How to Kiss a Vampire novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cut Bolt
Hanne falls eight floors off a stormy roof and a masked man catches her in the air; at home, the pocket watch he left is her ex's, engraved in her own handwriting.
The anchor bolt let go at 9:40 on a Tuesday night, and I fell off the Lundgren Building.
I am a roofer, so I know exactly how far eight floors is.
It is far enough to count to three.
The storm had peeled a sheet of rubber membrane off the top of the building at supper time.
Berit Ostby, who owns Ostby Roofing and signs my paychecks, called me out to tarp it before the rain got into the offices below.
I clipped my harness to the bolt, walked out to the edge of the wet roof, and dragged the tarp toward the drain.
Then the bolt popped out of the concrete.
The rope went slack in my hands.
I did not scream, which I am proud of.
I said one short word and turned in the air to look for the ground.
The ground was a dark alley with a dumpster and a glittering lake of rain.
One.
Something hit me from the side.
It hit me hard enough to knock the breath out of my chest.
Two.
An arm closed around my ribs.
We were not falling anymore.
We were going sideways across the alley, over a gap I would not have jumped with a running start.
Three.
Boots hit a stone ledge on the next building, and there was no sound at all.
A man stood on a ledge four inches wide in the rain, holding me against his chest.
He wore a black rain shell with the hood up and a black wool mask over his whole face.
I could see two eyes in the holes and nothing else.
"Hold on to me," he said.
His voice was low and rough and it did something to the back of my knees.
I held on, because I am not stupid.
He stepped down off the ledge onto the flat roof of the next building and set me on my feet.
My legs shook for about two seconds.
Then I got angry, which is how my body deals with being scared.
"You jumped that," I said.
"Yes."
"That is a twenty-foot gap."
"Twenty-two," he said.
"You can't do that."
"Apparently I can."
He let go of my arm and stepped back.
His hand stayed in the air.
His hands were freezing.
I could feel the cold through my jacket and my thermal and my skin.
"Who are you?" I said.
"Go home, Hanne."
I had not told him my name.
It is stitched on the front of my harness, but it was dark, and he had not looked at it.
He had said it with practiced ease.
I grabbed for his mask.
I got a fistful of black wool and yanked.
He moved.
I do not mean he ran.
He was in front of me with the mask in my hand.
Then he was fifteen feet away at the edge of the roof, and then there was only rain.
I stood there holding an empty wool mask.
It smelled like cedar and old machine oil.
I knew that smell.
I could not tell you from where.
Berit found me on the roof of the neighboring building twenty minutes later, soaked to the skin, with the mask in my fist.
She had run up four flights of stairs in her canvas coat.
"I saw your rope drop," she said, and her voice cracked.
"I'm fine."
"You are not fine, you are standing on the wrong building."
"A man caught me."
She stared at me.
She did not ask what man.
She did not say it was impossible.
I noticed that, even then, and I put it away to think about later.
She drove me home in the truck with the heater on high.
My apartment is the top floor of a double on the hill.
The retired deputy who lives downstairs watches my son when I get called out at night.
He met me on the porch with his bathrobe on and his reading glasses pushed up on his head.
"Eero slept the whole time," he said. "Somebody left something on your rail."
He pointed at it and went back inside.
It was a pocket watch, silver, with a worn chain, folded into a clean handkerchief.
Nobody had rung the bell.
I knew the watch before I touched it.
I had given it to Torsten Ruud, Tor to everyone, for his birthday the autumn he left.
It was the only gift he ever let me give him, and he took it with him when he went.
I checked on Eero first, the way I do, with my hand flat on his back to feel it rise.
Eero is five years old and he sleeps like a starfish, one foot out of the blanket.
Then I went back to the kitchen, and Berit stood with her hands in her coat pockets, looking at the watch and not at me.
She looked like she had seen it before.
My hands were not steady when I turned it over.
There was an engraving on the back, in a loopy, tilted hand that I have been writing for twenty-nine years.
It was my handwriting.
It said, "Come back to us."
I had never engraved anything in my life.
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