Page 59 of Sunsets & Other Dangerous Things

“Going home is hard,” Esther continued, “and most people aren’t vampires on top of it.”

“It’s not going home,” said Ashley. “Well, it is going home. But right now, it’s the nothing on the way there.”

“The nothing?”

As counterintuitive as it seemed, discussing her lonely years took away the sting of seeing the darkness creep up around her, so she kept going. “When I changed, I wasn’t exactly alone. Not at first at least.”

She paused, not sure how much of this story to tell. But Esther wasn’t her girlfriend. Not for real. She wasn’t even gay. There was no reason to try to impress her or keep parts hidden.

“In the beginning, there was Konstantine.” Ashley blushed, hearing the reverent way she still said her name. “She was my first crush in high school. Not that anything ever happened. I wasn’t out then. It was the early 2000s in rural Iowa. No one was out.” She was rambling and glanced at Esther to see if she was still listening. “Anyway, I went to college after high school, like the good middle-class daughter I was. But while I was gone, my Oma died, and she was kind of an important person.”

But she couldn’t go through all of that now. How her Oma was the one she made cookies with after school and taught her to curse in German when she was angry so she wouldn’t upset her teacher. She showed Ashley how to cross-stitch and to speak louder, and going home would never be the same without her there.

“I came home for the funeral and wasn’t all right. And it’s a small town so, of course, Konstantine was there. We got to talking, and one thing led to another. In one weekend, I lost a grandma and gained a girlfriend and also agreed to become a vampire. Turns out Konstantine changed sometime during college out east.” She paused to take a breath, stealing a glance at Esther to see she was still listening. “Oma had this thing she would say,Einmal ist keinmal. Once is nothing. And I just thought, if I only have one life, I’ll make the most of it. I’m probably butchering the German. I never did learn much more than cursing.”

“So, did you live with her after that?”

“Yeah, I lived with Konstantine. Dropped out of school and started training to be a functional vampire. The first few days are the hardest, so it was nice to have someone to walk me through the process. Some things at least. I still have trouble stopping, once I start drinking.”

“Where is she now?” Esther with the hard questions.

Ashley gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. “She’s dead.”

“Wait, I thought vampires couldn’t die. Don’t you live forever?”

“Well, there are some pretty classic ways to kill a vampire, but strangely enough, it wasn’t burning or a stake to the heart. It was witches.” Ashley took a deep breath and tried to focus on the road as that day came tumbling back to her. How she had come home from the farmer’s market, so proud to have been in a crowd, and bore the fresh produce to prove her success. But the house was empty except for a clawing, fizzing sensation in her throat she would later recognize as residual magic.

“Witches?”

“I waited a couple of weeks before realizing she wasn’t coming back, but her absence activated my anxiety, and I relapsed. I couldn’t control the bloodlust like I had before. I decided to take myself away from temptation.” The town lights grew on the horizon, and Ashley felt both relief to get out of the endless darkness and anxiety at the idea of being around people that knew her again. “I ran away, wandering cornfields for a time as I made my way over to western Nebraska to get away from the crowds.”

“You walked to Nebraska?”

“Some. I hitchhiked a lot of it. It wasn’t the safest option, so I tried not to do it often.” Ashley didn’t mention that it wasn’t safe for the person giving her the ride, not herself.

That was her vigilante phase. She tried to live on deer blood, but if she got an especially handsy driver, she’d dispense of him as a service to humanity. It never settled quite right though, no matter how terrible the driver.

Esther was the first human she drank straight from in years.

The road curved through town and out again, and Esther left her in silent reflection for the rest of the drive. Her parents still lived in their country home just on the other side of town. She recognized the colorful lights over the porch and on the large pine in the front yard.

They pulled into the gravel drive, and Ashley turned off the engine. “We’re here.”

19

Esther

Esther pulled her bag from the car, still processing everything Ashley had shared on the ride over. She pressed a hand to her inner elbow, feeling a small sting, but the cut had mostly healed already. Which couldn’t be natural, but neither was the situation she was in.

She had a lot to process in general, and they hadn’t even set foot inside.

“Do you want to be Romanian or another foreign Ph.D. candidate in microbiology like myself?” Ashley paused next to her open car door. “Or was it environmental science? Crap, I forgot what my Ph.D. program was.”

“What? Why would I be Romanian?” Standing in front of Ashley’s parents’ house with a suitcase ready to pretend to be their daughter’s girlfriend was already a huge ask on Esther’s acting skills. She’d never dated a woman before and certainly didn’t go home to visit the parents.

“Well, I’ve been in Romania this whole time—as you remember—so that’s where I would have met you. Long-distance seems too difficult.” Ashley laughed. “It’s just occurring to me now. We spent so much time working on making sure I looked human, we forgot to figure out our backstory.”

Esther froze, her hand on the door to the car. They didn’t have a backstory. How could they have missed something so obvious?

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