After a few more details were ironed out, Martin left, and I stood there in the library by myself. I only stood there for about a minute before Autumn walked in.

  She rushed into the room like a silent blur, appearing as if she had only stepped from the doorway, and not from somewhere else much deeper inside the house. Once the air released her hair, it fell around her shoulders, framing her familiar face. Everything about her was the same as always: dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, with a welcoming smile. She was… gorgeous… as always. Even after everything she had been through, she was looking at me like she wanted to help me. She didn’t realize how much she had already helped me.

  “Leaving us again, huh?” Autumn asked lightly. “Seems like you always disappear right as things settle down. Never gives us a chance after to…”

  She didn’t need to say it, because I knew. It seemed like from the moment we met, we had slowly drifted together, but never fully bonded, whatever this was. Not before darker forces from beneath the city got in the way, or Death tore me from where I wanted to be.

  I had been alone for so long in the city, hiding in the shadows and killing, before I met her. So when I met her that night, when I first stepped out of the darkness to find some semblance of answers and humanity again… It was an instant connection.

  Sometimes it was hard to even justify it more than what it had been. She was just the first human… good… genuine girl that I had met while pretending to be human. That was the initial pull. I wouldn’t play like it was anything else… that was what made me focus on her. That didn’t mean it took anything away from what we felt for each other. I mean, how did anyone meet, human and monster alike? You meet someone, feel some kind of connection, and things just start happening. It was no different with us.

  Honestly, I was thankful. I was lucky enough to find Autumn in a situation that was leading me toward answers. What I didn’t plan for was that it was the same moment that I began trying to regain any semblance of humanity. Just being around her made me remember so many things about life before all of this. For the briefest of moments… it made me feel normal. Then, the ties started forming to the Chasse family as a whole. It all just started happening… But that didn’t mean it was any less real.

  I think Autumn found me at a time in her life when she needed something different. Something other than what she had known with Patrick. The fa?ade that I showed her and the rest of her family made me highly intriguing to her. I was everything to her that Patrick was not, at least maybe that’s the way it started. It was hard for me to really know what she thought or felt because her human life was so far removed from what mine was. I knew nothing about monsters and the dark world beneath our feet when I was still an average person. So I wasn’t sure how much I was actually getting correct with my thoughts.

  To simplify my thoughts, I knew that no matter how it started, or how simple the connection was, it had grown into something much greater. But like she said, some things just kept getting in the way. Now that left us in an odd predicament where we were both connected to another person who was splitting us.

  Alex, the killer of killers, whom I felt so close to. It was that relationship built in those harsh times when all hell was breaking loose, and I grew into the monster that I was. Now Alex was Autumn’s creator, and they had been bound in a way that I could never understand. It went without saying, but I knew that it made Autumn just as confused about what was between us, knowing that Alex and I were connected as well.

  “I know,” I said as I nodded slowly. “With you and Patrick, the curse,” I shook my head in frustration. “Things have gotten…”

  “Complicated?” Autumn cut in with a weak chuckle and a reluctant smile.

  I sighed in an understanding way, “Yeah.”

  There was only a brief moment where we stared at each other and then awkwardly looked around the room at the massive horde of books. We were both just unsure of how to continue with the conversation.

  “The bond we shared… Alex and me,” Autumn started. “It wasn’t just a line of communication. It gave me access to her mind. I could see her memories, hear her thoughts in a way that’s… hard to understand or explain.” She struggled to find the right words. “When we were connected, I could see how much she struggled in this world. I could feel our hunger… and those memories… and how much of a fight it was every day to resist human blood. I saw the memories of what happened to her. Those awful… unforgivable things that were done to her before she was turned. I could feel how much they still weighed on her, how much she wanted out of this life. Sometimes… she just wanted it to end… but she couldn’t just do it herself. She was a fighter… she’d never just roll over and die. She wanted to go out killing as many as possible.”

  I stared into autumn’s brown eyes as she steadied herself against the table, not out of necessity but more for comfort. She stood tall and strong, staring straight into my eyes, talking about something she knew so intimately. It was weird hearing her talk about Alex so much like they had known each other for years. Also, the way she spoke about her in the past tense freaked me out a little, but I didn’t say anything about it. It had to be the fact that Autumn couldn’t feel Alex anymore after the relic was destroyed.

  “That’s why I was so frantic about her. When the bond was cut, I thought she’d finally done it. I thought she’d finally gotten what she wanted. Right at the end, before the connection was severed, she felt like she was finally at peace about something. About all of it. Since the moment I woke up again, and I was this,” Autumn lifted her hands, expressing to me her new existence. “There was so much turmoil… so much grief… almost agony over what she’d done. She thought constantly about the promise she had made herself so long ago. She saw making me as her greatest failure…” Autumn was trying to explain with her words, but I could see more of the burden of everything through her body language.

  For a supernatural creature like Autumn to be breathing so heavily, and her heart rising and falling as fast and chaotically, was telling. It was all based on emotion and not the actual physical aspect of herself.

  “As I said before, it has to be from when I destroyed the relic. She’s fine,” I assured Autumn.

  Autumn nodded, trying to calm herself down. “It’s just strange to have that deep of a connection cut off so abruptly. Do you think she’d want to meet before you leave? I assume she’s…”

  I nodded, seeing that Autumn could read between the lines and knew that Alex would be going with me. But I could sense a weight behind that realization that I felt like I had to say something, as complicated as it was.

  “I’m sure she would want that. But don’t think this means we’re just going to ghost everyone and not come back. I just need to go home. After everything that’s happened, seeing how much your family has been tossed around by the secret side of this world, I just need to stop wasting time. After talking to Martin, you’ll have your work cut out for you here. So naturally, I’m sure I’ll be back to help out with any trouble that might arise. I don’t want you to think this is any kind of hard goodbye, though. Or that this is the end of things between us.”

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  Autumn looked at me, surprised for a moment, and was cautious before she spoke. “What do you mean?”

  I took a deep breath and tried to really mean what I was going to say… or say what I meant. However, that saying went.

  “Things between me and Alex are… they surprised me,” I admitted. “None of this is simple. I’m complicated, she’s complicated…” I looked at Autumn and said, “You’re complicated now, too. Our lives aren’t as black and white as they used to be. I’m not going to hold myself to old human standards or thoughts. The simple truth is, I still feel very deeply for you, Autumn. But I feel for Alex, too. With the things I know… the things I have coming… Maybe it’s selfish of me to say this, but I can’t afford to lose anybody. I know if I were just a normal human guy, I’d have to choose one person, but… I can’t. Not when the relationships I have now are so much deeper than the ones I ever had as a human. I’m bound to you and your family in ways I never thought possible. My ties with Alex are different but equally as strong. I know I’ve said this before, but I know that there’s going to be a day when I’ll be walking this world alone…” I waited to see her reaction.

  Autumn’s face held a slight hint of fear. It was a fear of the unknown. I was effectively telling her that she would die before me. That had to be hard to hear after becoming a supposedly immortal creature like she was.

  “None of you will be here with me… Not Alex… not you… no one. I need everyone with me as much as I can… while I can. As long as you’ll have me,” I admitted to her.

  Autumn had cut her eyes down to the table as I spilled my guts to her. I could tell the words were hitting her full force, and it was hard to get a read on her of how she was taking them. I didn’t say anything else, and I just watched her. I didn’t feel like there was anything else to be said. It was brutal, foreign to what either of us had grown up around, and uncompromising, but it was the truth.

  I knew that any other person on the face of the earth wouldn’t be able to get away with what I had just said. But if what Jon and Death told me was true, and I was going to be here after all my loved ones died, to become some kind of lonely stranger wandering and killing in the shadows… I was beyond over trying to be anything but open. When it came to what I wanted in the long term… I was going to be straightforward.

  Autumn looked up slowly and said, “Look, I know things are weird now, and they don’t have to be fixed right this second. And honestly, I think I understand what you mean more than you realize.”

  Autumn shifted her stance as she began to explain something. She leaned away from the table and paced around the study area to look out the window between some shelves. She stared out into the darkness of the night as she began, almost seeming to lose track of being in the room with me.

  “When the curse had me, and Patrick and I were bound, I felt what he felt. I felt that longing desire to have what we once had together. I felt the truth down to his core. The purest form of that need was so innocent. There was a memory he always thought about between us. It was nothing… something so simple… so mundane that it would mean nothing to someone else. Honestly, I vaguely remember the memory from my own head, but the way he looked at it… the way I saw it was so different in his eyes.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, truly intrigued. I hadn’t known that the curse intertwined their minds like that.

  “When the curse still had me, it wasn’t really me walking around and talking to people. It was like I was in the back seat, locked inside a prison in my own mind, watching everything the other person was doing in my body. It was… a nightmare. While I was stuck there, I felt the thread between Patrick and me. If I followed that thread, I could link into him… see things he thought about. It was a welcome break from seeing what I was doing on the outside.” Autumn admitted.

  “What was the memory?” I asked.

  Autumn had a starry-eyed look on her face as she stared out the window, bloody tears pooling on her lower lid. I could see her reflection in the glass, and I felt a knot form in my throat as I began to feel her own emotions.

  She sniffed a sob back as she explained, “We were watching a movie. That’s all… It was so simple. We were in my dorm. My roommate was gone, and we had the whole place to ourselves. We made popcorn, had big warm blankets, turned all the lights off, and just watched the movies. It was the old movie called Speed, where they had that bomb on the bus.” Autumn started laughing as the tears spilled over her eyes, as she recalled something good from the memory. “Patrick used to always give me shit about not seeing it, so he forced me to watch it. Then he had the sequel lined up right after. The whole memory was just of us watching those two movies that night. To see it all through his perception, though, it was different. The closeness he felt to me in those few hours that night… it was beyond anything I ever thought he felt about me.”

  I stared at Autumn’s reflection as she cried, continuing to face away from me. She was truly hurt by this memory. It affected her so deeply, and it seemed that even she was confused about what that meant and how it made her look at herself.

  “We were just together… It was simple. All he wanted in that moment was that time with me, and that’s what he wanted back again. That was what was at the heart of the curse. But it was twisted by Peter… corrupted with that dark power, turning something that was once pure into something evil, obsessive… and murderous.”

  Autumn leaned over against the wall beside the window and put both hands over her face. She cried quietly there at the window as she lived in the grief of what all had happened, and the truth of Patrick lay bare in her mind.

  I slowly walked around the table, grabbed her shoulders, and pulled her slowly into me. I didn’t say anything, mostly because I didn’t know what to say, as all of this was hard for me to understand. It was so easy to want to hate Patrick for everything that happened and his role in it. But from Autumn’s perspective, Patrick was equally as much a victim as she was. Not only that, but I think now she has regrets about her relationship with him before all of this started… before I came around.

  A few minutes passed as we stood there holding each other tightly, and then she broke away. She wiped the blood of tears from her eyes and cleaned herself up.

  “Like you said… everything’s complicated now. But I get it… and I’m not going anywhere. There’s a lot to do here, a lot of plans that are getting laid, and I’m at the center of most of them. Martin intends to have me take some kind of leading role here in the city. I was hesitant at first, but honestly, if it keeps mom and dad out of harm’s way, I’m all for it. Not to mention, I’m excited to start hunting using my new abilities. It’ll turn our family into a murder machine all our own. Not to mention having Jane and her family more closely tied in with all of us now. So yeah… lots to do, but I’ll be here when you get back,” Autumn assured. “I don’t know how everything’s going to work out, but I’m not just letting go of you either. I don’t know about how long I’ll live compared to you, but I have a lot to figure out. All of this is new to me… to us… even Martin. No one knows what I am, and what it’ll mean long term.”

  “I know that feeling,” I said the words without thinking.

  Autumn smiled, “Everything is so… more. The hunger is heavy… like a hole that is constantly growing and needing to be filled, and if I don’t fill it… I’ll crumble away and lose myself. The strength… the power… the speed, all of it. It’s going to take a lot of time to… adjust,” Autumn explained. “And if I don’t have Alex bonded to me anymore, it’s going to be much more difficult.” Autumn eyed me intently, seemingly nervous again about something as she asked, “Alex really is okay?”

  I nodded again with no hesitation. I knew she was back at her apartment, or maybe running around the shadows trying to get things done before I returned and we left.

  “It's just so weird not to feel her in the bloodline, or through our connection from hunger or whatever it was with the relic.” Autumn tried to shake the fear and anxiety of her lost connection away.

  She moved away from the table, getting ready to leave the room. I didn’t want the moment to end, but I knew things had to progress here, so I could leave. I had a timer going in the back of my head. I knew I had to get back to Alex so we could start making our moves to leave the city. It would be even more complex if she truly couldn’t walk in the daylight anymore.

  “When you’re down there, Sam… if you need any help, just call me. No matter what we have going on here in St. Louis, you know that Mom and Dad will drop everything to come and help you. I’ll drop everything to come to you… If you need it. You're our family now, too, Sam. You’ve done so much for us… don’t think we won't do the same for you.”

  I clenched my teeth to fight back some emotion that was swelling to the surface. Her words meant more to me than I expected. Especially with everything between her and me getting so fucked up.

  “Thanks, Autumn.”

  Without any more conversation, Autumn smoothly walked out of the room at a human speed at the same moment Carter and Eleanor walked in behind her.

  They both glanced at Autumn in a way as they passed that told me they saw something of note from their expressions. I could see the reaction in their eyes, and I could smell the blood in the air. She had started crying again, but waited until she left the room to let it slip.