The house is buzzing with electricity that only Annie could create. She bustles through our small kitchen as if it is her own little universe and she, its maker, the celestial body around which everything else revolves. I watch her in quiet amusement as she grabs a bowl here, a whisk there, zooming about like a madwoman. She's glowing. No, literally glowing. A warm light, the sort of twinkling white light you see on Christmas trees and in shop windows seems to emanate from somewhere deep within her. Almost like a halo. It glows brightly for a few seconds as she grabs a measuring cup from the cupboard, then dies down again. I find it fascinating. Just one of the many strange additions to her skill set, as it were.

She smiles more, these days. Real smiles. Not false little flickerings of hope, delusions of Owen and a happier time, a time that never fully existed. Now she smiles because of real, genuine, concrete things. She doesn't dwell on the past, on the what-ifs of a life that ended all too quickly. She smiles, and it's for today. For right now. Her eyes are no longer…for lack of a better word, dead. There's life in them yet. Like she feels she can do anything and everything she wants.

And today, she wants to make a birthday cake. George's birthday cake, to be more specific. Chocolate with chocolate icing, his favorite. Right now he's out with Nina, but when he gets home there'll be homemade cake and presents and our two big grinning faces waiting for him. He needs this. The last few weeks have been…intense. He could benefit more than ever from a bit of normalcy. And I'm glad Annie is here to help give that to him. Besides, as a vampire - well, I've never been much interested in cooking my meals.

But Annie is all about domesticity, isn't she? There's something very endearing about the cups and cups of tea covering every surface of every room, the way she hoovers the living room sometimes twice a day and insists on doing the laundry when we're out. Well, maybe some feminists would beg to differ on how endearing that actually is. And George has described her behavior as "anal" and "annoying," on more than one occasion but, really, who is he to talk?

It's just Annie.

"OK Mitchell, this is the labor intensive part. Come over here," She beckons, and I join her at the counter.

"What can I do?"

"Eggs."

"Eggs?"

"Yes. I want you to crack in the eggs, slowly, while I stir them into the batter. Do you think you can do that for me?" She fixes a gaze on me that strikes me as more akin to someone passing along the information that the fate of the Free World rests on my shoulders.

I smile weakly. "Yeah, sure. I tink I can handle cracking a few eggs…Why am I cracking a few eggs?"

"Because," Annie answers with a withering yet amused look, "The yolk from the egg is like…the glue that brings all the ingredients together. Keep up. Now crack, I say."

I pick the first one off the counter; it feels cold and smooth between my fingers. Annie holds the whisk just above the surface of the mixture, waiting. Crack, goes the egg against the edge of the counter. Plop, goes the yolk - right in the center of the bowl. It looks like a blob. I half expect it to start moving. I cast an expectant glance over to Annie.

A huge grin starts on one corner of her face and works its way to the other end. "Mitchell! You're cooking!" She gives me a quick hug before she starts beating the egg into the batter.

It's strange, touching Annie. Or even being around her, for that matter. She smells of nothing, in a way, and she feels like she's not really there. Cold, and far away. Like a memory. But I like being with her. I get to bask in her humanity without the temptation of…other things. In a way, it makes life in the real world somehow easier.

Because it never goes away, the thirst. It's like a sleeping giant, something awful slinking about in the darkest corners of my mind. Whispering from the shadows. Telling me that one taste of blood wouldn't hurt anyone. One little taste…But sometimes all I have to do is visualize George's disapproving glare or Annie's disappointed pout and…the ache dulls. Just enough to get through another day.

A calm settles over me as we stand at the counter together. It's strange. It's been well over ninety-years…but I feel like a child again. Maybe because of how wholly domestic this entire situation is, how it reminds me of my old home back in Ireland. The smells of flour and sugar in the air somehow conjure up images of my mother, even though I can no longer even picture her face clearly, or the sound of her voice.

I mention this out loud to Annie; the words come bubbling out of me before I even realize that they are. I carelessly crack another egg into the bowl and she whisks, starting up a soothing rhythm of metal against ceramic. There's silence for a bit except for that sound, and then,

"You've never talked about that."

"About what?"

"Before...when you were human. What was your mother like…if you don't mind my asking?"

A part of me does. But another part of me wants to gush out ever last minuscule little moment of my life before the war, before I met Herrick. I want to tell her about the creek not far from my house where I would play as a boy, about nights when I would lay in the grass and look up at the stars, thinking about how one day, I would be gone and they would all still be burning bright. Not knowing that they were all hazy reflections of stars that had burnt out millions of years before. Not knowing that I would probably outlive them all…

"I don't know, really. I don't have memories of her anymore. Not very vivid ones, anyway. It's mostly just feelings…she had the sweetest singing voice. She would sing me and my brothers to sleep at night….I can barely remember what she sounded like, though. But I remember feeling very safe. And happy."

"And that's how you feel now? Egg."

Crack. Plop. "Yes."

"Good."

"And now we wait!" I announce, closing the oven door carefully. The smell of the batter billows out in a cloud of heat and for a split-second I think how much I'm looking forward to digging into a slice. And then I remember, silly girl that I am, that I can't eat. Can't taste. That part of me is gone, now. I amble over to the kitchen table where Mitchell is seated, licking the cake batter off a wooden spoon. I glare at him.

"Something wrong, love?"

"How does it taste?"

Mitchell puts the spoon down on the table top and smiles knowingly. "It's OK. Nothing special."

My glare becomes more pointed. "Liar."

"I'm sorry, Annie."

"Don't be! At least I won't have to worry about gaining any weight now…Although I sort of wish I had done a bit more exercising that week I died. My arms still jiggle."

"Oh, shut up. You're pretty much perfect."

I roll my eyes dramatically but that's only to stop myself from giggling like a schoolgirl. I'm too easily flattered, and Mitchell, the liar, is too good at flattering. It must have something to do with his being a vampire. They're magnetic, aren't they? Enchanting. We look at each other, and as our eyes lock I can only imagine the number of people he's charmed in the past. The number of…victims.

I shake that thought out of my mind as quickly as it appears. It is not pleasant at all, thinking of Mitchell that way. I prefer to think of him as the Mitchell I know. The Mitchell who willingly drinks my cups and cups of tea and hot cocoa even though I know he'd rather not. The Mitchell who sometimes stays up into the wee hours of morning watching old movies with me because he knows I get bored and lonely when he and George are sleeping. The Mitchell who is good and kind and always there when I need a laugh or a shoulder to cry on.

My Mitchell.

"Shall we watch a movie till the cake is done?" Mitchell asks, and I nod, following him into the living room. He crouches down by our small but impressive DVD and cassette tape collection, asking me what it is I'd like to watch.

"As long as it isn't Laurel and Hardy I'm fine!" I answer, snuggling down into our lumpy brown couch. Mitchell turns around briefly to smirk sardonically at me before popping something into the DVD player. Then he walks over and sits beside me. The movie begins. It's Casablanca (why am I not surprised), and as the music swells and the title credits I've all but memorized by now begin to roll I find myself turning my attention to Mitchell's face. It's bloody mad. He's an old man. An old dead man. But he's so alive. Like me. What a world it is, I muse, that people like Mitchell and George and I can even exist. Or half exist, at the very least.

I put my head on Mitchell's shoulder as he begins to nod off, muttering the lines along with Humphrey Bogart beneath his breath. Before long, he's snoring. I stifle back my laughter, studying the rise and fall of his chest, and the frantic movement of his eyelids as he dreams. Dreams. I haven't dreamt in a long while. Years, actually. I've been afraid to sleep. I half expect it to be yet another impossibility for me, like drinking a cup of tea. And then, there's also the simple fact that I've been afraid to dream. What if I find something lurking in my mind that I'd rather not? Like those men, with their ropes and sticks, and their strange language that sounds like stone scraping against stone...

Mitchell stirs a bit in his sleep, mutters something unintelligible, and puts an arm around my shoulders. And just like that, the fear is gone. In that moment, I feel safe. I feel happy. Truly and genuinely, more so than I ever did when I was alive. I close my eyes and suddenly I feel as though I'm floating, millions of miles above the air.