For Beck's sake, she wouldn't say it, but it had been the worst Thanksgiving Iman had ever lived through.
Hours meant to be spent in the kitchen—shearing collard greens away from the stalks or brining a massive turkey or laughing as Beck tried and failed at not crying while cutting onions—were instead spent guiding Beck around his childhood house, pressing his hands to light switches and doorknobs, listening to him count the steps between each room in the house. They were all trying to smile for him, but Iman wasn't stupid. She saw the way Beck's sister and dad looked at him as he staggered through the house, the ache in their eyes, like something within them had snapped in half.
Now, Iman guided Beck through the door of their apartment, switching on the light above their heads. For a moment Iman just stood there, Beck's arm linked in hers, overwhelmed with the strange emptiness of the space around her. It was the same—same dark granite countertops, same food-stained cabinets, same animal print rug on the floor in front of the television that Beck hated. But somehow it felt different, warped, useless, as if there was no point in looking at any of it if Beck couldn't do the same.
"Im?"
"Right," she said, snapping back to her senses. "Are you hungry?"
Beck shook his head. "No. I think—I think I just need to lay down for a while."
Iman sighed, but nodded her head. All Beck had done lately, it felt like, was lie down for a while. He got up, traced his way to the bathroom, or maybe to the window to feel the sun on his face for a while, and then went back to the nearest couch or bed, staying there until someone dared to move him.
He was lost. So lost. But Iman didn't know what she was supposed to do.
Iman started to lead him towards the bedroom, but he shrugged her off, walking ahead of her. When she started to protest, he held up a hand. "I'll find it," he said, a new determination in his voice that at once uplifted and frightened Iman. "Let me just—let me find it on my own, please."
"Beck."
A gentle shake of his head, his fingers trembling. "Immy. This is it. This is the rest of my life. If I don't get used to it now, I never will."
So Iman fell silent as she watched him slink off down the hall. He walked with both his hands held wide, brushing the walls, fingers tripping over the hung up paintings and photographs, over the divots left in the paint from bad nail work or accidental bumping-intos. Every time he brushed a doorknob, Iman told him, politely, "No," until finally it was, "Yes, that one," and Beck opened the door with a creak and vanished inside.
Iman lingered in the hallway, a hand held to her chest, right where her heart hammered beneath the skin. The ache she'd seen in the eyes of Wendy and Lemmy was no doubt within her own eyes, too; it was the ache that came automatically with missing someone who was right in front of you.
When she stepped into the bedroom, she found Beck seated at the edge of the bed, his ankles crossed, a book in his lap. She stopped upon the threshold, watching his fingers as he traced pages full of words he could no longer read. His fingers danced across the edge of the paper; until briefly he flicked the page and brought his hand back again with a hiss of pain.
"Shit, Beck," said Iman, grabbing a tissue from the box on the dresser. "Be more careful."
She knelt in front of him, folding the tissue around the pad of his finger and holding it there. Red bloomed into the white as Beck said, "Which book is it?"
"Hm?"
"Which book did I pick up?" Beck asked, lifting his head. It was a simple question, but the darkness in Beck's voice colored it complex.
Iman hesitated, but picked up the book from where it rested beside Beck on the duvet. The book's jacket was gone, her fingers gritting against maroon buckram and gold lettering. Turning it over in her hands, she read, "The Catcher in the Rye."
Beck laughed, but it was not the laugh she had grown to love. It was bitter, choked of its usual enthusiasm: a tourniquet strapped before a wound.
When she felt the first cool, tender tear kiss the skin on the back of her hand, she looked up and Beck was weeping.
The book thudded upon the rug. She didn't have the right words to say, and even if she ever had, they were locked away at that moment at the sight of Beck's face: a tense wrinkle of skin between his eyebrows, his blind eyes squeezed shut, mouth open in a perpetual gasp.
Iman wiped his tears away, silent even as a rage-tinted sorrow welled up strong in her chest. Her father had always insisted she wasn't cursed, but now, holding Beck as everything he'd built up crumbled away from him again, she wasn't so sure.
She made him eat a bowl of microwave mac and cheese (the only edible thing left in their pantry, really) and drink a glass of water, trying to pretend it wasn't hurting her to see him like this, a shell of himself, always giving the right advice—she remembered him telling her, please don't hate me when I beg you to eat something—but unable to follow it himself.
When she was sure he was okay, or at least as okay as he could be at the moment, she stepped out into the hall, pulled up the newest contact on her phone, and hit call without a beat of hesitation.
"Have you changed your mind?" asked Fritz immediately. Iman was standing with her back to the bedroom door, watching the sun set beneath the trees in vibrant shades of pink and purple and yellow—a sight Beck would never see again, she thought, before shoving the idea from her head. In her ear, Fritz went on: "I haven't turned many people before, but I can promise you this: Beck wouldn't make a bad vampire."
Iman smirked to herself. "No, Fritz. Thanks again, but I think we're okay."
A loud staticky sound, like he was letting out a particularly theatrical sigh. "Fine. Why are you calling me, then?"
"I need you to do me a favor," said Iman. She walked to the living room, easing herself down onto the couch.
"Anything."
"Well, two favors."
"Okay?"
"One, I need you to come here and keep an eye on Beck while I'm gone. He needs someone right now to watch him and make sure he doesn't hurt himself."
"Fair," agreed Fritz, clicking his teeth, "but where are you going?"
"That's the second favor," said Iman. She closed her eyes. "Can you tell me where Jules is?"
Julien was drunk.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd been drunk, or what it felt like, so he at least thought he was drunk. It was something about the noxious cocktail of pure alcohol and blood and blood containing high amounts of pure alcohol that put a slant in his walk and stars in his vision; he was stumbling home from Club Sanguine, half-conscious, the residue of his latest meal still sticky on his shirt.
Sera hadn't wanted him to go home at all. Stay the night with me, won't you? Stay here. But even in his strangely detached state, Julien knew that the longer he stayed away from the townhouse, the easier it became to forget why he had ever left it in the first place. He had already given up so much; he refused to give up the entirety of himself.
A new heartbeat blared in his ears, drawing him to a pause. The street was vacant, or so he'd thought—yet he knew he could not be mistaken. He heard the pulse as it pounded, the blood as it ran through the veins. A human was nearby. A very unlucky one, at that.
He reached the townhouse, where a lone figure slumped upon the stoop.
She lifted her face.
Julien was still very drunk, but he felt a lot closer to sober then. "Iman—"
"So you really have been here," she said, not rising from her spot on the front steps. There was something off about her, and Julien realized a second later that it was her lack of energy, the utter blankness to her face and her voice. Exhaustion was a parasite, and it was feeding well off of her. "This whole time," Iman went on, "you've really been here."
"Beck didn't tell you that?"
"Yeah, Beck told me. Beck told me what you were up to. Then Beck nearly got smashed to pieces in a car wreck and lost his vision, and Fritz came to the hospital. Fritz came, Jules," said Iman, her voice quivering, "when I called you."
Julien blinked. Caulfield had lost his vision? Caulfield, who he'd seen just a week or so ago, glaring at him from across the kitchen island. The world tilted, and Julien struggled to keep his balance.
Though he stood underneath a streetlight, its orange-yellow glow didn't reach the front door. Iman sat in the near-darkness, her shoulders now and then suffering an involuntary shiver from the growing chill.
Julien started, "I thought—"
"You thought what?" snapped Iman. "That Fritz was good enough—as a, what, substitute? So what if you sent someone else. It doesn't change the fact that I needed you, I always need you, and you're—you're not there, Julien. You're not here! You're not. So where are you? Where the fuck did you go?"
"Immy—"
"Don't—don't Immy me right now. Jesus."
"Sorry."
"'Sorry?'" Iman repeated, a humorless laugh at the end of the sentence. Julien watched as she rose to her feet, drawing closer to him. He tried to remember the last time she had ever been so mad at him, but he couldn't, because there was no precedent at all. "Look at you, Julien. You're covered in blood. How many people did you feed off of tonight, huh? How many people did you take a fucking bite out of? Was it fun sucking the life out of them? I bet you don't even know their names. Where they're from, who they are. Does that matter to you?"
"Iman. You're not listening."
"And just what do you have to say?"
"Did you not come here to hear what I have to say?" Julien fired back, shoving his hands in his pockets to disguise their unwilling trembling. "You don't get it, do you? I tell everyone the same thing and no one believes me. I know what I'm doing. I have to be with Sera, okay? It's the only way I'll find out what I need to know."
"What if it's not?" Iman asked. She stepped into the light now, and Julien sighed, the full scope of her weariness plain now. Iman, his lovely Iman, withered like a deciduous tree. Had he done this to her?
"I don't know. But I've wasted enough time looking for other ways. This is my last resort, okay?" Julien said. "I just—I have to stay far away right now. Sera is not an angel. She never has been. She could hurt you, Iman—"
"I'm not scared of her," Iman said, her voice flat. "Sorry if that confuses you."
Julien hesitated. He remembered the person he had been moments before, lost in the technicolor jungle of Sera's club, drifting from person to person, blood in his mouth and down his chin, a constant reminder of the monster he really was.
He took Iman's wrist, closing his fist tighter and tighter, until she squirmed. "If you're not afraid of her," he said, "then maybe I'm the one you should be afraid of."
She held his gaze, and as tired as the rest of her was, those eyes were powerful. "I'm not scared of you."
"You should be. You don't think I've survived this long without killing people, do you? I could kill you right where you stand—right here. You wouldn't even have time to scream. Don't you realize that?"
"But you won't," Iman said, trying to tear her arm free, then squealing under her breath when Julien's grip didn't give. She gritted her teeth. "I know you, Julien. I know you, the real you, and I know you're still in there. Fuck Sera. If you have to lose yourself to find yourself, is it even worth it?"
Julien's fingers fell from around Iman's wrist, one by one. He stepped back, his heel touching the curb. "Im..."
"Tell me what this is really about, Jules," said Iman, then shook her head. "Because I know it must be about something else. You were so scared of finding out about your past—reluctant, even, to let me search—so I know you wouldn't do all of this unless it meant something else to you. So tell me. I'm not going until you do."
He stared at her, this girl that had walked—or quite literally, poofed—into his life and at once rearranged every single part of it. Though years before Iman existed, they were much less important to him now, like a photo album whose pictures grew faded and more faded the further back you turned the pages. She knew him like no one else knew him. How stupid he was to ever try to fool her.
Though his heart had been cold for nearly two centuries, at that moment, it burned within him.
He told her everything. About Manu, the one who had come before her, about his eerie disappearance that would no doubt repeat itself if Julien did not find the answers he needed. He told her about the pictures Sera had shown him, of his mother, his father, his twin brother. He told her everything: everything he'd done, all the people he'd killed or fed from or both in the last three months. Everything, everything, everything. He had been a liar before. Many times before. He didn't want to be that anymore.
When he was done, Iman stood in silence for a while, her hands curling into fists, then uncurling again.
"It's about me," she said, her voice low enough to rival even the hint of night wind that blew at her curls.
"Much of what I do is about you, Iman. You're my best friend. I can't...I can't lose you, okay?"
"Jules?"
"Yes?"
"Okay."
Julien waited a moment, perplexed. "Okay?"
Her hand rested upon his cheek, and Julien shuddered. He'd forgotten how it felt to be touched by her, by a hand who loved him for who he really was, not for the person he used to be. Sera's hands on him were ice; Iman's were summer immured in flesh.
"Do what you need to do," she said, and when they locked eyes Julien realized hers were brimming with unshed tears. "But I want you to walk me down the aisle in June, so please don't—just don't fight too hard."
"I'm sorry," Julien said, though it was like the long-dead organ inside of his chest said it more than his mouth did. He felt so much, and all at once. Self-hatred, relief, love. He was human for a second. He felt human. "I'm so sorry, Iman. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry..."
But Iman only laughed, and if nothing else brought him back to his senses, that sound certainly did. She stepped closer, drawing him into a hug.
"Welcome back, Jules," she whispered. "We missed you."