1

Kate

My murder went like this:

It was Monday - I fucking hate Mondays - and my murderer and I were engaging in the usual teenager shinnangannary, in this case, spray painting the principal’s car with a variety of vulgar words and crudely drawn hands with the middlemost finger waving in the air like a cartoon recreation of the ocean. The principal deserved it, of course, but that was hardly the point.

My murderer - Nathan - had his face partially obscured by his filtration mask, as did I, but his eyes were sparkling with mirth as he repressed laughter. He shook up his can and started another squiggly middle finger. “Mr. Bernard is going to be sooo pissed,” he mused.

“We’re going to be in so much trouble,” I agreed with a laugh, myself writing ‘FUCK THIS BITCH’ on the hood of the silverish car in bright orange. Really I was going to be in ‘so much trouble’. Nathan’s rich ass was going to get off without so much as a slap on the wrist. Pays to have a mom for a mayor.

“Yeah,” he chuckled, and I wondered if he actually thought he was going to get in trouble.

Then we were running.

There must have been a noise, a security guard approaching from ridiculously far away, because Nathan suddenly grabbed my arm and dashed with me stumbling behind into the dead-end alley beside the apartment complex.

“Do the thing,” he said desperately, pushing me toward the wall and glancing back.

“You and your fucking superhearing,” I muttered and raised my hands to the wall. Careful as ever, I closed my eyes and imagined its image clinging to my palms, the light bouncing off of the air in front of the stone in the same way instead of the stone itself. Then I pulled. The image of the wall moved with my will as I moved my hands, pulling them toward me, then pushing them behind me. To lose my footing was to lose my focus and the spell.

Nathan hid behind the false wall just as I began to hear the footsteps myself. There was cursing, something muttered that I couldn’t make out, and then running toward our hiding place. Nathan was doing something by the cluster of drainpipes at the end of the alley, but I didn’t open my eyes to check.

The beam of a flashlight shone on my back, faintly illuminating the backs of my eyelids. Then it vanished, and the security guard ran off.

I dropped the spell and opened my eyes to find Nathan halfway up the wall, clinging to the pipes like a spider to silk. Before I could say a word he vanished onto the roof. He reappeared a moment later to wave my up after him.

I huffed. “Fucking bat bitch.” I clambored up after him, grumbling all the way.

He was lounging about on the flat stone like he was sunbathing in the light of the much further stars that winked above us, twinkling almost romantically down on him and his spikey jacket.

“Took you long enough,” he teased with a grin. His fangs flashed in the moonlight.

“Planning to feed tonight?” I asked, brow furrowed. I rarely saw his fangs exposed. They only popped out when he was planning to, well, use them. There wasn’t even a rat to grab up here from what I could tell, but maybe he could hear something skittering around in the shadows. It wouldn’t be too surprising.

He shook his head, smiling as he got up from the ground and moved to take my hands in his. “Katherine-”

“Kate.”

“Kate,” he amended, “I-” he swallowed, “I love you.”

Sure you do, I regretted the thought as soon as I had it. He had never- mostly never given me a reason to think that he didn’t. We were…in love, in the way teenagers were in love. I thought so anyway.

“I want you to be more than my girlfriend,” he continued, “I want you to be…forever, like me.”

The realization sank in slowly.

More than my girlfriend….

Forever…..

Fuck.

“Um…” I hesitated. My hands tensed in his. My gaze darted around, and I realized I was looking for a way out. But, why? I loved him, didn’t I? Love meant forever, even stupid, tepid, tennage love. No, ecpecially the kind of love we had. We were forever. We had to be.

“You want me…you want to bite me?”

He hesitated, then gave a tepid nod.

“Kinky.”

He snorted, then chuckled, then looked me in the eye in a way that was, in his head, probably very romantic. His eyes were an ugly shade of green. Like swampwater with flecks of grey like dead fish floating on the surface.

“Let me make you forever with me.” It sounded like a statement. Not a question, not a command, just a statement of what he was about to do.

He took my lack of answer as his cue.

And then, he killed me.