The Vampire Who Forgot Me

The letter arrived on a Tuesday. By Wednesday night, a dead man was standing in front of me, insisting I'd come back to kill him. The worst part wasn't that he looked alive. It was that when he said my name, I almost remembered dying. I stood beneath the stone archway of Blackthorn Hall, rain dripping from my hair and a suitcase cutting into my palm. The mansion rose like something that had survived two centuries by eating the people who entered it. Dark towers pierced the November sky. Ivy strangled the windows. Iron gates stood open, though I hadn't seen anyone open them. My taxi driver had abandoned me at the village crossroads forty minutes earlier. "Ashford place," he'd muttered, throwing my suitcase onto the wet road and peeling away so fast he sprayed mud across my coat. Even taxi drivers in Northumberland knew when to run. I should have taken the hint. Instead, I'd walked because of six words in my own handwriting. He's going to forget you again. I'd found it slipped beneath my apartment door three mornings earlier. No envelope. No stamp. Just my name on the front in the slanted writing I use when I'm exhausted. I checked it against old notebooks and shopping lists. Even the little hook at the end of my lowercase y matched. Someone copied my handwriting. That was the sensible explanation. The less sensible one was that I remembered writing it. Not where or when — just the feeling. Frozen fingers, hammering heart, absolute certainty that if I failed to deliver it, someone would die. Three days I tried to ignore it. Then the second letter came. Just an address: Blackthorn Hall, Northumberland. And underneath: If you wait until he remembers, it will be too late. So I'd come. Now I stood outside a mansion from a nightmare, wondering if the sender wanted to save me or make sure I never left. I knocked. The sound vanished inside. I knocked again. "Hello?" Something moved in the glass beside the door. I turned. Only my reflection. Wet hair, ruined coat, a woman who made terrible decisions for a living. Then my reflection smiled. I didn't. My suitcase hit the stone. For a second I just stared. Then the smile vanished. "Nope. No. Absolutely not," I muttered, dragging a hand over my face. "I'm cold, wet, and not getting haunted today." The door opened. A woman in a grey dress stood there. Sixties, silver bun, a face that had mastered saying nothing. Her gaze moved from my suitcase to my face — and the tray in her hands tilted. Porcelain slid. Then the whole tray slipped from her fingers and shattered across the hall. Neither of us moved. She stared at me like she'd watched a corpse climb out of its grave. "No," she whispered. "Excuse me?" "You can't be here." "I was hoping to speak with Mr. Ashford." She flinched at the name and seized my wrist. Her fingers were cold and too strong. "Listen to me. Whatever you think you remember, you must leave before—" "Before I remember her." The voice came from behind her. Her grip loosened. At the far end of the hall, a man stood at the foot of the staircase. Black shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, dark trousers, black hair falling carelessly across his forehead. His face was too perfect, but it was his stillness that unsettled me. Predator-still. His eyes were silver. He started down the stairs. One step. Another. The woman backed away from him. He didn't look at her. Only at me. By the bottom step, his composure cracked. Raw recognition broke through. His fingers closed around the banister. Wood creaked. "No," he whispered. I swallowed. "I'm sorry?" He looked at me like a wound that had reopened after a century. "You came back." "Pretty sure you've got the wrong girl." "No." "Great way to greet a stranger." "You're not a stranger." His jaw tightened so hard a splinter broke off under his fingers. "Okay. What's my name then?" He said it. Perfectly. The way he said it — quietly, like he'd once whispered it beside someone dying — made me forget how to breathe. "How do you know that?" His eyes dropped to my coat pocket. To the letter. "Where did you get it?" "Someone left it at my apartment." "Who?" "If I knew, I wouldn't be standing outside your creepy mansion in the rain." He held out his hand. "May I?" The politeness threw me. Hard to reconcile with the way he'd just tried to murder the banister. I gave him the paper. He unfolded it, read the six words, and went pale. For the first time he didn't look like a man who controlled everything — he looked like someone who'd found his own grave empty. "You're certain this is your handwriting?" "Checked for three days." "That's impossible." "Second time I've heard that tonight. Explain?" He turned the letter over, then folded it and slipped it into his own pocket. "Hey." I reached. He caught my wrist. The world tore open. Not pain. Cold wire buried under ice. Pressure behind my eyes — and the hall disappeared. Candlelight. A woman's hand pressed against a wooden door. Blood between floorboards, dark and glossy. A man on the other side I couldn't see. "Please," he begged. "Don't make me forget you." It shattered. I tore away, my suitcase toppling and spilling across the stone. I couldn't breathe. Lucien stared. "What did you see?" "You felt that too?" "Tell me what you saw." "Don't order me around." His gaze dropped to my wrist. A faint red mark bloomed where he'd touched me. "How long have you been dreaming about the door?" My stomach tightened. I'd never told anyone about the locked door, the blood, the voice that woke me at 3 a.m. with the certainty I'd forgotten something vital. "How do you know about my dreams?" He didn't answer. His intensity made the room feel smaller. "Who are you?" "Lucien Ashford." "And what are you?" For the first time, something human crossed his face. Regret. "Something you should have stayed away from." I should have listened. Instead I bent to gather my scattered clothes so he wouldn't see my hands shake. "I didn't come to meet you. I came because someone said you'd forget me. And judging by your reaction, you already know something about a life I can't remember." "You need to leave Blackthorn Hall." "Why?" "Because if you stay, I might hurt you." No flirtation. He meant it. "Have you hurt me before?" Silence. Rain hammering windows. "Yes," he said quietly. "When?" "I don't remember." "You expect me to believe that?" "No. I expect you to leave before I remember enough to prove it." Thunder rolled. An enormous grandfather clock in the alcove halfway up the stairs began to chime. Lucien went rigid. "Don't move." One. Two. Three. Each chime vibrated through the floor. Four. Five. Six. The pendulum stopped. The hands kept moving. A crack split the glass. "What is that thing?" I whispered. "Don't move." "I wasn't planning to dance." Glass exploded. Lucien moved so fast I didn't see it. One second away, the next his arm locked around my waist, yanking me back as the clock face burst outward. Shards rained down. One sliced my sleeve. Then he was between me and the wreckage, shielding me. Cold poured off him — not rain-cold, but stone-buried-underground cold. I looked up. His eyes were no longer silver. They were completely black. I should have screamed. I stared at his mouth instead. At the tension in his jaw, at his gaze flicking to my lips. Then he whispered, "It knows you're here." "What knows?" He turned. Wedged between the clock's gears was a folded, yellowed paper. He stared at it with unsteady fingers. So old its edges crumbled. 17 October 1897. If she returns, do not let me remember what I did to her. In his handwriting. "That's impossible," I said. His mouth twisted. "Now you understand." "That's a hundred and twenty-nine years old." He crushed it. "Get out." "Lucien—" "Get out!" I flinched but didn't retreat. "You knew I was coming." "I was mistaken." "You recognised me." "I said I was mistaken." "Then why does a letter from 1897 mention me?" He looked at me like answering would hurt more than silence. When he finally spoke, it was a whisper. "Because I've spent a hundred and twenty-nine years trying to make sure you never existed." A shadow crossed the tall mirror at the end of the hall. I turned. At first I saw only the entrance hall reflected — the staircase, the shattered clock, Lucien and me. Then a woman appeared behind his reflection. Pale face, dark hair loose, a thin line of blood from temple to chin. I spun. No one behind us. When I looked back, she was still there in the mirror, palm pressed to the glass. Lucien stopped breathing. "No," he whispered. She tilted her head. "Lucien?" Soft. Affectionate. He backed away. I'd never seen anyone look so terrified. "You're dead," he said. Her face crumpled. Then she smiled. "You promised you would remember me this time." A crack appeared under her palm and raced toward the frame. Lucien grabbed my arm. "Don't look at her." Naturally, I looked. She leaned closer, then her eyes found mine. Her smile vanished, replaced by pure hatred so sharp I forgot how to breathe. She whispered something I couldn't hear. The mirror cracked from the inside. Her laughter filled the hall as Lucien dragged me backwards and the glass buckled. Just before it shattered, I finally understood his face. He wasn't afraid that the dead woman had returned. He was afraid that she had recognised me. And whatever she knew about me was something even a 235-year-old vampire couldn't afford to remember.