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“Where is he?” Gable whined petulantly as he sprawled himself gracelessly across Katie’s lap. “He’s late.”
“Not that late,” Katie told him absently, picking at some blood caked beneath her nails. She stuck her finger in her mouth, swirled her tongue around her cuticles, and sucked out every last hint of her daughter’s blood. “You can always call him if you’re that worried about him.”
“I’ve already texted him, but his phone’s probably on aeroplane mode,” Gabe sighed, sounding very put-out. Katie didn’t know why. It wasn’t like they really needed Eddie tonight, and if he decided not to show, then fine. They could work it out just the three of them. “I don’t know why he thinks that’ll keep trackers away. It’s adorable but so inconvenient.”
“I thought I saw him going into the club this afternoon,” Naomi said absently from where she was inspecting the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang display, the theatre decorated in swooping fabrics and bright, cheerful colours. “Don’t ask me what the place is called, though. That might be why he isn’t answering.”
And then, all at once, Katie understood. She smiled down at the side of Gabe’s face as he pouted, because Katie had known Eddie for a long time now, knew him better than she knew her own sister, and knew that the past few days they’d had, the pressure and the stress and the countless obstacles were just enough to push him in that direction. A man could only compartmentalise so much, even an undead one like Eddie, who prided himself on being able to lock away all those unpleasant thoughts and complicated feelings in a little box and shove it deep in the recesses of his mind so he didn’t have to worry about it anymore.
Katie probably should’ve seen it coming, after last night, when they had walked home after Robert’s most recent job, and he had lingered in front of that house. Katie had paused, curious, as Eddie went ramrod straight, and his eyes had darkened as they travelled up to stare unblinkingly at a shape moving in the window up above. She knew who lived in this house, but she also knew that Eddie typically forced himself to avoid it, so the fact that they happened to walk past it was an unfortunate coincidence – or, even worse, intentional on Eddie’s part.
They sent Naomi and Gabel – holding hands and twirling as they walked – ahead to the theatre, and Katie had stepped up to lean against the parked car beside Eddie. In the living room, someone watched the television. In the upper floor, a bedroom, a young man was getting ready for bed, changing into pyjamas, brushing his teeth and turning on a movie to watch. Eddie’s eyes were almost black with desire; his hands curled into tight fists at his side.
“Are you going to go in and say hi?” Katie asked, ever the instigator.
“I can’t,” Eddie said thickly, something garbled and grating, like rocks behind his teeth. “I’m not allowed.”
“So?” Katie tilted her head. In the ground-floor window, someone lit a candle and changed the channel with the remote on the coffee table. Just a human, a measly, pathetic human, with bird-brittle bones and paper mâché skin, and certainly no match for Eddie with anger fuelling the sludge in his veins that used to be blood. “You can do whatever you want. It’s not like anyone can stop you.”
Eddie didn’t turn away from the house to look at her, but she could practically feel his irritation. “You know I can’t. You know.”
And yes, she did know. Technically, she and her ex-husband had an arrangement as well, but that didn’t stop Katie from feeding from her daughters every chance she got, from cradling Corey against her chest and sinking her fangs deep into his neck until she had drunk her fill. Arrangements didn’t mean much to her anymore, not that there was nothing that could stop her from taking what she wanted, and she didn’t think they should stop Eddie either. But Eddie has always had a softer touch than she.
She knew what he was thinking, what had frozen him to the footpath outside his son’s house. The same thing that had her crawling back home to sink her fangs into her daughters and the man she once loved and still, if she were being honest, cared deeply for. That bloodthirsty part of him, that voice in the back of his head that urged him to take and take and take, told him to conquer and pillage and to grab with clawed hands and cling tight while it struggled and strangle into submission, to bleed dry and drink his fill and, for once, since his death, to be sated and full.
“Well,” Katie tilted her head to smile at Eddie, but it wasn’t a nice smile; that wasn’t the point. She doubted that he wanted niceness right now. “I won’t tell if you don’t want me to. It’ll be our little secret. Your choice.”
But there was never any choice, was there? Because Katie knew what Eddie would do as soon as he came to that sudden stop – with a low growl, the kind of growl that rattled his bones and was torn from the depths of him, that would make a mortal shiver in fear but just made Katie grin, he turned around and punched his fist through the metal body of the car behind them, denting the door and leaving a crator in the shape of his knuckles. Immediately, it erupted into flashing lights and blaring alarms, but neither of them moved.
“I have to go,” Eddie said, eyes as black as tar. “I need to…”
“Yeah, you do,” Katie wrapped her hand around his upper arm and firmly pulled him away from the wreckage of the sedan. Around them, lights were being turned on in rooms, and people were emerging from the safety of their homes to assess the damage. “You’re a mess. You need to get yourself sorted before you come back to the theatre.”
And so Eddie had run off, swallowed by the darkness, and Katie had walked at a leisurely pace back to the theatre where Naomi and Gable were waiting, lounging with their legs slung over the plush red chairs of the audience seating and Robert’s haul heaped in the centre of the stage. They didn’t ask about Eddie, and for that Katie was glad. She didn’t have it in her to tell a nice lie.
Now, with Naomi falling into one of the armchairs with a redundant sigh and Gable laid across her lap while impulsively texting Eddie through the Discord and whining like a kicked puppy, Katie thought about the blackness of his eyes and the fury in his voice and the moment where she thought he might listen to her and barge right into his sons house and claim him the way she knew that evil little part of him wanted to.
You can’t compartmentalise everything. Can’t shove it in a box and lock it away behind his ribcage with everything else he kept there, stuffed to overflowing.
Just when Gabe was threatening to go searching for him, the doors to the theatre banged open, and Eddie entered. Katie could already tell that something was different. His gait wasn’t too steady and his shoulders were loose, his head bobbing on his neck with every step like he was untethered from his body, his boots scuffing across the floor of the theatre like he just couldn’t pick them up all the way, and he had this goofy grin on his face as he clambered ungainly up the stairs to the stage. “Hey,” he greeted absently as he came to an unsteady stop. “Long time no see.”
“Eddie!” Gable cried in an obnoxiously high octave as he sprang up off of Katie and stood with his hands on his hips. “Where have you been? You’re late! We were worried sick about you.”
“You’re not his mother, Gabe,” Naomi muttered, but she was smiling, head tilted back to blink upside-down at Eddie. He blinked down at her as if he had never seen her before, and Katie could feel the smile crawling across her face before she could stop it. When in doubt… compartmentalise anyway you can. “He’s a grown man.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Eddie laughed like he found this whole thing incredibly funny. “I was busy. But I’m here now, right? Isn’t that what counts?”
Katie already knew how busy his day was – knew that he had gone to the club and had blended in with the flashing lights and deep shifting shadows, had found a pretty scantily-clad man dancing amidst the mass of sweaty bodies, had wrapped his hands around him and pressed close against him, and buried his nose against his neck to seek out that altered chemical scent that he so craved, and sank his teeth into his neck, drinking his fill and then some as other partygoers danced around him and paid him no attention, probably already doing the same thing with a very different result. Eddie would’ve pulled away, gasping, brushed the poor boy's hair away from his dazed face, and led him gently by the hand towards one of the plush seats that lined the walls of the club and left him there to sleep it off. But that would’ve only taken a couple of moments.
No, Katie knew that the reason he had been late was that he was trying to enjoy the buzz of the high while he could, before he arrived at the theatre and the coterie ruined it for him.
Naomi turned upright in her chair and squinted up at Eddie. “Dude, your pupils are fucking huge. Did you feed on a whole drug den or something?”
“I – what? I’ve no idea whatever you’re talking about,” Eddie blustered unconvincingly, stumbling across the stage to collapse in a heap against Katie’s side, her arms already open and inviting for him. “What – what are you saying? I don’t know. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“Eddie!” Gable whined, doing a very impressive impression of a damsel in distress as he sank into one of the armchairs beside Naomi and buried his head in his hands. When he spoke, his words were muffled by his palms, but his tone was no less exasperated. “We have so much to do today! That job for Robert, remember? You forgot!”
“I didn’t forget,” Eddie protested, slumped almost entirely into Katie’s side. She tried not to feel any satisfaction over the fact that he had been drawn to her and not to Gable, but it was a hard feat. “We can still go, I can still do it. I’m not useless.”
“I don’t know,” Naomi teased. “The last time you did a job high, you got pretty pissed off and almost took that kid's head off.”
“He deserved it,” Eddie waved a hand absently before he dropped it limply back to his lap. “And he lived, didn’t he?”
Not one to be easily satisfied, Gable groaned pathetically into his palms, and Naomi tutted in mock sympathy as she rubbed circles on his back. Katie, skillfully ignoring them, returned her attention to Eddie, who was already blinking stupidly up at her, a goofy smile on his face as if he hadn’t yet realised that he was doing it. There was a smear of blood in the corner of his mouth. Though Katie wanted to see what would happen if she just ducked down and kissed him, she had more restraint than that, and she used her nail to scrape the flakes onto her finger and suck them into her mouth, tasting the sanguine blood of the man he had drunk from and the faint chemical aftertaste of the drug he was on now.
Eddie smiled up at her, shifting so he could rest further against her, his head on her shoulder. “Hi,” he hummed.
“Hey,” Katie brought her other hand up to nest in his hair, like a bird of prey waiting for its next meal. He leaned further into her touch, even though her nails were probably digging near-painfully into his scalp. “Big day?”
“Guess so,” Eddie replied absently, too preoccupied with the feeling of Katie’s nails scratching across his scalp, every sensation heightened to the point of too much. “Good day, though. S’fun. You should come with.”
“Why would I do that when I prefer this so much more?” Katie cooed at him, twirling some of his hair around her finger like a mother with a precious child, as Katie herself did with her own girls long ago, when they were younger, and Katie was anything resembling a person. She was struck, not for the rest time, by the realisation that she could grip Eddie’s hair and yank his head back far enough to snap his neck, and he would probably thank her. But she didn’t. She just fisted her hand in his hair and tilted his head back to expose the long line of his throat. If he were human, he would already be dead, and he would probably enjoy it just as much as she did. She trailed her nail, the one wet from her saliva and with the faint memory of the scent of blood under the nail, and traced it across one of the veins bared on the side of his neck, bulging and empty and lifeless just like the heart silent in his chest. “Isn’t this much more fun?”
Eddie laughed, a gust of breath where his nose was pressed up against her throat. “Yeah. I guess this is better.”
For a short, fleeting moment, Katie couldn’t help but wonder what Eddie’s blood would taste like. She knew that a Kindred’s blood would taste as good as it smelled, and from experience, she was keenly aware that drinking from someone she loved and cared about would make their blood taste all the more delectable, and well, Eddie was one of the few on that list of people for her. Would it be sweet, or heady, or smoky like the cigarettes he once partook in and found himself favouring in the blood he sought? Would it be full-bodied like the red wine that Katie used to drink? Would it be salty like sweat, or bitter like coffee, or intense like Eddie’s anger? Katie liked to think it would be the most amazing thing she’d ever put in her mouth.
“Got a job to do,” She said as she walked her fingers down his throat, her nails depressing the skin, and slid her hand beneath the gaping maw of his shirt. “You think you’re up for it?”
“Of course,” Eddie’s eyes had slipped shut, and he was smiling, just slightly. “I’ve done a lot more high on a lot less.”
“I know,” Katie replied. She glanced up at where Naomi was carolling an anxiously pacing Gable, where he was making laps up and down the aisle between the plush red theatre seats. “Just want you at the top of your game. You’re no use to anybody dead.”
“Aw,” Eddie languidly blinked his eyes open, and his small smile got larger and larger until he looked foolish and childlike, like one of those Labrador Retrievers with the golden coat and that big, sloppy grin. “You saying you care about me, Katie Cat?”
“Never call me that again,” Katie said. “I’ll let it go because you’re higher than NASA.”
“Nah,” Eddie said in an obnoxious singsong, endlessly proud of himself, satisfied right down to his liquid bones. “It’s because you like me.”
Sighing, Katie placed her whole hand on Eddie’s face, so she didn’t have to look at him anymore, his nose digging into her palm and her fingers stretching down to reach beneath his chin. If it also meant that he couldn’t see the smile she struggled to hold back, then that was just as good. “I forgot how insufferable you are when you get like this. You'd better sober up, or Gabe will skin you and wear you as a coat.”
“Wow,” Eddie said, muffled by her hand. “That’s kinky, even for Gabe.”
Sighing fondly, Katie glanced up and followed the pacing Gable with her eyes, catching Naomi sprawled across the seats, apparently defeated in trying to stop their friend from losing the rest of his mind. Eddie’s breath, though none of them needed to breathe anymore, was hot and wet against the skin of Katie’s palm, and she had to stop herself from wondering if that’s what Eddie’s insides would feel like, too, if she tore a hole in him through the abdomen and got her hand all up in his guts, wet and wriggling. If she could crack the sternum, break through the ribcage, get a hand around his heart –
“Katie,” Eddie said beneath her, voice breathy and barely there. “Katie, come on. Let me see you. Come on.”
Rolling her eyes, Katie dropped her hand away from his face and brought it to cradle his head, thumb brushing gently across his cheekbones. His eyes, still blown black and three times their size, struggled to track her as they roamed across her face. She liked it when he got like this, not that she would ever tell him so. Like a docile pet.
He brought a hand up to cup the side of her face, a sloppy mirror to her own hold on him. His thumb hovered over her lips, his touch feather-light, knowing that she could bite him at any moment just for the thrill of it and not caring in the slightest. “There you are,” he said. “Hey,”
“Hey,” Katie replied, tender, more tender than she would ever let anyone else hear her and was only this tender because Eddie would be too high to remember, and Gabe and Naomi were too busy with their own conversation to notice. “You in a better mood today or what? Because last night…”
“Yeah, I know,” Eddie slumped somehow further against her. “I feel much better now, though. Can’t even remember what I was so upset about in the first place.”
For a tiny, very mean moment, Katie almost wanted to remind him, to whisper his son's name and tell him how close he had been to breaking in and seeing him despite his ex’s wishes. That he’d almost listened to that vicious little voice that lived within his ribcage right beside his long-dead heart that drove him to do brutal and terrible things, that he tried to lock away and forget about but would always find a way to break free and remind him that it was never, ever going away no matter how hard he tried to get rid of it.
But she wasn’t that mean, and contrary to popular belief, she liked Eddie. Their relationship was hard to put a name to, really, almost impossible to define, but it was fun and innocent and sometimes bloody, and weren’t all the best relationships like that? He matched her energy but could keep her on her toes, and she knew that no matter what, he would always have her back, and he could plough through any obstacle that dared to stand in her way, even if that obstacle was a person, or used to be a person. Not that she needed him to protect her, or fight her battles for her, or keep her out of danger, but it was nice to know that there was somebody else in the coterie she could trust and rely on to throw the first punch or at least not get knocked down as easily as some. She could bite into Eddie’s jugular and leave him bleeding out across the stage, and she could hold him softly against her breast and let him rest with his head in the clouds and his thoughts sluggish and syrupy. Anything was possible. Katie, like most women, contained multitudes.
“It doesn’t matter,” Katie told him. “You did what you always do. You shoved it aside and focused on something else instead.”
“You know what that’s called,” Eddie told her with the fake wisdom of the heavily intoxicated. “Compartmentalisation.”
“I know, babe,” Katie hummed as she carded her hand through his hair again, and she felt him slump languidly against her again, bones turning liquidly and weak. She almost made fun of how he had managed such a big word, but thought better of it. “Don’t worry about it now. Just enjoy the high before it fades.”
“I will,” Eddie said with a stupid grin. He burst out into a bout of giggles like a blast of bubbles that faded as quickly as they came. “Gabe is going to be so mad at me.”
“Don’t worry about Gabe,” Katie said decisively. “I’ll deal with him.”
Humming, Eddie turned so he could rest his head against her shoulder, his nose buried into the junction of her neck between her artery and airway, his breath warmer than both of their bodies combined, ghosting across her skin like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. He made a contented sound, shut his eyes, and nestled further into her. She watched him for a moment, his long eyelashes casting shadows across his cheeks, his sharp jawline and curly hair and this rare moment of peacefulness, tranquillity, relaxation. Eddie was so high-strung most of the time that she rarely ever got to see him like this. She liked it and hated that she liked it.
Katie watched Naomi bicker with their friend with that teasing not-a-smile-but-not-not-a-smile that she remembered when they were eight and eighteen, right before she went off to college, and Gabe draped himself dramatically across the red theater seats like a fainting maiden, and she felt Eddie breathe and rest against her, oblivious to the rest of the world around him, and really, what else was Katie to do except to take a page out of Eddie’s own book?
She took that warm, bright feeling that had nestled itself into her chest like a pebble in a shoe and shoved it deep, deep down, into a part of her so dark and endless that she would never reach it again and resolved to forget all about it. Compartmentalisation at its finest, a lesson she learned from the best.