Banner by the lovely and talented always_jbj


Author's Note: If you've read the first two installments, THANK YOU! But I should warn that this is darker, even angsty in places. Meet the Pratts was a romp, Finding William Pratt held a little more tension, but was still mostly fun. This is ... well, this is what I think happens next, and it isn't easy for anyone.





“You’re not really going?”

“No, Owen,” I reply, hefting my last bag. “I’m already gone.” I leave the key on the table and head out to the waiting taxi, all without looking back.

I know what you’re thinking. That’s a cold-hearted way to leave six years of marriage, almost a solid decade of togetherness. But, really, what’s the point? We’ve agreed to the divorce. There are no kids, no pets, very few joint possessions to consider. It should be harder, but it isn’t.

Before I can get choked up about my dry eyes, I’m at LaGuardia, boarding a flight for LAX. I have an aisle seat, and as the plane begins its ascent, I’m not even a little bit tempted to look back at the city disappearing behind me.

***

“So … what now?”

I fled New York on a snowy Tuesday at lunchtime. Dinnertime Wednesday, and I’m wearing a tank top in Willow and Tara’s backyard while their daughters splash in their inflatable pool. Los Angeles is in the middle of a heat wave, and I’m melting.

It feels heavenly.

“I mean, you’re welcome as long as you want. As long as you can stand the madness,” she adds, as Anneliese and Emmaline start a splashing fight that splatters us both with water. “Girls! The water has to stay in the pool. Right?”

The girls stopped laughing long enough to look contrite, and then resumed their gleeful shrieking.

“We thought it would be ideal for them to be close in age,” Willow grumbled.

“They’re adorable, Wil. You guys are lucky.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know. I didn’t mean …”

“It’s okay.” I push away a tidal wave of regret and disappointment. “It’s better this way. It didn’t matter … Owen was just a … well, he was just never what I needed.”

“Buffy, not this again!”

“Look, I know how you feel about it, but it doesn’t change the fact that even when things were good with Owen – even at their best – I wondered. I thought about him. It’s awful, but I wished it was him, so much of the time. I’d close my eyes and …”

“Okay, TMI!”

“Sorry.”

“Buffy, don’t you think you’re just clinging to some fantasy about the unattainable? I mean, I know that what happened … well, I know it was a nightmare. If the girls ever … no, I can’t imagine it. But why are you so sure that leaving Owen is the way to deal? Don’t you guys need each other?”

“He’s writing poetry about it. Heck, he’s probably writing poetry about me by now.”

“Well, um, he’s a poet.”

“Come on. He’s a tenured faculty member. If he wanted to write, I’d get that. But does he really need to publish it?”

Willow fell silent.

“He was my son, too. And Owen just … he just doesn’t seem to get that mourning in print, for money, might strike me as problematic.”

Willow nodded, knowing there was no possible response.

***

I’m nursing a pint in the Dove, one of the few pubs round these parts that still rates as a proper pub, though much of the clientele here tonight would not be out of place in a trendier establishment with an extensive wine list.

Take a seat in a meet market and inevitably the appraising looks come. Especially if you happen to be as handsome as yours truly.

‘Course, I’m not here looking for any type of romantic entanglement, no matter how fleeting, and before you get squeamish on me, I’m not hunting, either.

No, I’m just your garden-variety vampire, getting my ale on in a convivial watering hole.

Alright, fine. So I’m out here, at least in part, because I don’t want to sit up in my basement flat and suck down bottle after bottle of Jack. I could. I have, more nights than I care to admit. But I’m waiting for lightning to strike again. They say it never strikes twice, but that’s in a normal human life span. Surely there’s an exemption for my kind.

My kind.

Some romantic fool called us The Lonely Ones.

He had no idea.

Most of us – vampires – behave something like frat boys on a perpetual spring break. Except we intentionally commit not only mayhem, but murder, too. Then again, no one blames frat boys for killing the keg, so maybe that’s not exactly fair. But a place like this, tonight? Most vamps would already be fangs deep into their victim in the alley.

I’d say that would show a remarkable lack of subtlety and finesse, but it isn’t as if it’s rhythmic gymnastics and the gold medal is at stake.

Besides, there’s no way out. It’s the original existential crisis. If I wish to continue my existence – and may I assure you that I very much do – I’ve got to kill. I can’t go veg. There’s no Morningstar Farms cooking up the dietary equivalent of facon for my kind.

This puts a kink in the forming of warm friendships.

It was different. Once. One time in all these years. I didn’t just put her on the “do not eat” list because it would jeopardize my set-up to tear open her jugular.

She got a reprieve – even when she was begging for death – because she saw me. Saw that I was a creature of the night and exhibited neither morbid fascination borne of too much SciFi channel nor a horrified fear for her life.

My girl was curious. Quietly and stubbornly curious, but not about to dismiss me because I was a serial killer. Wasn’t out to save me, didn’t have any delusions that I could change.

And then … then … she went and seduced me! Can you imagine? This demure little thing, kitten as a cat, goes after me. The Big Bad.

And something in her – that mix of quiet confidence, poise and still horrible uncertainty – cracked me in two and made me hers.

If she hadn’t left that second time, would I have really gone?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that it wasn’t our last meeting.

She’ll be here soon.

It’s been well over a decade since we first met. I’ve followed her work – she’s famous now, or as near to it as a photographer can be – and when I least expect it, I’ll see her work. Which isn’t the same as seeing her, but that will change soon.

I can’t tell you how I know. I just have this feeling, this sense, that she’s coming back to me.

Does that sound hopelessly romantic?

You caught me out, then.

Better than a century on this rotten Earth, and I’m still a hopeless ponce.

***

Tonight marks the Lunar New Year.

“Happy Year of the Snake,” Emmaline tells me, only it comes out more like “Heppy Yeh of da Nake!”

I’m cleaning the bathroom in preparation for Willow and Tara’s big party. Their guests will be the usual mix – their neighbors and colleagues – but with lots of families including children adopted from China, like their girls. In fact, their guests will include lots of lesbian couples adopting from China, because the LA area has enough such families that they have their own Yahoo! Group.

The thought of being with so many kids doesn’t trouble me too much. Only pregnant women move me to tears. Pregnant women, and tiny newborns. I love Willow like a sister – and truthfully I didn’t have any place else to go – but if she were married to some guy named Dan and had pushed out her two darling daughters the old fashioned way?

The way I’m feeling, there’s no way I’d be here.

***

Of course, fate seems to be throwing glowing pregnant women and brand new mommies in my path. In the middle of a sea of faces, I end up next to the one woman nursing a petite, six-week old baby girl. She is Tara’s former neighbor, a counselor who works with runaway teens.

This stranger does not deserve my rage. So I slip into the guest bedroom and try to practice the meditation techniques my grief counselor suggested.

It helps, but only a little. Not nearly enough.

One of the platitudes that you hear in difficult times is this: when one door opens, another one closes. As I hide in the guest bedroom, I amend this statement. When one door slams in your face with hurricane force, sometimes you have no choice but to shimmy out the tiny crack in the window.

***

There are ways, of course.

There’s the Pretty Woman scenario. The hooker with the fangs of gold. Slightly harder for men to work, but far from impossible. And since we aren’t subject to disease and have little to fear from an aggressive customer, it isn’t an unappealing route. But it requires hanging about to attract your clientele, chatting and flirting, and I’m not exactly a people person.

Some of us just fall in love with a single victim and manage to subsist on a semi-starvation diet. But that way? It’s always very possible that you’ll miscalculate and drain your beloved. Not for me, thanks. And even if your willpower is iron, well, what happens when your human tap starts to wrinkle and grey? If you offer up eternal life, then you’re just creating one more starving fledgling, another mouth to feed.

Now and again you’ll hear about a vamp living on pig’s blood or stealing supplies from the local hospital. I’ve drained rats on long ocean voyages, and they’re not so bad. Bag blood re-heated is, of course, close to indistinguishable from the real thing.

But I’m a predator. And even if I were to find an alternate food source, what would I do about my longing to stalk, to hunt, to kill?

There is more than one appetite I need to sate.