Extraits

Post-Epilogue Epilogue proposé sur le site de Jenna Levine

A Few Weeks Later)

A note from Cassie Greenberg, written in sparkly purple ink on a blank white notecard, left for Frederick J. Fitzwilliam on their new kitchen table

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Hi Frederick,

I’ll be home late tonight. The administration is holding a meeting to discuss the upper school’s hiring needs for next year. I don’t know how late I’ll be but hopefully it’ll be before you have to go out for the evening.

Love you,

Cassie ps: Also, before I chicken out — there’s something important I want to talk about when I get home

#

Frederick

I stared at the concoction on the stove, willing it to bubble the way the recipe I’d found on that website called “Pinterest” said it would.

When staring at it didn’t make it bubble faster, I began glaring at it. To my great consternation, that didn’t seem to work, either.

“God’s thumbs,” I muttered. I dragged a hand through my hair in frustration—remembering, too late, that part of my hand had canned tomato substance on it. If I’d been wearing the ridiculous apron Reginald bought me when I’d told him I wanted to get better at cooking for Cassie, I probably could have wiped my hands on it instead of making an entire mess of my head.

But I refused to even touch that apron on principle. Why did they even make aprons with smirking cartoon phalluses on them? I was certain Reginald only gave it to me to get under my skin. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of wearing it.

I grabbed a dishcloth and wiped what I could off my face. Getting it out of my hair would have to wait until I’d finished this meal.

However long that might take.

The recipe—the person who shared it to Pinterest had called it Shakshuka Aromatic—encouraged anyone trying it to modify the listed ingredients and their quantities based on how the dish smelled and tasted as it was prepared. That made sense to me in theory, though it left me at an obvious disadvantage. I was a dab hand at following written instructions (as the hideous but well-assembled bookshelves Cassie and I recently acquired from IKEA could attest). But all human food smelled, and tasted, more or less the same to me. Which was to say: mildly to moderately awful.

For Cassie, though, I would try. She was working so hard in her new job. Even before she’d started it, she rarely took time to prepare healthy meals for herself. Who better than me to ensure she was getting the healthy human food she needed? I was more or less a house-boyfriend these days, with little to do in my extensive leisure time besides reading Regency romance novels (I would deny this at stake-point before ever admitting it to Reginald) and catching up on my favorite TikToks (now that I knew what TikTok was).

Suffice it to say: I had a lot of time on my hands and an undying desire to make Cassie happy.

So when my beloved had come home the other night from dinner with work colleagues and raved about a dish called shakshuka, I knew I had to reproduce it for her. There were a lot of things I couldn’t do for her. Like, for example—be mortal. Or understand most of the jokes in the television shows she liked me to watch with her. Or warm her up with my body heat when I gave her a hug or after we made love. But now that we were living together officially, making certain she had healthy, tasty meals was one thing I was determined to get right. No matter how many failures there were along the way.

(And there had been many.)

(Not that I’d ever admit that to Reginald, either.)

This effort wouldn’t be a failure though.

No.

This time, I was a vampire determined.

I was so focused on the dinner-to-be on the stove and how it steadfastly refused to bubble properly that I didn’t even notice Cassie had arrived home until I felt her arms go around my waist.

“Hey,” she said, molding her soft, warm body to my back. Tugging me close. Wasting no time, I set down the wooden spoon I’d been holding in my grip like a vise and turned in the circle of her arms to face her. The subtly erotic scent of her blood, of her, thrummed through me, filled my nostrils. Just as it always did.

I buried my face in her sweet-smelling hair to distract from the way her scent aroused me. Lavender, and mint—and her. I would never get enough of this. Not even if I lived one thousand lifetimes.

“Hi,” I said. Grinning, despite myself. I always seemed to be smiling when I was with her. I couldn’t help it. She made me happy. I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, just because I could. “You said you wouldn’t be home until later.”

“The meeting ran short.” She pulled back to look at me, then frowned. “You have tomato sauce on your cheek. And… and in your hair, I think.”

I winced. “How bad is it?”

She laughed. “Bad. Come here.” She took the dishcloth I’d used moments ago and ran it under the kitchen faucet. “What are you making?”

“Shakshuka.”

“So that’s what that delicious smell is,” she said, then groaned. The sound went straight to my groin. Before Cassie, getting an erection hadn’t involved a complicated formula of blood, venom, and sheer dumb luck. Now, though, the sound of her unfiltered pleasure would have been enough for it to happen all on its own. I knew better than to question it.

“I don’t know if I’m doing it right,” I admitted. “I left out the garlic for uh… obvious reasons. But you said you liked this dish, so I thought I could—”

My thoughts scattered as Cassie leaned in close and pressed the cool, wet dishcloth to my face. She began to rub away the tomato sauce, gentle strokes against my skin that shouldn’t have affected me as much as they did. But it was like this every time she touched me, had been since the day she moved in as my new roommate and turned the very nature of my existence upside down. Everything collapsed in that moment down to her warm breath fanning soft and sweet across my lips, and to her soft little hand—dishcloth now forgotten—cupping my cheek.

Giving in to impulse, I ducked my head and kissed her, holding back the full extent of my ardor only with great difficulty.

“Is it gone?” I murmured against her lips.

“Is what gone?” A small thrill went through me at the breathiness in her voice. At the knowledge that, for reasons passing understanding, I had a similar effect on this marvelous woman to the one she had on me.

“The tomato stuff,” I clarified, grinning again.

“Oh.” She pulled back, blinking slightly. She chewed on her bottom lip. “Mostly? You’ll need a shower to get it out of your hair. But before you do that… can we talk?”

My mind went to the note she’d left that morning. When I’d first seen it, after she’d left for work, I’d worried about what she might have wanted to discuss that was important enough to give me advance warning. Especially since she hadn’t mentioned what she wanted to talk about. Was she still upset about my forgetting to take out the garbage last week? I hadn’t thought so—I’d thought the kisses she’d given me later that night meant all was forgiven—but I was still getting used to cohabitating with a human so perhaps I’d thought wrong.

Either way, I’d forced myself to put her note out of mind the rest of the day. I’d been too focused on getting the ingredients for the special dinner I wanted to make for her exactly right, and then on the preparation of the meal itself.

But at the anxious look on her face, I was concerned all over again.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

I reached out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She hadn’t gotten her hair cut in a while and it now fell just past her shoulders. I liked the way she looked with longer hair. Then again, I liked the way she looked, full stop.

“You’re worried about something,” I pressed.

She shook her head again, taking my hand in both of hers. My eyes fell helplessly to the ring she now wore. The ring I’d given her a few weeks prior to symbolize maybe, one day. Her hands were so much smaller than mine, delicate and warm. Just like the rest of her.

I could consume her, swallow her up, so easily. Without even trying.

The thought of it never failed to make me dizzy.

“I’m not worried,” she said. “I’ve just… made up my mind.”

I blinked down at her, not following. “Made up your mind? About what?”

She held my gaze, then lifted the hand that bore her ring. Our ring.

“About this.”

My mind shorted out.

#

Cassie

I saw it in his face the instant Frederick understood what I was trying to say.

His eyes went wide as saucers, and he stumbled backwards until he was sitting in one of our new kitchen chairs.

“You… do you mean to say that— ” He tripped over his words, voice hoarse, his dark gaze still locked on mine. “Are you telling me that—”

“Yes.” I pulled out the chair next to his and sat beside him. I took a deep breath and tried to steady my nerves. I’d been a wreck all day, knowing that tonight would be the night I’d tell Frederick I wanted to stay with him forever. I’d lied a little bit when I said my meeting had ended early. The truth was, I had ended it early, pretending I was ill and needed to go home. I just couldn’t stand waiting another second to tell Frederick, now that I’d definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, decided what I wanted.

“I need to hear you say it,” he rasped. “Please.”

He took my hand again, gently kissing my palm before pressing it to his cheek. Soon, my flesh would be as cool as his was. That thought would have terrified me six months ago. Now, though? I was ready. I loved him. He’d would make sure I didn’t experience any of it alone. Not the physical pain of transformation, nor the awkwardness that might ensue with my friends and family, afterwards.

He would be there, right by my side. Just like he’d been there for me, for everything, from the day I’d first moved in with him and become his roommate.

He was still gazing at me, expectant. I smiled at him, then said, “I want you to make me a vampire.”

His eyes slipped closed. “Are you sure?” His voice was low and urgent, barely above a whisper. “Cassie, are you certainthis is what you want?”

“Yes.” I reached out, and tilted his chin so he would open his eyes and look at me. When he did, his eyes were fathomless pools, boring into mine with an intensity that still made me weak in the knees, even after all these months. “I’ve never been surer of anything.”

“But why?” He leaned closer, until our faces were mere inches apart. He cradled my face in his large hands, his thumbs tracing anxious patterns along my cheeks.

“Because I love you.” I gestured broadly at the apartment—our apartment. We were moving soon, into a new home, but this place had gradually become a home for both of us, our two disparate lives coming together to blend into a perfect new whole. I nodded at the shelves behind me, the ones we got a few weeks ago from IKEA. I knew he hated them, hated every second he’d spent putting them together for me, but he insisted we get them anyway, just because I liked them. Because he’d wanted our home to feel like my home, too.

Then I motioned to the stove, to the dinner that—if I was being completely honest—smelled atrocious, but that I knew he’d worked hard on because he thought it would make me happy.

All he wanted, it seemed, was my happiness. For me to believe in myself as much as he had always believed in me. It felt only natural for me to want our time together to never end.

“You’re the most wonderful, loving, amazing person I’ve ever met,” I continued, when he just stared at me, awe-struck. “I’d sort of like to be with you forever if it’s all the same with you.”

His throat worked. “We could get married without me turning you,” he offered. “That way we could be together in an official way for your forever without you having to change who—what—you are.”

At the nearly desperate look on his face, a terrible thought surfaced that hadn’t occurred to me before. “Do you not want to have me for your forever?” In all the little things he said and did for me every day, I’d assumed we wanted the same thing. Just last week, I’d even found a copy of a strange book called What to Expect When You Become a Vampire on the coffee table.

Surely that had meant…

But maybe I’d read the signs wrong.

He looked stricken. “How could you even think that I don’t want you for as long as you’re willing to stay?” He pulled me into a hug so tight it felt like he was trying to gather me up, pull me inside himself. When he spoke again, his voice was gravel-rough. “Cassie, you are my world.”

“Then why don’t you seem to want this?”

He hesitated a moment. “I want this more than I have a right to. I just…” He shook his head. “You need to be sure. It’s...”

“It’s what?” I prompted.

He blew out a breath. “It’s… huge. And irreversible. You won’t be human anymore. You won’t be able to eat what you like anymore. No more Lucky Charms, or those horrible Hot Doritos you love so much. The only thing you’ll be able to consume for the rest of eternity is blood.”

“I know that,” I said. I wasn’t stupid.

“Everything will change if you do this,” he went on. “Not just your diet. You could potentially still keep your job, after the brief initial bloodlust phase passes, but it’ll be… different.” A pause. “Everything will be very different.”

“I know that, too,” I said. “But what I know most of all is that this is what I want. I’ll figure the rest of it out, I promise. You’ll help me figure it out.” When Frederick still looked unconvinced, I moved to sit on his lap, straddling him. I leaned forward until my mouth was just a hairsbreadth away from his. I didn’t miss the way his breath caught, how his eyes glazed over slightly. The way they drifted down to my lips.

“Cassie,” he whispered.

“Make me yours, forever, Frederick.”

His chest heaved—once, twice— and then he crushed me to him once more.

“Okay,” he whispered, reverent. Grateful. His arms banded so tight around me I no longer knew where I ended and he began. He grinned broadly, kissing my forehead, then my cheeks. Again, and then again. “Okay.”

~fin~

"How did you know to ask about TikTok, then ?"

A pause. "I thought it was a new kind of music", he admitted, a bit sheepishly.