"Feeling a little better?"
Maura was slouched against the headrest with her face hanging out the open window. The cool early-autumn air was clearing her head and somehow settling her stomach. It had been a long time since she'd drunk that much, she only just now was remembering the experience. She'd have a different sort of hangover in the morning, or what passed for the "morning after". Exhausted, and inexplicably depressed. The please-kill-me part was still processing but she knew from experience it would be over soon.
"Yeah, sumthin like that." Her verbal skills and mental clarity were still in flux. "Where's Nick?"
"Up ahead. I don't know how much you remember, but no way you could ride that high-speed bike with him. I'm giving you a lift home in my ratty old Subaru."
"Sorry… shouldn't have come I guess."
"Hey we've all been there. Some more than others."
A few moments of silence followed. Sherry was dying to ask the questions that she figured Maura may not answer cold sober. How long had she really been with Nick? Three-four years she'd told them at the bar, but that could be part of the charade. It didn't make sense. Since Eric had managed to survive the attacks of a limited series of immortals – neither one of them could bring themselves to use the descriptive "vampire", it was just too out-there – she and her brother had figured out that there was something about his biology that acted as a lure, a death sentence to the unwary. Like crack, that's what his blood was, and like addicts anywhere the immortals that'd found him were relentless in their desire but somehow seemed terrified to be discovered. By whom, Eric hadn't been able to tell. He just said it was as if they were looking over their shoulders as they struck, and his observant nature had saved his life the first time. So the second and third times he knew enough to react, not as if there were another mortal but as if there was something else beyond mortal that caught his attention. And, thus, theirs. Thankfully after about a half-dozen incidents in the past three years the attacks had stopped, as had Eric's awareness that predatory immortals might be nearby. Until tonight.
"So, you seem a little different, you and Nick. He's pretty low key and you're a little more party-oriented, no offense. How did you ever get together?" She knew the "official" story, of course, but wondered if there was more to it.
"Gofigger. Don' think I don' wonder myself." Suddenly Maura struggled to face her driver. "Hey, you ever love somebody so much it shamed you? Like, you swore you'd never, then you were, and it scares you?"
Sherry cast about for a suitable reply as she strained to see the taillight of Nick's bike. Never mind, she knew where the (former) Miller's place was. She thought she heard some code in Maura's question, and fought her instincts regarding Nick.
"He hurt you, honey? If you don't'want to go home I can turn around right now."
"No!" Maura jerked upright in alarm. "Never, he never, not like that." Well, that wasn't entirely true. There was that time, that drug that morphed him into a monster... she trailed off. "Other ways, yeah, sloppy I guess, he didn't ever mean to."
"Then what did you mean by being sick and tired of being reasonable? I thought maybe it meant putting up with shit you didn't want to put up with."
Christ, she was tempted. Sherry seemed like the type that would listen and process and maybe not judge. Like Janette, maybe, but less cynical. "Yeah, but who doesn't, huh? It's complicated…"
"Isn't it always."
Sherry decided not to force the issue. Maura may well have been in the thrall of a powerful immortal, or maybe Nick was in thrall to her, because of her odd condition. Not that Sherry, or Eric for that matter, had learned much about it aside from the very obvious. That immortals couldn't detect Eric's nature if he kept far enough away, and that if he didn't the consequences were dire. But if Eric could sense Maura was like him, why couldn't Maura do the same? Or maybe she had, and was keeping quiet about it, not knowing anyone else was aware of it. God, there were so many questions she wanted to ask! Eric was only 23, where Maura appeared to be in her late 30's. She must have some sort of knowledge and understanding that hadn't been available to Eric, if only because of her association with Nick. That in itself launched a raft of questions. At the top of the list: how did she survive? Why hadn't he killed her by now? Assuming what they said was true, that they'd been together for over three years, how did either one of them survive the other? And next on the list of questions, though perhaps even more important: how and upon whom did Nick feed? Certainly one mortal couldn't sustain his needs. But none of the random disappearances that surrounded the presence of the few other immortals were evident since the Knights had arrived in town. Did he feed on animals? And why could he be seen in the mirror behind the bar? Were there stereotypes in vampire lore, as there were in every other kind of society?
Sherry fought the urge to laugh, picturing herself marching into the library and requesting a Tory field guide to North American vampires. In spite of the surreal character of the situation, Sherry's thoughts kept returning to a very common sort of curiosity regarding Nick and Maura's domestic relationship. If either of them was "slave" to the other in any sense, it certainly didn't show. Their behavior and body language appeared no different than that of any other couple she could remember. Even Maura's drunken outburst was pretty normal, given the recent events Nick had related. Assuming of course even one word of it was true. He seemed so normal in most ways; she still found it hard to get her head around Eric's revelation of Nick's true nature. But Eric had never been wrong before; experience had been a harsh teacher. By the time she'd pulled into the dooryard of the red Cape (and noticed how unchanged it appeared, as though she'd expected bars on the windows, or a moat) Sherry decided to take things as they came. Nobody had been harmed since their arrival, and the newcomers were behaving like any others had in the past. If anything Nick seemed friendlier than most, and Maura… well, she was off to a rough start.
Maura was jolted from her doze when the car stopped. "Wha…" she struggled straighter, fumbled for her seatbelt, looked around in confusion. "Where's Nick?"
"Right here." He'd appeared as if from nowhere. In fact he was being very careful not to tap into his "unique skills"; Sherry just hadn't noticed him jogging down the walk. What she couldn't figure out is how he got there on the bike so much sooner than they had; he hadn't seemed to be speeding at all. Not worth wondering about, she decided, with so many other questions rattling in her mind. Having opened the passenger door, Nick was leaning in to help Maura with the seatbelt.
"Thank you, Sherry, I'm sorry to have put you out of your way," he was saying.
"No problem, these things happen. God knows they've happened to me from time to time… I'm glad I could help. I think the fresh air helped, what do you think?" she asked Maura.
"Yeah, my head's less mushy." Her voice was clearer and she felt not so much drunk now as mostly burnt out.
Nick faked a dodging move. "It's your stomach that worries me."
"Fuck you, Bats."
Bats? Sherry had to stifle a giggle. Now if that wasn't an appropriate nickname, nothing was. What she wouldn't give to be open about what she knew, but it wasn't the right time. If there'd ever be one. And things might not be what they seemed, in any case.
"Sorry, Sherry," Maura apologized, "Romeo and Juliet we ain't."
"You look okay to me. Right, I'll see you later."
Maura got out of the car with Nick's help, taking an experimental step to lean against the open window. "Shitty first impression, I guess. What's the usual number of days before someone can show their face again after a night like tonight?"
"24 hours should do it… this is the town that elegance forgot. 'Night, Knights."
"Thanks again, Sherry, we'll be in touch," Nick told her. "C'mon, you," he smiled at Maura. "Time to sleep it off."
Their conversation trailed behind them as they made their way to the front door.
"Well you were hoping I'd get drunk, remember?"
"Well you're one for two… you forgot about the 'willing' part."
When she'd backed out of the drive Sherry took a last look at her new acquaintances silhouetted by the light shining out the front door. Maura had stumbled, and Nick steadied her. They didn't seem to be speaking. Maura looked up at Nick and he pressed his forehead against hers then scooped her up in his arms to carry her inside. Seeing them there, Maura's arms wrapped around Nick's neck and her head resting on his shoulder as he carried her inside and toed the door shut, Sherry's doubt's about the nature of their relationship unraveled. Nobody could fake something like that, especially when they believed nobody was watching. She decided she'd tell Eric there was nothing to fear from these two.
Nick carried Maura up to the bedroom and sat her down on their new custom-made four-poster. No canopy, just four graceful finial-topped columns tapering up from the hand-carved head and footboards. Maura had recovered enough to notice a shift in Nick's demeanor, from confusion to solicitousness, as though he'd been the one who'd behaved like a frat party refugee. Underneath she could sense something harder.
"Nick? You okay?" she asked as she changed into the pj's he'd laid out on the bed. He wasn't changing yet, but seemed to be waiting for her to get settled. She noticed he'd also filled a small glass pitcher with water and had put it on the nightstand with a glass.
"I'm fine, Sweet. Don't forget to drink up, it'll help you feel better. " His medical incarnations hadn't been limited entirely to life-and-death situations; he'd attended to more than a few hangovers over the centuries.
When she downed a glass and crawled into bed he sat down next to her for a minute, looking at her with a curious mix of affection and chagrin. Before she could ask him again, he bent to kiss her and said, "I'll be back in a minute, I'm just going down to make sure the shades are shut and the lights off, okay?"
"Mmm, 'kay." She was asleep before she finished the words.
Nick rested his hand on her head for a moment. "Reasonable, you're right about that, " he said quietly. "Reasonable about my doubts, reasonable about my moods and my secrets and my mania to be who I can never be again, no matter how many people it hurt. Reasonable about my spiritual suicide attempt, and my unannounced waltz through the world with LaCroix. Reasonable when Schanke died and all I could see was my own pain. Reasonable about everything, as much as you could manage. Who wouldn't be tired out by now?" He kissed her forehead, carefully, so he wouldn't wake her, then lit the pillar candle (some habits would never be broken) and went downstairs.
After turning off the outside and living room lights, after checking the shades, Nick returned to the candle stand in the front hall where the recharge indicator of the cordless phone cast a wash of red light mortal eyes would barely have discerned. To his eyes it shone like a floodlight, in more ways than one. When he'd hurried in the door after riding home he'd bumped the small table and knocked the phone to the floor. When he'd retrieved it the number glowing in the caller i.d. display decoded the events of the previous few hours like a nine-digit decryption key. He thought he'd been clear, he thought she'd understood what he was asking. He thought he was being reasonable. But one-way conversations have their limitations, leaving both parties secure in their own expectations.
Nick listened for a moment to discern any sounds of stirring from the bedroom upstairs. Hearing none, he picked up the phone, thumbed the caller i.d. display button, and pressed "call".