{From Beatrice’s Journal}

He knows. She told him how I feel about him.

I don’t know what she did, but somehow, Mistress got to him. He liked me! Now, he’s changed. He doesn’t let himself touch me anymore. I could flirt with him and he’d laugh and be funny. Now he gets upset and doesn’t play along. I can almost feel his discomfort when I get near him.

Somehow she made him discourage me. Why? I know he’s mortal. I know I’m trading sadness later for some happiness now. As if it wasn’t worth it to me. As if it wasn’t my choice to make.

I could try to get inside his dreams again and try to make him treat me the way I want. I might be able to. But I won’t. I won’t abuse him like that. Not anymore.

Has she thought about who I’d ever be able to have a relationship with? Among vampires, I’m a crippled freak. Among humans, I’m a frightening freak. He’s been through a lot, and with his years it gave him a calm that I wish I had. He seems to understand me. He tries to. Although standing at his side he looks like my grandfather, I’m fine with that. We’re all strange here. But I wonder, does he feel fine standing next to me?

He called me a child when we first met but he knows me better now. I’m nearly twice his age. Surely in all that time I matured enough, endured enough, to be as much an adult as he is. I can’t ever change my appearance. My body doesn’t fit my mind and my feelings. He’s stuck in an aging and dying one that doesn’t fit his feelings, either. I want to become older. He’d like to be younger.

Mistress saved my life once… more than once… and I’ll be eternally grateful for that but he’s saved me, too. He’s given me something she couldn’t. I’ve felt happy, again. I want to live and keep being happy and he makes me happy. And they’re stealing the time he has left away from me. Somehow, I have to convince him to ignore what they made him think he must do.

I’m not a child. I won’t be treated like one any longer. I’m not weak. I’m not afraid. I’m not even afraid of him dying. Not if I can be happy with him first. I know what I want. I’ll find a way to have it.