So yeah, nothing he could volunteer to fix or tidy up or help with.
“Actually,” Shuli said with a gleam in his eye, “I am feeling a little peckish. I’ve been working out.”
“Oh?” The social worker—God, what was her name?—put the plate she’d layered with Toll Houses on the table and turned away for glasses. “Where have you been exercising? And what kind of stuff are you doing?”
Nate narrowed his stare at Shuli, the universal signal for “don’t you fucking dare bring up your fucking.” Shuli made googly eyes in return, but at least he didn’t go there.
“We have a home gym,” was all he said as he took a cookie and bit off half of it.
Home gym, Nate’s ass. Shuli’s mansion had a D1 football team’s worth of equipment and floor space. He got points for not bragging, though.
“These are amazing,” Nate said as he tried one of the cookies. “No nuts.”
“Just like you,” Shuli whispered.
Nate flipped the guy off on the side, then he leaned out and tried to see through to the back hall. You know, just in case somebody had walked in from the garage. Even though no doors had opened and closed.
“That’s really convenient.” The social worker put a milk carton back into the fridge. “We’d love to add one off the garage here, but we don’t have the funding quite yet.”
Crap, what were they talking about again, Nate thought as he glanced into the living room.
“Exercise can really help with mood and feelings of mastery,” the social worker continued. “It’s an important component to health and recovery—”
“Gym,” Nate blurted.
The female laughed. “Yes, I wish we had a—”
“We’llbuilditforyou.” As her brows went up and she stopped in mid-delivery of the glasses of milk, Nate forced himself to slow down. “We can totally build one here for you.” He nodded at Shuli. “He was just saying the other day that he wanted to do something charitable for the community with his allowance.”
“I was?” Shuli said around a bite.
“And he and I’ll do the construction work for free.”
“We will?”
Nate shot his buddy another look. “Our foreman, Heff, can draw up the plans and give us a deal on the supplies with his contractor’s discount. We can work here on our off days.”
The social worker put a hand to the base of her throat and her eyes shimmered with gratitude. “You guys… that would be so kind. But are you sure?”
Nate nodded as if they’d sealed the deal with a blood pact. “It’s our pleasure.”
“It is?” Shuli muttered.
* * *
Out behind the farmhouse that smelled like chocolate chip cookies, Rahvyn walked through the meadow, the grasses and wild flowers yet to kindle, the acreage still scruffy and barren of life from winter’s cold embrace. As she zeroed in on the far-off wood line, she thought of her arrival in this place and time. Her trajectory had been off. She had had to visit a few other finite folios before she’d gotten it right.
Halting, she let her head fall back and looked at the galaxy above. The fact that she was where she was… she knew it was a miracle, an exception to the order of natural things, and she should have appreciated the rare power she possessed as the boon it was. Instead, she felt empty. Lost. Alone.
Then again, this was a whole new world, and not just because she was no longer in what people in the here and now called the “Old Country.” Old Country indeed. Back where she was from, there had been nothing old about it. It had just been where all vampires had lived.
Centuries had passed, however, and therefore perspectives had changed. Unless one had hopped across all the years as opposed to plodding through them.
Time, as it turned out, was not linear in the strict sense of the word. It was more like a book full of short stories, all of the moments simultaneously re-readable, relivable, existing in paralleled perpetuity because they were bound together. Mortals, like readers, passed through each proverbial page of their tale, the letters, the spaces, the punctuation being the years, the decades, the life they lived.
None of them had any idea that it was all predestined. Even their free-will choices were a given—because their fates were on an endless loop, nothing finishing, just infinitely restarting, ever new, ever old.
The trick was, once you started your story, you couldn’t not finish it. And you had no choice but to read and no conscious memory of what you had been through before.