A Dark-Adapted Eye Read online

  “Didn't mean to wake you,” Les said as I sat up and stretched.

  “Oh—no big deal.” I shrugged casually, as if I hadn't overheard something so personal. Following him into the kitchen, I began looking through the cabinets for breakfast. “Want some coffee?” I asked.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  I spooned the grounds into the filter and listened to the machine start to brew. I loved the smell of coffee, though I'd only recently begun to like the taste. And I only liked it heavily loaded with some diluting combination of cream and sugar.

  “You're up early,” I noticed, glancing at the microwave clock. It was barely nine.

  “Yeah . . .” Les, standing by the fridge as he waited for the coffee to finish, rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, Sarai and I . . . we sort of had a fight. We broke up.”

  “Oh.” I waited for him to elaborate but he didn't. I covered my disappointment by getting out the sugar. The details of his love life were none of my business. “How long did you guys date?”

  “Two weeks.”

  That had to be a record.

  “You didn’t get your present yesterday,” he said. “We forgot all about it.”

  “What present?” Birthdays weren’t a huge thing in our house now that my mom wasn’t around to make us feel special about turning another year older. Even when she had been, store-bought cupcakes or a hastily signed card in a pastel envelope had always sufficed.

  “It’s on the floor by the table.”

  Curious, I walked around the counter and into the dining room. There was a box stashed beneath the table and I instantly knew it was a telescope. I looked up at Les with wide eyes and then crouched down by the box to read the specifications. It had probably cost nearly five hundred dollars.

  “I can’t wait to use it,” I said excitedly. “Thank you so much!”

  “It wasn’t just me,” Les said. “It’s from both of us.”

  “Thanks. It’s great.” I stood up and smiled, feeling grateful and weirdly sentimental. “I might need help getting it on the roof.”

  A brisk rapping on the door distracted both of us. A key sounded in the lock and a second later Criseyde's voice rang out in the living room. “Helloooo!”

  “Hello,” I called back.

  “Ooh, coffee,” she said, entering the kitchen with a delicate clipping of her heels. “Actually, Ash, I thought we might go out for breakfast today. I kind of wanted to talk. About things. You know.” She rolled her eyes elaborately, indicating Les who, thankfully, was looking at the coffee maker and paying no attention to her.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But first, look at my new telescope.”

  Cris eyed the box. “That looks fancy.”

  “It is. Ivory and Les got it for me.”

  “Oh, Ivory and Les did?”

  “I need to get dressed,” I said quickly. “Come on.” I abandoned the coffee to go to my room and dragged her with me.

  Cris was wearing some kind of glittery top despite the early hour, but I shimmied into my usual jeans and casual tank. My unbrushed hair tangled over my shoulders. Slipping on my flip-flops, I ignored her exasperated sigh at my careless outfit. With a grin I grabbed my soft brown leather purse. “Let's go!”

  The morning sun was bright and the air smelled like watered lawns. It was the kind of cool summer morning that fooled you into thinking maybe it wouldn’t get so hot that day, maybe the heat wouldn’t press the breath from your chest. It was a lie. A couple hours more and your sweat would evaporate into the oven-like air and you’d be remiss not to carry a bottle of water wherever you went.

  We drove to a nearby diner with a bright fifties theme and settled into a red vinyl booth by the window. After we’d ordered and gotten cups of coffee, Criseyde proceeded to pour six packets of sugar into hers. Still wearing her zebra-striped sunglasses, she sipped it thoughtfully. I exhaled a dramatic sigh, waiting for her to tell me why we’d had to come somewhere Les and Ivory couldn’t overhear us talking.

  “It sucks here,” she finally said, gesturing out the window at rows of strip malls and the interchangeable houses sprawling beyond them. She giggled. “Literally. It sucks blood. Can you believe this is all we’ll ever get from now until who knows when?”

  I shrugged. “There’s no point in wishing for anything else. Nobody can leave anymore. It’s a black hole.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is we should make the best of having to live here.”

  “I try. Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Oh, that,” she said, as if just remembering the reason for dragging me out of the house.

  I tasted my milky coffee, savoring it in my mouth for a moment. “Criseyde, what is it?”

  “Okay,” she said in a eager, businesslike tone. “So, you’ve been in love with Les for like, ten years. But nothing’s ever happened between you two.”

  “That's what you wanted to talk about?”

  Her lips pursed and I could only imagine her rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses. “Humor me, please.”

  “Okay . . . No, nothing’s ever happened. As you know.”

  She nodded sagely. “He’s had all those girlfriends, and you haven’t even had a date since junior year.”

  “That wasn’t a date. We went to the house of that guy you liked, and his cute friend happened to be there. We didn’t even touch. We didn’t even sit on the same couch.”

  “Oh, wait, there was your date to senior prom.”

  “Ugh. Let’s not talk about that guy.”

  “Yeah, it’s not important. Anyway, I decided you should go to that guy's house.” At my blank look she added, “I know that's why you went back to Shiver last night. To get that guy's information, the one who saved us?”

  “Criseyde,” I said. “You do realize that guy is a vampire?”

  She leaned back with a shrug. “So what? He's hot. Besides, he saved our lives.”

  “Well, yeah, he did. But I don’t think of him romantically, if that’s what you’re getting at. I don’t think I ever could.”

  “Don’t you know that a lot of girls find vampires sexy? I bet we weren’t the only humans at Shiver that night. We were just the only ones who didn’t know it was a vampire club, and they could tell.”

  “What?” I cried. “Sexy?”

  “Yep. It’s a thing.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Anyway, if you don’t think of him romantically, why did you try to find him last night?”

  I sighed, steeling myself for the uncomfortable truth I was about to share, and lowered my voice as I spoke. “Cris, there’s something you should know. That vampire—Rade—bit me when I was nine. That’s why I went to find him.”

  “What!” she shrieked, drawing a few stares from people sitting nearby. “You never told me that!”

  “I only remembered after we got home from Shiver that first night. It was like I’d blocked it from my memory or something.” I paused. “What kind of name is Rade, anyway?”

  “That’s nothing. In ninth grade I dated a guy named Murgatroyd.”

  “Whoa.”

  “I know,” she sighed nostalgically. “But his name was the least of his problems.”

  After breakfast we drove back to the house and I imparted what few details I knew about having been bitten while Criseyde babbled on about it, baffled and amazed. I’d just confessed my only secret to my best friend, but now I had another. I couldn’t quite explain to myself why I felt compelled to see Rade, the feeling growing stronger the more I dwelled on it.

  “I have errands to run before work,” she said as we pulled up to my house, “or else I’d stay and talk about this more.”

  I was actually relieved I wouldn’t have to talk about Rade anymore that day. I needed something to distract myself from unsettling thoughts of him.

  Cris sped away before I had made it up the driveway. As I pondered how I might spend the rest of the day not thinking about vampires, I swung the front door open to see Les and Ivory standing in the l
iving room. Two pairs of eyes slid to me, guarded and wary. I’d interrupted an argument between them, it appeared.

  “What are you guys talking about?” I asked cautiously, stepping inside.

  “Nothing,” Ivory snapped. He turned abruptly and stalked back to his room.

  I looked to Les for an answer, but he just shook his head and edged past me to the front door. “Tell Ivory I’ll be back in a while” was all he said before slamming it behind him.

  “Okay,” I muttered.

  Bored, I flopped down on the couch and reached for the TV remote, though I didn’t bother using it. I wondered where Les was going. To visit a girl—that was my first miserable thought. Then again, maybe he was going to buy me a dozen roses.

  There was still plenty of daylight left, so I decided to head to Witcher Park. Reluctant to ask Ivory to borrow his truck—he always gave me lectures about gas and mileage and random fluids—I uncovered my mom’s old mountain bike from the garage, brushed off some cobwebs, and rode it there.

  My mind wandered as I pedaled along the concrete-paved trails, circling the bosque, a thick grouping of trees with a stream running through it. I found myself thinking about vampires. Of course. Not Rade specifically, but vampires in general. Were they all vicious killers? Not according to some people on the news, but apparently the human death toll had started to rise only recently, months after the quarantine. Were they like humans, some good and some bad? Where they slept, how or if they slept, the amount of blood they needed to survive, why they had congregated in Las Secas . . . Most aspects of vampirism were mysteries.

  And now Criseyde claimed some people got a lot closer to the mysteries than others. If vampires were very terrible, I reasoned, humans wouldn’t want to be romantically involved with them. Or maybe they would. What did I know about it? I certainly wasn’t entertaining such fantasies.

  The thoughts sustained me for a couple miles until I decided to head back to the café for an overpriced bottle of water. I turned off the main trail and took the bike onto a narrower, unpaved one that cut through the center of the looping trails and would make my ride back to the visitor center shorter.

  Big acacia shrubs were closing in on me, brushing my arms every time I made a turn, when I suddenly noticed something was wrong. I wasn’t sure what. Coasting to a stop, I straddled the bike in the middle of the trail and tried to think, wondering if it was something I had heard, something I had seen . . .

  An eerie feeling came over me as I dismounted the bike and walked a few steps back the way I had come.

  And I saw it.

  A pair of feet, one in a flip-flop, the other bare, stuck out from one of the shrubs. The toes barely brushed the ground because the body had been tossed carelessly back into the shrubs, flattering the acacia branches into a prickly cushion. Flimsy blossoms and fluttering leaves worked to obscure it. But I could tell it was a girl wearing cropped jeans and a sherbet-colored top. I couldn’t see her face, but I could also tell she was dead.

  No one else had been on this trail today, I realized, backing slowly toward my bike. The feet didn’t stick out far, but they weren’t so totally hidden that someone would pass right by without even seeing them. I was the first person to lay eyes on this girl since she’d been killed.

  She had been killed, I knew. She hadn’t thrown herself back into the bushes.

  Suddenly in a hurry, I hopped back on my bike and pedaled frantically to the visitor center. Instead of the information desk I went straight to the café because I always went there. The boy who worked there—Rhys, I remembered—flung his magazine aside and sat up straight when I walked to the register.

  “I need to use the phone,” I said.

  “Uh, sure, it’s right there. Dial nine.”

  He walked away to clean up a table and watched me from behind his shaggy hair while I called the cops. I told the dispatcher what I’d seen and where I would be waiting when they arrived.

  I replaced the phone mechanically and wondered if I was in shock. I had never seen a dead body.

  “So, your friend. You put in a good word for me?” Rhys stood beside me, tossing his rag back and forth between hands.

  “Huh?”

  “Your friend. You were in here with her the other day.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I haven’t gotten around to it.”

  “Well, so, what’s her name?”

  “Um. Criseyde.” I shook my head, unable to think.

  “Criseyde,” he repeated reverently.

  “Look, Rhys,” I said, finally regaining some sense, “I just called the cops. There’s a dead body on one of the trails.”

  The rag fell to the floor. “Uh, what?”

  “A body. On a trail. I have to wait here so I can show them where it is. And they’ll probably ask me questions. Maybe you, too.”

  We waited together without speaking, him working when he needed to, and after an hour a couple of officers arrived. Numbly I led them to the place where I’d found the body. I tried not to look at it. They used their radios to call for backup and then sat me in a corner of the café, emptied of all customers, to ask me questions. Yes, I come to Witcher Park regularly. No, I was just riding by. No, I didn’t touch it. Yes, I called as soon as I could. I live right up the street.

  The girl was dead because of a vampire. That was the only information the officers would give me, and it was all I needed.

  There was still about an hour before dark by the time they finished with me and I was allowed to leave. I felt I needed a little time to return to normal, though, or at least time enough to make Ivory and Les believe I wasn’t feeling lopsided, so I didn’t go straight home. At the library I picked up a book I’d wanted to read about constellations and their mythological origins. Then I rode to the convenience store near the house and bought a newspaper, tucking it under my arm as I got back on the bike.

  It seemed I could do a believable job of pretending like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  Les’s motorcycle was back in the driveway, a sight that caused a skip in my heart. I couldn't deny how much I always looked forward to seeing him even though he’d always seemed so moody. Even though he didn’t feel about me the way I did about him. And today the sight of him was especially comforting.

  He and Ivory were watching the news, as usual, when I entered the house, their earlier argument forgotten. Making my way through the room, I eyed Les surreptitiously but he didn't notice. As usual. Neither of them suspected anything was wrong with me.

  I didn’t tell them about my afternoon. Maybe I would later, when I’d come to better terms with it.

  Now that Criseyde was back at work from her days off, I was back to having nights to myself. After Les and Ivory left, I went out back and climbed the ladder to the roof with a beach towel in one arm. One or both of the guys had already brought my new telescope up for me. Spreading out the towel, I started arranging it the way I liked and tried to put the murdered girl out of my mind.

  Ivory had long since given up trying to stop me from spending time on the roof after I’d kept doing it anyway. I could have gone anywhere, done anything dangerous, gotten myself killed in any number of ways without him knowing until it was too late. But I wasn't that kind of girl and he must have known it. The roof was a relatively safe place. Except for my ill-fated excursion to Shiver, I was good and stayed at home where the bad vampires couldn't get me.

  Only a bad vampire had managed to get me once. There was no magic or charm to keep a vampire out of a house. Locks just made people feel better. Luckily, nearly all the vampire action happened downtown, away from most residences. It was strange, but vampires tended to stay away from suburban neighborhoods, almost as if they respected the privacy and sanctity of a human's home.

  But not Rade. He had wandered into my house, one of hundreds differing only in paint color. What had drawn him to me?

  Sometimes I stayed up on the roof all night, taking notes and making sketches of the things I saw—binary systems and the moo
n and nebulas. I would try to stay awake until Les and Ivory came home because sometimes I couldn’t sleep until I knew they were safe.

  Tonight I turned my telescope toward Saturn, wanting to take a good look at the rings. But because of the girl and because I had let Rade back into my thoughts, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fully enjoy the view. I rolled up my towel and climbed back down the ladder. My bed called to me.

  The rest of the evening I thought about Rade and what he’d done to me. A mess of startling emotions left me breathless. I felt frighteningly vulnerable. I hated having been a victim, having been used. I had been just a girl, a child. I was near to tears with anger and hate, my body crushed into my sheets as I tried to make sense of these unwelcome feelings. Rade and I might never have crossed paths but that day he had created a link between us. If not for that link, if I hadn't seen him again after ten years, I'd never have felt the need to go to him. I'd never have felt this betrayal.

  five

  predictability: the ability to predict the future behavior of a dynamical system on the basis of the present knowledge available on this system

  By morning, I was feeling mostly all right with my world once more. Hungry for breakfast, I opened a bag of bagels I’d made a few days earlier. They’d tasted all right when fresh, but now I knocked one on the counter and it was so hard I could have sharpened it into a stake and gone on a vampire-killing spree. It looked like I would have to start breakfast from scratch, which was fine with me, since I had nothing but time.

  Spreading my mom’s crusty old cookbook on the counter, I eventually found myself covered in flour as I made cinnamon rolls. I had started cooking a few months earlier as a way to pass the time during the day, since I didn’t have to work and didn’t go to the roof until nightfall.

  Although I usually had fun cooking, it wasn’t enough to keep me occupied all the time. Over the past year I’d painted walls, rearranged furniture, planted herbs, and learned the basics of sewing. I always itched to learn something else, do something new.