trust him, so he sent me off. I made good money in Texas and I sent it home. Eliza never got married. She took care of my father and taught school for forty years. But she did live in style, and comfort. Bitsie got married. She was the middle one. Her kids looked just like her.”

  “Thom…did you ever see Eliza again? Or Bitsie?”

  “Thom, why are you telling her this story?” Rayner asked.

  “I couldn’t see her again, that’s all,” Thom said. “I didn’t want to tell them about vampires. I might as well tell Alissa the story because it’s the same story almost every one of us has to tell. The good thing is that your sisters are witches, so you can tell them the whole truth.”

  “You can’t ever tell humans about vampires?” I asked. “I don’t understand. You were a human too.”

  “I could,” Thom said. “But it would hurt them. It would draw them into a world they don’t have any business being in.”

  “It’s true,” Jie said. “It’s a weird thing about humans. They might believe deeply in ghosts or angels or all sorts of supernatural beings, but you can’t tell them you’re a vampire. I saw my parents one more time before I left for England. I started to try and tell my mother. I thought she was going to have a heart attack. I had to pretend I’d been drinking and at sea too long.”

  “So neither of you ever saw your families again…”

  “It was a long time ago,” Jie said, but I could tell they never forgot their family. I wouldn’t want to forget my family either.

  “I didn’t realize that you gave up so much…”

  “We don’t need to talk about these sad stories,” Rayner said, clearly worried that this would trigger my grief.

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “I want to be strong and believe that my sisters will survive. All of you sacrificed a lot just to…find me? That couldn’t be it because you didn’t know me yet. Or…why did you become vampires? You just wanted to be immortal? Or stronger? It doesn’t seem like the best life if you had a choice.” I hoped I wasn’t asking offensive questions, but the more time I spent with them, the more I found myself growing curious about what made all of them tick.

  At first, Jie and Thom both seemed like they didn’t even have a good answer.

  “Well…life used to be really hard in the 19th century,” Jie said. “I’d seen my parents work very hard and we didn’t always have enough to eat. But, I actually was enjoying the life I had, especially the more I realized I was good at languages and people started asking me to talk to foreigners. It was exciting, learning how big the world was. No one knew much about each other compared to the world we live in now. I guess I’d seen a lot of people die already, and I wasn’t ready to die anytime soon. I wanted to hold onto life any way I could.”

  “But some of it was you,” Thom said. “The idea of you.”

  “Rayner,” Jie said. “It was the way Rayner looked when he came up to me asking for help. I knew before I even asked that whatever he was looking for was a treasure.”

  “That’s it,” Thom said.

  “That’s why you two are here,” Rayner said. “Neither of you were the first person I asked to help me find my beloved. But you were the ones who understood.”

  “I think some people are born wanting more out of life,” Silvus said. “Whether it’s good or bad hardly matters. All that matters is to strive for that transcendence. Of course, Rayner turned me without permission and I don’t think I have the fire in me, and it’s a good thing, because these other three would be dead otherwise. Yes, even you, Jie.”

  “I’m not arguing,” Jie said. “That’s why you’re the mom.”

  “Urge to pee,” Silvus said, taking out his wand.

  “Fuck. Silvus, you really need to learn to handle being teased.” Jie grabbed the back of Silvus’ seat, clenching his thighs.

  “It’s a good disciplinary exercise,” Silvus said. “You know logically that you don’t actually have to pee. Learn a little magic of your own and fight it off.”

  “How!?”

  Silvus laughed.

  “He can be so sadistic,” Jie groaned.

  “Warlock tricks,” Thom said, but he was laughing, although he seemed to be on the receiving end of the tricks more than Jie. I couldn’t help but laugh a little too. When they first grabbed me out of the forest and brought me into the clan, all of them seeming so competitive over me and arguing with each other, it
made me feel like I was in the hands of four wolves who might tear me apart.

  I don’t think it’s like that at all, I thought. I was used to a family being loving, but tense. I was used to my parents being afraid of Father Joshua and the Elders, and my father trying to live up to the controlling ways of the Order.

  These men all gave up their families to become a clan and they’ve never left each other’s side since. However much they might argue, they love each other. Rayner might seem like the leader, but he doesn’t control them either. They all have an equal place here. I think that’s how it is.

  What I was still trying to understand was my own place. I wasn’t like them. I had lived all these lives with them, seen many of the same changes in the world that they had seen. But I didn’t remember them. I was their Lisbeth, their Meg and Li Mei and Bertie. All my mind knew was my own nineteen years. I didn’t really know where I stood. Whether I was their equal or their pet.

  What did I want, if I had a choice?

  Did I have a choice?

  Chapter Four

  Alissa

  In the late evening, we reached the home of Ulf, the oldest vampire in America. Rayner told me that despite a vampire’s immortality, most of them didn’t live all that long. It was a dangerous life. Ulf was a Medieval vampire and this was a great rarity. All of the men seemed to admire him.

  “Thursday night,” Silvus said. “We must be here for a party weekend.”

  He hadn’t been able to find street parking in front of the house. As we walked up the steps, I could see what looked like the set up for a gathering or party. A tent was set up in the back yard and lights were strung all over the garden.

  “Awesome,” Jie said.

  “I don’t know that I wanted to introduce Alissa to all of society. I’m not sure she’s ready for all of this yet,” Rayner said. “But I suppose it can’t be helped. We need to see him.”

  “You’ve already known him,” Jie said. “When you were Li Mei. He had a house in London not far from ours, although his wealth put all of us to shame. He’s a good man. It was so rare to meet someone who didn’t treat you like a foreigner and stare at you, but he welcomed you like you were anyone else.”

  “Not quite like anyone else. I was a little afraid he was going to steal her,” Silvus said. “But he came to your funeral and I daresay he wept.”

  “Oh…that’s…nice.” I wasn’t sure if I would ever get used to hearing about my own funerals.

  “We brought Bertie too,” Rayner said, like he’d just remembered.

  Well, if there was a story to that, I wouldn’t know it then, because the door opened. A handsome young man in a neatly pressed suit with bow tie answered the door. “Oh!” he said. “I thought you would be the Brennan clan.”

  “Van der Berg clan,” Rayner said. “Ulf isn’t particularly expecting me, but he isn’t particularly not expecting me either. Lucas, isn’t it?”

  “Rayner van der Berg? Yes! You came! Ulf was trying to get ahold of you.”

  “Oh, we’ve been at the Baltimore house. Why? To invite me to a party? I never stay long. These parties are all still newfangled to me, but I was in town.”

  “That’s probably my fault, the parties. I’m still a kid. I take it that Antonio liked very old world parties.”

  “Very. But he was from Milan.”

  “Ulf does have a taste for Italians.” Lucas laughed.

  “Antonio was Ulf’s avowed manservant until he was killed in the 1890s, and then Ulf turned Lucas in the 1920s,” Silvus explained to me as Lucas showed us in, telling Rayner about the guests they were expecting for the weekend. “Some vampires have just one thrall they will turn to serve them for the whole of their lives. They have a ceremony that is as serious as a marriage. In turn, the servant is very much under the elder vampire’s wing and is showered with gifts and beautiful thralls. They are often lovers as well, but not openly. It’s not as common as a clan, but almost no vampire has both a clan and an avowed manservant. The dynamic is very different and not compatible.”

  “Oh.” I was certainly learning new things already. “So Ulf is sort of like a guardian to a younger vampire in exchange for them serving him?”

  “Exactly so, pet. Ulf always says he has no clan because we are all his clan—if we need a place to go.”

  “I wonder why everyone is here,” Rayner said. “The Brennan clan, he said? They’re not usually much for parties either.”

  The house was a grand southern mansion. I obviously didn’t know much about the world, and certainly not about houses, but some things you just know when you see them. The room felt old like the houses in my village, but rather than the dark wallpaper and heavy curtains in fashion in the village, this house was very open with high ceilings and an abundance of windows. Folding wooden blinds could block the sun while still circulating the air on a warm summer day. Since it was October, the weather was really nice here, much warmer than Pennsylvania at this time of year and more like a perfect summer night. The house already seemed half full of people. Servants were polishing the wooden stairs and dusting an array of china and silver. Lucas showed us into a full parlor of people dressed in suits and gowns. Some of them must be vampires, but some of the women were clearly thralls, because the women wore low cut gowns that showed off the marks where they had been bitten.

  I was fascinated but also very uncomfortable.

  I was wearing the modern clothes we bought at the mall and I didn’t look like anyone else in the room. Not a vampire but not like the other thralls either.

  One man drew my eyes in particular. He was not the most handsome, but he was magnetic and his blue eyes were hard to miss in a face that should have been unremarkable. A young, dark-skinned girl was clinging to him, staring at him with awe even as everyone else looked at the new arrivals.

  This had to be Ulf. If he wasn’t Ulf, I couldn’t imagine who else could be.

  “Rayner.” He stood up to shake the hands of Rayner and his clan before his attention locked on me. “Did you find her?”

  “Yes. This is Alissa. This is our host, Ulf.”

  “Alissa.” Ulf kissed my hand with perfect gallantry. “How lovely to meet you again, in yet another skin—but when I see your eyes I am reminded that we have already met.”

  “I wish I remembered it, sir.”

  He smiled back at another young woman in the room. Like Dee, and so many other human girls, she had a very self-assured air as she smiled back. She was clearly a thrall, and from what I had learned, I was the only thrall who couldn’t become a vampire. “You picked a good weekend to come,” Ulf said. “I hope you brought some evening dress.”

  “Of course,” Silvus said, as if insulted that anyone would think they traveled without it.

  Vampire society, I was quickly starting to learn, was a very old-fashioned, elegant world of suave immortals and worshipful thralls. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here. I was afraid it would remind me of Father Joshua and the priestesses again. I supposed I might be trying to run from those memories forever. At least he never got his hands on me, I thought with a little shudder. It didn’t matter where I was, I was never free of the shadow of that man.

  “Shall we talk upstairs?” Ulf asked. “The party doesn’t really begin until tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” Rayner said.

  “Does Alissa need any dinner?” He only needed to glance at me to decide that I did. I had been picking at my food for days now and I had lost weight. “Rosie, please feed this sweet little rabbit. Don’t worry—“ He lifted a hand. “Rosie will take good care of her and we shall speak business.”

  “Are you all right without us?” Jie asked me.

  I nodded. Rosie was the self-assured girl and she was already taking my hand. “You don’t look like you’re in the mood to talk business,” she said.

  After my brief encounter with Dee and the witches, I was intrigued to know more of other women who were out in the world. I yearned to be more like them even though I hardly
knew how.

  The clan went upstairs and Rosie took me to a large, modern kitchen with a huge island and six-burner gas range. “Isn’t it grand?” she said, when she saw me admiring it. She spread her arms across the island possessively like a stretching cat and then flounced back to me. “And the vampires don’t even touch it! Still, they’ll have nothing but the best. It’s my playground. I made pear tart this morning.” She pointed at a half-empty pan. “But that’s dessert. How about a stuffed acorn squash? I’m a vegetarian.”

  “I’ll eat about anything,” I said.

  “Oh, good. My favorite kind of person.” She grabbed a squash and a cleaver and put the squash in the oven, face down on a pan with a little oil, and then she took out a skillet. “I guess it isn’t actually stuffed. It would take too much time to make the filling first and then bake it. If I’d only known you were coming.”

  I still wasn’t very hungry but I would do my best to eat the food because she seemed so happy to make it for me. “Do you live here?” I asked.

  Rosie was wearing a low-cut 19th century gown with a ruffled bustle, and her neck bore the mark of a vampire’s bite, just above a ribbon choker with a single blue jewel that matched her earrings. Her hair was dyed golden blonde and pulled up into gathered ringlets. She didn’t look like she should be cooking in the gown, but she carelessly spilled a few chopped nuts on the skirt as she shoved them into the pan. “Yes, indeed,” she said proudly. She didn’t seem as submissive as I would expect a thrall to be.

  “Are you a witch?” I asked her.

  “Not exactly. I’m a human, but humans can learn magic and I’ve been trying. I have always felt like a witch. I grew up here in Savannah haunting the cemeteries and looking for ghosts, and when I was a teenager I became a Wiccan. My dad is a Baptist minister. That didn’t go over well. I was what you might call—what my parents definitely would call—a bad girl.” She grinned at me and I didn’t doubt that the Order would consider her a bad girl as well. “So I ran away from home. For a year I was bumming around and I’m sure I would have gotten in a lot of trouble, but Ulf found me before my life went off the rails. Once I learned that vampires and magic was real, I’ve felt very centered. It’s like thinking you’re crazy, and everyone telling you you’re crazy, and then someone comes along and tells you you aren’t crazy. So what about you?”