Chapter 7: Hours
The shower ran for a long time. Then it stopped. Then there was only silence from behind the bathroom door, a silence so profound it felt heavier than any sound.
Sloane paced the short length of her living room, the worn floorboards creaking under her steps. The bandage on her palm was neat and white, a stark contrast to the lingering tremor in her fingers. She’d cleaned up the kitchen. The knife was washed and back in its block. The blood-streaked sink shone. The piece of cantaloupe, now tainted by the memory, was in the trash. Yet the metallic scent seemed to linger, woven into the very air.
Mortimer had finally emerged from under the bed, casting suspicious, slit-pupiled glances toward the bathroom door before leaping onto the windowsill to ignore everyone.
She tried to watch TV. The cheerful banter of a late-night talk show felt like a transmission from another planet. She clicked it off. The silence rushed back in, broken only by the distant wail of a siren and the oppressive quiet from the bathroom.
Hours bled into one another. The sky outside her window deepened from twilight to a solid, starless black. This was ridiculous. She lived here. He was the… guest, if you could call it that. A freeloading statue with a thirst problem.
Finally, her own restless anxiety burned through the caution. She stood before the bathroom door, her good hand raised. She knocked, three sharp raps. “Luka.”
No answer.
“I know you’re not taking a nap in there. You’re not doing… whatever it is you do. Open up. We need to talk.”
The silence stretched. Then, his voice came through the wood, low and hollow, stripped of its usual polished tenor. “We do not need to talk. You need to go to your room, Sloane. Now.”
His use of her full name, usually delivered with a hint of ironic detachment, now sounded like a strained command. It pissed her off.
“Yeah, see, that’s not how this works,” she said, leaning her forehead against the cool wood. “You don’t get to freak out in my kitchen and then give me orders in my own apartment. I’m not one of your nighttime groupies.”
A beat of silence. “I did not ‘freak out.’” The defensiveness was new, raw.
“You looked at my hand like it was a five-course meal and you hadn’t eaten in a month. Which, I guess, is technically true.” She tried to lighten it, to inject some of their usual sharp-edged banter, but it fell flat.
“It was a lapse. It will not happen again.” The words were stiff, rehearsed.
“A lapse.” She let out a short, humorless laugh. “You looked like you were about to come through the drywall, Luka. That’s more than a lapse. That’s a system failure.” She paused, her voice dropping. “You’re starving. And it’s making you… unstable.”
The sound from the other side of the door was something between a sigh and a growl. “You have a talent for understatement. My stability is not your concern.”
“The hell it isn’t! You’re living in my living room! An unstable vampire is a bigger problem than my shitty landlord. Look, just… open the door. Face to face.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
A longer pause. When he spoke again, the weariness in his voice was centuries deep. “Because the door is a necessary barrier. Because the scent of your blood is still on your skin, even bandaged. Because the memory of it is in every particle of air in this confined space. Because my control, at this moment, is theoretical.”
Each reason was a hammer strike. Sloane swallowed, her own throat dry. She hadn’t expected such brutal honesty. It was more frightening than his earlier silence.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked, her own voice quieter now. “You just live in my bathroom indefinitely? You’re gonna start paying rent in there? I can get you a little throw rug.”
“The plan,” he said, the words slow and deliberate, “is for you to listen. Go to your bedroom. Lock the door. Do not come out until sunrise.”
She pushed off from the door, crossing her arms. “Or what?”
The silence that followed was different. It was charged, electric with unsaid things. It wasn’t a refusal to answer. It was the answer itself.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, her bravado feeling thin. She looked down at her bandaged hand, the memory of his black-eyed gaze crawling over her skin. Her defiance warred with a very primal, very sensible fear. He was a predator. She was pushing him, poking a starving lion with a stick, and they both knew it.
“Fine,” she said, the word clipped. “But this isn’t over. You can’t just… white-knuckle your way through eternity. And I’m not spending my nights locked in my room like a snack in a pantry.”
She waited for a retort. None came. Just that heavy, breathing silence.
With one last glare at the unyielding door, she turned and walked to her bedroom. The click of her own lock engaging sounded horribly final, a admission of defeat. She slid down to sit with her back against the door, listening to the empty apartment. She heard nothing from the bathroom. No movement. No sound at all.
Outside, the city hummed its indifferent night song. In her hand, the cut throbbed with a steady, warm pulse. A reminder. A lure. A problem with no easy solution, locked away with her in the dark.