He tossed back the covers and pulled on his clothes; naked, she came after him, drew him to a standstill and reached tremblingly to touch his redly illumined face in the darkness of the room.
‘When I was dead,’ she said in a whisper, ‘they tried to tell me you were a monster. I wouldn’t listen to them, because I didn’t want to talk to dead people. But I remember they said there was life, and death, and a place between the two. People have existence in the first two places but not in the third, which is reserved for . . .’
‘. . . For vampires,’ Harry cut in, harshly. ‘Yes, and for their victims, people they turn into vampires. And for foolish girls who through their thoughtless actions change themselves into vampires!’
She shook her head. ‘But you didn’t take my blood, Harry. You didn’t even make me bleed!’ She was defiant. ‘I’m almost nineteen and anyway, I wasn’t a virgin. I … I knew a man for a whole year, once.’
‘Knew a man!’ he snorted. ‘You’re a child!’
‘And you’re out of touch!’ she hit back. ‘It’s 1989! Plenty of girls – British girls – get married at sixteen and seventeen these days. Yes, and plenty more prefer not to get married but simply live with their lovers. I’m no child. Are you saying my body felt like a child’s?’
‘Yes!’ he snapped, then gritted his teeth, folded her in his arms and groaned, ‘No. You felt – you feel – like a woman. But still a foolish one. Penny, you don’t understand. I didn’t need to make you bleed. You see, there’s something of me in you now. It’s not much but it doesn’t need to be, for even a little is enough to change you.’
‘Then let it, as long as I’m with you.’ She clutched him to her. ‘You brought me back, Harry, gave me my life. For what it’s worth, I owe it to you. All of it. And I want you to have it.’
‘You’ve run away from home?’ He put her away from him, to arm’s length.
‘I’ve left home,’ she sighed. ‘Nineteen-eighty-nine, remember?’
He wanted to hit her and couldn’t. He thought: Dear God, she’s in thrall to me! And then thought, But she was even before this. Except we’d call it a ‘crush’. Please don’t let anything of me – of that – be in her!
His head cleared; sleep and all that had accompanied it receded; the implications came home to him, fully. ‘What time is it?’ He glanced at his watch. Only 10:30 p.m. ‘How did you find me? More importantly, how did you get in?’
She sensed his urgency and reacted to it. ‘What’s wrong, Harry?’ And now her eyes were frightened.
As he put on the lights and his face took on a more normal aspect, she said, ‘When I was here before, I saw the address on some of your mail. I remembered it, remembered everything about you. In fact you haven’t been out of my mind for a minute. And I knew I would have to come to you. No matter what.’
‘And Trevor Jordan let you in? Without waking me?’ Harry hurled open his bedroom door. ‘Trevor!’ he shouted. ‘Will you come – the – hell – up here?!’
There was no answer, just Penny shaking her head.
Harry looked at her: long-legged, yellow-haired, blue-eyed. His gaze took in her firm breasts, thighs and backside, all of her beautiful young body. And the uneven slant of her mouth, which was quite unintentioned but still made her look sexy and somehow provocative. When he’d first seen her like this, naked, there had been ugly black holes in her flesh. But now she was whole again. Whole, but probably unholy.
‘Better get dressed,’ he said. And: ‘Jordan?’
‘Gone,’ she said, slipping easily into her clothes. ‘I told him I had to be with you, but not how I intended to be with you. He made me promise to look after you, and told me to tell you goodbye.’
That’s all?’
‘No, he also said I shouldn’t stay. When he couldn’t convince me, then he left. He said you’d understand. Oh, and I remember he said he hoped that – er, E-Branch? -that they would understand, too. For his sake.’