SNAP: The World Unfolds

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

I snuck out of L.A. like a thief in the dead of night.

Well, there was more flourish.  And it was in the afternoon.

I packed books, clothes, cosmetics some keepsakes and pictures.  My things didn’t take up more that a few boxes.  Jean-Louis was laughing at me.

“You’re going to be staying at Stefan’s castle.  There are servants.  You have a suite of rooms assigned to you.  You’re in Europe.  You can have the plane, or the demons, take you to Rome, Milan, Paris.  If you truly run out of something from here, you can have me or Carola or Mira pick it up on one of our trips.  You can call Jazz and have her send it!  Stop acting as though you’re going to a Siberian gulag!”  His words were stern, but his tone was light.

And why not?  He’d won.  He got his way.  I’d be tucked away safely where he, Stefan, Pen and the demons could keep an eye on me—waking and sleeping.

He was right, on the surface of it I looked silly and provincial.  I was—temporarily, I kept reminding myself—moving from a six-room condo with a view of the Pacific to a 150-room castle with a view of manicured grounds and forests filled with feral pigs, wolves—Were and others—and occasional vampires. 

Inside, though, was the rub.  I was managing the strangeness of working with, and loving, a vampire.  It was beyond my comfort zone and knowledge.  It was terrifying.  As long as I had my real life, my normal life, waiting for me in L.A., I could cope with the eeriness.   If I was overwhelmed by the strange, I could leave; give it up and go back to my usual, unexciting, known and unsurprising routine.  The familiar was home.  I’d built a life that made me feel loved, safe, close to my mother.

Deep, deep inside, I guess I knew that I could, still and always, choose to give up the vampires, the luxury, the excitement, Jean-Louis.  The routine and regular were going to be there.  This move was stepping into the abyss.  My world was unfolding, opening up to new dimensions.

I was on the verge of hyperventilating on the way to the airport for a trip that would be a duplicate of my first one to Budapest.  The leg to Newark, refueling and on to Europe.  Except the first one was going toward the unknown and a great adventure.  This was running from my home and escaping possible kidnapping, torture, maybe death.  I could do it because Jean-Louis was with me.