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Might as well keep going.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Let’s do it.”
•••••••
Snowshoeing proved a lot morestrenuous than I remembered. Then again, the last time I’d done it had been more than ten years ago, when I was a lot younger and more used to regular physical activity.
This was also the first time I’d ever tried it in the middle of the night with a vampire, which may have also been a factor.
“Am I doing this right?” Reggie had stopped a few yards back, kneeling in the snow to adjust the straps of his snowshoes. While I was bundled up in so many layers I was practically unrecognizable, he wore only a long-sleeved flannel shirt and a pair of blue jeans. “I feel like these aren’t on properly.”
I trudged through the snow to where he stood. It was so bright out there, with the moon and starlight reflecting off the snow, that the headlamps we wore were practically unnecessary. I crouched beside him and rapped once on his snowshoe closest to me. “They look fine to me.”
He let out a frustrated breath. “If I’m wearing them properly, why is snowshoeing sodifficult?”
I laughed. “It just is. Do you want to turn back?”
“No,” he said quickly. “You still have eighty-seven minutes left of the two-hour break you promised me. Let’s soldier on.”
It was always so quiet out there. That was one of the most welcome differences between regular life in Chicago and our visits up here to Wisconsin. It was even quieter now, with the snow blanketing everything and absorbing all sound. The crunching snow beneath our feet and our labored breathing were the only noises disturbing the stillness surrounding us.
Eventually, we came to a wooden shed that my grandfather would use on hunting trips back when he still came up here regularly. “Let’s take a break,” Reggie said. When I made no objection, he pulled me inside of it and closed the door behind us. It was warmer in there, despite it not having any heat or electricity. The broken floorboards suggested no one had been in there for a while.
“I think this is abandoned,” Reggie said, echoing my thoughts.He sat down on the small bench inside the shed and motioned for me to join him. I did, careful to leave some space between our bodies. “If it belonged to someone, I wouldn’t have been able to just walk in.”
Behind the shed, someone had built what looked like a little snow family. Small footprints all around the scene suggested this was the work of some of the kids who lived around here.
“I would have liked to have met the children who made these,” Reggie said suddenly, sounding wistful. “I have a lot in common with kids, you know.”
That surprised me. “Really? How do you mean?”
“We both live without fear,” he explained. “Though it comes from different places. Kids see the world and live each day without fear because they don’t yet know what they have to lose. I see the world and live each day without fear because I know all too well there’s nothing left for me to lose.”
His words were tinged not just with melancholy, but with resignation as well. Gone was the giddy chatterbox who nudged me out the door when he thought I was working too hard. The man who took nothing seriously and seemed willing to try anything as long as it was fun. In his place was a man who seemed both ancient and bone weary.
It was simple reflex, putting my hand on his arm. I was driven by an instinctive need to provide comfort to someone clearly in need of it. He gave no sign that he wanted to talk about what was going through his mind, but before I could talk myself out of it, I went there anyway.
“What triggered this mood?” I asked. “Is it something I said?”
He looked horrified. “What?No! Of course not.” He shook his head. “I guess I’m just…thinking.” He cleared his throat andshifted beside me on the bench. “Are you sure you want to have this conversation? The whole point of this was to give you a well-deserved break. Not to listen to me be maudlin.”
Even as he said the words, I could see in his changed expression that hewantedto talk about it. “It’s fine,” I said. “You can tell me.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you remember the night we met? How I said people were chasing me?”
I thought back to that night. Me, walking out of my building completely distracted and worried about being late for my family’s dinner. Reggie, sprinting down the sidewalk, slamming into me and making me drop everything I’d been carrying. The way he’d asked if I could either pretend to kiss him or pretend to laugh to keep his pursuers from finding him. The way I’d thought, even as it was happening, that the entire encounter must have been some bizarre fever dream.
“Vaguely,” I quipped. “Werepeople chasing you?”
“Yes.”
My breath caught. “Who?”
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall of the shed. “The group calls itself The Collective. They’re like…I don’t know. This weird vigilante vampire cult, I guess?”
“A vigilante vampire cult?” A shiver ran down my spine. “Sounds ominous.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Each member can trace themself back through bloodlines to a group of powerful vampires who died at a party over a hundred years ago.” He sighed. “Technically, I can, too. Though that’s the beginning and end of what we have in common.” He looked at me with a familiar gleam in his eye, and it struck me that I must be getting to know him pretty well, because I guessed he was about to deflect with humor a momentbefore he did it. “I’m afarbetter dancer than anyone in The Collective, for starters. My parties are better, too.”
