“I was just thinking out loud,” I quickly refuted. I didn’t realize I’d hurt him.
“It would be that easy to have someone turn you? Just like that?”
When Alexander posed it to me like that, my fantastical solution didn’t seem so romantic or practical in its reality.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Are you so sure? You’d have my best friend bite you? Or worse, my longtime enemy?”
“But now you are friends with Jagger,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“That’s not the point.”
“Of course not — I only want you. . I was just trying to take the pressure off of you. I was just thinking out loud.”
Alexander didn’t seem pleased with my response and continued to stare off into the distance.
“Let’s be clear,” I said, turning his face toward me. “I want to be a vampire. But I want to be one with you.”
He barely broke a smile.
“I’m turning eighteen soon and you’ll be seventeen,” he finally said. “It’s something I think about, Raven. You. Me.
Our future. I want you to know that. But this is something that is life changing — especially for you.”
“I know.” I gazed up at my dreamy boyfriend’s eyes. His face was so handsome in the moonlight. “But will you really be eighteen? Or something else, in vampire years?”
“I will really be eighteen,” he said.
“And then the next year?”
“Uh. . nineteen,” he said as if I should have known.
“But you are immortal.”
“The aging process will slow down. But that’s many, many years from now. Is that what you are worried about? Us not being able to be together unless you are immortal, too?”
“I’ve always wanted to be a vampire, since I was born,” I said to him urgently. “But then when I met you, I wanted to be one — to be turned by you. To have the covenant ceremony that you didn’t have with Luna in Romania. A beautiful wrought-iron lace trellis with a coffin and two goblets, on sacred ground. I’d be dressed in a black corset dress and hold black roses. You’d be wearing a black suit and have a black rose in your jacket lapel. We’d say a few Romanian words and drink from each other’s glasses. Then, you’d turn me.”