Ghost Girl

Being a vampire doesn’t always suck.

short story

A rolling hum and clack of the wheels of my board on the deserted street.

It felt dead. Which was a weird thing to feel since that could be said about me. Technically. Or clinically. Tashi would argue I was still very much alive. But when you’re older than you can remember, I guess you’d have a mind-blowing perspective that didn’t fit with how most humans would see life.

Close to the Treasury Gardens at the top of the Melbourne CBD, houses and shops were a blur as I raced for the lights nearing Wellington Parade. Didn’t matter if the lights turned red, no cars were on the street.

End of the freaking world.

Tashi had lived through more than any of the history books I’d read. Living right now when the world was going crazy because of a pandemic didn’t faze him at all. When I left he was in his sanctuary, meditating. He knew I was out after the 8.00 pm citywide curfew. That’s why it felt dead. No cars, no people. The streetlights and building lights were on, but it felt like the world had emptied out. The air was crisp-cold, and I thought about cutting through the gardens to get home. But I was flying on my board and it was semi-dark and an eerie quiet settled in me like peace.

I hadn’t felt at peace in so long.

And I’d stick out even more amid the dark of the trees. Probably a dumb thing to be wearing a ghost costume. I wore it the year before the change for Halloween. Just a white sheet with holes for eyes and a bit of stitching on the sides for wide armholes to keep the whole thing from falling off. My sister made it—scrawled “BOO” with a Sharpie across the back.

It was my invisibility cloak.

Gliding through the abandoned city. No cops, but there were street cameras. I tried to avoid them. I’d got good at avoiding most kinds of surveillance because Tashi said awareness was key to survive. To disappear.

I’d been invisible for over two years now.

Ghost me felt right on a night devoid of humans when I was the only vampire around.

* * *

Well, at least I thought I was the only one.

I could always sense when one of my kind was near, like a high vibrational charge, a current of energy that signalled a presence. A disturbance in the air.

But I was going fast, the air gusting the ghost-sheet like a sail. Tashi always asked why I skated when I was faster on foot. I didn’t have the words to explain how it connected me to my other life, to that other me. I think he knew though. Just that he wanted me to speak rather than keep so much inside. That’s why he gave me a journal.

In Tibet, his spiritual home, Tashi had a library that rivalled most public institutions. Hidden amid books and scrolls and tablets, were leather-bound pages with his indecipherable script, stories of his life. I couldn’t read them, but David said they were written in such a way that no one would mistake them as a diary. Tashi would never leave behind the traces of his life that would reveal who he truly was.

Which made the journal weird.

Because how could I not write about who I was? What I’d become?

To make the marks on the page in my hand felt like an indelible trace I couldn’t erase. But of course I could. I could burn it, rip it up. It just felt so revealing when I was so intent on not being seen, known. I mean people saw me, but they didn’t truly see.

Like a sleight of hand, a trick of light. Humans would never truly see what they didn’t believe.

I was a walking fairy tale. Or horror story. Take your pick.

I was fiction and real. Straddling dimensions. Living an unbelievable existence. But, it was all too real to me.

Nearing the incline leading to Spring Street and the top of the city near Parliament, I rolled to a stop, kicked up my board and walked. Sneakers slapped the pavement. Every movement announced I was here. Still no one around, the city hushed. The night air was crazily fresh—no fumes, or food and human smells. The streets still wet from an earlier rainfall, soaking the cement and tar and tram tracks, leaving it all bright and sharp. I breathed it in even though I didn’t need to.

Turning down Little Collins St, I came to a stop outside a three-storey building with Victorian moulding and oak double doors, three wide steps up from street level. Painted dark grey, the building sunk into the night, was so non-descript, I’d passed it in my before-life so many times I’d never seen it.

Punching the keypad, a small panel slid open revealing a hidden scanner. I pressed my palm to the screen and the door clicked open. I slid in like a cloud-wisp, the thick door shutting, vacuum sealing the interior, separating me from the world outside.

No lights were on, not that I couldn’t see as if a light was shining as bright as day. I opted for the stairs, not the internal glass elevator that speared the centre of the building. The staircase was a spiralling vine around the glass and metal atrium. A diffuse light came from the skylight above. The building was never full dark. Tashi liked the juxtaposition of the old and new. His husband, David, had only been changed for seventy years and favoured both as well.

Entering my room on the first floor, I paused; just a moment when I couldn’t help wondering how I’d fallen into this life. The room was huge, nothing like the tiny bedroom I used to have—just that, a room that fit a bed. This was more like a suite, with a massive bed but also a lounge area and a bathroom attached. And at the back of a walk-in closet there was a small, concealed room that was accessed via a steel door with a biometric screen-pad featuring a much smaller bed for day-rest. It reminded me of a panic room I’d seen in a film, which was exactly my reaction on first seeing it: I panicked, hyperventilating despite not really breathing, more like gurgling sounds coming from my chest, seizing at the thought of being trapped. It was fire proof—pretty much anything proof—but the size and enclosure was one up from the mythical coffin featured in the stories I was beginning to see held both fact and fiction. My first day-rest both Tashi and David sat in the cramped room simply so I’d know I wasn’t alone, except I fell into rest so fast—fell from consciousness to not—the panic subsided, and I quickly got used to the room because I was there only briefly before, like magic, it disappeared.

I dumped my board and went to a huge window, curtains open, and peered down at the walled-in back garden. Tashi had created an oasis with night blooming flowers amid stands of trees. The night before I’d sat beside the pond at its centre feeding the koi, the quiet of the city sinking into my bones. The eeriness of such quiet etched on my skin, made me squirm, so that I knew tonight I couldn’t be still, I had to get out and move. To try and shake the stillness as if proof of life.

Turning on a standing lamp, I lay on the black leather sofa, still not bothering to take off my ghostly attire. The otherworldliness of the night outside and the emptiness clung to me and I held on to the strangeness, because it fit me like a second skin.

Being of this world and not.

My life a coin toss, constantly flipping between what I’d known and what I now knew. I’d rejoiced at my immunity to the virus now spreading the world then panicked knowing my very human sister was vulnerable to it.

“Can I let her know?” I’d pleaded with Tashi, not long after the change.

His eyes were infinity pools, dark as the night sky without stars. “Is it a choice you can live with? What if she rejects you? Can you live with that? Can you trust her to keep you a secret?”

He hadn’t said more, leaving the decision to me. Even at the risk of exposure of our kind.

Few humans could be trusted with our world. Tashi had learned that from countless experiences over a life so long it spanned thousands of years. Incomprehensible. And now a very real possibility for me.

I couldn’t think further than tomorrow.

How could I measure my life as eternity?

* * *

“Not exactly inconspicuous,” said Tashi.

I stared down at my ghost outfit. I’d got restless on the sofa and made my way down to the ground floor and the kitchen, all gleaming stainless steel, parquetry floors and marble. The dim overhead lighting should have been a giveaway. I wasn’t alone. Tashi was making dough for Tibetan momos. My favourite. I’d loved dumplings in my before-life, and at least in this one thing, nothing had changed.

Tashi pushed a frosted mug with a lid and metal straw over the wide central bench. I whipped off the sheet and sat on a barstool. I couldn’t drink without a mouth hole.

Watching the dough making was soothing, the capable strength of Tashi’s hands. When I first became conscious after the change, his face was the first thing I saw. With my heightened eyesight I’d registered the broad planes and high cheekbones of his face; the flawless honey-brown skin, thick black hair partly pulled up into a topknot while the rest fell to his waist. Eyes too dark and deep to see into, his nose slightly hawkish; lips wide and full that had tilted up a little, not quite a smile.

I’d screamed.

He hadn’t even showed me his fangs at that point.

I held the warmish mug. Tashi had anticipated I’d venture down here. I sipped my sustenance, tasting the sweet raspberry syrup before the earthier metallic taste hit. To say I hated it was an understatement. At least I’d never give in to bloodlust. The opposite was more likely. For weeks both Tashi and David had to coax me to drink the nutrients my body needed. I could still eat, although much less, but blood was essential. Non-negotiable. No matter my pleading, tears and the fact I vomited it up. For a while I’d had to have it intravenously. That I hated needles didn’t help and probably spurred me to drink it. I was vegan in my before-life. A vegan turned vampire. Other than my species status, the diet was the next world-altering change. I refused human blood. Animal was the only alternative and since it was also Tashi and David’s preferred sustenance, it could be accommodated. With alterations. We hit on incredibly sweet fruit syrups as a way to disguise the taste. Enough so I could get it down. A small amount of food following my “drink” helped as well. Hence the momos.

“Were you careful?”

Tashi was now placing spoonful’s of his signature vegetable mix—the usual cabbage replaced with bok choi because I hated the smell—into each round of rolled dough, expertly shaping the momos into curved quarter moons.

I slurped my “drink”. “No one around. I couldn’t even hear or sense anyone.”

“Cameras?”

“Avoided.”

“Still not a good idea. Not now. The police will be more vigilant in some areas. And you do stand out in that.” He nodded at the pooled sheet by my feet.

Tashi would never outright forbid me to go out. Ever since the change he’d presented as much of this new life as “choices”. Having my life altered irrevocably, he and David never wanted me to see there weren’t options, that I had agency over my life despite not feeling that was the case for a long time. Strangely, I had more freedom and “choice” than in my before-life, simply because I was seventeen when I changed.

In my before-life I was a teen on the cusp of adulthood. In this one, I wouldn’t know how to define what I was. Experience counted more than age, and in some ways, I was an infant. But Tashi and David never treated me as such.

The momos were beautifully made and now nestling in a tiered bamboo steamer. Tashi’s movements were economical, purposeful. He was tall for when he was born he said. His body was slender, muscled, his shoulders oddly broad. He was trained in more martial arts than I knew existed. David had been a karate black belt before he changed. He said he was laughably inadequate when sparring with Tashi, would probably never match his skill or lethalness. And while I’d seen and knew how deadly Tashi was, I’d never felt threatened or unsafe. The opposite in fact. A gut knowing he’d protect me with his life.

“Training after you’ve eaten, okay?”

I nodded, a whiff of the lightly steamed momos had my mouth watering. Amazing how I still produced saliva. Tashi reached to cup my cheek then left, so ghostly quiet he probably should have been wearing the costume, not me.

I pulled out my phone to time the momos cooking for at least ten minutes. In my eagerness, I’d eat them close to raw. Which I did once, wanting the blood taste gone from my mouth. I wouldn’t recommend it.

That’s when I noticed a text from Brooke:

How are you? xo

Such a loaded question about my state of being. My sister was always so direct.

Just went skating—it was spooky

(And yeah—no pun intended.)

My phone rang. I noted the time, my momos were nearly ready.

“Are you nuts?! We’re in a lockdown with a curfew!”

“Last I checked I’m pretty sane. For a vampire.”

“Duh! Jessie you can’t go skateboarding when you’re the only one out there! It’s not safe. What about the cops? You can’t get on their radar.”

Stating the obvious. “There was no one around. I’d know. And I’m good at evading anything that could pick me up. And running. I’m a freaking vamp, Brooke, I’m the one everyone should be scared of.”

She sighed. “Vamp credentials aside, other than your enhanced attributes and fangs, you’re about as scary as me! And that’s not the point. Why do it?”

“Because it felt good.”

So not what she wanted to hear. I suffered through her tirade on having to be invisible—despite occupying physical space on this planet—removed the steamer from the pot, transferring the momos onto the plate Tashi had left out, with a small dish of freshly made chilli sauce. I took a bite, admiring my improved chopstick dexterity, while keeping the phone in my other hand. One bite and I was in heaven.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Listening and eating.”

Pause. “Eating as in, having your special ‘drink’?” She was always tentative about mentioning my diet. So was I.

“Tashi made momos,” I said through a mouthful. I should wait and enjoy them after we’d spoken, but I could never wait when it came to momos.

“They are delicious.”

“I’m careful, Brooke.”

“I know. But this isn’t the time to muck around.”

“My daytime is now. Going out is what helps keep me sane.”

“I get it. I just hate thinking of you out there when no one else is.”

“It’s kind of cool, actually.”

“Only you would think that.”

“Probably.”

“Anyhow, just don’t take risks. I get you can’t get sick and all, but flouting lockdown rules is one thing you need to be careful about.”

“So I’ve been told. But I’m cooped up enough as it is.”

Silence. “I know. I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

So much already had. Evading the cops was nothing in comparison. And while I got that most people took the lockdown seriously, I also felt it didn’t really apply to me. It wasn’t a point I wanted to argue with Brooke. Her world and mine were parallel universes in ways she would probably never understand.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” I asked, nearing the end of my scrumptious meal. I chewed slowly savouring every bite. Also, my digestion was slower so I made sure what went in was masticated thoroughly.

“Working from home, so my schedule is off.”

“Sorry.” It seemed a lame thing to say. So much for all the sloganeering by officials we were all in this together. If you were human it applied. Kind of. Life wasn’t exactly an equal opportunity love-fest with people enjoying the same privileges.

“Hey, I’m fine. And you know me, super cautious.” Surprisingly true. I’d always been the reckless one. And yeah, look where it got me. I was a walking cautionary tale if ever there was one.

“I’ll check in tomorrow, okay?”

“Just be safe.”

“I will.”

Sigh. “Love you.”

“Same back. Bye.”

“See ya.”

I stared at my phone. I never took it for granted, just hearing her voice. Having Brooke in my life was a miracle. Not long after the change, once I was stable enough to go out, I did what Tashi had warned me not to do, I went to check on my sister. It was night and I peered like a stalker through an uncurtained window into the small house we called home in Carlton. Our parents died in a car accident, leaving Brooke as my guardian. She’d been nineteen and five years older. It didn’t take long for me to see and sense her grief. It’s why I was frantic to see her. Other than friends and a few relatives in another state, I was her family. She was mine. And we’d barely survived losing our parents.

I was technically a missing person and the hope she clung to was as strong as her grief. I’d gone back to Tashi and David and argued that I needed to make contact, let her know I wasn’t gone. Even if she rejected me or even feared me, the resolution of her knowing seemed better than living in a limbo she might never recover from. For them to agree was a gift, because her knowing was an act of trust that she could maintain our secret. The whole mind-compulsion thing to get people to forget was only partially true, it was a skill only the oldest of our kind could achieve, and then rarely. Tashi had the skill, but saw it as a violation, preferring that very few people ever knew the truth to begin with, saying humans were good at compelling themselves to not believe what was right in front of them. For me he’d offered to remove all memory of the encounter from Brooke if she reacted badly. It wasn’t the first time I realised just how much he and David would do to make sure I could adapt to this new life. It humbled me.

But Brooke always surprised me. She’d been shocked seeing me, then cried and screamed that I’d freaked her out disappearing, and what the freak had happened? It was probably the hardest thing I’d ever done, coming out to her. She was stupefied for ages, couldn’t quite get the words out or make sense of it (mythical being and all). The relief I felt was immediate: there wasn’t a trace of fear at knowing what I was.

I cleaned up because Tashi was uptight about his kitchen, and he did cook. Grabbing my phone and the ghost costume, I hiked to my room to change. Thing was, nothing was plain sailing in this life. The miracle of Brooke’s acceptance came with more complications than I could have imagined. Tashi and David had warned me. My “status” was no longer missing. Still alive as my old self (kind of). I was living with my “uncle” and his husband. Initially they’d had to homeschool me because I couldn’t attend regular school. I’d literally had to drop out of my before-life, and that extended to friends. But this “life” couldn’t last too much longer since I didn’t age. The complex logistics of immortality hit, realising that very simple fact.

But I’d deal with it for however long I got to have my sister in my life.

* * *

That’s why I got into meditating, to counteract the messiness of my topsy-turvy vamp-life.

According to Tashi, balance was key.

Tashi and I sat cross-legged and opposite each other, a low table between us. Two sticks of incense burned, the sandalwood rich and soothing. I’d associated the scent with Tashi immediately on awakening after the change. It clung to his skin and clothes. Now I caught it wafting from my own clothes on occasion.

My “training” amounted to meditation. A way to control my mind and emotions, to adjust to my body. Tashi had added Tai Chi the past few months, the movements complementing the meditation.

When I first changed, I was a mess (understatement). I’d never been prone to depression or mood swings in my before-life, but the change triggered all my emotions exponentially. From a light euphoria discovering the heightened movement, senses, the sheer strangeness of my new being, to incredible despair at a life lost, a body I found alien, and the existential knowledge I’d technically “died”. Tashi despised the word “death” or “undead” or whatever is often attached to our kind. He asserted it was a life made new and extraordinary, and yes, utterly different, but a life nonetheless where much could be experienced and achieved.

One morning Tashi found me on the rooftop, my gaze fixed on the rising sun. Contrary to fiction (and I’d been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—irony) the sun wouldn’t kill us, but I’d get extra crispy skin at my age and it would be painful. I healed fast, but the brief joy at being touched by the sun’s warmth would be eclipsed quick enough to cure me of trying it anytime soon. Tashi and even David could tolerate the sun without any effects. They walked in daylight without any human being the wiser. It was a tolerance I’d build up, but that morning I craved the light as if it could alleviate the cavernous dark hole that had opened inside me.

I didn’t know how to accept this life, what I’d become.

I didn’t know how to be.

Tashi had sat beside me, his expression peaceful as if meditating, greeting the day with a calm and grateful welcome.

“I cannot remember my beginnings as clearly. My master was strict but fair after my change. He emphasised discipline and I was a warlord’s son, so I understood. I knew of his kind. I’d had no fear of them. My change was not violent as yours was. Having seen many others change, I believe it is the manner of the change and how it happens that determines the state of mind and feeling after.”

My throat was too choked to speak. Pink filmed my eyes. I’d taken to wearing dark T-shirts and hoodies, because crying was a bitch on my clothing. Washing bloodstained white T-shirts, no matter how diluted, got annoying real fast.

Tashi breathed in deeply. Needing to breathe less, he still emphasised its importance to calming the mind and body, to bring both in sync.

“I missed the sun. That I remember. So I was trained by another master to meditate, to find the sun within. To reimagine the sun being within me, that it warmed and enlivened me, no matter whether I could stand in its rays. And later, when I could bathe in its light, it was joyous.”

I wiped the tears with my sleeve, so I could see clearly the beauty of his face tilted to meet the dawn. So much gratitude for something so simple, something I’d taken for granted all my life. Perhaps it was then I got a glimpse of a life so different opening up to me, one that was not mired in the darkness and torment I’d been subjecting myself to.

“Can you teach me? To find an inner sun?”

“Yes.”

And so my training began.

The training and sparring room was mostly bare. Situated on the top floor where Tashi and David had their suite of rooms, it featured the high ceiling and space I associated with all the rooms, the windows screened during the day, but at night open to the sky. All weapons, mostly blades and swords, were locked behind wooden carved screens. The floor was lined with tatami mats, the overhead lighting adjustable and discreet. No excess to distract.

We both wore loose fitting black cotton pants and jacket style tops. Our feet were bare and we’d both tied our hair up in ponytails. Hands gently placed on our knees, backs straight. Relaxed.

Given my attention span was dodgy in my before-life, I took to meditating like I did to drinking blood—NOT. From sitting still, keeping my back straight, keeping my face expressionless, focusing on my no-need-to-breath-often breathing, trying to empty my brain—it was a challenge. But a challenge I very much wanted to meet. The fact I could focus on empty space to the point of slipping into a weird state that was a kind of conscious drifting for well over an hour was mind-boggling. All the while imagining the heat radiating from within. My inner sun.

But at some point the spacey dark would shift and I’d find myself doing more than dreaming, seeing these unbidden images and visions.

The first one was the worst.

The night I’d been changed was a blur.

I’d been out skating, not late, more evening, but when I was in a zone, kind of flying, I could be out for hours. It wasn’t far from where I lived now, perhaps that’s an irony, but it ended up saving me. But in that “vision” I remembered: Being snatched off my board with such force. Arms banding me from behind so I couldn’t see who’d grabbed me. The sheer strength of my attacker squeezed the breath out of my body. A hand gripping my mouth, no way to scream. Legs flailing except it was pointless. And quick. So fast I barely registered the savage sharp sting of my neck being pierced. Only that it went numb and my own strength leeched from me until I lost consciousness.

I’d snapped out of the fugue state of that vision, having no previous recollection and wondering if my mind had deliberately shut down against the violation. I couldn’t breathe, again, gasping, pink rivulets streaming from my eyes and I cried, truly cried for the first time since the change. Tashi and David were there, at first each placing a hand on my shoulders to anchor me, and then they both enfolded me, cocooning me against the pain and senselessness of an attack that ripped my world from me. In those early days, I had wished for real death rather than this. If Tashi hadn’t sensed the vampire who had changed me, too close to his territory for his liking so that he’d gone looking, hunting, perhaps I would have died.

He’d found me near death from the blood loss and took a risk he said he’d only done a handful of times before in his very long existence. He fed me his blood to heal the wound, to replenish and give me a chance at life. Ingestion of vampire blood was an elixir, a very well kept secret. But there was always the risk I could change. It wasn’t a given, influenced by the age and strength of the vampire, a 60/40 chance in favour of no change. He said it was my youth; he couldn’t abide seeing one so young being killed by one of his kind. Taking a life was abomination to Tashi. A life was precious, however you defined it.

It was a split-second life-altering choice. If I changed Tashi had been prepared to take responsibility for me as if I were his child, with no idea who I truly was. Or if he’d even like me! It was too big a gamble for me to consider. It blew my mind.

Tashi said it had been fate and instinct that guided him.

I believed in neither. Well, at least not the fate part. My instincts were highly questionable.

Tonight the only vision was of skating through the abandoned streets. And relishing the lack of fear I’d had to conquer, something as simple as getting back on my board, doing one of the few things that had made me feel free.

And I’d fought so hard to reclaim it, I knew I wouldn’t stop going out, no matter what was happening in the world outside.

* * *

And the world was getting pretty crazy.

Perched on the rooftop of the building next door, I surveyed the empty street.

The stillness was as surreal as the night before, but I was expecting it. I was a ghost gargoyle, tricked out in my costume over my hoodie, jeans and black Converse high tops. Skateboard hooked with straps on my back like a backpack.

I had a different mission tonight. Embracing the dark and absence of people, I was cloaked in eerie silence. Rising from day-rest I’d heard birds outside my window. That was rare enough. Tashi had bird feeders strategically placed in the garden he frequently topped up. They were the best-fed birds in Melbourne.

Slurping my “drink” I’d sat on the roof beside the lap pool, my feet dangling in the water, gazing at the sky streaking a pale pink and blue as the sun set. The water was frigid, but the temperature didn’t really affect me. I liked to feel the liquid swirl. It helped me to “wake” up. The house had been quiet. Tashi was most likely meditating. When David was away, he meditated a lot.

And that was part of the crazy, how hard it was for David to get back to Melbourne. He’d been hiking in the Himalayas when the pandemic hit. Australia’s borders were now shut, although David was technically an Australian citizen. He and Tashi were actually “citizens” under aliases of other countries. Just in case. My mind skated over the fact I’d have to assume other identities at some point. And while flights were still coming into Australia to bring people home, Tashi and David preferred boat travel as taking blood on board a flight was near impossible. Short distances were okay, because they’d survive without it, but overseas travel was trickier. And since only commercial cargo boats were allowed into the country, David had had to wrangle passage on a freighter from Mumbai in India to Sydney. Thankfully a large amount of money made it possible. But the trip could take three weeks to a month, and there was no guarantee the state borders to Victoria would be open as well.

Crazy.

In my pocket was a wad of stickers. Just printed and delivered. I’d designed them. A square shape the size of my palm with a ghost figure I’d drawn, simple, just a wobbly black outline with holes for eyes, and in the bottom corner, my tag GHOST GIRL.

I’d stuck one on an exhaust outlet on this roof.

Slowly rising, feeling part exhilaration, part unease, I jumped, the ghost sheet parachuting—

And nailed the landing on the unforgiving cement footpath. It never stopped thrilling me that I could do that. Leap over rooftops. Jump off buildings. I couldn’t fly, but this was way cool.

Walking down the one-way street I came to a six-storey car park, all shut up. Indoors would have been great for skating now that it was empty. But I was wary of security. Going down the side laneway of Meyers Place with the shut up bars exiting into Bourke St, I slapped a sticker on a wall before finding the back of the car park lined with dumpsters. A leap onto one dumpster and I climbed the outer steel fire ladder quick.

And sweet. Just a huge open space. Cars could park on the roof, but the ramp to the next level down was blocked with a steel grate. I dumped my board, making a thwack on the cement, and I pushed off, gliding. Swerving, doing airs. Just playing. I’d staked it out, cameras weren’t functioning, so it was my own personal skate park.

My mind just drifted, thoughts flashing in and out, but mostly I focused on the feel and movement, and the fact I was skating as if I was the last being in this crazy world, not caring about anything much at all.

Barely any wind, it was icy, the streets slick with more rain. My ghost sheet billowed and I wondered at how simple it felt, just skating, not really thinking much at all. Almost as good as meditating. Time meant nothing in this headspace.

Finally I skidded and jumped off my board onto the ledge and sat, feet dangling over. I pulled out another sticker and whacked it on the ledge next to me. An “I was here” placeholder. Like this was my spot where I’d park my butt from now on. My butt-park in the car park. I grinned stupidly beneath my ghost hood.

I’d always been solitary, but this was kind of extreme.

Earlier, flicking through Instagram (social media was a big no-no, I should have deleted it), I’d seen an image of a boat coming to the edge of the world. A literal edge where the sea or whatever this boat was on was coming to a sharp ledge that just dropped off, water flowing down, like a waterfall. Admiring the photoshopping I was mesmerised, thinking it was a metaphor for all of this, suddenly having a life upended, falling off the world, the course of your life veering so suddenly, nothing would ever be the same. Maybe that’s why the pandemic didn’t hit me as much. Because I’d fallen off the world before now.

Looking down not even heights made me afraid, that old vertigo having disappeared.

Or maybe I’d just got really good at falling.

* * *

Actually I was thinking I was falling into some weird habits.

Back on the home roof, close to dawn, day-rest nearly upon me, it was becoming predictable, greeting the rise and fall of the sun.

“You’re feet are blue.”

Tashi sat cross-legged beside me. Dressed in jeans and a loose navy knit, his beautiful hair unbound and freshly washed. Feet bare like mine and not blue.

I pulled my feet out from the pool and dried them. Pulled on striped socks and my Converses.

“Have you heard from David?”

“A brief call on his satellite phone. He’s well. The trip through India wasn’t good though.”

“Pandemic?” Tashi nodded. The last few texts David sent signalled his distress. He hated seeing people suffer. His descriptions of villages, workers leaving the cities to lockdown with families, many impoverished, put what we were going through in perspective. The fact of our immunity made it almost unreal.

We sat companionably, faces turned to the brightening light on the horizon.

“Did you finish the translation?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Tashi suggested I learn Mandarin, as well as Tibetan. After our stay last year at his home in Tibet, I was fascinated to learn. I’d never had an interest in languages in my before-life, half-heartedly studying French and German, but travel had opened up my life to experiences where learning a language took on a new relevance.

And while I’d graduated high school already, given Tashi was fluent in so many languages my head hurt thinking about it, he’d taken it upon himself to help teach me. I’d been an average student at best before, preferring my extra-curricular activities, pretty much anything but schoolwork. But I’d liked to read, and that became a solace and a way to adjust to swathes of time that school had taken up. A big upside I’d discovered—my brain processed information, anything, way faster than before, my attention span lengthening as if it got the message I now had all the time in the world.

Time that was now upside down and measured differently to the point I didn’t notice the time much at all. Instead I followed the cycles of the sun and moon, the seasons. Tashi believed that was more real than human-made time. It’s also why he cultivated a small garden in this inner-city home. In Tibet, the garden was much larger. Tashi said nature had always been one of his greatest teachers and saviours. Seeing how life cycled seasonally. How plants and trees grew and shed and appeared dormant only to spring to life and thrive. Constant regeneration.

“That is the potential of life,” he said as we sat in the courtyard the first spring after my change. “The essence of immortality is present in the natural world, even as people deny it as real.” And while I struggled to accept what he was saying, I could see how it gave his own existence meaning, so that a linear beginning and end seemed almost meaningless.

Not that we couldn’t end, just that it was so incredibly hard for that to actually happen.

“Sleep well.” Tashi touched my cheek and then rose, walking as quietly away as he’d come.

I could feel my body giving in to a heaviness signalling it was time to hole up in the panic room. But I resisted, each day seeing how long I could push myself to keep awake. To hold onto the light streaking across the sky. To feel the world take a long breath as it rose, disquieting in its silence.

Like I was clinging to life when for so long I’d wanted to let go.

* * *

Because some things were definitely worth hanging on to.

Like listening to the Linda Lindas. My fave punk band at the moment. Headphones on, volume down because even that was loud, listening to their song Claudia Kishi.

Walking to the Treasury Gardens, it was bordering on evening, the sky cloudy so I only had on a striped, mouse-eared beanie and sunglasses, my clothing covering pretty much everything. I felt oddly conspicuous without my ghost outfit. Almost naked.

There were a few people out walking. All masked up. Like me. It was another kind of disguise. I didn’t need it, but the extra face covering helped with my comfort zone.

I spotted Brooke seated on a bench near the garden entrance. Technically she was a little out of the 5km radius from her home, but since I avoided Carlton and my old haunts as much as possible, she was willing to risk it. Anything to get out and spend her two hours of outdoor recreation checking in with her vamp sister.

“Hey,” she said, rushing to me and hugging hard.

“Hey.” I buried my face in her hair, the mask filtering the citrusy shampoo scent.

“Incognito. The mask, glasses and beanie suit you.”

“Ha ha. Let’s walk.”

It was almost normal, with people in view and a few cars passing in the streets. My puffa jacket buffered the wind, and was also a little for show. Brooke had on running tights and sneakers under her long puffa. I never got the whole wearing sports gear to go for a walk.

“God this is weird,” said Brooke.

Story of my life.

“How’s the thesis?”

“Progressing. Teaching is the problem.” Brooke was completing her PhD in Medieval European history. Definitely the brain in the family.

“Are classes online?”

“Some, mostly for students doing the coursework. Harriet always records the lectures. So shifting to virtual hasn’t been so hard. Just weird.”

Brooke actually liked teaching so that the lack of contact was driving her a little insane. I’d thought of visiting and hanging at her place, but while it was my “choice’, Tashi and David said hanging around places from my before-life would make it harder to create a new one. One where I’d have to eventually deal with Brooke no longer being here at all. I tried very hard not to think about it.

Also, bumping into neighbours or old school friends would just complicate the fact I was supposedly living with relatives in another state, saying I’d needed a change of scene after the “attack”, which was spun out as a semi-hostage situation, where a deranged kook had decided to drug and keep me in his hidey-hole until I’d managed to escape. The official spiel.

Not that I had a ton of friends. At first I’d had a flood of school comrades contacting me, wanting the down-low. I was still numb and disoriented enough my lack of wanting to talk was convincing. As were my lies. Amazing how quick the interest waned, people going back to their lives, how easy I was to forget since I’d gone invisible. Only one person tweaked there was more to it, and he was the hardest to speak to of all.

Phoenix.

I tried really hard to not think about him, too.

“Um, you’re not having any trouble, um, you know, with your dietary supplies?”

Awkward! I almost burst out laughing. But hey, I was right there with her in how squeamish I felt just thinking about it.

“Nope, we’re all good.” I wasn’t about to elaborate on the source of our “dietary supplies”. We’d all agreed to only tell Brooke stuff on a need-to-know basis. The fact Tashi and David had invested in an organic farm with paddock-to-plate butchers across Melbourne that also home delivered, providing exactly what we needed was enough information for me. Their foresight and ingenuity astounded me. Tashi had been embarrassed to admit since the lockdown, with people at home and cooking, the business had been booming. I understood his unease, the idea of profiting from a pandemic, even unintentionally, made me queasy.

“Any thought about further study?”

Wow. Great subject change. And ugh. She so wasn’t letting up!

“Not yet.”

Brooke sighed. We were walking briskly, well, brisk for her, and the darkening sky was the only indication that evening was well and truly settling in. Lights lit the pathways and the glass hothouse that seemed so incongruous. Brooke had pointed it out saying she’d attended a wedding there. And it snuck in, just a sliver like a splinter of a thought, how that was probably another rite of passage I’d never experience. Like kids. Not that I’d ever really thought about it. Tashi said family came in many ways, and he was subtly pointing at me, at us. Because somehow, we’d become a family.

But then Tashi found David. After thousands of years. And while he never said anything, and I hadn’t asked, I’m sure there’d been others he’d loved. Yet what he had with David went beyond simply loving, and seemed so outside my comprehension, I just accepted rather than questioned it. Like they didn’t just love each other deeply, unconditionally, they needed each other to live.

“There must be something you want to do?” Brooke coaxed.

“Actually no.”

I didn’t think being a ghost girl skateboarder vigilante street artist would fall into her idea of something to do.

“You’ll figure it out.”

Now I sighed. Sort of. There’d been too much to figure out, but I couldn’t keep reminding her.

And what the hell did an immortal late-teen do with the rest of their life that made university seem necessary? Or urgent? What could I ever contribute to this whacked-out world? It seemed kind of nuts to think about it with the world falling apart and people were just trying to survive and not get sick.

Maybe if I pointed all this out Brooke would just give up. Even though it was almost comforting, her treating me like nothing much had changed at all.

Still, I could only hope she’d slack off and give me a break. For a few years at least. Maybe a decade.

Not likely.

* * *

Got to admit, sometimes hope was all I had.

Hope that I’d somehow feel right about being who I was. Hope I’d figure out what to do with my immortal life that still felt unreal.

Seemed like Brooke’s needling had got under my skin. Again.

What to do with all this future?

Made me wonder if I was shaping up to become one of the most unambitious vampires in existence. I mean, given eternity, surely you’d eventually try and do something interesting?

Ugh.

Skating along the paths of the Treasury Gardens I’d walked with Brooke just hours before, I let the night seep in, like I was part of it. I’d traded the ghost cloak for a skeleton black onesie, my long dark hair streaming behind me like a banner. It grew so slowly now, I was afraid to cut it.

Face uncovered, I felt freer than trying to pretend to be human earlier. The fact I made that distinction kind of freaked me out. Like in so many ways I still felt human, looked human, but I wasn’t; like trying to reconcile being alive but also not alive in the human sense. It did my head in every time. Tashi insisted I see myself as being extra-ordinary. Like being human-adjacent. Still with many human features and qualities, but all with a fabulous twist.

Fitting as “fabulous” derived from the Latin fabulosus, which meant a legend resembling an invented story. Mythical.

Board wheels rumbled and clacked against the cement paths, while my mind coasted.

It’s one reason Tashi and David took me overseas. To open my mind to all the possibilities of life, what it could be. To get me to see that my new life could be so much more than I could ever have imagined in comparison to what I had before. Given I’d lived such a closeted existence, it didn’t take much for the trip to be mind-blowing. Also, they wanted me to get over my increasing FOMO at spying on my former friends on social media, which I knew was the stupidest thing to do.

But I couldn’t resist. Not to begin with. Seeing Karl finally able to flip his skateboard effortlessly after I’d shown him how, what felt like eons ago. Seeing Cynthia acing every science fair and getting her kicks from anything math related which was why she tutored me since year 7 despite being the same year as me. Worst, seeing Phoenix post his street art and skateboarding exploits; seeing him physically change.

I’d secretly thought him beautiful, not something you admitted to your best friend. But he was. Now he was just more beautiful, like the sun expanding and growing and getting brighter. He was blinding. The grace with which he moved. His shoulders had filled out, his body lithe and muscular without being chunky. His brown hair always cut to his shoulders, streaked blonde from the sun. Eyes starkly blue. And his face, a wide jaw and cheekbones more defined, the nose simple and straight and a mouth made for smiling.

It was painful looking at him.

Painful to see him living a life that I’d been so much a part of once upon a time.

Hearing the car in the distance, I stopped, listened. Saw the police stripes and quickly grabbed my board. The straps to hoist it on my back were loosely draped across my shoulder. So quick, I had my board on my back and I scanned for the nearest tree, jumping to swing onto a high branch. Monkey-lithe, I climbed high enough I could scan the area and remain hidden. The police car slowly skirted the gardens.

I breathed, the air clouding in front of my face. Scrabbling higher up I spied the piercing eyes of a possum. I remained still, hoping not to scare it.

“Hey, buddy,” I whispered. “Come here often?”

The possum skittered higher into the dense canopy.

I’d do the same seeing me.

Looking across the gardens, perched, I marvelled at the change in perspective. How terrestrial I usually was, or had been in my before-life, occasionally looking up to check out the sky. But now, now, given what I could do, my life kept altering with every new perspective.

It was weird and okay all at once.

Kind of like me.

It’s not like I wasn’t weird before my life hit free-fall.

School was a bust. I’d never liked it. It got worse after my folks died, as if I couldn’t see the point in any of it; a day mapped out and scheduled by the hour put me in zombie mode. Having to do stuff because I was told to at the risk of failure was like living in fear of never doing the right thing. I’d wake up during art or free periods or lunch, but what I lived for was escape. Leaving each day felt like I could finally breathe. Getting on my board out of the school gates signalled freedom.

Strange how my not-human status had freed me in ways totally unexpected. Like I’d been given a life I secretly wished for, but would never choose knowing the consequences. Freakishly strange.

Phoenix used to joke I was a Goth skater girl, my leaning towards Halloweenish outfits didn’t exactly gel with most people, but I was hardly outlandish. Mostly, I just wanted to go unnoticed. Slip through the cracks and under the radar of teachers, students and strangers most of all. The clothes were like costuming, a disguise and another way to escape. Shy didn’t begin to cover it. Socially anxious sounded too psych eval. Misfit sounded like I was worried about ever fitting in. I wasn’t.

I was just kind of undecided about being here and how to live.

Maybe being a vamp just ramped all that up. Given I couldn’t ignore who I was now, it also made me face stuff I’d been more than happy to bury as human.

Leaping off my perch to the ground, I decided to walk home. Savour the night hours. Arms outstretched, I twirled along the path, wishing I’d stuck at dance classes, just so I could feel what it would be like in this body to do what I’d struggled with before. I’d been co-ordinated enough, but too self-conscious to perform. Yet the urge to move, to let loose, was an itch under my skin. A hum in my veins.

Slowing to walk, it amazed me how much more in my skin I’d become; more comfortable with this body, how easily it did what I wanted it to. How freaking cool it was to be able to go beyond anything a human could.

Now if I did slides and airs, I didn’t fear falling. I’d heal super fast. Yeah, it would hurt, but I knew it would never be fatal. And that kind of changed everything.

For the gazillionth time I wondered if Phoenix could see me now, what would he think? Would he be horrified and simply run? Truth is, if our situations were reversed, I had no idea what I’d do if I saw vamp Phoenix. Knowing how hard it had been to get used to being me, I didn’t delude myself to think acceptance would ever be that easy.

All I knew was I cared enough about him to try.

I shrugged. It was moot. Not like he’d ever see me again. No matter how much I fought wanting to see him, even after all this time.

* * *

So, when the unthinkable happened, to say I wasn’t ready was a freaking understatement.

Nothing could have prepared me for the paralysis and nauseating fear, for the shock of just seeing his face for real.

Skating to a park in East Melbourne, bordered by four roads and houses, it was small compared to Treasury, but I needed the change of scene. And the lights from the houses gave some sense of life to the empty streets. I stuck a few stickers on benches, one next to a faded sticker from over a month ago. Bending to check it out, my fingers snagged on the peeling paper. It was the way of things. Transitory. Fading.

Evanescent.

Loved the word. How it combined a sense of an essence of something ongoing, but also, ephemeral. Like a cloud wisping to nothing. But clouds always seemed to come back, as if the essence of clouds existed always in the very structure of this world, even when they couldn’t be seen.

I straightened in my skeleton onesie. The black beanie kept my hair from flying in the crisp wind. I pushed my board with my foot, and—

“It’s you!”

—whipped my head, not having heard Phoenix walk behind me.

Vampire hearing be damned.

“Me?” I croaked.

“Jessie.” A whisper and a sigh.

Phoenix. Taller, broader, more there than he’d ever been. More alive.

And here. In the dark, past curfew, nowhere near where he lived.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, dumb and numb.

His mouth dropped. “Is that all you’re going to say? After disappearing like freaking smoke? What the fuck, Jess!” Phoenix never got angry. This was new and just so beyond anything I’d expected from the night and just skating and playing and…what the hell!

“I said I had to leave for a while.”

“Lame! And I never bought it. What happened, Jess? And what are you doing back, and outside beyond this stupid curfew?”

“What are you doing out?” I was almost shaking from adrenaline. The fact I still had all these chemicals streaming through my body amazed me. Vampire biology wasn’t my strong suit. And so not the time to be thinking about it.

“I live there now,” Phoenix jabbed his finger at a lovely Victorian terrace, “and my bedroom window looks over the street. And guess what? I just happened to see this girl wearing a skeleton onesie I’m quite familiar with, about the right height and skating like the world isn’t going to shit.”

Okay.

Phoenix’s eyes were almost shimmery with anger or pain or something I couldn’t decipher. My best friend. Or my closest friend. I don’t know. Just that he was so enmeshed in my before-life I couldn’t quite believe that for over two years now he hadn’t been part of my life, yet somehow, on a core level, he still very much was.

“Jessie,” he pleaded quietly, “say something!”

“I—”

Words jumbled, images strobed, lights flashed, the blood I’d drunk earlier kind of went south, and if I could, I think fainting would have been a real possibility.

Nothing made sense.

How to tell him about my crazy life and how I didn’t know how to speak it so it could ever make sense. To him.

To me.

“Jessie?”

“I—can’t,” I stammered and lightening fast, I pushed on my board and did what I’d got so good at—

I escaped.

* * *

If escaping looked a lot like running away and hiding back in my room.

I could still hear Phoenix yelling my name, announcing to anyone in a close proximity he was outside when hell, he shouldn’t have been.

Yelling at a ghost.

Me.

’Cause I’d ghosted him. Dropped out of his life, no contact, because he was getting perilously close to me divulging everything. Just to keep him in my life.

It had been a few months after the change and he’d kind of bought into me bailing interstate. We’d texted and talked, but every time he’d wanted to know what had happened. Why I wouldn’t talk. Why he couldn’t help me through whatever I was experiencing. And when was I coming back? So many questions. And he had every right to ask.

I was lying to him and hated myself for it.

I got my sister back, but could I have Phoenix, too?

And what kept me from taking that step was imagining his face when I told him, going bone-white as he stepped away, slowly at first, but then he’d turn, and he’d run.

Away from me.

Who wouldn’t?

Didn’t matter the history. Didn’t matter the feelings, the connection, the shared stuff. None of it seemed to matter when faced with a walking-monster.

Well, that’s how I’d seen myself for a long time.

Lying on the couch, I played it out, all the possible ways I could have told him, all the ways he could have turned away.

But I wasn’t that girl anymore. I mean, girl-vamp.

Maybe it was Brooke’s acceptance and love. Being part of a family of two pretty awesome beings, who never made me doubt they loved me as well.

It had healed so many broken bits of me, even when I thought nothing would.

I grabbed my phone and called David.

“Jessie,” he said, voice deep and melodious. So different from Phoenix’s strained almost panicked tone. I felt I could finally take a breath.

“Hey you. Are you managing okay?”

“I think I’m meditating as much as Tashi! So I’m fine, despite the cramped albeit private quarters, and making sure a large freezer of blood lasts in case of any delays. What about you, love?”

Meaning, you don’t usually call to simply chat. I didn’t. We texted mostly.

“Phoenix found me.”

Quiet. “I see.”

No, not really. But I’d discussed at length with Tashi and David about bringing Phoenix into the loop. Same concerns as with Brooke, but the fact Phoenix wasn’t family seemed a sticking point. Except, he was family in a sense. As in he was someone I associated with home. With being able to be myself, and being accepted no matter what. And him not knowing had been a massive splinter in my already splintered heart.

“He’s living in East Melbourne.”

“One of your recent haunts,” David said dryly. Ha ha. He’d been riling me about going out after curfew as much as Tashi. In a downbeat kind of way.

“He saw me and confronted me. And I bailed.”

Quiet again. Ugh. I was so on edge my skeleton onesie could have happened for real with my bones jumping out of my skin.

“Well, that’s an effective exit strategy.”

“David!”

He laughed! Gorgeous vamp that he was, but so not in my good books right now!

“Love, it’s totally understandable. But I think you called me because you want to figure out what to do? Right?”

“I’m going round in circles!”

“But you’re afraid of something, aren’t you?”

This was why I’d called David. Tashi would have been thoughtful and wise, but he wouldn’t immediately tune into my anxiety or fear. Emotions were so distant for him to comprehend. An extraordinarily long existence had made Tashi more an observer of people from an elevated plane. Like a Buddha.

“It’s not just exposure. It’s—“

“Rejection?”

“That. And maybe terror. On his part.”

“I get that.”

Or disgust. I couldn’t get the word out. Just the thought of him looking at me as if I was something horrifying, ugly or just disgusting. It made me want to puke.

Suddenly drained, I just lay there in the dark, which was never quite dark for me now, and stared at the high, white-painted ceiling. But I wasn’t really here, I was still back in the park with Phoenix. Close enough to feel his heat. And I was amazed he couldn’t sense the lack of heat from me. Or a regular pulse.

“I wasn’t this scared with Brooke. I mean, a little. But this feels different.”

“You were trying to help Brooke with her grief. How you felt was almost secondary at the time.”

“I guess.”

David sighed. “We all love you, Jessie. So much. If telling Phoenix feels right, then do it. Tashi will no doubt help if he reacts badly, then he won’t remember. If that’s some comfort.”

That’s when it hit. Because it was more than fear of rejection. It was fear he’d be compelled to forget and that would be the end, in truth. Because Phoenix might remember me, but he’d never truly ever know me again.

“You’re not alone in this, love.”

David always knew just what to say. Pity it didn’t give much comfort.

* * *

And I could have done with some comfort food after speaking to David, which was why I found myself digging through the fridge for the extra momos Tashi had made for me earlier. He’d made double the usual amount. Maybe he had one of his sixth senses I’d be needing more later.

My diet was very repetitive. I’d never been adventurous with food. Except Italian. I had an unholy love of pasta and mushroom risotto. When we’d gone to Italy, I’d begged David and Tashi for us to stay indefinitely. Florence was a particular favourite of both of them, so they’d been happy to oblige. For a few months at least.

I placed the momos in a steamer. Going through the motions calmed me.

Getting out a plate and a small dish for the chilli sauce.

Putting my phone on the counter to time them.

Sitting at the bench and staring at the screen. As if I was waiting for a call.

From Phoenix.

But my number had changed. It had been part of severing myself from my before-life. Once Brooke was back, it seemed a step I needed to take. And I’d never given Phoenix the number.

I knew his by heart.

I was surprised he didn’t hate me already.

Maybe he did…nope, not going there.

“Snack?”

Wow, my hearing truly sucked today! Tashi had snuck into the kitchen. Dressed in his meditation gear, hair in a topknot, the angular beauty of his face always surprised me.

I nodded, and Tashi simply lifted the lid of the steamer and transferred the momos to the plate, pushing it across the counter.

Picking up chopsticks I waited for them to cool a little.

“David called.”

Of course he did. They shared everything. And that was fine by me.

I popped a momo into my mouth and chewed. And sighed. Heaven.

Leaning against the counter, Tashi waited. His patience was as endless as the sea or sky.

“I still don’t know what to do.”

“It must have been a shock.”

“Understatement.”

Eating another, I mulled over who must have been more surprised. I think it was pretty much even.

“Give it time.”

Such a Tashi thing to say.

“It already feels too late.”

“If it were you, no matter how horrible it might be, would you want to know what happened to him?”

I put my chopsticks down before I dropped them.

Because, yes, I would.

And it struck, hard, how little faith or trust I had in Phoenix if I didn’t even try to tell him. Or how much of a coward I really was. It wasn’t about owing something, it was a truth I was keeping from someone I professed to care for so deeply I’d think of him as home.

Which maybe made me a hypocrite as well.

Tashi cupped my cheek. “Don’t beat yourself up. You weren’t ready so soon after you changed, but perhaps you are now.”

So wise, and annoyingly right.

* * *

Which was why I was standing in the same spot Phoenix found me the night before, staring at his house, and wondering whether to call or just psyche myself to throw something at his window and possibly alert the neighbours and his family to my ghostly existence.

Talk about a leap of faith.

While I debated, a shadowy shape was cutting through park and aiming directly for me. I froze, not from shock so much as anticipation and dread.

“You came back.”

Phoenix stopped so there was enough space not to feel confronted like the previous night. I still felt overwhelmed. If I could blush, my whole body would have gone up in flames.

Still beautiful. Still Phoenix.

“Yes.” Amazed my voice came out without quavering.

“Can we sit?” He angled his head at the bench. He was rugged up in a puffa and beanie. I was in the onesie again, striped beanie this time. But he’d surely notice how little I had on in comparison. Maybe.

Sitting felt ridiculously normal. Like this wasn’t some momentous occasion, but just two people catching up in the park, admittedly late and beyond some draconian curfew that seemed like it didn’t apply to us.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted. For everything.

Phoenix’s leg bounced. He did that when he was on edge. And yeah, I was putting him on edge.

“What’s going on, Jess? Just tell me. This is me. We’ve known each other since we were kids.”
He was staring at me. My hands gripped my board so tight I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the bones pop out. Ugh. That would most definitely freak him out.

“Did something worse happen than you told me?”

My head whipped to see real anguish in his face. And my heart just melted. He cared about me. So much. I couldn’t keep bailing because it was easier than the truth, and there’d always been something true about how we connected.

“Yeah.” My voice too small, but loud enough to hear.

Phoenix went rigid still. “Did that guy…” He couldn’t finish and it took a minute for me to get what he was trying to say.

“No! That didn’t happen. He didn’t rape me.”

Well, it depended on your definition I guess.

“But,” I searched for words, anything to—“He did violate me, just not in the way you’d think.”

“Oh shit,” Phoenix moaned, bending forward, elbows on his knees, head lowered. Crap, I hope he wasn’t going to be sick. That would ratchet up my own queasiness.

He took a while. Then straightening, he stared at me, resolved. “If you can, just tell me, Jess. Please.”

Phoenix reached his hand to touch my knee. Tentative, then firm.

It anchored me.

And brokenly, then in a rush, I told him.

And he didn’t once lift his hand or look away.

* * *

“Say something! Anything!” Now it was my turn to plead.

We’d been sitting for what seemed forever. Although, that was debatable given my actual sense of time.

Tashi knew I was going to tell Phoenix. All I had to do was call him and he’d be here immediately to intercept Phoenix and compel him to forget what I’d said. My hand was in my pocket, gripping my phone.

Phoenix’s hands were now stuffed in his jacket pockets and he was staring into the distance. There’d been no sign of disgust or horror, just a steady, intense gaze as he took in every detail.

It was freaking me out.

“You know, ever since you left, I keep thinking I see you. All the usual spots, but since we moved here, I’d be wandering around the city or nearby and I could have sworn I did see you.”

Well, yeah, he could have. Ugh.

“Then I was walking around here a lot with the whole lockdown thing, and I spotted the sticker. Ghost Girl.”

He turned to me and there was a hint of a smile. A hint. Something loosened in my gut.

“I always knew it, deep down that the story was off. I just couldn’t find an explanation other than the worst case I could think of and you not wanting to go there. Guess my limited imagination couldn’t encompass any other possibility.”

Well, I was on the same page on this point.

He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say, Jess. It’s too big. Yet you’re sitting beside me and it feels like you’ve never left.”

My eyes smeared pink and I closed them. Trying to get the tears not to fall. Pink smears would be evidence that words just didn’t quite touch. I wasn’t sure Phoenix was ready for the proof.

“Hey, Jess.” His hand reached and touched my knee again. My eyes opened. His eyes squinched a little seeing the colour. “You okay?”

I laughed. “I should be asking you that.”

He grinned, a lopsided grin that was cheeky and so familiar I was on the edge of losing it for real. “Yeah, but I’m not the one who went through all that. I can’t get my head round it. I don’t know how you can actually be living it.”

Such a Phoenix thing to say. He had the biggest heart, never saw the world in a narrow way. How I’d ever been afraid to tell him seemed a joke. Yet it was my inability to accept myself that had always been the block.

“I’m me and I’m not. Tashi says I’m more than I ever was and yet, at the core, a lot hasn’t changed as well.” I gave a wobbly smile. “It does my head in.”

“Bet it does.”

We sat, almost companionably. Except the axis of the world felt tilted and I wasn’t sure whether I could stand just yet.

Whether we were on solid ground or about to go our separate ways.

“Only Brooke knows?”

“Yeah. It’s a risk. A big one.”

“And yet you told me?” And an implied question: Why now and not before?

“I wanted to. Before. But I wasn’t in a great place and could only imagine you’d be horrified and run. I didn’t think I could deal with that.” Not from someone I loved. “Sorry.”

Phoenix’s face was so mobile, so expressive, I could usually read what he was thinking. Now there was distress, sadness, understanding, but also something lighter, more hopeful. Even grateful.

“I get it. And I don’t blame you. But shit, I’m glad you could tell me now. It hurt so much, you leaving like that, except with all you’ve been through, it feels selfish thinking about how I felt.”

And the tears spilled.

He didn’t look away, just smiled a little.

“Pink? I’m guessing that’s…”

“Yeah. It’s blood.” I found a tissue in my pocket and swiped my cheeks.

“I remember how you always cried reading those tearjerker romance novels you liked. Must get real messy now.”

“Hey!” I nudged him with my elbow, not too hard. Super strength.

Then tangentially—“Does this mean I’m older than you?”

Bloody hell (no pun intended). “In years, no. Biologically, yeah.”

“Crazy.” He was shaking his head, but more in wonder.

“You’re taking this better than Brooke.”

“Huh! Brooke was still grieving. And probably furious. I don’t know. We grew up reading those stories about vampires, crap you even made me watch Twilight.” He grinned stupidly. It had been bad and funny. “But the truth of it is definitely something else. And I’ve got questions, lots, but I just feel like you being here and alive seems enough.”

Alive.

Don’t know why, but that simple affirmation of my existence was overwhelming. So much I closed my eyes, tears dripping again, but a sob escaped my mouth. I heard Phoenix edge closer and then his arms banded around me.

He was hugging me.

Me.

And this time when I cried it was relief and like my heart was squeezing out all this fear and pain and trying to find a way to stick its ragged bits together to be whole again.

I couldn’t think of a word for how good it felt.

* * *

But like so much, it couldn’t last.

If it wasn’t for the late hour and lockdown and curfew and the cold Phoenix and I would have sat on that bench for hours and talked.

Leaving to go to our respective homes felt wrong.

“Call me when you get home. We can talk more.”

I just stood experiencing what seemed a miracle. Phoenix, here. With me. I didn’t think you got more than one in your life. Or any at all. But this felt like one.

“Okay.” Saying more was beyond me.

Phoenix grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Not losing you again, Jess. Call.”

My face opened with a grin so huge I wondered if my fangs would pop out. I was so not ready for that level of exposure. Not yet.

“Promise.”

This time when I skated off, I looked back and saw Phoenix watching. He raised a hand and as he walked, there was a lightness to him that buoyed me as I skated home.

Later in my room, having reassured Tashi it went more than well, I lay on the sofa, holding my phone. Small actions can feel momentous, and calling Phoenix felt like stepping off a cliff and flying all at once.

I called. He answered.

“Took you long enough!”

“Had to check in with Tashi.”

Phoenix was quiet. “Can I meet him?”

Wow, hadn’t expected this. Brooke had been very reluctant, but also eager to meet David and Tashi since I was now living with them. But I think what was hard was being so grateful to Tashi for saving my life.

“Of course. I want you to. And David when he gets home.”

“Was he okay? With me knowing?”

“Since it went well, yes.”

“Otherwise I wouldn’t remember.”

“Sorry, but yeah. We have to be careful.”

“I get that.”

A pause and it was that weird schism thing in my life where it felt so familiar and new all at once. I wondered if it would ever be different. Or whether I’d want it to be different.

“God it’s good to speak to you again,” Phoenix whispered and his voice was all choked. He’d been so calm—maybe even scary calm—that I froze a bit. Maybe he’d go into some kind of delayed shock and freak out. But Phoenix didn’t freak out. No, this was something else.

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere so long as you can deal.”

He didn’t hesitate. “I can deal. Don’t ever doubt it.”

My heart thumped, harder than it usually did. A reminder of just how human I still was, and hopefully would always be. Extra-ordinary vamp side and all. That Phoenix could still see me as the girl he’d known, no matter how much I’d also changed.

A girl not quite as invisible anymore.