Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel Read Free Book Online

entrance. He held his hands behind his head and stretched his legs out.
    “That’s mine,” I said. I stepped next to the bench and pointed at the car.
    “Whoa,” Tony said. I could see that he was admiring the sheen of the hood. “Lucky. You can leave campus. Restaurants, the mall, Boston.”
    “Maybe you could show me how to drive?” I proposed.
    “You don’t know how?” Tony stopped walking. I shook my head. Tony smiled. “Your parents bought you a fancy car but haven’t taught you how to drive it? I thought my parents were weird. Soon, Lenah. As soon as possible.”
    “Excellent!”
    As we passed Seeker, I looked back and saw my balcony, the door still open, and I wondered for one fleeting moment if any of Rhode’s remains were swirling around the patio tiles.
    “You hungry?” Tony asked.
    I thought wistfully of my tea bags at home and the oatmeal I was supposed to ease into. I also thought of my promise to Rhode. I did not want to meet any doctors so soon into this human experience.
    “A little,” I said, noticing my stomach was doing that lurching, tingly thing that meant I needed to eat.
    The Wickham Union was constructed like the rest of the buildings on campus: made out of stone, and fronted by glass double doors with silver handles. The shape of the Union was different from the rest of the buildings; it was a large circle. Shooting off from the main room were five or six hallways, all leading toward rectangular rooms. Tony opened the door of the Union, and I was met with the most amazing smells I had experienced since my mother’s cooking during the fifteenth century.
    The circular part of the building was a cafeteria. There were five food windows where students could pick out what they wanted to eat. Each one was different. In the middle of the room, underneath a circular skylight, were Formica cafeteria tables.
    “We can eat any one of these we want?” I asked. There were windows for Italian food, for burgers, pizza, vegetarian options, salads, and one for sandwiches. Behind each counter was a student or Union employee in a white apron waiting at their station. My eyes were wide with amazement.
    “Let’s chow, and then we’ll get our books,” Tony said. Just as the door was about to close behind us, he added, “You act like you’ve never had food before.”

    Hamburgers. French fries. Green beans. Lemonade. Chocolate. Pizza with pineapples. Rare steak. How would a person decide? I settled on some bland chicken soup.
    “You think we’re in some of the same classes?” Tony asked. I couldn’t help but watch him chew the meat in his mouth into tiny pieces. The blood from the rare steak he was eating washed in a mix of saliva over his teeth. “You’re staring at me,” Tony said, swallowing.
    “That steak has blood coming out of it. It’s in your mouth.”
    Tony nodded. “The bloodier, the better. I love rare steak.”
    As a vampire, I never yearned for animal blood, so I wasn’t drawn to the blood in Tony’s mouth. Though it was strange that I couldn’t smell it. I sniffed a few times, trying to hone in on the rust flavor that I used to love so dearly. I sniffed again, but too many different odors wafted up my nose: perfumes, chicken broth, and soda. The vampire sense of smell was limited to blood, flesh, and body heat. Occasionally I could smell herbs or flowers, but that became rare the more time that passed. If something was burned, such as a rose or a body, its fragrance would linger for a fleeting moment and then dissipate with the smoke. I could smell animal blood from miles away, though I hated the taste of it. The truth was that I hated its impurity. It took away from my status as the most pure, most powerful vampire in recent history.
    After our early dinner, Tony talked me into ice cream. Food was so different, so packaged, and appeared easy to make. I had to put so much work into it in my family’s orchard back when I was first mortal. Even in the fifteenth century