Page 1 of Be Still My Unbeating Heart

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“I didn’t want to tell you this and ruin your holiday,” the cat said, glaring up from her spot on the doorstep, “but I think it’s important you know that Friday the Seventeenth is a bad omen in Italy.”

Standing in the sun-dappled street, Bastian Emerson pushed a hand through his shoulder-length blond hair and puckered his lips in a knowing smile.

“Will you stop looking for bad omens, darling? We’re here now, so let’s explore! If we hurry, we might even be able to watch the sunset from the beach.”

The cat tutted, her long black tail curled around her feet like a fur stole. “A vampire who loves sunsets. You are nothing if not a walking contradiction, Bastian.”

“Says the talking cat,” he said lightly, nudging his vintage Wayfarers back up to the bridge of his nose.

He turned his face toward the sun, which made his skin tingle. Before venturing out into the humid August air, he had applied factor seventy to every inch of exposed skin—a necessity even though he was one of the lucky few who could tolerate daylight insmall doses. He’d hate to be one of thoseeternal nightvamps who dwelled forever in darkness. That kind of existence surely went hand in hand with an eternal case of S.A.D, and that would be a fate worse than death.

“Every day is a gift,” Bastian said, fixing the cuffs of his coral-colored linen suit, “and should be treated as such, even if one is going to live forever.”

“Listen,” the cat said, “I read this online. It’s worse than Friday the Thirteenth. Italians don’t leave their homes on Friday the Seventeenth. They carry around lucky charms to ward off ill fortune. If anything bad is going to happen, it’ll happen today.”

“Whitby, we saw plenty of people on the way here who weren’t hiding away from a superstition they read about on the internet.”

The cat’s yellow eyes shone up at him from the apartment doorway, unblinking, like she was casting a spell. Her black coat was sleek and well groomed—because Whitby bathed roughly ten times a day, and Bastian had cleaned up enough hair balls to know it.

“I’m telling you, we should stay indoors,” Whitby said, whiskers trembling. “I could use the time to perfect my first incantation. I’m so close to shifting this block and unleashing my full magical potential.”

Bastian tilted his head in thought. The cat had insisted on packing half a dozen books about conquering the dark arts, plus an assortment of crystals, herbs, ointments, and tokens, all of which were stored neatly in a 1940s doctor’s bag with leather straps and a bronze clasp. Naturally, he’d had to carry it for her. He didn’t mind, though. He was glad Whitby had ambition, because an individual without ambition was even deader on the inside than, well,him.

Sometimes, though, he wondered if the cat was overreaching.I mean, who ever heard of a feline who casts spells?

“Darling,” Bastian said, warm but firm, “we’re not spendingour first night in Vernazza indoors. Now come on. You’re going to love it.” He reached inside and tugged the door shut, forcing Whitby off the step.

“Heathen!” she yowled. “Were you raised by wolves?”

“No, I was raised by the dead.”

“You’re not funny, Bastian.”

He smiled as he ambled down the cobbled street, admiring the terracotta-and-pastel-pink houses that rose on either side of them. The sounds of laughter and television sets slipped through the green shutters that checkered the buildings, and here and there, olive trees grew in rough-hewn pots, their branches weighed down by a succulent, pearly crop.

Bastian smelled lobster, fresh-brewed beer, charred steak, black coffee, and the sweet bouquet of bougainvillea, which bloomed in purple flourishes along the terraces above them.

Beneath his linen suit, he wore a floral blue shirt, his trousers folded to midcalf. He savored the warm air on his ankles. Contrary to popular belief, vampires needed heat. The cold slowed them down, stiffened their joints. He had almost tied his hair back and out of his face, but he liked the way the breeze tangled in it, like a playful Italianfantasma.

“What does a vampire need a holiday for anyway?” Whitby muttered, puttering along beside him, a shadow hugging the side of the road.

“Everybody deserves a little time away,” Bastian said. “Besides, haven’t we earned a few weeks of fun after the past few years we’ve had?”

Whitby grumbled something he didn’t catch even with his vampire hearing, and Bastian knew he’d won with that particular point.

Five years really was a long time to spend cooped up together in his Shoreditch flat. Just long enough for Bastian to get clean,which was to say he’d given up drinking human blood. As his familiar, Whitby helped him through the whole excruciating ordeal, cleaning up the pig’s blood he’d hurled at the wall in disgust and kneading his back while he retched and sobbed, his body racked with convulsions so crippling it felt like he was dying a second time.

It was a miracle they hadn’t killed each other.

Instead, their bond had been cemented.

He had done it for her: gotten clean, sworn off killing. She made him want to be better, in the way that a best friend often did. He had no reflection, but he saw himself in the way the cat looked at him, and he didn’t want to see a monster. Not anymore.

He wanted Whitby to be proud of him.

“Look out!” a woman cried in Italian. She leapt back into the man behind her, staring at Whitby in horror. “Black cat! Where did it come from?!”