Alice

Knocking on Morgan’s door, Alice hoped her pregnant friend wasn’t napping. She was the only one who could help.

Morgan had grown very adept at interpreting dreams and visions. Sure, Alice had just had the most intense pleasure of her life, but she needed answers.

Drew had stayed with her in her bed until sunset, then sneaked away through the woods, hopefully without being noticed by any of the other Sisters. But not before she grabbed him one last time and whispered, despite all sense, “Next time, hunt me down, vampire. Stalk me. Grab me. And then take me.”

She would not have expected to have a desire to be hunted. Maybe having union with a magical dark beast had done something to her. You think? She felt more fearless, more reckless. In tune with her desires of her flesh. She had even gone so far as to weaken the museum grounds’ security for Drew’s benefit. She knew she was under the vampire’s thrall even as she gave him the code to the gate and took out her wand to erase the extra layer of befuddlement charm on the woods.

Ever since last Halloween’s near-disaster involving an angry mob of villagers—with literal fire and pitchforks—attempting to burn some witches at the stake, the Sisters had had a gate with a key-card entry installed on the road leading up to the grounds, and doubled down on the befuddlement spell to keep random hikers from finding them as well.

Well, even if Alice’s sex demanded she act recklessly, her mind still wanted answers.

Morgan’s door opened on its own, to reveal the woman sitting on a balance ball, eating a pink macaron and watching The Chew on DVR. It was an odd sight. Morgan was always very particular about her little magical cottage. But her fiancé Adam, a cop and a sports fan, had somehow been allowed to set up his huge television set in Morgan’s little living room. And it looked very out of place in Morgan’s perfectly twee surroundings. Morgan, who ran a successful lifestyle blog, always had the picture-perfect home and garden. Now, with the baby on the way, the only part of Morgan’s cottage that was anywhere close to Pinterest-ready would be the nursery.

Morgan had evidently opened the door with magic, not wanting to stop watching The Chew to answer the door. Alice was glad her friend was at home, but still sad to see her alone on the night of Valentine’s Day.

“Where’s Adam?” asked Alice, stepping in from the cold.

Morgan spoke through a mouthful of macarons, “He’s on nights this week. It’s no big deal. I pretty much don’t want anybody to touch me right now. I feel bad. Poor guy is getting a little frustrated, but he says he doesn't want me to give him a blowjob in my current condition.”

Alice sat down cross-legged on the floor next to her friend and took one of the sweets from the bakery box that Morgan had offered to her.

“Whoa, why not?” Alice asked.

“He says it makes him feel guilty to see me kneeling, even though I’m not exactly huge in the belly yet. So now I’m stuffing my face. How are you, friend?”

Alice decided whatever was going on with her, she was in an infinitely comfier space than Morgan right now. “I’m good, and now I feel bad for coming over to ask your advice.”

“Well, don't feel bad. If anything, I’m tired of people feeling bad for making demands of me.”

Alice smiled and massaged her friend’s feet while they watched Michael Symon making eggplant parmigiana on the television.

Morgan said, “Whatever you need, I’m your slave, just keep rubbing my feet. It will get my mind off my aching back. Everything’ starting to shift into weird spaces and nothing feels right.”

“Poor thing,” Alice said.

“Never mind that,” Morgan said. “Spill it. How was your date? I saw that guy from the brew pub got your brown bag. The one who ruined the open mic last night. What’s his deal? Why’d he bid on your bag?”

Alice took a deep breath and spilled the beans. “Well, apparently he’s had a crush on me for some time. He keeps saying things like ‘your blood is calling out to me.’”

“Creepy,” Morgan said.

“Well, there’s more. We did it. He was my first cock. Well, my first without batteries. And I liked it. A whole fucking lot. I mean, I have always liked both men and women. But never the kind of dudes who swill beer and wear ball caps indoors. I just found myself really digging him for some reason.”

“That’s hot,” Morgan said. She was now dipping potato chips in ice cream. Alice had no idea where all these snacks had materialized from, but Morgan seemed to be at triple her power while pregnant.

That was one thing about living with the Sisters. Nobody ever judged anybody for having sex on a first date. Sex was just sex and it filled a need.

“So anyway, while we were having sex, I closed my eyes and something weird happened.”

“The condom broke?”

“No. We kind of forgot about the condom.”

“Alice…”

“But I don’t think it matters because of the blood thing. He…don’t freak out, but…Drew is a vampire.”

Morgan stuffed a rocky-road-loaded chip into her face and looked more thoughtful than judgmental.

“OK. Is he going to suck you dry and then transform you? Do we need to call Magda and ritually banish him because he’s clouded your head?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Obviously he’s clouded my head, but let’s wait on calling the high priestess. I came to talk to you because I saw something. When Adam and I were doing it, I closed my eyes and it was like I was floating in space, but it wasn’t really space. There was dust and stars and I felt like I was falling. You know that feeling you get when you’re on a roller coaster? Or when you’re dreaming you’re falling but then never hit the ground?”

Morgan nodded, but Alice could see she was still wrapping her brain around the vampire thing.

“Is he more like an Angel vampire or Spike?”

Alice frowned. “You know I’m more of an Edward girl.”

“Oh god. If you tell me he glitters in the sunshine I’m going to push this whole bowl of ice cream right into your dumb Bella face. The only vampire whose cock is worthy of one of us is Spike. End of story. Or possibly Angel, when he showed up at Buffy’s prom? Oh my god, I swooned so hard I had to throw those panties away.”

Alice put her hand on Morgan’s knees. “You do realize, honey, that we are talking about a real live vampire in Birchdale? We’re lucky he seems to have a light dusting of conscience. And I need you to interpret my dream.”

Morgan rolled her eyes. “OK, well I’m going to need more context. What were you doing while all this visioning was happening?”

Alice thought. “He was inside me, and it was pretty fucking great. But he kept saying that I was doing something to him. I was changing him somehow. Like, when he was around me, he felt more human.”

Morgan thought for a moment. “At first blush, the idea of space means the infinite. It could mean a lot of things. It could mean that both of you are dead.”

“Huh?”

“No, I know that’s not it. It could also mean both of you are immortal. Or it could mean the two of you already knew each other. You know, beyond the constructs of earth and man’s idea of time passing.”

“Oh yeah. That. Actually, Morgan, what the hell does that mean?”

“It means you might have met him in a former life,” Morgan said. “But I don’t know for sure. You could have just been hallucinating. It happens a lot around here.” She winked at Alice.

“Yeah, we both know hallucinations do not explain anything to anybody except the non-magical.”

“Well, I need more information. Did you feel a sense of dread or peace in this vision, or whatever it was?”

Alice thought for a moment. “Neither. Just like, we were part of something bigger.”

Morgan smirked. “How big was it?”

Alice blushed. “Not small.”

“Good for you,” Morgan said. “Listen, I’m going to need to crack open some dusty old books on this thing. I’ll call you later if I find anything. In the meantime, try not to, you know, get too busy with this guy, OK?”

Alice made no promises of that before she left.

* * *

After the next morning’s rush of coffee addicts, Morgan and her just-showing belly came in for a half-decaf and a moment of Alice’s time.

“We need to talk.” She looked deadly serious and was holding a large, old manuscript under her arm that probably should not have been brought out of its safe place in the museum’s library.

Alice asked her barista, Jordan, to take over for a minute.

Morgan spent the next several minutes telling Alice what she found out in her research. It was strange, bizarre, unbelievable. And it was not good news. It was pretty devastating, actually.

“So,” Morgan said, gingerly patting an open page of the manuscript that included an illustration of a female figure, a man, and a small, shriveled-looking bloodsucking creature. “To summarize: you lived a former life, also went by the name of Alice, in the 1300s. For clarity, we’ll call her Alice the First. She was—you were—not exactly a good witch. To use a schoolyard phrase, you started it.”

“So it was me? In a former life, I turned him into a vampire and he’s just been roaming the earth ever since?”

“Not just him. You made them,” Morgan said.

Alice was confused. “I thought people only became vampires by being turned by another existing vampire?”

Morgan shook her head. She looked drawn and haunted. “No, sweetie. I am saying there were no vampires before Alice the First. You created them. You cursed them to live diminished in the sunlight, and doubly cursed them to survive only on blood. According to this legend, you believed this curse would only mean the vampires would be relegated to offal, scraps and unable to be in the sunlight. Well, the vampires sought out any black magic they could find and eventually sold their souls to a demon in exchange for immortality and superhuman strength. Which meant they could feed on humans and live forever. This was Drew’s wish, to torment Alice and her kind for the rest of her days.”

Alice shook her head. “This is crazy.”

Morgan shrugged. “It’s no huge coincidence that he would be drawn here to Birchdale after all these centuries. You’re the key to letting him die, finally.”

“But his soul is still somewhere?”

“That was the meanest trick of all. The irony is that there is no hell other than earth for a soul to suffer in. Hell is simply living on and not dying.”

“So the demon did this just for what, sport?”

“It’s what they do.

“And in that former life, you definitely were somewhat involved in the curse or whatever happens that made him into a vampire. And now, you're back in his life to undo it.

“It means you’d better go back and figure out what you did in your former life to make the curse and what the conditions of the curse are. Because if you take away his immortality, he’s either going to die immediately or he is just going to be erased like he was never here in the first place.”

“So if we keep having sex and all his vampire-y goodness disappears, he’s free, fully human and mortal again, but then all of his memories as a vampire — all the destruction as well as our relationship — are obliterated?”

“Yes, But you’ll still carry the memories.”

After Morgan left, Alice put Jordan in charge again so she could go across the street. The young barista was getting lots of hours on his own this weekend. Alice needed to talk to Drew.

At 9 a.m. the brew pub was locked up tight and dark as she peeked in the windows, so Alice slipped upstairs and knocked on the apartment door. A bleary-eyed, naked vampire answered the door.

“Did I wake you? I’m sorry,” she said.

He pointed at his bare chest. “Me, vampire bartender. You, coffee lady. I could not get more nocturnal if I grew wings and slept upside down.”

Morgan stared at him excitedly. “Does that happen? Do you guys really do that like in the movies?”

He looked at her like she had just grown wings herself, or perhaps a second head. “No. We don’t do that. Come on in.”

Inside, Alice was about to start in on the whole speech that Morgan had given to her. She was going to break it off in the kindest way possible. Better to end things early on than let it drag on forever.

But looking around, what greeted her took her breath away.

“You cleaned up!” she said, taking in the tidied up studio apartment. There were no clothes lying around in funky piles on the bed. His bed had…sheets? The floor had been swept. “Oh my god, you have a kitchen table? Was that what was holding up the beer can sculpture?”

“I wanted it to look nice for you. I know the mess made you uncomfortable, so I fixed it,” Drew said with a shrug.

This was bad. It was good that he cleaned, but this effort he was putting in was making Alice lose her nerve. She took off her coat. This was going to take a while. “You shouldn’t have to change for me.”

He laughed. “It’s just a little bit of cleaning, babe. It’s not like I’m suddenly not a vampire anymore. And besides, I like you. Kind of a lot, in case you hadn’t noticed. If we’re going to be together, I want to do it right. You make me want to…I don’t know, be better.”

She turned to him, her eyes shining.

“Oh god. You’re making this so hard.”

He pulled her in his arms. “Nope, you’re the one making this hard,” he said, squeezing her around the waist, tight against his morning wood. His chest felt cozy and tempting.

“Why are you so warm?”

“Biology? We vampires may run colder than mortals, as we’re undead, but we do have actual blood and working organs and a beating heart. My systems don’t work as hard as yours because immortality doesn’t require any external input. We don’t need to eat or breathe to stay alive. And it used to be that vampires did not eat or drink or breathe or have sex, or any of that. But it made immortality so boring that vampires started killing themselves.”

Alice lifted her head up to meet his eyes. “Oh my god, why?”

Drew turned and led her over to the bed. He sat down and motioned for her to sit in his lap. His plain pajama pants, bare chest and pillow-mussed hair were too, too sexy. She knew it was wrong, but she obeyed.

He answered, stroking her back. “You might love chocolate. But could you imagine going through life not tasting anything but chocolate?”

“Have you met me? The only thing I love more than a shade-grown, fair-trade, organic Nicaraguan bean is chocolate.”

He leaned in and placed his nose between her breasts and inhaled. Oh god, she should really not be allowing that right now. He continued, “But imagine eating only chocolate but not appreciating anything else, no other taste or scent, or touch. So we adapted.”

“That’s crazy to think about,” she said. Drew was placing little kisses up and down her neck as he slipped his hands under her top. Oh goddess, that feels good.

“No more crazy than humans adapting to walking upright,” he said. He boldly released his fangs and traced them across her collarbone. This was getting out of hand.

Dammit, she let a little sigh of pleasure escape before she could stop herself. Breaking up could wait. Maybe she could stall him with more genuine questions. “I suppose. But wait, how were they killing themselves if they are immortal? Wooden stake through the heart?”

“Not unless the wooden stake is magically cursed. Since we can’t be killed by natural causes or terrestrial violence, it has to come from somewhere else.” Now he worked his way downward, across her chest, tentatively biting without breaking skin.

She displayed her neck for him. She had no hope of going back once she was this close to him. Fuck it. “You know,” she said, starting to feel breathless, “You’re debunking a lot of mythology that’s been in place for, like, a millennia in about 20 seconds. Even for a witch, I believe a lot of wrong things, I guess. Oh goddess…”

Drew’s hand was all the way up inside her top, cupping her breast, rubbing one nipple with his thumb.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?” he asked, stroking the hair at the nape of her neck with the other hand.

She lifted her face to meet his gaze, and she felt the pit of regret in her stomach.

And she just couldn’t bring herself to rip off the bandage, metaphorically. She felt so at home in his arms. They simply fit. How could this be wrong? How could she end it when she didn’t even know if what Morgan was saying was correct?

But deep down she knew it was all true.

“We have to stop, as much as I don’t want to,” she said weakly.

“What is it, beauty?”

Alice forced herself to focus and placed a hand over his hand that was at her breast, signaling for him to slow down. He growled in frustration, but he complied.

“After you left I went to see Morgan,” Alice said. “She sees visions, she interprets dreams. And she did not give me a warm and fuzzy interpretation of the visions I had while we were together last night.”

“What did she say?” Drew looked more curious than concerned.

“I’m sorry, Drew. But as much as I like you, and as much as I felt the connection between us, I don’t think we can be together.”

“What’s gotten into your head?” he asked, smoothing her top down. She appreciated him acting like a gentleman despite the beast she knew was rising in his chest. She slid off his lap.

“Drew, if we stay together, it could kill you.”