Two Flights (Arc 1)

I was surprised to learn that it was legal to live in an artifact.

“It looks like an old English church,” I said.
“French,” Professor Jackson sighed, “do you remember any of ARCH 314?”
I could feel my father rolling in his grave as I shook my head. The truth was, I didn’t remember any of
those classes—it was hard to remember something you never used.
The silence was uncomfortable, but Professor Jackson sold his house to me anyway.

The city called it a duplex. There was a disclosure on file about the rickety stairs leading up to my half of
it, a little red note: don’t trip.
“The rental is occupied,” Professor Jackson told me, “he’s a long term tenant— signed his lease
sometime before I purchased the property. He’s a private man, but he always pays his rent on time.”
Professor Jackson handed me the keys and I hugged them to me.
“It’s perfect,” I said.

My only problem with my tenant was that I couldn’t quite decide whether or not I believed he was real.
His windows were always dark and the number for his flat rang endlessly no matter when I called him. I
never saw him leave the flat either.
“He’s a ghost man,” my mother’s voice laughed through my phone. “How will you pay your tuition
without a renter?”
“I’ll find a way,” I snapped.

He paid his rent on the first of the month. In cash. The stack of bills had been wrapped in brown packing
paper and tied together neatly with a bit of old-fashioned twine. I found it in my letterbox just after
lunch. I had been home since the evening before, but I had not heard or seen anyone by the door.

“He always pays in cash,” Professor Jackson shrugged, sipping his coffee, “he’s an older gentleman. For
him the Great Depression probably never ended. I’m sure he’s got an old-fashioned mattress bank
somewhere.”
“Have you ever met him?” I fiddled absently with the pen collection on his desk.
“Now that you mention it, no. I’m not even sure I ever caught his name,” he said, reaching over to stop
me from messing with the engraved fountain pen they had given him along with his tenure, “who’s
teaching your Organic Chem this time Ali?”
“Kovar.”
He nodded approvingly and sipped his coffee again.

Around midterms, the man got a dog. It was a little white mop dog that spent most of its time dusting
the fenced porch and wishing it had eyes. I never saw him let it in or out, but it appeared early every
morning to greet me on my way to school and disappeared every night right before sundown. It was a
happy creature that rarely barked and looked well fed; which made me feel much better about my ghost
man.

The dog made me wonder if the man was lonely. I baked a try of cookies (no nuts, in case he had
allergies or bad teeth) and put them in a gift bag to hang from his door handle. Then I decided the mop
dog needed a special treat too, so I bought a small box of biscuits and added it to the gift bag. It was
raining when I got home from school, and bitterly cold, but I was warmed a little when I saw that both
gift bag and dog had already been taken inside.

I needed a break from studying one night, so I dug through the papers that had come with the duplex. It
had occurred to me that the man must have signed his lease. I was hoping to look up his name online,
see if he had ever been employed in the community or had any family in the area, if only to find out who
to contact if anything happened to him. His signature was too loopy and slanted to make out, but it still
made me smile. The lease was up just after finals; I was finally going to get to meet him.

I didn’t think my day could get any worse. Still spent from finals, I forced myself to stay awake late into
the evening, refreshing the registrar’s web page compulsively for three hours just to learn I had failed
Organic Chem. Again.
My mother was delighted.
“Come home,” she begged, feigning sympathy, “use the degree you already have and settle down for a
bit.”
“I can’t,” I said.
When I took out the trash that night, I found a stiff dog shaped bag in the shared dumpster behind the
church. I was afraid to open it, but I had to know. When I saw, I decided the ghost man’s lease would not
be renewed.
10

On the appointed day, I found an envelope in my letter box. Inside was a copy of the lease. The dates
had been changed and he had even written in an increase in the amount of the rent: a hundred dollars
above what he had been previously paying each month. It only awaited my signature.
“You could use the extra money. You wouldn’t have to pay for books,” my mother pointed out, “and
now you have an extra class.”
“He killed his dog.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, “it could have been old. It’s hard to tell with those little ratty ones.”

11

I couldn’t bring myself to sign it. I couldn’t be like Professor Jackson or the woman who had owned the
duplex before him. I had to know something, anything about the elderly renter. So I sat at my kitchen
island with a blank piece of paper and a pen. I almost drained the pen and I had to find six more pieces
of paper. Nothing sounded right. Another crumpled ball of a failed attempt bounced off the rim of the
trash into the living room. In a fit frustration I wrote:
Who are you?
In the biggest letters I could fit on the page. I don’t know if it’s possible to slam a mail slot, but I tried.

12

I was born Toussaint de la Fontaine in Ambleny, France. 1585. I have been called Bathelemy, Ambroise,
and Roussin. Most recently I am called Raphael.
The note was written on a yellowed sheet of paper which looked and smelled like it had been torn from
some anciently overdue library book. The date captured my eyes. By my calculations, he was claiming to
be over 400 years old.
I wasn’t falling for it. I wrote back on the same page:
Really? Then what are you?

13

A vampire—and thus, you should leave well enough alone. If you hold in your young mind the
unfortunate notion that I might be lying, you’d best see the city records on our property’s prior “owners”.
I will take your signing of the lease as an official declaration of truce and I shall not write again.

Regards,
Raphael
14

1200 paperback mystery novels lined the walls of my library: it was practically a monument to my
inability to walk away from the unknown. I knew he was insane, but the cloak and dagger game was
more than I could resist. I recruited Gina to help me. She was the best friend I had in Portridge, and like
me, she owned her own home. We used her house as our base of operations and set about making
plans to disprove my vampire.
“This is silly, but fun,” she said excitedly.
I nodded and bit into one of the snack sandwiches she had made for us.

15

According to city records, the house was half as old as the vampire claimed to be, and its history was
very odd.
“In 1896 the whole neighborhood around it burned down,” Gina read, “only the church was left
standing. It was condemned until a banker bought it and restored it. 1952. That’s when it got converted
into a home.”
We looked at the list of previous owners, trying to find someone other than Professor Jackson who
might still be living.
“Gabriella Morten,” I said, “she’s be somewhere in her 50’s or 60’s, I’d think.”

16

It turned out that Gabriella Morten’s last known address was in a cemetery. But she hadn’t died from
old age. She was 42, according to the dates. My next door neighbor—a delightful gray-haired woman
who called herself Mama Julie—had plenty to say about Mrs. Morten (and everyone in the
neighborhood).
“Poor thing,” Julie sighed, “took a nasty fall on those steps up to your flat. Terrible accident.”
“Did she ever say anything about the house?” Gina asked.
“My but yes! She’d tell everyone who’d listen to her. She was always going on about how that the
basement was haunted,” Julie laughed, “poor superstitious thing. You know, I heard someone say she
even had a carpenter come and nail the stairwell door shut.”

17

“What stairwell?” Gina asked, looking around the great room that had once been pews.
I walked into the kitchen and stared at the wall of cupboards.
“This is where my half ends. The other side of here, and down, is his flat,” I said, “Professor Jackson said
it used to be where the priest’s quarters and storerooms were.”
 “Why would she nail it shut if it was already behind a wall cabinets? Do you think Professor Jackson
added the cabinets?”
Just then, I noticed the fridge. Above it, a wall detail I had always thought was nothing more than a stray
old bit of crown molding suddenly revealed itself as the outline of a door.

18

“I’m not moving the fridge just to look at it,” I told Gina.
The glow of the coffee shop suddenly seemed much warmer than my home had.
“We could try putting some Garlic on his door,” she laughed, “or wash all his windows with holy water.”
I smiled, “What would that even do?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” she giggled, “it would mess with him though. You know, like he’s just with you. Are
you going to sign his lease?”
“First, I’m writing him another letter,” I said, “If he won’t come clean and meet with me, I won’t sign.”

19

He didn’t respond to that letter—at least, not in writing. A few rainy nights later, I found myself up late
studying for a test. At the moment the clock hands converged on twelve, the lights flickered twice, then
held, then flickered once more. Undaunted, and desperate to keep up with my school work, I rummaged
for a flashlight, and then kept working.
The bang startled me.
It sounded like it came from the roof, somewhere above the converted balcony loft where my bed was. I
shined the flashlight up into the loft and saw menacing red-eyes appear briefly in a second story
window. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone.

20

Dear Toussaint de la Fontaine of Ambleny, France:

You won’t scare me as easily as you scared Mrs. Morten. You may think you’re some all-powerful
vampire, but chances are you’re just a pathetic old man who happens to know some stage tricks.
Consider this your notice of eviction. If you haven’t arranged a meeting with me or moved out by
Tuesday, the police will be notified.

Regards,
Your Landlord
21

His answer was immeasurably satisfying, just a simple unsigned note on yellowed paper—Who are you?
I wrote back:
I was born Alison Jezebel Kaiser in Fredericksburg, Virginia. 1982. Most recently, I am known as Ali. If
you want to know more than that, you’ll need to speak with me in person.
I won’t write again.

22

The knock at the door came late— just after midnight. I stumbled out of bed and hurriedly pulled on
jeans and a t-shirt. I made it down to the foyer and glanced through the peep hole. No one was there.
The knock came again, and I realized it was coming from the kitchen.
I cautiously approached and yelled in the direction of the hidden door.
“Who’s there?”
No one. Apparently. After half an hour sitting on the living room couch there was still just me: half
dressed and feeling foolish for staring at my fridge.

23

Gina helped me move the fridge. Behind it, we got our first glimpse of the door, caked in layers of
cobwebs and dried insect carcasses. It was barred by three cross pieces made of dark wood and the
frame itself was riddled with dozens of carpenter nails. Someone had added a set of chains and from
them hung hundreds of small coins.
“They’re Mary medallions,” Gina gasped, “like the ones they use on rosaries.”
Silence filled the little former church.
“Maybe we should put it back,” Gina whispered.
I shook my head. “This needs to stop.”

24

I cleaned the door and it seemed a bit less threatening without the grime. I didn’t think I had the right
tools to get the rusted nails out of the aging wood so I used a drill to make a hole in the door instead.
“We shouldn’t do this,” Gina pleaded, “that’s his apartment on the other side of the door.”
“Just the stairwell,” I corrected, “if the blue prints are right, his end of it was probably boarded up too
before he messed with it. Besides, it’s my house. If he’s sneaking up here to eavesdrop on me, I want to
know about it.”
The drill suddenly struck something hard and made a horrendous noise. We were both surprised to find
a brick wall behind the wood.
“How did he knock on the door then?” Gina asked, “And why the nails and chains?”
I had no answers.
25

When nothing bad happened after a few days, Gina decided the “voodoo” look of my secret door was
cool.
“It’s a great conversational piece,” she said, admiring the antique chains and medallions.
To keep it exposed, I had to move the fridge out into the breakfast nook, but since I never used the
space, it fit well enough.
“Get some shelves and it can be an oversized pantry,” Gina suggested.
She also suggested we paint the door and its cross bars white.
“It will look cleaner,” she said.
She was right. It did.

26

The second time I awoke to the knocking there was no mistaking that it was real. I could hear the chains
on the door rattling, the wooden crossbars creaking. I turned every light in the church on before I
approached the door. I kept my distance from thing, sitting on the couch.
“Who’s there?” I asked, as bravely as I could manage.
The voice that answered me from behind the door was deeply virile—as far from the voice of an old
man as it could possibly be.
“I am Raphael, as it is the day appointed in your letter, I have come to ask that you sign my lease—
pleased to make your acquaintance, ma fifille.”

27

I agreed to a trade of information.

Later, I could not decide if he was just abrupt in his normal manner or I had undergone a very polite
interrogation. He asked me about everything that mattered and everything that didn’t. He learned,
among other things, that I was a student at the local University and that I enjoyed singing.
In return, he gave me a brief but detailed recollection of his rather minor role in the French Revolution
and told me about his fondness for Latin books. He politely excused himself sometime after 2am.
“I pray my coming has not put you to any inconvenience, but night is the day of my kind.”
“I hope we can talk again sometime.” I was lost for better words.
“Trust in it,” he said, his warm tone laced with something dangerous, “This was pleasant, and I have few
other obligations. I will return as often as you will oblige my intrusion.”
28

“You are a woman of many fascinations,” he told me one night, “your bravery in manner when speaking
with me is quite unmatched by any other woman I have known, and yet, there is something very likeable
about you.”
“I’m not sure if I should thank you for that,” I mumbled, leaning against the door and flipping the page of
my Chemistry book, trying to study and listen at the same time.
“Insufferably clever, as well” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, “unusual for your generation. Most
others of your vintage are quite vapid.”
“And how were people in your generation?”
He was silent for a time.
“Bereft of all good sense—but they had workable minds and fine manners.”

29

“You told me once that you like to sing,” he said one night, “I was wondering if you might do me the
favor of a performance?”
I searched for sheet music in an unpacked box that was shoved into a corner in the Library. My cheeks
burned as I sifted through them. It had been so long. I happened on my favorite song, Memory, from the
Broadway play, Cats. Suddenly, I felt self-conscious. I told him it was from a modern play and related
the story to him while I worked up the courage to sing.
Standing in the open moonlight of the living space, I preformed for my audience of one, using the vault
of the cathedral almost like an instrument to the song.
To my surprise, there was nothing but silence to greet the last notes. Nor did he answer any of my
embarrassed apologies. He had simply left.

30

“I apologize,” he whispered the next night, “the beauty of your voice overwhelmed me. It was not
polite, in my day, to make tears before a woman, no matter how moved a man might be.”
It felt like a lie, but I didn’t question it. He was soothing my ego, at least. In the silence, the page turns of
my Chemistry book seemed excessively loud. For the first time, he noticed them.
“What do you study?” he asked.
“Chemistry,” I said, then suddenly realized it might have been less common in his day, “do you know of
it?”
“Chemistry,” he said slowly, “the bastard child born of noble Alchemy: an institution of men who make
lives out of dissecting the empty corpse of their reality, ignorant that the soul within it has fled. Yes, I
know of Chemistry.”
I slammed the book shut and walked away, ignoring his commands that I return.
31

“I am very awkward, pray forgive me,” he said the next night.

Determined as I was not to forgive him, I was still in the kitchen by the appointed hour, waiting for his
voice.
“It was not my intention to insult you.”
“I want to be a Chemist,” I blurted out suddenly, my cheeks burning again.
“Why?”
“I want answers,” I said, “I want to know what I’m made of and what everything else is made of and
how all of it works and why all of it matters.”
“You want the keys to the universe, then,” he said solemnly. There was no trace of censure in his strong
clear voice, no patronizing smile hidden under his words, “that is admirably bold.”
In that moment, I felt I liked him better than I had in the whole of the time I’d known of him.

32

“I have thought long on it. Yours is a worthwhile and ancient pursuit,” he told me the following night,
“You are in good company with your wiser ancestors. It is a shame that Alchemy is gone.”
My heart fluttered. I stumbled over my words, trying not to lose the fire he had kindled.
“Chemistry is an evolution of that Alchemy,” I insisted, “there are mysteries in it that could change
everything if we solved them. I want to be one of the people who know the mysteries, even if I never
solve anything. I want to be one of the people who try.”
“If that is truly your goal,” he said softly, “chemistry cannot give you what you seek. Chemists do not
posses anything more extraordinary than unanswered questions: they know nothing of mysteries.”
“Is there a difference?”
“There was in my time, ma fifille.”

33

He promised me a book about Alchemy, but never made good on it. Still, things were fine between us
until a few months later when I finally thought to ask him about Mrs. Morten.
“She was kinder than she was wise,” he sighed, “she made the grave error of opening her door for me.”
“The front door?” I asked.
“This one,” he knocked once from the other side of the white wood, “despite my pleas that she keep it
locked.”
“How do you get past the brick to knock on the wood like that?” I asked, seizing on the chance to
confirm some trick in it.
“The same way I got through her nails and chains,” he said, “invitation means more to a vampire than
the material of your world. The bricks do not protect you as much as does the empty but virgin
threshold of your home.”
34

“Maybe you shouldn’t be talking to him,” Gina said as we stood in line waiting for our turn to check out
our books, “you have a lot of school work to do anyway, so it would be a good excuse. If you’re suddenly
busy all the time, maybe he’ll forget about you.”
“Maybe, but I don’t know if I can forget about him,” the words sounded strangely wistful to my own
ears and I was relieved that Gina didn’t notice.
“I could,” Gina said, “I’d tell Mr. Creepy door-knocker that he could find someone online to bother if he’s
lonely for a chat that early in the morning.”
“You haven’t heard his voice,” I mumbled—but I didn’t confess to saying it when she asked.

35

I confronted him with my suspicions that night.

“My voice can have such an effect,” he admitted, “especially when I begin to see someone as potential
prey. Your friend may be correct. It may be better if you stop speaking with me.”
“What exactly happened to Mrs. Morten?” I asked suddenly, “The neighbor said she fell down the
stairs.”
“The police assumed that,” he said, “because there were no obvious wounds. The bite of a vampire
appears insignificantly small and does not bruise. I did not intend for her to die, but she tried to escape
me and, much like a dog is more likely to chase moving prey, so too did my instincts overrun me.”
“Speaking of that, what happened to the little dog you had? Did you eat it?”
“Please ma fifille, do not ask,” he groaned, “this is not something you want to know.”

36

He did not appear the next night, or the one after. Days turned to weeks, then months, and only rarely
did I glance longingly at the chained door. I finally passed Organic Chem.
“Well, just don’t go blowing your house up with evil experiments,” my mother sighed, resigning herself
to my fate, “use your mad scientist powers for good.”
I was happy, confidant, and convinced that I could finally realize the future I had longed for.
Then, one night, I dreamed of him.
I watched him stare at me from a dock as I drifted away on a nameless vessel into stormy waters. His
clothes were turn-of-the-century, and soaked through by the rain. The weather did little to deter the
ferocity in his gaze. The blazing red eyes that looked out at me from under his long dark hair stayed with
me. Nothing I did after I woke could erase the image of those eyes.
37

I didn’t sleep the next night. I sat on the couch, staring at the little medallions hanging from the chains.
When the clock started to strike twelve, I stood up as if in a trance and knocked on the door.
“This is dangerous,” he answered hesitantly, when the clock finished striking, “you should not call me to
you like this. It is too easy for me to make an invitation of it.”
“I dreamed about you,” I said. The words I spoke felt compelled, in a way which frightened me back to
wakefulness. I fled for the safety of the living room, curling up on the couch, hugging my knees to my
chest.
But it was too late. His presence shifted and I felt his voice whispering in my ear despite the distance I
had put between us.
“Did you? Tell me of this dream ma petite.”

38

Later, I couldn’t remember what I had told him that night, nor anything he had said during our long
conversation. I woke up on the couch, unsure of how much had been real and how much had been a
dream. I started to call Gina, then backspaced the number and started to call my mother— but neither
felt right. Desperate, I went to Professor Jackson’s office. I ended up just asking him to recommend a
professor for Organic Chem II.
“Is something wrong, Ali?” he asked, setting his coffee down.
Even when his eyes softened toward me, like the eyes of the father I wanted him to replace, I couldn’t
tell him.
“No Professor,” I said meekly, “I just haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Chamomile tea,” he suggested at length, picking up his coffee again, “it works well for my wife at any
rate.”

39

The book appeared in my letter box along with his rent; his flowing script spilled across the brown
packing paper he had wrapped the tome in:
Do not lose this, it took a great deal of time and effort to acquire. ~Raphael
It looked like it belonged in a museum. The title was worn away by time and the pages faint, in a
language I barely knew. Latin.
He laughed when I asked.
“I did not expect you to have any dealings with it,” he said, “it was a dead tongue before I was born, and
even with my fondness for it, I still acquired my fluency somewhat late in life. It is the diagrams you will
need for your studies.”
“My studies?”
“I intend to teach you Alchemy ma fifille,” he said, “so that you may have the means to defend yourself
against me.”
40

His “lessons” began the next day despite my objections. Six hand written pages, front and back, small
script, were delivered to my letterbox by the time I arrived home from class. It was a guide to
correspondences and symbology, along with a recommendation of charts which I was supposed to
memorize by evening. The pages smelled different. An air of faint, delicate cologne clung to them,
lending a kind of intimate elegance to the letter. I tried to focus on the words, but the references were
obscure and even with the aid of the mighty internet, I had little luck untangling any of it. By nightfall, he
found his pupil very indignant.
“Perhaps you would take better to lectures,” he mused, “very well. I had hoped to save time, but if it
must be so, there is little to be done for it.”

41

It became clear to me that his Alchemy was less a renaissance science and more a religious teaching. He
avoided overt references to god, but I couldn’t help the feeling that what I was really learning was some
sort of ancient pagan philosophy. There was little mention of chemicals outside purely symbolic cameos
and the narrative played with an incomplete cast of elements.
“I am not concerned for your knowledge of reactions and physical material,” he told me, “you will find
that in your chemistry. It is the wisdom, the layers of meaning to those reactions, which are lost to the
modern perspective.”
“In other words, science with soul,” I accused, “you want me to be more subjective in my experience of
Chemistry.”
“I want you to see the inner world which surrounds you,” he growled.
“I don’t understand,” I sighed, “I’ve never understood spiritual things. Just ask my mother.”

42

It did not go much better on any other night. I could feel his frustration with me growing. In some ways
it was reassuring: he seemed more human when he showed his petty annoyances with my scientific
disposition. I wondered increasingly if I had finally exhausted all of the man’s tricks; if, in my refusal to
play into the subjective world of myth and spirit, I had broken his “vampire” illusion and proven him to
be quite mortal after all. Increasingly, I wanted to know for sure, and I soon concocted a plan to get out
of his lessons and into his more immediate physical company.
43

“I want to see you,” I said one night, “I know you don’t want an invitation into my home because you’re
worried you’ll eat me, or whatever—but what if I come to your home, if it is an invitation received, not
given?” When he did not immediately object, I tempted him further, “I learn better in person. It might
help my studies.”
“You merely want to know if I am genuine,” he corrected, “you want an objective observation of my
nature.”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause as he considered it.
“It may work,” he said at last, “I have not before considered giving an invitation to the prey. It still strikes
me as a dangerous venture, but if you are willing—if you can ascertain that I am being truthful about my
condition, you will humor the subjective nature of your studies in Alchemy?”
“If you prove to my satisfaction that you’re a real vampire, I’ll humor anything.”

44

I would come to regret my offer.

We set a night for our meeting, as he insisted on time to “prepare”. In the days leading up to the
appointed hour I became increasingly aware of what “prepare” might have insinuated. My paranoia
increased when he stopped coming to the kitchen door at night.
Was I to be raped, murdered, or both?
I felt like the stupid heroine in a horror movie, insisting on entering the obviously dangerous basement
out of nothing more than morbid curiosity. This man was obviously insane. And so was I.
Gina agreed.
“Well, at least you told someone first,” she grumbled, “I don’t like it though. If you don’t call me right
afterward—”
“It could be early in the morning,” I said, trying to dissuade her.
“I couldn’t care less,” she hissed, “you matter more to me than a few hours of sleep.”

45

I waited until the last stroke of the clock before I left my apartment for his.
Midnight.
My flashlight outlined the dips in the path as I carefully picked my way to his porch, hoping all the while
that Mama Julie wouldn’t see me and start rumors. When I went to knock, I was startled to find his door
slightly ajar.
“Hello?” I called.
The door opened of its own accord and I jumped. Immediately I felt my cheeks blush and my temper
flutter hotly. It was just a trick—easily accomplished with a bit of string. Feeling bold again, I stepped
inside and closed the door behind me. I turned my flashlight into the shadows. To my surprise it went
out before I could get a look at anything. Something brushed my outstretched hand.
I screamed.

46

The small candle that flickered to life on the far side of the room was accompanied by an amused
chuckle. The figure of the man became more defined as he lit more candles in the row and then moved
to another level of the rack that held them. Six rows of a dozen by the time he finished. Furniture was
scarce in his den, but a pair of armchairs beckoned from just below the candles he had lit. He sat in one
of them, his figure still little more than an ill-defined shadow.
I edged closer, drawn by the mystery of the scene.
As I approached, the candle light revealed him to me slowly. The long hair. The old fashioned clothes.
The fierce eyes. I gasped. This was the man from my dream. He gestured to the chair beside his.
“Please have a seat, ma petite,” he smiled, barring fangs.

47

He offered me a cup of tea and seemed very intrigued when I was reluctant to sip from it.
“If I wanted you to die, ma petite, I would not be so cowardly as to poison you,” he laughed, “I am well
equipped to offer a far more elegant demise.”
“Charming,” I grumbled, wondering if the fangs were surgically implanted or glued into place, “I was
more worried about being drugged.”
“That is perhaps the best sense you have shown since you suggested this insane evening,” he said, “are
you satisfied?”
“How could I be? You haven’t done anything yet,” I sipped the tea in outright defiance.
His left eyebrow arched and his eyes flickered dangerously, almost glowing a pale red in the dim light.
Contacts, I told myself.
“Leave it to a mortal to demand action,” he shook his head, “very well—but you may not like this.”

48

I am still not entirely sure what happened next. He moved so fast that I didn’t have time to notice until
his breath was on my neck, his arms pinning me to the chair. I struggled, but to no avail, and he laughed
at my efforts, a sound that sent a shiver of cold fear down my spine. Then he suddenly released me. I
swung at him, but my fist passed through his physical form as if he weren’t there.
“Very unwise, ma petite” he cautioned playfully, “this would not be a fair fight.”
After a moment of stunned silence, I reached for him again, unable to resist. I carefully lifted my hand
toward his face, my fingertips passed through his cheek, disrupting his image, like so much smoke. Then
in a blur of motion, he was back in his chair, pouring more tea into the cup I had dropped; his very
existence defying all rational explanation.
49

“You cannot be both physical and incorporeal,” I stammered, “physical and non-physical are mutually
exclusive.”
“I have not been without physicality,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand, “That is only your
perception.”
“I passed my hand through your face!”
“Can you not also pass your hand through air? I think you will agree that air exists.” he said brushing my
hand as he passed the cup to me to remind me that he was, in fact, real. “Does your chemistry not
already explain a change in states?”
“Molecules can change states,” I asserted, “but living beings as a whole cannot. Not while alive anyway.”
“You make too many assumptions,” he waved his hand dismissively. “I never said I was alive. Now…are
you ready to listen?”

50

“I can’t believe he didn’t show,” Gina said.

I looked up at the ceiling of the hallway. Lying was hard.
“I didn’t really expect him to,” I said, “that would have ruined the illusion. But anyway, I think I’m over
this.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t sound sure,” Gina said gently, “I worry about you, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, “Look, don’t worry; I’ll be fine.”
The other students in the hall suddenly started gathering their books and belongings.
“Hey, the professor just got here. Call you later?”
“Tomorrow maybe,” Gina suggested, “I’ve got a night shift.”
I hung up the phone and watched the other students file into the lecture hall. I followed sometime after,
sitting in the back row. It wasn’t a core class, so I pulled out the notes Raphael had given me and started
studying while the professor droned on about something unimportant.

51

My face was the only image that looked back at me from the mirror. I shivered. Raphael put his hand on
my shoulder to prove to me that it wasn’t an illusion.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I no longer have the connection to this world that I did when I lived,” he explained patiently, “It does
not heed my passing. It forgets me. Thus, I cast no reflection, and were I able to walk in the sun, I would
cast no shadow.”
“How is Alchemy supposed to protect me from this?”
“Alchemy is the study of the threads which weave the world,” he said, “the very threads which reject my
unnatural existence. If you wrap your soul in that tapestry, no phantom—vampire or otherwise—shall
be able to cause you harm.”
52

“Are you coming home for the break?” My mother pleaded.

“Mom, I have a lot of studying to do,” I said, eyeing the stack of parchment I had collected from Raphael,
“I don’t want to fail my finals.”
“Okay,” she sighed, “If you need to…but call me, when you have time?”
“I will,” I promised.
Not that I had been good at keeping promises. Gina was still mad at me for sleeping in and missing our
planned brunch. The nights were starting to get to me, and it was getting progressively harder to get out
of bed in time for much of anything.
That night I didn’t meet him as I usually did, but waited by the door in the kitchen.
“I know you’re there,” I said shortly after the midnight toll, “we need to talk.”
He didn’t answer, but he also didn’t need to. I was talking for my own sake as much as for his. His silence
was long.
“You are rich with aliments and short of remedies,” he grumbled, “Very well, I will think on it.”

53

He offered his cure for my troubles the next morning. His solution came in the form of a note, tucked
into my letter box, and a rusted key folded neatly within the parchment:

Come at your convenience, if you can find the courage to do so. The door you seek will be obvious.

I found myself on the steps of his porch almost without hesitation, glancing only briefly toward the
neighbors to see if I was being watched before trying the key in the lock. The door opened and I stepped
inside cautiously peaking into the halls behind our normal meeting place. I noticed the furthest door was
barred across by a wrought iron gate. I marveled at it, running my fingers over the black scrolls of metal.
It was anchored in the brick to either side with no latch, nor any other obvious way to open it.

“I am not in need of such things,” he said from within, startling me, “I should warn you; the day grants a
sense of privilege to me, I will read your thoughts quite shamelessly if you visit me now.”

54

“Why don’t you listen to my thoughts all the time?” I asked, “What’s to stop you? I would never have
known any different if you hadn’t mentioned it.”
“It is a matter of courtesy—as things have stood before, one of us has always been a guest to the other.
But if you come and sit outside my den to speak to me, it is much the same as if you were to invite me to
sit at your bedside while you slept. The intimacy of it invites me to behave differently than I might
otherwise if the circumstances were different.”
“Bedside? Are you going to sleep?” I asked, both confused and disappointed.
He laughed, “I do not sleep, ma petite, I merely rest. But I am vulnerable when the sun is so high, even
with these mortal fortifications. I have not trusted in another like this in quite some time.”
“Thank you,” I said, blushing.
“Thank you,” he asserted, “and heed carefully my warning: this arrangement benefits me far more than
it does you, you must take great care from here forward, or this will end in tragedy.”

55

The only downside to the “arrangement” that I could find was that, once again, I could only hear his
voice and did not have occasion to stare at him anymore. I also frequently forgot that he could listen to
thoughts.
“I find myself glad,” he growled one day, “that living flesh cannot pass through iron, else your thoughts
might convince me to pull you into my den. I shall have you know, you are quite pleasant to look at as
well.”
The small hallway suddenly felt stuffy and overly warm. Dust billowed into the lines of light which
slipped in through the blinds and the silence between us waited heavily.
“And what would be the consequence of that?” I asked solicitously.
I could almost taste the difference in his aura; something shifted in his presence and my heart skipped
beats wildly.
“Pleasure for me, ma petite,” he whispered, his breath filling my ear as if nothing separated us, “death
for you.”

56

His warning didn’t stop me from sitting outside his door every day. There was something about the
daytime that seemed to make him more open with me, and his sudden honesty—the intimacy of it—
was intoxicating.
“How did you become a vampire?” I ventured one afternoon. “Is it really just a bite?”
“You doubt that tale?”
“Well, it seems impractical,” I said, “I mean, with as many hundreds of people as you must have bitten,
and as many hundreds of others of you kind must have bitten—there would be thousands of you,
maybe millions, if that was all there was to it.”
“An astute observation,” he said warmly. “You are correct. There is more to it. It is more the breath than
the bite. Prey are bitten. Kin are breathed into existence.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“You’re mortal,” he laughed, “you aren’t meant to.”

57

The week of finals I told Raphael that I would be staying after class at the university’s library until late at
night, for some last minute cramming. Even once I had explained the concept to him, he could not find it
anything but laughable.
“You mean to say, that you have it in your mind that it is best to deprive yourself of sleep—a mortal
requirement, last I checked—in the hopes that you might learn what you could not be bothered to learn
while fully rested?”
“It is a custom of modern students,” I said indignantly, “An honored university tradition.”
“It is a custom of odd students,” he laughed, “If I were not so famished for the hunt, I would visit you at
your library and observe it.”
I suddenly wanted to ask him if he killed his prey, and how he got away with it if he did. But the moment
to ask came and went and I couldn’t find the courage. If he had read the thought in my mind, he gave no
indication of it. His cheerful mood lasted until I headed off to my study session.

58

I met Gina at our usual table on the third floor. We always sat next to the glass half wall of the balcony
that overlooked the lower floors—that way we could keep an eye out for people we knew and drop bits
of paper onto unwary TAs who happened by.
“Feeling good about tomorrow’s Chem. finals?” she asked.
I nodded, “As good as I ever feel.”
“You’ll do fine,” Gina smiled, “you’ve been studying really hard this semester.”
I blushed, but not because it was true. I had been studying. However, I had been studying Alchemy, not
Chemistry. And Raphael, my mind added, unbidden.
Gina smiled broadly at me.
“Or maybe not,” she teased, as if she had suddenly gained the ability to read minds, “come on girl, out
with it: is he cute? Rich? Older or Younger?”
“How did you guess?” I stammered.
“Oh please,” she laughed, “girlfriends can just tell.”

59

I didn’t confess very much about him. Older. Don’t know if he’s rich. Hot more than cute. Killer French
accent when he lets it slip. The girl talk felt nice, and for a moment, I caught myself thinking of him the
way I had any other boyfriend. I had to actively remind myself that he was a vampire. Raphael couldn’t
snuggle with me on the couch while watching a movie. He couldn’t take me out to dinner or buy me
flowers on Valentines. There was nothing normal about my relationship with him, and most importantly:
I could never introduce him to Gina, or anyone else I loved.
“I met him on the internet,” I lied, sighing into it to make it sound more genuine, “so I’m trying not to
get my hopes up until I know he’s for real.”
“You and your mystery men,” Gina shook her head.
The lights in the library flickered, signaling to the students that it was time to head home.
“2:00am already?” Gina said, “Time flies. You want me to walk with you?”
“That’s alright,” I said, stretching and gathering my things. “There are lots of people heading that way. I
should be fine.”
60

Home was only two blocks away, and the night was less shadowy, less threatening, under the glow of a
full moon. There was a brisk wind but the warmth of the day stuck to the pavement and the chill was
manageable— as long as I stuck to the street and stayed away from the deeper shadows of the trees
and lawns.
Still, I found myself on edge. The voices in the distance did little to quell the sudden shiver of fear that
danced down my spine. I was alone on that segment of the street. The houses were dark, and the badly
wired streetlights flickered on and off along the walkway, making the shadows move like creatures of
substance.
Suddenly, one of Rapheal’s lectures came back to me in a rush, and I decided that it was as good a time
as any to try the Alchemy I had been studying.
“Quod est Inferius est sicut quod est Superius, et quod est Superius est sicut quod est Inferius,” I said, my
mind struggling to recall the correct pronunciation of the charm ” ad perpetranda Miracula Rei Uni—”
The lights along the street suddenly steadied and I gasped, my charm forgotten. A single dark silhouette
appeared, shuddering into existence without pretense, and walked noiselessly toward me. Red eyes
flashed and I found I could neither speak nor move.

61

It was a man. Or it appeared to be. There was something so malevolent in its smile that I instinctively
had my doubts. The truth was readily apparent when a small breeze tossed a leaf at him and it passed
through his shoulder, disrupting his image for a moment. A vampire, I realized.
He was wearing jeans and a black silk blouse, his long dark hair tacked at the base of his neck in a small
curled ponytail. If he hadn’t been such a frightening presence, he might have been able to pull off
looking attractive.
“Alchemy?” he said, “How quaint and utterly useless.”
He leaned close to me. His nearness, the way he smacked his lips when he spoke and kept mouthing
words even as his voice faded away, the overpowering stench of his cologne—I shuddered: there was
nothing good about him.
He breathed in leisurely. Then hungrily. His eyes flashed again.
“I know that smell,” he whispered, “Toussaint. Yes. Very well—you escape tonight, little doe, but only
because I am a gentlemen. Tell your master he had best teach you stronger magic, if he hopes to keep
you from me.”
A moment later the streetlight above me flickered and he was gone.