The Vanishing by Karla Nikole

Seventeen

Cellina rests against her hip on the tatami floor of the traditional restaurant, her arms folded atop the low table. The small building is situated along the Kamogawa river, streaming and sparkling in the sunlight. She’s seated beside a large, open window overlooking the downtown area of central Kyoto. The rain has stopped and the weather is glorious—a pristine, early summer day with white, fluffy clouds scattered across the blue sky.

Detecting his gingery scent, Cellina sits up straight and looks toward the entrance. A minute later he’s there. He smiles at the hostess and bows. Impeccably dressed as always, and his honey-brown waves are longer now, but pulled back to the nape of his neck in a neat style.

At the table, he nods in greeting. Cellina returns the gesture, distracted by the way the sunlight catches the green flecks in his eyes like flashes of emerald stone. Giovanni makes himself comfortable across from her as the waitress grins above them. She registers as vampiric in nature—maybe third-gen?

“Is there anything I can get you to start?”

He looks at Cellina. “Did you already order?”

“Just two iced coffees and a cake for myself.”

“Dessert first.” Giovanni offers a little half-smile, as if the choice has jogged something in his memory. He looks up at the waitress. “The iced coffee is fine for now, thank you.”

“You’re very welcome… Are you Nino Bianchi’s brother?”

Giovanni’s countenance shifts, oozing purebred charm as he smiles brighter. “I am.”

“Nino works with my brother in Osaka—Daiki Izumi,” she explains. “He told me you’ve been helping him and how awesome you are. Thank you for saving the family business.” She offers a deep, reverent bow.

Giovanni lifts his square jawline, his eyes thoughtful. “Your brother is a hard-working vampire with a lot of creative ideas. It’s my pleasure to support my kin in any way—particularly with entrepreneurial aspirations. The business will thrive in time.”

She bows again, bubbling with enthusiasm. “Thank you—when things are up and running, I want to go back home and work. I’m looking forward to it. I—I’ll go check on your coffees! Please excuse me.”

“Thank you.” He nods. When the young waitress shuffles away, Giovanni’s entire demeanor drops as he lays his scheduler on the table. He reminds Cellina of a helium balloon deflating. The shift is drastic, and the more time they spend together, the more she notices the hard lines forming in his chiseled face.

He opens the book with one hand, then presses his fingers to the center of his forehead with the other. “I have to fly home next weekend. I’m wrapping up a new restaurant contract this week, then I have follow-up meetings scheduled with three of Nino’s clients before I leave. His newest client is having some sort of centennial celebration next Friday night in Osaka, so I think I can squeeze that in before my flight in the morning. What’s happening with the social visits in Okayama? How’s planning going for Tanabata?”

“It’s going well,” Cellina reports, just as the waitress returns and sets their coffees and her cake on the table. “I’m working with the temple to schedule renovations, and managing the food vendors. The Shōwa Clan handles all the details for the decoration competition, so I’m leaving that in their hands. But they know to reach out if they need me. I’m having fun covering for Haruka. Everyone is so nice. I love planning events and talking to new vampires—my Japanese is getting better, too.”

“That’s good, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. If I can get all of Nino’s clients settled, Asao said I may not need to come back. That works, because I have to fly to Paris and Germany while I’m at home, but we’ll play it by ear.”

He looks down to scribble dates in his calendar. Cellina shakes her head. She considers herself a productive, professional person. Having aspirations to manage her own gallery in the future means she’s always studying and working, networking and schmoozing. But this purebred’s schedule is insane. “Giovanni, when do you just breathe?”

He looks up at her, a deep frown etched in his forehead. “Breathe? What does that mean?”

“Take a break. Relax.”

He scoffs. “When I’m asleep.”

She watches him write things into his calendar, erase, then re-write. Everything about him is tense. Uptight and strained. Who is this male sitting in front of her? What happened to the playfully defiant and sweet vampire that she’d once considered her best friend? They had their falling out so long ago, but the ramifications of it are still present between them even now.

What have the years done to Giovanni? It feels like time has ravaged him—worn him down to this gruff, bitter state like a weathered stone in sand.

“Why don’t I go to the centennial celebration on Nino’s behalf next Friday, since it’s the night before your flight home?” Cellina asks. “You can go back to the Kurashiki estate and rest.”

He shakes his head, still writing. “I’ll already be in the area. It doesn’t make sense for you to go all the way there. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just change my flight to leave from Kansai International.”

Cellina takes a sip of her iced coffee, letting the cool, sweet liquid settle her nerves. She takes a deep breath. “Then… do you want me to come with you? I can meet you in Osaka and we can go together? If you don’t mind… Two reps at a social event are always better than one.”

Giovanni freezes, meeting her eyes. “You’re willing to attend a social engagement… with me? Together?”

That should be my line. Nervous, she smooths her hair up to her oversized, curly bun. With all this humidity in Japan, every day is curly-bun day. “Yes… if you’re comfortable with me being there?”

Dropping his pencil, he sits up straight, massaging the back of his neck. “Of course.” An awkward silence hangs listless between them until he says, “It’s always better with you there.”

“Always?” Cellina frowns. “Always since when?”

“Since we were kids. Like when my father would trap me in those boring-ass conversations about agricultural trade and exports, or national annual growth rates. Having you there… Sneaking away with you made it better. It gave me something to look forward to.”

“I… thought about that recently,” Cellina admits. “The summer parties at your family’s estate were the best. The food—and I loved roaming the gardens at night. It was like magic.” She relaxes her shoulders. They haven’t talked like this in forever: calm, casual and without some explicit purpose or underlying hostility. It’s nice… like dipping her toes into a warm bath.

“Yeah.” Giovanni nods. “We spent a lot of time out there. Do you remember how we used to tell Nino and Cosimo that we were going to play hide-and-seek, then they’d run off somewhere and we’d go sit by the fountain and talk?”

Cellina laughs. “We got away with that for a long time before Cosimo figured it out. He was so upset. Nino didn’t even care, did he?”

“Nope.” Giovanni smiles. “He used to go climb that old peach tree near the gazebo—the one by that hedge of rose bushes? The gardener would find shriveled-up peaches and their pits around the bottom of the tree the next day and make a big fuss about them destroying his lawn equipment.”

“I recently told Haruka about that silly habit.” Cellina laughs. “And Nino was always hiding in that area with the rose bushes. God, he was such a little loner… Cosimo tried his damndest to get Nino to open up to him after they came of age.”

“By that time, Cos was so desperate to fuck him and feed from him that it made Nino uncomfortable.”

“He was so into Nino,” Cellina admits. “He came on waytoo strong.”

Giovanni smirks in a laugh, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Thank God for Haruka.”

“I love Nino like he’s my own little brother—probably more. But yes, thank God for Haruka. Nino was always good though, you know? He never once tested my boundaries and always fed from my hand. He also let me expose him to nineties American R&B and TV shows when I was going through that phase.”

“Hm. Everyone in our estate was exposed to it by proxy.”

“And you’re all very welcome.” Cellina sticks her chin out. Giovanni smiles.

A comfortable pause settles over them as the sunlight shifts behind a cloud. They’re talking to each other. Amicably. Reminiscing about the good times and when their lives were simpler. Cellina can almost smell the summery, smoky but sweet aroma of cypress trees floating through the balmy night air of the garden. She can almost hear the white noise of the marble fountain, its fresh water spouting in the distance.

Her mood dampens, melancholy settling in her heart. She looks up at the vampire sitting across from her, meeting his lovely but unfamiliar eyes. “What happened to us?”

He takes a deep breath, his chest rising and falling. “Everything changed.”

It did. Without question. Cellina considers. Maybe it’s time to talk this through?

“I didn’t make that choice to hurt you, Giovanni. That was never my intention.”

“I know that,” he says, his gaze cast down. “I couldn’t understand it at the time—my juvenile vampire mind couldn’t process it.”

“A lot happened back then,” Cellina says, taking a moment to steel herself. She’s spent so many years wrestling with the mess of complex emotions resulting from that time—frustration, indignation, regret and deep sorrow for her friend. She wanted to be there for him when things were difficult, but he didn’t want her there. He told her to go away, so she did.

But now…

“So… you’re not angry with me anymore?” she asks. “You don’t hate me?”

“I never hated you. I could never feel that way about you.”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you. I don’t regret my decision, but… we made a promise and I broke it.”

“You made the right choice.” Giovanni closes his eyes, bringing his fingers up to massage the space between his brows. “You saved Nino’s life. He needed you more than I did—and I did some stupid things back then.”

“We were young,” Cellina says, letting the moment wash over her. Relief. The freedom of it long overdue. This unfortunate circumstance of Nino’s abduction brought them here—in Kyoto together and at this table, forcing them to sit down and acknowledge the elephant. To tackle and push it from in between them.

Feeling comfortable enough to put both feet in the water, Cellina grins. “I will admit that when I offered myself to Nino, I didn’t think I’d be feeding him for the next one hundred and four years.”

“You fed him for a long fucking time.”

Cellina laughs, covering her face with her palms. “So damn long—why was it so long? I thought he’d come of age at twenty-one and find someone.”

“Nope,” Giovanni says. “You enabled him. We both did in different ways.”

“I think… I just wanted to protect him, you know? The vamps in our society were being such shitheads, I felt like I had to compensate… God.” Cellina shakes her head and picks up her dessert fork. She takes a bite of her cake, sighing as the fluffy, buttery and sweet texture engulfs her senses.

“What is that?” Giovanni asks, eyeing her plate as he takes a sip of his coffee.

“It’s called Castella. It’s from Portugal originally, but you know how the Japanese like to take things and put their own spin on it. One of the families I visited gave me some and now I’m hooked. Do you want to try it?”

Giovanni’s full lips curve into a surprised grin. “Sure.”

Cellina cuts a piece of the cake with her fork and holds it out to him. Maybe they won’t ever be as close as they were. So much time has been lost between them and they’re very different vampires now. No longer kids sneaking out of boring, adult conversations to roam around moonlit summer gardens.

Theyare the boring adults now. Totally changed. Grown up and experienced much of life in absence of each other. But this—an open conversation, a moment of warm recollection and laughter. It’s a nice beginning. A true cease-fire.

Giovanni leans forward, opening his mouth to take the small chunk of cake. Not thinking, Cellina watches him, mesmerized by his beautiful lips wrapping around her fork then slowly pulling the dessert off the utensil. He flashes a rogue look, his vivid eyes shining. “See something you like?”

“Shut up.” She frowns, brushing off the mild embarrassment. “I was just thinking… it would be nice if we could be friends again.”

He raises a golden-brown eyebrow. “Were we just friends before?”

“Of course we were.”

“I remember it a little differently,” he says, bringing the iced coffee to his mouth.

Cellina narrows her eyes and leans forward. “Then it’ll be nice for us to be friends for the first time, apparently.” At this, Giovanni laughs, the frown lines in his forehead easing and giving way to mirth.

His damn mouth,Cellina thinks. That’s changed over the years, for sure.

Among other things.