It’s the next night. Silviu just left. OMG. Scandalous Orly!

  No, not really. Dear Journal, let me tell you what happened.

  After I texted Silviu, I got dressed. I slipped into a black minidress and accented with lots of diamonds. And though my calves aren’t even developed, I put on high heels.

  At just after eleven, the doorbell rang. This time, Rosanna answered it, invited Silviu in, and announced his arrival to me, even though I could hear it all going on from the living room. The formalities felt stupid.

  Silviu was holding a bottle. “I brought scotch.”

  “A man after my own heart.”

  “I hope the brand is okay. It was the best I could get.” He meant, on short notice, or really on no notice, but he couldn’t say that to the imparateasa.

  “Rosanna, you should go out.”

  “Yes, Imparateasa.”

  Sorry, Rosanna. Talking to you like this is weird, I said to her telepathically.

  Soon enough, I had Silviu alone. We brought the bottle and two tumblers into the backyard and sat, side by side, but angled slightly toward each other, in front of the fire pit which was already burning. The night air was remarkably cool for June, but against the heat of the flames, the atmosphere was refreshing. As we sipped the scotch he had so thoughtfully brought, I kept watching to see if his gaze would ever glance over my girlish legs which, with my minidress slightly riding up my thighs, were in full view, crossed and bare over those spiked heels. But he didn’t seem to notice all that skin. His eye contact was steady and I worried it would make my cheeks flush noticeably enough that the depth of its rosy hue couldn’t easily be explained away by the warmth of the fire.

  “I imagine you’re wondering why I called you here.”

  “I was happy to receive your invitation, Imparateasa.”

  “Yes, well, when I was in Bucharest, I noticed many of the younger Cob?lcescu looked up to you. I admired you greatly for this and therefore I wish to get to know you better.”

  I realize that doesn’t really sound like me but that’s because I rehearsed how I was gonna explain myself before he came over because, even though permissible as imparateasa, I couldn’t find the gall to say, “I, the imparateasa, desire your favors and command you to get naked at once.” (Even that sounds a little rehearsed.)

  “I am honored, Imparateasa, that you found anything in me which to admire. Of course I would never contradict you, but I assure you, most humbly, I am undeserving of the regard given me by the younger members of our coven. Despite this, I’m very happy to share anything you wish to know about me, though I’m uncertain of how much will be newly of interest to you beyond what you already learned when you scribbled me in Bucharest.”

  Shit. That’s right. I already scribbled him. I could’ve dug up that scribble and studied it more closely. How could I have come up with such a flimsy excuse for making him come over?

  “I find this to be more intimate than scribbling.” Was that even true? It’s like I was covering my intentions with verbal diarrhea. “I don’t plan to interview you. I just want to see you more often and get to know you naturally. Of course, I want our time together to be enjoyable for you as well.”

  He told me the pleasure was all his and that he’d be grateful to see me whenever I could find time for him and polite stuff like that and I didn’t know if he was just saying it because he had to or if there was the slightest hope he might mean at least a little bit of it.

  His glass was empty soon after mine and this pleased me as most whom I drink with, excluding Hisato, struggle to keep up with me. Most are nowhere close. I smiled as he refilled our tumblers.

  As we continued to drink we didn’t exchange favorite movies, favorite bands, favorite seasons, favorite vacation spots. No favorite anythings. No celebrity hall passes or body counts either. It could’ve been because I said I wasn’t gonna interview him, but even if I hadn’t said that, I don’t think our conversation would’ve gone in that direction. There’s something about Silviu that wouldn’t go there. I think he’s not playful. At least he’s not playful in the way Vance is playful. I crossed that out because I didn’t want Vance’s name to appear in this entry about Silviu because I’m trying not to compare them. So instead of all those trivial things, he told me what it was like growing up as an only child in Bac?u and what his parents were like before he disappeared on them at age twenty after becoming a vampire and how after he watched over them until they passed, suffering as they suffered with his absence. He only briefly mentioned Alina, the woman he loved but was too young to turn, because I had seen that loss in his life when I scribbled him. On a lighter note, he shared that if he weren’t a vampire, for a career he’d like to be a local politician in a small city because he felt at that level he could effect real change without being too burdened and tempted by corruption. But then he also said that might all be too idealistic, and in that case maybe he’d be happier if he joined a circus, but he had no idea what he could do there. When I pressed him to pick something, he said maybe he’d try to learn to ride a unicycle on a tightrope; he just wouldn’t want to exploit circus animals. He told me his thoughts on religion in general and then his thoughts on a couple religions in particular. He talked about his hopes for the environment, climate change, and the roles and necessity of technology in the caretaking of the Earth. There were other topics as well, and I said lots of things too, but what I’m trying to convey is that the things he talked about went far below the surface of listing your favorite things and which celebrity you’d like to fuck. He surprised me. I wasn’t expecting his conversation to be like this, and though I enjoyed listening to how strongly he felt about things, and though he said it all in a non-showoff, non-mansplaining way, I wondered if maybe I wasn’t serious enough, thoughtful enough, or deep enough for him.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  Two things he said stood out especially. I’m gonna write them down verbatim so they’re not muddled with my viewpoints.

  “Is it true there’s a vampiric power that would allow us to turn into seawater?”

  “Yes. But from what I know it’s rare. Is that a power you would like to possess?”

  “Very much.”

  “Why that power in particular?”

  “I like the ocean. I’d never been as a mortal. Now I can’t get enough of it. Often, I wish I could go out to where it’s deep and sink and sink and just be there floating, drifting, far below the surface.”

  “Couldn’t you do that without turning into seawater? You wouldn’t drown.”

  “Yes. I’ve done that. But as seawater, I think it would feel different.”

  “Different how?”

  “There’d be less self. Maybe I’d be nothing but I’d become part of everything. I’m sorry, Imparateasa. You must find me strange.”

  I told him I didn’t find him strange and that I think I understood his feelings. He thanked me, but maybe I said I understood too quickly because the more I think about it now, the more unsure I feel. In the moment, what I wanted to ask but didn’t was, “What happened to you that makes you want to disappear like that?” I’m glad I didn’t ask because now I see how selfish that question is because I would have only asked it wanting his answer to align with my reasons when I want to disappear, and do disappear by not coming out of my coffin for stretches of nights. Furthermore, maybe his being nothing but part of everything isn’t about disappearing at all. While caught up in that conversation, I felt like I had been taking my first steps toward getting closer to him, but now that he’s gone home I see I hadn’t understood him in the least.

  The other thing I wanted to record was when we were looking up at the stars.

  “Kristy once told me she liked knowing that those are the same stars the Trojans and Greeks looked at as they fought for Helen. It’s kinda romantic, isn’t it?”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Kristy was my fledgling. She died in the war.”

  “Kristy Amare. I remember, Imparateasa. You mentioned her when Evike died. I’m sorry you lost someone so close.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad her name is remembered. What about you, Silviu? What do you think of when you look up at the stars?”

  “Imparateasa, I fear my answer might be too glum for the occasion.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “If it pleases you, Imparateasa. When I look at the stars, I think that even though we’re immortal, we’ve lived very little. Those stars have been living and dying for billions of years and we immortals are at best what, six thousand, seven thousand years old? It makes me feel we’re hardly immortal at all. And the mortals, the humans I mean, with the destructive path they’re on, when they make themselves extinct, where does that leave us? There’d be no more blood. It feels presumptuous to me to call ourselves immortal, because we won’t last.” He poured the remainder of the scotch in my tumbler. “Bottle’s empty. Apropos, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But it’s not doomsday yet. There’s a lot more inside. In the kitchen and at the wet bar.”

  He asked if he could get us another bottle. I agreed and he asked what I would prefer. I told him after he had treated me to a bottle of scotch, it should be his turn to choose. He surprised me again when he returned with a bottle of rum and shot glasses. It didn’t take long until we were on our fifth shots. And it was around this point that things shifted. I no longer felt so out of my depth and began to feel more at ease with him. And this delighted me.

  “Imparateasa, I think I’m drunk. But I’m gonna drink more.” He poured us both shots and then threw his head back as he took his, and left it in that position, resting on the headrest of his chair and staring up at the night sky. He lifted his empty glass and said, in a slightly raised, slightly slurred voice, “You live forever, you fucking stars!” We laughed. He then sat back forward to pour another round. This time, he lifted his shot glass and swung it back and forth like a pendulum as he sang, “Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!”

  “I gather you made your trip to Disneyland.”

  “Last night, Imparateasa!” He poured. “Drink up me hearties, yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!” We drank, laughing together but at different levels of sloppiness as he was drunker than I was. “Maybe I wouldn’t ride a unicycle. Maybe I’d be a pirate on the high seas.”

  I leaned forward and ran my fingers through his hair. “Black Beard with reddish tint?”

  “And a fucking eye patch!” He didn’t seem to mind me touching him. He poured another round, and holding his shot glass, he stood up and ran unsteadily, happily singing that yo ho ho song, downed the rum, threw the shot glass over his shoulder, it landed on the grass, and jumped into the deep end of the pool, fully dressed. When he resurfaced he was still singing the same lines. It was clear he didn’t know much beyond the chorus, but neither did I.

  I stood up and walked to the pool and stood at the edge, watching him floating on his back, drunk and now only humming. I stepped out of my heels and jumped in with him, still wearing my minidress, which clung even tighter now that it was wet. We both floated in the pool on our backs, silent and not splashing. I stared at the stars and I think he was too. I don’t know if he was seeing true immortality up there in the Milky Way. I was seeing its magic. It probably sounds like I could’ve made a move, but I feel like I would’ve had to force making it into that kind of moment when it naturally wasn’t. I’m not saying there couldn’t ever be a moment between us, it just wasn’t right then.

  Eventually, we ended up in bed. Dawn was still hours away, but I told him he should stay the hours of daylight. Out of our wet clothes, I wore light pink silk pajamas, and he wore a white Turkish cotton towel around his waist, leaving him bare chested. Rosanna and I didn’t have anything that would fit him. It was the first time I had seen him with no shirt and below this I could discern the contour of him beneath the towel. I admit I felt aroused at the sight of him but this feeling slipped into something tranquil as we lay embraced and our breathing eventually matched. He didn’t wake when Rosanna passed through, headed below. She smiled but she wasn’t teasing me. She too had many times slept in my arms in order to revive her strength during the hours of daylight while outside her casket. But I wondered, would he be in my arms, would I be in his, had we a spare funerary box? I really don’t know. I suppose it would first depend on whether he felt he truly had a choice. By commanding him to stay, hadn’t I, in effect, also commanded him to share my bed? But unless I’m wrong, the embrace we did share, while not clearly amorous, wasn’t entirely platonic either.

  If I’m honest, I don’t know if I could ever command someone to be my lover. The idea that I could with a Cob?lcescu excited me because of the sheer prospect of romance, but when I place a real person into the role of the desired, in this instance Silviu, I don’t think I could command what I’d sense as not his will.

  I certainly don’t want it to have to be that way. But as I sit here writing this, again alone, I wonder how eternal growth of frustration and despair might eventually change what I’m capable of. It would almost be better if I weren’t empress and not bestowed this right to demand whatever I want of my coven members. Were it not for that, this wouldn’t even be a thing I’d need to consider.

  But whatever that was last night with Silviu, it was nice.

  https://patreon.com/rt! There, you’ll find lots of bonus content not available anywhere else!

  https://blackwaxvampire.com!