Sara didn't know what she expected when she started looking for answers. She was a pragmatist, who had always questioned superstitions and even religious belief. She didn't believe in all-seeing old men in the sky or fairies running around the fields. Everything was as it seemed, and there was little room for fantasy. Now she was being forced to accept that a vampire killed her mother and that somehow she summoned up a blue fire to kill two security guards.

The intrigue of it was not enough to make her want to fight to live. She didn't care about whether or not Caleb's brother killed her. Caleb said that she would see her mother when she died. Trying to die was a lot more fun than hiding in her grandmother's house all day.

So Sara promised herself to stay out as much as she could. Caleb could follow her if he wanted, and probably would. That'd be part of the fun.

He was quick to catch up with her while she started down the road past the school when class got out. “You're not actually walking, are you?”

She was trampling the grass through the field. “Yes. I thought it'd be fun to go out for a walk.”

“You're trying to get yourself killed, aren't you?”

“We'll see.” She picked up her speed, hoping to leave him behind but he matched her pace quickly.

“Why are you making this so hard for me?”

“I'm not.” She started uphill, farther out into the fields, hoping to cut through the hills to get to her house without having to walk on the side of the road.

“Yes, you are.” He laughed.

“I'm helping you find your brother.” He grabbed her arm and spun her around so that she was trapped, facing him.

“I'm not talking about him. I'm talking to you. You know damn well that if you keep this up, you're going to die. Why are you making it so hard to keep you alive? Do you really want to die this badly? Because Sara I can assure you it's not an easy death. He'll take his time and drain you so that you're barely alive. Then he'll start tearing you apart. First,” his fingertips ran along the place where her shoulders met her arm. “He'll dismember you. Then,” he stroked some hair behind her ear. “He'll take what little of you is left alive, and he'll roast you slowly while you scream. Do you want that?”

“Yes.” She looked up at him.

He held his head down low. “Why?” He sounded angry.

“Because then I'll get to see my mother.”

“Without ever having lived.” His hand brushed her cheek, and his eyes crept out from behind his black bangs. “Without ever having fallen in love, you're ready to die. You don't even know anything about life or the world you live in. There's so much to see. You can see her anytime you want to. You'll only get to be here once.”

“But I don't want to be here without her.”

“Not at the moment you don't. You're short-sighted. But in a few months or in a few years you'll wish you'd stayed. You're staying here, and I'm making sure of it. So walk around as much as you want to. It's not going to work.” He let her go, and she turned around to keep walking through the field.

“I thought I was making it harder for you to keep me alive.”

“You are. That doesn't mean I can't do it. It just means that sometimes you have to get used to the idea of me following you around everywhere and I have to spend all my time doing it. It also means that I won't get to have a life outside of watching you.”

“You're a vampire. What kind of life could you possibly have?”

“I don't know.” He sounded kind of defensive. “Mostly we just keep ourselves company, but I wanted to go cliff diving today.”

“Cliff diving? Wait, the first night your brother attacked me, I saw something flying down off the cliff. Was that you? I saw this light.”

“It's a lantern I take when I go diving. It's waterproof. That way I can see underwater.”

“Do you cliff dive?”

“Yeah. Why?”

It was strange to think of Caleb just running and jumping off a cliff. “I can't see you doing anything like that.”

“I can take you with me.” A smile crept over his lips. “It's totally safe.”

“Do it.” She turned left, towards the beach.

“You're not even worried?”

“No. You said it was safe.” She didn't really care either way.

“It is. We're only doing safe activities.”

“Well, I trust you.”

“Are you sure? You trust me enough to jump off a cliff with me?”

“You don't want me killed. You've made that very clear.”

“You're right. Only safe activities.”

“Like jumping off a cliff with a vampire.”

He laughed at the irony. “Come on.” He snatched her up in his arms, cradled her like a baby then started running. He moved so fast that the wind, barely a soft breath before, slammed into her entire body, blowing her hair back against her face. The world flew by like she was driving through it at a thousand miles an hour. One second they were standing in the field. The next, they were on the cliff trail, winding in between the boulders until they reached the edge and he set her down on a boulder.

“What?” He was staring down at the water, then back down at her again.

“It's ju—

“What?”

He grabbed her back up again, ran to the edge and hopped off. “Don't be afraid.” His whispered was nearly lost in the pounding tide of air rushing past her.

They were racing down towards the water, hundreds of feet below. Sara thought she was going to lose her mind. Sara had never been more excited in her entire life. He was barely holding her, just around the waist so that she could spread her arms out wide and pretend like she was flying.

“WHOO!” She twisted and spun while he moved along with her. She was falling like a leaf with the wind blowing her this way and that. The water below was a boiling tide of navy blue, so dark it almost looked a solid surface and it might as well have been because the force of the impact would snap her head right off her body the second she touched it. She could die. There was no way of knowing whether or not this would work, but that just made it even more exciting.

She wasn't afraid, even when they started to get closer and the water was all that she could see. She wanted to let it break her to pieces, and smash here until there was nothing left than a red dot in the water.

She shivered, and her skin was tingling. It was getting close enough that she felt like she could almost reach out and touch it. A spray came off the waves and hit her in the face, like tiny daggers of ice piercing through her skin. She was going to die. Nothing could travel this fast, make an impact and survive.

He flipped her around so that she was facing the sky. That way he could break her fall. Then he took her in his arms as tightly as he could and held her head above the water expertly as he pounded against the waves and swam her out to the beach.

By the time he pulled her onto the shore, she was shivering, huddled close against his chest. He laid her down in the sand and stroked her cheek. The sun was directly at his back, illuminating him as he reared up, tore off his wet shirt then stared down at her, a smile creeping over his lips. “You're shivering.”

“I’m cold.”

“Here,” he let her rest against his shoulder and covered her with his arm to shield her from the wind. “Did you enjoy that?”

“Immensely.” She moved her finger along his white chest while she watched the sky fade from blue to indigo as the sun fell.

“Do you still want to die.”

“I just don't want to live. I want to make all of this pain go away, and that's the best way I know how.”

“Hmm.” His eyes drooped for a moment.

“Do you know what it's like to die?”

“I've never done it, but I do know about it.”

“Tell me.”

“They call it piercing the veil.”

“The what?” She sat up to look at him, and he turned his head to meet her gaze.

“The veil.” He said quietly. “It's the space between the worlds. Once you reach it, your consciousness starts to transition from a physical state to a spiritual state. To do that, it has to fall so hard it pierces through the veil and starts falling away. It's like falling off a never ending cliff. It takes months for the transition to cement, and you feel yourself falling the whole time.”

“Kind of like falling off a cliff.”

“Yep.” He nodded his head. “I died when I turned into a vampire. We all do, but our transition is cut short. Vampires are forced to maintain a consciousness that is both physical and spiritual to stay in this world.”

“You're dead.”

“More dead than you are. When we die, we disappear. There's no heaven or hell, no afterlife—just death. We trade in eternal life for a second longer on Earth.”

“That's terrible. I thought you couldn't die.”

“There are forces out there that can unseal our spirits and push them out of our bodies. It's rare when it happens, but most of us do die eventually.”

“There's a lot out there that I don't know about.”

“Most people never get a single look outside their fragile reality, and that's comfort, Sara. There are things out there that neither you nor I could possibly imagine. It's best to live your life in ignorance.”

“When I found my mother dead, after I overdosed, the cops brought me back and tried to accuse me of her murder. They chained me up and took me to the hospital. Then they locked me up in a cell while I withdrew from opiates. I started hearing voices in there, telling me how to erupt this blue fire out of my fingers. These two guards came to get me so they could put me through PET scan and take brain imagery. They beat me, threw me around on a leash and ultimately ended up violating me so badly that the fire erupted out of my fingers. I turned the men to ash without even thinking about it and found myself waking up in my grandmother's guest bedroom. What does that mean?”

He seemed disturbed, staring up at the sky. His face went dark for a moment as if Sara had said something terrible. Then, all at once, he pounced on top of her and drove their lips together. “It means,” he laughed with his body pressing against hers, “that you have an extraordinary power inside of you and that I'm going to do everything I can to give you a reason to keep on living.”

She rested her arms around his neck. “What does it really mean?”

He kissed her again. “It means that you're a witch.”