The first words Jefferson said to him were, “Jesus … you look like shit.”
His trial period of immortality had started off with a terrible flu. He didn’t know if that was a coincidence or not, but it had laid him out for days. He spiked a fever and couldn’t keep anything down. All he wanted to do was stay in bed and wait for death. During the worst of it he began to worry that this was part of the process. That suffocating him hadn’t been what triggered the half-death. That he was actually dying now.
He tried to call Guy but the vampire never picked up. That was unlike him. The fever broke before Ethan could nurture those suspicions.
Ethan was passed the point in which death seemed certain, but he didn’t really want company now. He was still woozy and exhausted. To make matters worse, Jefferson was bringing work with him. Work Ethan would normally be happy to receive before his clients had attempted to kill him. Now he felt like John Wilson could pretty much go fuck himself. He didn’t know where the vampire was. He didn’t care where the vampire was. Maybe Jefferson had found him, maybe he hadn’t. Ethan couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Thanks,” Ethan said. “I feel twice as bad.”
“What happened to you?” Jefferson asked as he invited himself in.
“The halfway mark.”
“The what?”
“The halfway mark.”
Jefferson looked confused. “Halfway to what?”
What did it mean that he didn’t know what Ethan was talking about? He really didn’t know. He wasn’t acting, he wasn’t being polite, he wasn’t teasing, the other man stood there, put his hands in his pockets and waited for Ethan to explain himself. It made Ethan dizzy with anxiety. The nausea that had plagued him for days trembled up through his belly and tightened his throat. He felt ready to break out into a cold sweat.
“Is this not a thing?”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Reversal: vampires, time travel, memes... to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.