Editing Through a Mirror Darkly

Zadie looked at her room, dishelved as only a teenager's could be, a wonderland of childhood crashing into adulthood.  From rock band posters to ribbons, to silk flowers and stuffed animals, her room still said that a young girl lived there, not a creature of darkness and death.  


Except for her pillow.  It looked as if someone had died there, slaughtered in a mess of scarlet and fury.  She had cried herself to sleep for two mornings now, tears of blood leaking unbidden from her eyes as she tried to analyze and face the future that she had never wanted.  Sighing, she stripped the bed and added the sheets and pillow covers to the laundry bin.  She could wear clothes for days now; all her bodily functions had stopped and the only thing she needed to do now was wash the occasional dirt and blood from them.  But pillowcase would have to be washed before her bloody tears set permanently and it made as much sense to wash the whole mess than to wash one piece.


She went to the linen closet to pull another set of sheets out and sighed before returning to her room.  At least she still had the mall.  Thank God the place was open until 9.  She knew she'd go mad without shopping and it occurred to her that it had been far too long since she had had a free evening to go there.  Would she forget to be fashionable in time? Lost in the epoch that spawned her, would she be forever locked to dressing in one style much like some of the older vampires she had seen?  As she changed her bed, she caught a view of herself in the mirror and paused to analyze what she saw there.  Pretty, shapely, blond, and forever 19.  The thought made her freeze inside.  She would be forever this body.  Frozen forever in time, consigned to youth until the Final Death.


It occurred to her with cold clarity that she would never appear mature, never be given the gravitas given to those who had weathered decades of life.  She had eternal youth, the lithe and coltish body of a teenager, and yet all her peers would age on without her, live their lives as she never changed.  In time, she would have to leave the world of the living and closet herself with her own kind until her friends and family had passed on.  Either that or leave Natchez lest the suspicions lead people to seek answers that would endanger her life.  Or theirs.  Could she be that cold-hearted?  What would she do to survive?  The answer came easily and darkly.  Anything!  They are nothing but food and you know it.   She turned her attention from the mirror to the bed and finished changing the sheets, repulsed by the vision that she saw there.


How could she let Caroline join this eternal hell?  It was horrible and terrible, but seductive in its power.  But the price was too high.  She grit her teeth, feeling the canines sharp and hard.  Cord said to embrace the Beast, accept it and learn to work with it.  A shudder went through her and she sat down on the bed.  How?  How to save a soul gone and given to the Beast, how to hold onto humanity when that was the food that sustained you.  Was he right?  Could Cord be right?  She grimaced, her brow furrowing deep as she shook her head.


Lying back on the bed, it occurred to Zadie Calhoun that she was way in over her head.  Being cute and young wasn't gonna help no more and no amount of flirting or hard work was gonna change a thing.  The tsunami was coming and all that she and Gramma could do was find something sturdy to hold onto and weather the mess.  If she got lucky, she'd be able to save Caroline too.  Her cousin was a grown woman and could make her own decisions.  But for now, she was still mortal.  With all the frailty that that gave her.  Zadie could only hope that she could keep Caroline mortal, that the current Titans would destroy themselves and leave Natchez as it was. 
  

She sighed and rose to her feet to go help Gramma with one of the spells, giving a last dark look at the girl in her mirror.  She was still slender and young, blond and pretty, her image surrounded by pictures of her friends and a room that was a background that was full of flowers and stuffed animals, past glories and broken dreams.   With quiet resignation, she realized that her life as she planned it was gone.  And worse, she had little more power to do anything about it than any other mortal.  She and Gramma might get lucky and all this mess wash on by so that they could settle back into the life that they had carved out and the plans that they had made.  But so far the Calhoun women hadn't been that lucky.  Not since Gramma had gone to an innocent conference in a quaint college town.