SEVEN | SUNFLOWERS

“Hey, Cals, I’m in here,” Harper called. Steam pooled out of the open kitchen door, blasting heat and the smell of rosemary and butternut squash through to the hallway. It was a warm and comforting scent, hearty soup and freshly baked bread, and I felt the tension in my shoulders drop. I was home.

“Hi,” I shouted back, shrugging off my coat and hanging it up next to his on the hook, black faux-leather next to a worn corduroy jacket with a sherpa lining. It felt so wonderfully ordinary, to come home to a hot meal after a day at work.

“How was your day?” He yelled, over the sound of running water and something bubbling on the stove. I unlaced my converse and toed them off in the hallway, kicking them to the side of the doormat, and slipped through the house into the kitchen. 

“It’s just improved drastically,” I grinned, shutting the door behind me, wary and worried that the smoke alarm might go off. I pressed a chaste kiss to his warm cheek, and pulled out a chair, straddling it so that I could sit and watch him cook. Once firmly seated, I asked, “Do you need any help?”

He laughed, his dark skin glowing and finely misted with a sheen of steam from the soup. “As much as it looks like you want to, no, Cals, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

I shrugged, my grin turning teasing. “Well, I like to do what I can.”

“It won’t be long now. I mis-timed a few things, but,” he trailed off, smiling at me.

“I’m happy to wait. Thanks for cooking, Harp.”

I settled my front against the old dining chair, crossing my arms over its back. We had a small kitchen, with a small alcove that just fit a small table with two mismatched chairs we’d stolen from our university accommodation. Harper liked to buy seasonal tablecloths to try to make it look less battered, more homely, but we’d both forgotten to change the one from Halloween. Littered with little bats and smiling pumpkins, it made the kitchen look more like student housing and less like a cosy starter home – though I wouldn’t dare tell Harper that. 

There was a fresh jar of sunflowers on the windowsill, and I nodded at them. “Those flowers are nice.”

“Oh, yeah! I got them for you when I went to get the squash and bread. I thought – well, you found a body this morning, and then went straight to work.” He hummed thoughtfully to himself, turning to face me. He was still smiling, but his eyes were marred with worry. The wooden spoon in his hand dripped soup onto the hob. “I thought you could use a little sunshine in your life,” he shrugged, his gaze turning shy.

“Awh, Harp,” I cooed, pushing back my chair and standing up. “You’re like the sun to me all on your own, you know that?”

He pretended to grimace, though his eyes crinkled with affection. “Gross, Cals. When did you get so soppy?”

A shot of guilt ran through me. Was I only being soppy because I’d flirted with Cyrus? I stilled, my knees locking, and Harper cocked his head at me.

“Hey, are you okay? Is it your cut?”

“Oh. Oh, no, I’m fine.” I shook my head at myself, a tiny, amused movement. I was being silly. “Here,” I said, leaning over and turning off the tap, “let me wash up. I don’t know why you’re trying to do two things at once, anyway.”

“You just seem like you need a night off,” he shrugged, turning back to the now-boiling soup. It spat at him viciously, and I had to curl my lips inwards to keep from laughing as he batted the spoon at the bubbling liquid. “But if you’re offering, I’m not going to turn down an offer of free labour.”

I’d wanted to sit still, to rest, but my spasm of guilt had flooded me with nervous energy that I needed to release. If I was washing up, then my hands were occupied, and my brain couldn’t indulge itself with fantasies about Cyrus’s big, masculine hands grabbing me round the waist, or cupping the side of my face with his smooth palm.

Soap dribbled down my wrist, my hand frozen around the sponge. What was I thinking? I loved Harper; I had loved him for years, too. We were happy. I supposed it was normal for most people to daydream about other men, other women, even if they’d never act on it, but I’d never had the slightest inclination to do so before. I worked hard, I fought hard, and I came home to Harper, who made me happy. It was easy, simple. I didn’t have the time or energy to imagine myself with someone else, though I’d never met anyone who’d taken my breath away the way Cyrus had.

I swallowed desperately, my mouth suddenly dry. I scrubbed at a baking tray with renewed vigour, as though I could clean away the impulsive thoughts I was having. 

I needed a distraction. While Harper finished off cooking dinner – amid frequent swear words and mild burns from where he kept forgetting to use oven gloves – I focused on the list of traits we knew all vampires shared. If a new clan had arrived, I needed to be prepared. Perhaps, I thought, with a spark of amusement, they’d sent Cyrus in as a human decoy, someone to make the locals go all doe-eyed and confused by the sudden butterflies in their stomach.

I licked my lips. Cyrus was no decoy, and here I was, thinking of him again. I was tired, and hurt; my brain must be latching onto anything, in the typical nonsense way that brains did. It was like knowing I had to be up in a few hours and being unable to sleep, my mind broadcasting images and messages that would keep me awake. 

Vampires cannot walk in the sunlight, I told myself firmly. Holding my focus in place, I continued: vampires cannot eat or drink anything, only blood. Vampires heal much quicker than humans, but they can be injured, and killed. To kill a vampire, a stake must not be removed prematurely. Vampires can only be killed with wood. Oak wood is the most powerful, and the deadliest to them.

Vampires cannot get ill, or suffer from disease, infection, or plague. A stake through the heart is the only thing that kills them. Their heads can be removed, but if it is not separated from the body and destroyed, it can re-attach itself. In these cases, it is still safer to stake them through the heart. As they are supernatural beings, and charged with magic, with the vigour of blood-life, no overt risks should be taken when in combat against them. The sunlight is like poison to them, spreading fire through their veins, and they are weakened in the daytime. 

Although some sources suggest that shape shifting is possible for vampires, I continued to myself, wiping the washing up sponge across the soup-covered immersion blender, these claims are untrue. The more blood a vampire consumes, the more powerful they become. However, shape shifting has never been documented as one of their abilities – not even into a bat.

I smiled to myself, my brain ticking over as it usually did: serious and logical, with just a brush of humour. I was okay.

Harper slid his arms around my waist from behind, tucking his chin onto my shoulder. The short, prickly hairs on his chin tickled the skin of my exposed neck, and I shivered, tingles shooting down my back and raising goose bumps on my arms.

“Dinner’s ready,” he murmured in my ear. I wiped the soap bubbles from my hands and forearms, and turned, reaching up and leaning my wrists against his broad shoulders, my wet fingers interlinking around his neck.

“Let’s eat,” I grinned.

The night passed easily, effortlessly. We fell into our normal routine: cheerful bickering over what to watch, even though we were both more than likely to fall asleep in the first half an hour; light, teasing comments and too-loud laughter; sweet kisses peppered on every inch of available skin. I didn’t think of Cyrus again, not until we were getting ready for bed.

“What time are you in work tomorrow?” Harper asked around a mouthful of toothpaste, his toothbrush sticking out of his lips and moving exaggeratedly as he spoke.

“I’m on the early shift,” I said, rubbing coconut and tea tree oil into my skin beside him. “And you?”

“The night shift,” he sighed, looking crestfallen. “I really enjoyed tonight, Cals. I wish we could have more evenings together.”

“Me too,” I murmured, brushing my fingers over his hand, firm around the edge of the sink. I met his eyes in the mirror, through the steam of our shared shower that had clouded the glass. Harper had smeared a flannel across it, so we could both see our faces. Our eyes were almost level, and my mouth twisted wistfully.

Sometimes – only on very rare occasions, like now – I wished that I’d never been a hunter, had never learned about that world. These moments occurred less frequently than me wishing that I could tell Harper everything, but, as I stared at our blurred reflections, side by side, my chest ached for a normal life with him.

His shifts as a nurse would still make it difficult, but the thing that kept us apart so often was, in all honesty, my secret, second life as a hunter. I made time for him, but I simply couldn’t make enough – I couldn’t make as much as I wanted, sometimes. The desire sat heavy on my shoulders, and I reached over to squeeze his hand, still warm and damp from the shower.

“Maybe I could take you out for coffee soon,” he said abruptly, dumping his toothbrush in the little jar by the sink and spitting out the toothpaste. He swung me around in his arms, his breath minty and sweet up close. “Remember how we used to between lectures? We made time then. I just – I don’t want us to become too separate, you know?” He shrugged, but his dark eyes were intense as they watched me, flickering from my eyes to my lips in anticipation of a response.

“I’d love that,” I said, though it sounded stiff to my own ears. I hadn’t told him about Cyrus, and I wasn’t sure why. Now was the time, surely. I’d told Cyrus I had a boyfriend; I had no ill intentions, clearly, yet I couldn’t help but want to tuck my coffee meeting with him into the private part of my life, alongside my hunting, kept secret from Harper. “I miss those days, sometimes,” I said instead. “That little café in the library where we’d meet, do you remember? With the big mural of the monkey on one wall, with the scary eyes,” I grinned. It only felt a little bit forced.

“Of course I do, it wasn’t that long ago,” he laughed, seemingly unfazed by my clenched jaw and stiff smile. “Okay. We have to have a day off – or even a morning off – at the same time.”

I could feel it burning in my throat, the urge to say that I was busy on Friday morning, too, even though I wasn’t working. But it was so much simpler to keep Cyrus separate, too, so I slotted him in alongside the already long list of things I was hiding from Harper, and, though uncomfortable with my decision, and not entirely sure why I’d made it, I felt better for having decided. It was settled, out of the way, over and done with.

As much as it hurt, I was going to lie to my boyfriend. Though it wasn’t for the first time, something about this betrayal felt rawer, and much, much worse.