Chapter 2: The Taste of Trust
The bottle tipped and the wine curled into Danielle's glass, dark as a cut vein, thick enough that it barely sloshed. Amy poured until the rim trembled, then set the bottle down on the coffee table without a sound. Her fingers left no prints on the glass.
"There," she said. "That's the good one. I've been saving it."
Danielle laughed, loose and warm, and lifted the glass to her mouth. Some of it caught on her lower lip and she licked it away. She had kicked her shoes off an hour ago. Her bare feet were tucked under her on the couch, and the candlelight made soft red shapes of her shoulders.
"You're a terrible influence," Danielle said. "I have a spin class at seven."
"You'll make it." Amy settled beside her, close enough that their thighs touched. "Or you won't."
Renee watched from the far end of the couch with her own glass balanced on her knee, still full, still untouched. She had been nursing that same pour since the first bottle. The ice in her water glass had melted down to nothing and she had not asked for more.
Amy turned toward Danielle and smiled. This time she let it open a little, let the upper lip catch on the long curve of her canine, just for a second, just enough to show a glint. Danielle blinked at her and smiled back, slow and stupid with wine, as though she'd seen nothing at all.
And she hadn't. That was the thing. Amy could have unfolded every fang in her mouth and Danielle would have called it a shadow, a trick of the candle, a new lipstick. The spell had settled over her the way warmth settles into a room after a fire is lit, and now she leaned into it without knowing it was there.
"You look amazing tonight," Danielle said. "Have I told you that? You look like you've been on vacation."
Amy laughed, low in her throat. "Something like that."
Renee's fingers tightened on her glass.
Amy's eyes drifted down the column of Danielle's neck, to the small hollow at the base of it where a pulse moved under the skin, steady and fast and full of everything. She could hear it. Not just the beat, but the push of it, the wet slide of it through the artery, the whole hot machinery of the woman working away under a thin layer of skin. Her mouth watered. She let it.
She laid her hand on Danielle's knee. Her palm was cool and it sank into the soft warmth of Danielle's leg like water into sand, and Danielle did not flinch. She just leaned in a fraction further, her head tipping toward Amy's shoulder, her eyes going soft and unfocused.
"You're so cold," Danielle murmured. "Why are you always so cold now?"
"Bad circulation." Amy's thumb moved once, a slow stroke above the knee. "It's nothing."
"Mm." Danielle let her eyes close.
Renee set her glass on the table with a small, careful click. The sound was almost nothing. It was the loudest thing in the room.
Amy didn't look at her. She kept her eyes on Danielle's throat, on the rise and fall of it, on the little blue line of vein that ran down toward the collarbone. She counted the beats. Ninety a minute, maybe more with the wine. She could have counted them all night.
Then she took her hand away and stood up in one smooth motion, without using her arms, the way a shadow stands.
"Well," she said. "This has been lovely."
Danielle opened her eyes and made a small disappointed noise. "Already?"
"It's late. You've got that spin class." Amy gathered the empty bottle by the neck. "It's been so good seeing you both. Really. I've missed this."
Renee stood up too fast. She caught the arm of the couch and steadied herself, and she hated how obvious it was, how her body kept telling the truth her mouth was refusing to tell. "Yeah. Great night. Thanks, Amy."
"Anytime."
They walked to the door together, Danielle swaying a little, Renee holding her own elbows. The hallway was dim and the mirror was right there on the left, and Renee fixed her eyes on the front door and did not look at it. She could feel the glass the way you feel a person watching you from a window.
Danielle pulled her shoes on at the door and hugged Amy, a long, boneless hug, her face pressed into Amy's neck. Renee stood on the porch with her keys out and her back to both of them.
Amy leaned in and whispered something into Danielle's ear. Renee heard the shape of it, the hiss and the hum, but not one word.
Then Danielle stepped back, blinking, and said, "Actually. You know what. I think I'll stay a few more minutes."
Renee turned around. "What?"
"Just a few minutes." Danielle smiled, that same soft drunk smile, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Go on ahead. I'll be right behind you."
"Danielle, it's almost midnight."
"I know. A few minutes." Danielle leaned against the doorframe, and Amy's hand came to rest on her shoulder, and the two of them stood there in the light like a photograph.
Renee looked at Amy. Amy looked back, pleasant and patient, her eyes the deep red of coals that have not gone out and never will.
"Everything okay?" Amy asked.
"Yeah." Renee's voice came out flat and even. She was proud of it. "Yeah, everything's fine. Goodnight, Danielle."
"'Night, hon."
Renee walked down the path alone. She heard the door close behind her with a click that was far too quiet for the weight of it. The porch light went out. The crickets kept on with their noise and a dog was barking three streets over and somebody's sprinkler ticked around its arc, and it was all so ordinary that she almost kept walking.
She almost kept walking.
Instead she got to the low hedge between the two houses and stopped, and stood there in the dark with her heart going hard in her throat, and told herself she was being ridiculous. She told herself Danielle was drunk and Amy was lonely and there was nothing in that hallway mirror, nothing at all, just old glass and a bad angle and the wine.
Then she turned and looked through Amy's living room window.
The curtains were not quite closed. There was a gap an inch wide, and through it the candlelight was orange and low, and she could see the backs of the couch cushions and the corner of the coffee table, and she could see the two of them.
Danielle sat with her back to the window, her shoulders slack, her head tipped to one side the way it had been on the couch. She looked as though she was falling asleep sitting up, and maybe she was, and maybe that would have been fine.
Amy stood behind her. She had her hands on Danielle's shoulders, and her head was bowed over Danielle's hair, and her mouth was open. Wide open.
The fangs came down long and curved and white in that red light, longer than any tooth should be, wet with something, and the lower jaw worked once and the mouth stretched and she lowered her face toward the pale line of Danielle's throat.
Renee did not see what happened next. She was already running.
Her feet hit the grass and then the driveway and then the flagstone of her own walk, and she fumbled the key twice before it went in, and she threw the door shut behind her hard enough that the frame shook. The deadbolt. Then the chain. Then the little brass latch she had never once used in four years of living there, and she stood in her own dark hallway with her back against the door and both hands pressed flat to the wood, breathing like she'd run a mile.
Across the lawn, in the house next door, the candles kept burning.
Renee stood in her hallway with her hand flat on the deadbolt and listened. Nothing came across the lawn. No scream, no shout, no door slamming. Just the crickets and the dog three streets over and the slow tick of her own sprinkler.
That was worse. That was so much worse.
She slid down the door until she was sitting on the tile with her knees up and her keys still clutched in her fist. She told herself to call someone. She told herself the police would laugh at her, and that she had no proof, and that she had seen fangs and no reflection and Danielle leaning into a cold hand like a cat into a sunbeam, and none of it was a phone call. So she sat there, and she waited, and she did not turn on a single light in the house.
Next door, the candles went on burning.
The candles kept burning, and across the lawn Renee sat in the dark with her back against the door. She didn't move. She didn't turn on a light. She just listened, and heard nothing, and stayed there.
In the other house, Amy bent her head over Danielle's shoulder.
She took one long breath of her first. Wine and drugstore shampoo and sweat, and under all of it the blood, moving. Danielle didn't open her eyes. She tilted her face toward Amy's neck the way she'd done on the couch and made a small, contented sound.
"You're so good," Amy said. "You have no idea how good you are."
Her lips brushed the base of Danielle's throat. She found the place she'd been watching for two hours. The pulse came up against her mouth, steady, quick, and Amy let it beat there a while, just to feel it.
Then she opened her jaw and set both points over the artery and pressed.
Danielle gasped. It was sharp and wet in her throat, and her whole body arched forward, and her hands flew up and caught Amy's forearms. Her nails dug in.
"Amy?"
Amy didn't answer. She held her still. The skin gave the way fruit gives, and then the blood came, and it came hot and fast and thick, and it was nothing at all like the cold mouthfuls she'd been living on since the night she woke up with new teeth. It tasted like red wine and salt and something sweet underneath. It tasted like the woman who used to bring her soup when she had the flu.
Danielle's fingers dug deeper, then loosened. Her heels slid on the hardwood. Amy got an arm around her waist and held her up.
"Ow," Danielle said, dreamy and far away. "That... what are you..."
Amy pulled once, deep, and the words went out of her.
The sound was small and wet and obscene, and Amy could hear every part of it. The swallow. The artery emptying into her mouth in time with the beat. The heart under her tongue starting to run down, slower and slower, like a clock winding out.
She counted. Ninety. Seventy. Sixty.
She could have finished it there. Easy. Empty her down to the last drop and set her on the couch with a blanket over her knees, and let the women at work wonder, and let the police ask their questions, and sleep all day and forget her name by Christmas.
But she'd watched Danielle's mouth for two hours. She'd watched her hands. She'd watched the way she tucked her hair behind her ear with one finger and the way she laughed with her whole chest, and Amy had decided a while ago, before the wine, before Renee went white in the hallway, that she wasn't going to lose her.
Amy pulled her fangs out.
Two neat holes in the pale curve of Danielle's throat, and a thin line of blood running down toward her collarbone. Amy caught it with her tongue and licked it clean, all the way up and into the punctures, and Danielle shivered and sighed.
"Shh." Amy eased her down onto the rug with her back against the couch. "I've got you."
Danielle's eyes opened halfway. They were wet and unfocused and her mouth was slack. "What did you do," she whispered. "Amy. What did you do to me."
"Something good."
Amy raised her own wrist to her mouth. She fixed her eyes on Danielle, and bit down hard over the vein, and something inside her gave way with a hot, clean pain. Her blood came up out of the wound, black in the candlelight, and it ran down the curve of her thumb and dripped onto the rug.
Danielle stared at it.
"What is that?"
"Open your mouth."
"Amy, that's yours. You're, that's your blood, what are you..."
"Open your mouth."
Danielle's lips parted. Whether it was the wine, or the spell, or the fact that she had trusted Amy with a spare key and every secret she had for nine years, she parted them. Her breath came short through her teeth.
Amy put her wrist against Danielle's mouth.
"Drink."
Danielle flinched back an inch. Her eyes were wide now and starting to look properly frightened, the way a person looks when the dream turns and they can't tell if they're awake.
"What's happening? Amy, what is that?"
"Do you want to feel like this forever?" Amy's free hand slid into her hair, gentle, holding her head still. "Do you want to walk out of here and go home and go to sleep and forget tonight ever happened? Is that what you want, Dani?"
Danielle's chin trembled. She didn't say a word.
"Or do you want to stay here with me. Do you want to never get older? Never get tired? Never lose anybody again?"
"Lose anybody?" Danielle's voice broke on it.
"Drink," Amy said. "Drink, and become like me."
She pressed her wrist to Danielle's lips and held it there. For one heartbeat nothing happened. Danielle's mouth stayed shut, and Amy felt the whole thing balance on a knife, and she thought about how easy it would be to finish it after all.
Then Danielle's lips eased open against her skin. Her tongue touched the wound, tentative, the way you test bathwater.
And she drank.
The first pull was tiny. The second was not. Amy felt it go through her wrist like a pluck on a wire, sharp and deep and pulling, and her knees went slack with it. There was a tearing little noise in Danielle's throat. Her hands came up and grabbed Amy's forearm, and her fingers closed around it hard, and she drank again, longer, her jaw working, her breath huffing through her nose.
"That's it," Amy said. "That's my girl."
Danielle made a low noise into her wrist, half hurt, half hunger, and pulled harder. Her heels shoved at the rug. There was blood on her chin and on Amy's knuckles and in a dark stripe down the front of her blouse, and still she drank, and Amy let her, and the candles threw both their shadows up the draped red wall.
When Amy finally took her wrist back, the two wounds closed over almost at once and left nothing but a smeared shine.
Danielle fell back against the couch, panting. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stared at the red on it, and then at Amy. Her face was very pale. Her eyes were wide open.
"Amy?"
"Mm."
"I feel," Danielle said, and stopped, and swallowed. "Something's moving in me."
Amy smiled at her, fangs out and unhurried, and brushed the wet hair back from her forehead.
"Good," she said. "That's how it starts."