Sam returned from a Monday shift at Brunson’s to find Lola and Remy hard at work in the kitchen, making some sort of rapturous-looking chicken in cream sauce with fettuccini and a Caesar salad. With the bakery closed on Mondays, it was the day when everybody slept in and relaxed, and it usually meant the best meal of the week.
“That looks amazing,” said Sam, standing behind Lola and resting a hand on the small of her back as he leaned in to smell what she was cooking. Lola could be icy and a little too calculating sometimes, but he liked her anyway; her domineering streak was something of a turn-on, and he had wondered more than once what she would be like if he paid her a visit when she was fast asleep. He would never do that—strangers were one thing, but people who trusted you quite another—besides which, Remy was nearly always beside her. But that didn’t stop him from imagining it now and then.
She pecked him on the cheek before shooing him out of the way. “Run downstairs and tell the others that dinner’s almost ready.”
“Is Rose back from school yet?”
“Yeah, she’s showering. She said she’ll be down right after.”
Sam opened the door to the basement and was immediately hit by the smell of marijuana. At the bottom of the stairs he found Kevin and Amy sitting on the floor in front of the small TV, passing a half-finished joint back and forth. Cops was on, which struck Sam as ironic.
“Heyyyy,” Amy greeted him, her smile big and sincere and stoned. “We were just talking about you.”
“Uh-oh.”
“All good things,” said Kevin.
Amy held out the joint. “Want a hit?”
Sam held up a hand to decline. He tried to keep his feelings on the subject to himself, but smoking weed annoyed the crap out of him. It had no effect on him, and it smelled terrible, so he didn’t even grasp the appeal. All he could observe was that it turned his friends into boring conversationalists with goofy, childish senses of humor. Its only advantage was that it made Amy horny as hell, and a lot less inhibited about being on top. He turned away from dreamers when he saw evidence that they were under the influence, but he’d long since made an exception for Amy because she did it so often. It was a pity that she hadn’t waited until after dinner to get high, because it had been a while since she had treated him to that particular position, and he missed it.
They followed him up the stairs to dinner, where Rose wrinkled her nose at the smell emanating from Kevin’s clothing. It was almost a farce at this point that she wasn’t admitting her pregnancy to the group as a whole; they all could see that she was sick, that she turned down wine, and when she learned that Lola had used raw eggs in the Caesar salad dressing, demurred the bowl that was offered to her. If Lola and Remy hadn’t figured it out at this point, then they were even more self-absorbed than Sam had given them credit for being. But it wasn’t his place to tell anyone.
After the meal, his stomach pleasantly full, he laid down on the sofa on the side porch to enjoy his post-dinner cigarette. It had been three days since he had slipped out at night, and he was feeling it; for much of the day he’d had the sort of erection that TV commercials warned him he should see a doctor about. He was feeling wistfully nostalgic for his human days when he could resolve that problem on his own with a few minutes of privacy, but that ability was long gone.
He crushed out his cigarette and let himself fall asleep on the sofa, hoping to kill a couple of the hours that stood between him and his evening plans. When he awoke again, the sky was only beginning to grow dark, and Rose was bending over him, shaking his shoulder.
“Sam,” she said. “Everybody’s sick.”
He rubbed his eyes and pushed up on his elbows. “What? Sick?”
“Yeah, they’re all puking their guts up.”
He got up and walked foggily into the house, where, as promised, the first-floor bathroom door was closed and clearly holding one unwell person or another. He hurried up the stairs to his and Amy’s room and found her curled up on the cool tile beside the bathroom rug, her face strained. She opened her eyes enough to see who had opened the door, saw Sam, and said, “Get ouuuttttttt.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.” She covered her eyes with her hand, and he could hear Kevin on the opposite side of the wall, sounding no better. “Go away. Just let me die.”
He could tell she had aimed for a theatrical tone, but it came out sounding more serious than intended. “Can I get you anything?”
“A razor blade?”
He clawed back his hair from his forehead. He had no clue how to treat any form of human illness anymore. “Do I need to take you to the hospital or something?”
“No. Just leave me alone.”
“Okay, listen, just yell if you need anything. Or text me.”
She offered a moan of assent, and he stepped out into the hallway, where Rose was standing with her arms folded over her chest. He looked at her in utter confusion. “What the hell happened?”
“Food poisoning, is my guess.”
“Oh.” He frowned, looking back and forth between the two bedrooms. “Well, what do we do about that?”
“Wait for it to pass. Keep them from getting dehydrated. And buy a lot of Lysol.”
He shook his head helplessly. “I hope you don’t come down with it next.”
“If it’s what I think it is, I’m not going to. I didn’t eat the Caesar salad.” When he frowned in confusion, she explained, “Raw eggs.”
“Oh, right.”
“But you ate it. You ate a ton of it.”
Sam grimaced. “Good thing I’ve got an iron stomach. I’ll make a run to the store for some bottled water and Lysol. And maybe some—uh, I don’t know.” He had stopped himself from proposing ginger ale, wondering if that was still a thing people did. Probably not, and it was always embarrassing when he mentioned something that had been perfectly normal a hundred years ago and people thought he was attempting to be funny.
“You’re sure to get sick any minute, though,” said Rose. “Stay here—I’ll go.”
“No, I’m—” he began, but a glance at her revealed something wary in her expression that rattled his nerves. She was suspicious of him, somehow. “You’re right,” he said instead, and jerked his thumb toward the stairs. “I’d better lie back down.”
“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
“We’ll find out soon, I guess.”
Downstairs, he settled back onto the porch sofa, interlacing his fingers behind his head as Rose’s car rumbled to life at the curb and her headlights flashed on. Quietly, he sighed. The nostalgia for being human had definitely passed, at least for today.
~ * ~
Despite the deteriorating conditions in the household, there was no way Sam was going to make it through the night without prowling. At midnight he set down a fresh water bottle at Amy’s bedside, checked in on Remy and Lola sleeping fitfully in their downstairs bedroom, and snuck outside, setting off in Amy’s car to park in the lot behind Brunson’s. For years and years, when he and Tabitha lived in all sorts of dubiously habitable places in Lowell and Boston, going out at night had been so simple; he could climb up to the roof of the building, turn into an ember, and let the winds carry him in the direction that seemed most appealing. When he returned home there was nothing to hide, because Tabitha had been up to the same thing. Now he had to take the car, since Brunson’s was eight miles away and Amy needed to believe that’s where he had gone. At least the car gave him a place to stash his phone, which—unlike his clothes, which would travel with him—wouldn’t survive the elemental shift. And because Amy could see his location on his phone’s GPS, leaving it in the car added credibility to his claim of late-night work.
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In the lot, he stashed his keys behind a stack of wooden pallets, then sparked away. On this night, in the interest of not being away from home any longer than necessary, he was making a repeat visit. The weather was pleasant, and this particular dreamer liked to sleep with the window open. That was convenient for Sam.
Her house was a little yellow one at the end of a row of townhomes. She owned a cat, but she closed it out of her room at night, which was also fortunate; Sam hated cats, and cats hated him, and he had seen many a wonderful opportunity thwarted by an affronted housecat. Dogs were not so bad; they recognized him as fire and shied away from him as they would from a torch. Among humans, he claimed to be allergic to them, although it was really more the other way around.
With the window open, silvery moonlight struck across the foot of the bed. The dreamer’s ash-blond hair spread over the pillow; she lay on her side, the blanket draping the appealing curves of her form. The first time he had seen her, it had been in the kitchen of the restaurant she owned in downtown Portland, where he had been sent by Lola to deliver a large order of chocolate tarts. He’d brought in the big white boxes and set them on the metal shelf she directed him to, and all the while, he was certain he could feel her gaze on his ass. He’d tested the waters a little bit, chatting with her about a few of the bakery’s other specialties that she might try, and by the end he was convinced: she was going to have a dirty dream about the delivery boy whether he was there or not, so he may as well make it a good one for her.
Sam bent over her and touched his lips to hers, breathing softly. Without hesitation, she kissed him back, groping for his shirt to pull him closer. Permission granted, indeed.
Sometimes dreamers needed for him to build it up very slowly, keeping his touch steady and gentle until they couldn’t take it anymore and needed all of him—his smoky, insubstantial form no impediment to either their pleasure or his. This dreamer was not one who wanted a slow burn. Once he took off his shirt, her hands caressed his shoulders and arms and chest with such avid interest that he simply closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the smoothness and ardor of her touch.
He kissed her as he nestled himself against her body. She moaned, clutching at him to pull him deeper. After only a handful of thrusts, he could feel her on the edge; a few more, and she was there, crying out as if the speed had surprised her as much as it had him. Her cries went right to his core, and the feeling that rushed through him blocked out everything except the flashes of lightning that were the pathways of his nerves, the flickering fire that consumed him and would never stop consuming him.
She went limp against the mattress with satisfaction, and he rose up on his hands, somehow both exhausted and energized.
He brushed his lips against hers for a final kiss—both to keep her asleep and to thank her. He wished he could roll onto his back and take a few moments to savor the serenity and well-being that flooded through him after a good encounter, because those feelings were so fleeting in his life these days. But he could only do that with Amy.
He regretfully rose up out of her bed, stepped back to the window, and sparked out into the cool night.
~ * ~
It was not quite two o’clock in the morning when he pulled back up to the curb outside the house on Rockledge Street, and he mentally congratulated himself on the speed and efficiency of that prowl. He skipped up the porch stairs at the back of the house and settled onto the sofa. No sooner had he lit a smoke than Rose appeared in the doorway, looking at him with that same wary expression she’d worn earlier. “Where were you?” she asked, her voice holding just a hint of incredulity.
“Work.”
“You didn’t call out?”
“No, why would I?” He exhaled a fine torrent of smoke, and she came no closer; the smell had always bothered her, but now she gave him a wider berth for sake of the baby. For all that he liked her, her fretting presence and motherly questions made him irritable. She was interrupting the last euphoric moments of his post-prowl high, and he had little patience for playing human just then.
“You still feel fine?” she asked, sounding mystified, and he inwardly kicked himself. He had forgotten that everyone was sick. Outside of this house, outside of this body, there was no chance he would remember those types of human concerns.
“So far, yeah,” he said.
“That’s so weird. You ate the same thing everyone else did, and it doesn’t make any sense that—”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” he interrupted, louder than he’d meant to, and when he spoke again, he lowered his volume. “I told you, I’ve got an iron stomach. I’m just trying to relax and get to bed. If I come down with anything, I’ll be sure to alert you.”
She retreated, casting upon him a look that was both chastised and meant to chastise, and at last he was alone. The tree frogs were singing loudly from the treetops all around him, and he rested back and closed his eyes. Dimly his mind replayed scenes from the evening like a flickering filmstrip. The memories sparked a tingle in his groin, but for now he was satisfied. It was enough, even if it never lasted long.
~ * ~
By Thursday afternoon everyone had recovered, and on Friday morning Sam drove Lola, Kevin, and Amy to the airport to catch their flight to Los Angeles for the food tour, right on schedule. Amy was still looking a little wobbly, and Sam felt sorry for her; usually effusive in her physical affection, she had barely let him kiss her since she fell ill. When he got out of the car at the terminal to help unload the massive amount of stuff the group was bringing to Los Angeles, she hugged him goodbye with both arms almost desperately tight around his neck. “Love you so much,” she said, and her breath was warm against his skin.
“Love you, too, baby.”
“Have fun in Nashville.”
His flight was leaving later that day from this same airport. “I will. Not too much, though.”
She replied with a little laugh, and her smile looked relieved.
When he got home, he spotted Rose’s little blue sedan parked in the driveway—unusual for a school day. Still, the house was quiet, and he hoped to squeeze in a nap before his return trip to the airport; the night ahead promised to be busy. He jogged up the stairs and pushed open his bedroom door, only to be met with Rose standing up swiftly from where she was bent over an open dresser drawer. She faced him, her big eyes looked petrified.
Displeasure clouded his voice. “What are you doing?”
“I’m—nothing.” She shoved the drawer closed. “I found one of your shirts in the dryer, so I was putting it back.”
“You could have hung it on the door.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you’d left for your trip, but yeah. I should have.” Her lopsided, apologetic smile attempted to convince him of her honesty, and failed. “That was silly of me.”
“Why are you going through my stuff?”
“I wasn’t. I just found a—” She gave up and let out a sigh, her posture wilting. She brushed away a strand of hair that had escaped her bun. “Sam, I’m sorry. I was being nosy, and there’s no excuse.”
He stared at her with hard eyes, unsure of what to say, how angry to be. Humans had gone through his possessions before—petty thieves, trespassing teenagers in abandoned buildings in which he was squatting, a landlady who suspected he and Tabitha were not properly married. It angered him each time, but their motives were always obvious. In this case, that was not so. In the same curt voice he asked, “Why?”
The nervousness in her gaze shifted to something even less explicable. “It’ll sound stupid. Really, I’m sorry.”
“Say it anyway.”
“I was trying to figure out where you’re from.”
“You know where I’m from.”
“Well, you’ve said, but . . .” She sighed again, and her gaze darted to the window, then the door behind him. She crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s none of my business. Can we drop this?”
“Nope.”
“You came out of thin air,” she said abruptly. “No social media. No family. Kevin said your girlfriend’s name was Tabitha, but—I tried to look you up a little, okay? You were moving into my house. I mean, it’s normal to want to know, who is this guy? I couldn’t find anything about the accident. I’m not saying you’re lying.” She held up a defensive hand. “I just wanted to know more, that’s all. And couldn’t find it. And when that happens, and your mind starts putting different things together, it goes to some weird places. Especially if you’ve read too many stupid books, which is all I did in my teens.”
He turned his head slightly. “What kind of weird places?”
“Dumb stuff.” The look she gave him pleaded for him to let it go. “Look, Sam, I need to get to work. It’s a grading day, but I still have to show up at work at some point. I’m sorry, though. I am.”
“Well, if you’re suspecting me of something, I think I deserve to know what it is. You think I’m a criminal or something? Because I’m not.”
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Then what?”
She answered with a thin, miserable laugh. After a pause she said, “The day you did all that gardening, you came in for dinner afterward, covered in sweat, and you smelled amazing. You never get drunk, no matter how much you drink, and you drink a lot. And then when everyone was sick except for you, and you somehow knew you wouldn’t—that was weird. It’s like your body’s—” Now her laugh was sharp and humorless, mocking her own words. “Like you’re from another planet.”
Anxiety had risen in him with each astute observation, but he forced himself to laugh at that line. “So I’m suspiciously awesome, is what you’re saying.”
She rolled her eyes comically. “Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way.”
“Is there any evidence in my dresser that confirms I’m an alien?”
“Oh, Sam. I feel terrible. This is totally my issue, and I didn’t mean to burden you with it.” Her head tipped, beseeching him. “Forgive me for being such a busybody. The more I say my thoughts out loud, the dumber they sound.”
“Fine. Can I have my room back now? I’d like to take a nap.”
With resignation, she stepped away from the dresser. “I really did find your shirt, but on the porch, not in the dryer. One of your black ones. It’s right there.” She nodded to the bed.
“Thanks.”
She slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her, and he sat down on the bed with a weary sigh. He picked up the folded shirt beside him. It was one of his prowling shirts, unwashed—left on the porch when he had used it as a temporary bedroom during the household’s illness. That had been a stupid error on his part. To Rose, with her pregnancy-heightened sense of smell, it probably smelled intoxicatingly good—at once evoking her desire for him, which he was well aware existed, and clouding her judgment where he was concerned, which was its entire purpose. But she wouldn’t have gone through his belongings if she didn’t already suspect something was off about him. That troubled him, and it should. He could ill afford it, especially so soon after moving in.
He tossed the shirt into his carry-on bag and let his body fall heavily against the bed, on his side. Before the day was over he would be in Nashville, among his own kind, free from the complexities of pretending. He could blow off a little steam, feel the camaraderie of people who genuinely knew him, and return to Portland with all the documents he needed to live a passably legitimate life. From there, he could keep it going as long as he needed to. He was confident of that.