An Ever Fixed Mark

Lizzie Watson didn’t expect to enjoy her high school reunion, much less that it would bring Ben Cottingham back into her life. She quickly realizes he isn’t just the boy who pined after her friend 15 years ago. In fact, he wasn’t a boy at all, but something entirely different. A different type of human that never ages, never gets ill, and needs the blood of another human to stay that way.

It is a relatively easy shift to accept the new reality, but a challenge to live the minor details. Ben will never appreciate her culinary talents. She already has gray hairs and must keep training to make her blood healthy and desirable. Her friends settle down to start families, an option she realizes leaves the table when committing to a vampire.

Or are these just excuses to keep running? Sort of. There is always something, something at the edge of her brain she knows she must understand before she can let herself feel completely. Something in the story of a missing girl from her hometown, something in the silences about his brother, something in the dreams that distort her present with a past before she was born. A past she must understand to stop running and fleeing from the consequences of her own inhumanity.