Jan had shifted Jackie's whole world, but not only her world, the entire cosmos - the planets lifted and shuffled and resettled as Jackie started to fall for her, aligning into some form of significance. And sure, Jackie had had some brief fascination with Nicky way back at the start of the semester, but that was just infatuation. With Jan, it was different to any of the people she’d had fleeting time with before. 

It wasn’t just simple attraction, but calmness, genuine warmth even though Jan was always cold - cold-blooded, she always joked - the ability to be herself, even if herself meant sharing silence, nothingness. She hadn’t known wanting to be someone's future as well as their present. She hadn’t known wanting someone else in her future as well as her present.

Jackie hadn’t ever known love before Jan. 

‘I’m forever chasing after time

But everybody dies’

But now Jan sat before her, their three months of dating behind them along with the stars, a glass of red wine staining her lips and her words, as they sat in this restaurant that Jackie had passed by with stars in her own eyes every week. And Jan had insisted they go to a movie and then go here, in their finery. 

So Jackie had dressed to impress in a long purple dress she’d borrowed from Jaida, and Jan had been in black, the icy blue of her eyes striking like some otherworldly creature.

The day had been perfect. Jan’s hand intertwining with hers, the warmth of her gaze obliterating the cold of her skin. Both of them alone in the world, just them and the glitter that shimmered in the air. Brilliant sunshine, springs in their steps. Good company, good food, music that spoke to their souls.

It was utterly, utterly perfect.

The first I love you that slipped out from Jackie was a whisper, a shimmering veil of translucence that might not exist if touched, like a bubble, iridescent in the air; but Jan’s words after it, as Jan’s eyes filled with something pained, but honest; were nothing short of devastating.

Jackie, I have to tell you something.

When the words, tinged with wine, left Jan’s lips, Jackie’s first thought was disbelief.

I’m a vampire.

Disbelief.

Then revulsion.

And finally betrayal.

‘If I could buy forever at a price

I would buy it twice.’

The bubbles burst in the air as she’d gathered her coat and marched into the sudden burst of rain, knowing she’d have to do some explaining to Jaida as to how her dress would end up covered in mud and water from the rain. And she’d turned and Jan was right behind her, panic behind her eyes, but she tucked it back away as Jackie had frozen beside her, and even as the rain and wind roared around her, Jan’s whisper was the loudest thing in her ears.

Tell me if it’s over.

And Jackie’s tongue had stuck to the roof of her mouth.

She was meant to be repulsed.

Instead she’d tugged Jan to meet her lips, hand on her neck, the cold of her skin finally having a reason, reaching to Jan’s mane of blonde hair, finding Jan’s hands clutch at her waist and her shoulder as if she’d just pulled her from the edge of a cliff, as if Jackie had been about to fall from a precipice.

Maybe she had.

‘But if the Earth ends in fire

And the seas are frozen in time’

Jan had explained everything that night, as they’d both sat in Jackie’s room, hands intertwined, and Jan had emptied herself into this space, earnest truths spilling from her lips.

Growing up in New Jersey in the fifties. Hitching up north to New York for Woodstock in the sixties. Getting drunk, getting high, and getting bitten. It turns out that Woodstock was practically utopia for vampires, so many walking blood bags to feast upon. Jan had had her first taste of blood there too, from some guy who wouldn’t stop hitting on her friend. 

But Jan said she’d preferred to be alone, until she’d met Jackie. 

“Immortality,” Jackie had murmured.

“Is somebody jealous?” Jan’s smile was small, sad, made Jan shrink. “I don’t think you should be.”

“Are there many more here? On campus?”

“Not many,” Jan had nodded, “but some.”

‘There’ll be just one survivor:

The memory that I was yours

And you were mine’

“No more secrets,” Jackie had whispered, finding her voice more strained than she’d expected.

“None.”

Jan was earnest, nodding and opening her arms to Jackie, and Jackie found herself in them, holding Jan so tightly and not wanting to let go. Jackie noticed that Jan didn’t have a heartbeat as she rested her head on her chest, but something in the back of her mind wondered if she’d always known that. After all, they’d laid like this so many times before. 

Maybe she’d just wanted to delude herself all along.

Immortality.

“Do you … want me to be a vampire too?”