Immortal With a Kiss by Jacqueline Lepore Page A

life.
    But of all the Romantic poets, Keats, in his tragically short career, had written the most stunning works involving the undead. La Belle Dame sans Merci and Lamia were almost certainly about vampires. I thought I might find some inspiration in his poetry.
    And it was Keats my mother had scribbled on the inside leather flap of her torn portmanteau. Thus, I thought he might have something to tell me.
    It was colder outside than I’d thought, and the sun was blurry and thin. If I were less stubborn, I would have gone indoors posthaste, but I liked the privacy out here and I’d missed the crisp air of a chill winter’s day. As I began In a Drear-Nighted December , a curiously cheerful poem completely out of character with the poet, a voice cut into the quiet.
    “I should have known you would have your nose in a book. Lud, you are helpless, Emma, and freezing to boot. When the woman at the house directed me to find you out here, I thought she was daft.” It was a droll tone, infused with humor and mockery, and I caught my breath, recognizing it at once.
    Sebastian stood on the grass with his feet braced apart, arms akimbo, an apple-green cape artfully draped over slight shoulders. Upon his head was a jaunty hat that made him look like Robin Hood. He was laughing at me, his smile as mischievous as that of Eros.
    I was up off the bench and in his arms before I drew another breath. “Sebastian!” I shouted.
    “Heavens, gel, you’ll muss my hair.” But his arms were around me, and although he was a slightly built man, his embrace was tight and sure.
    “How I missed you,” I said. My voice was muffled against the extravagant knot of his cravat. I could not seem to let him go.
    “Now, now, what is this?” he said, pulling back so he could look down into my face. I did not realize my cheeks were wet until he touched a finger of his forest-green velvet glove to my skin.
    “Nothing. Nothing.” My reassurances were hollow.
    His smile stiffened and faded, and he appeared stricken. “I knew I should have come sooner.”
    I shook my head. “No. No, I am fine, really I am.”
    He did not believe me, and his frown of concern made me twist away. I forced a smile with some effort and he shook his head at me. “Good God, that is a ghastly excuse for a smile. There is no use for it, I have found you out. You are miserable.”
    “I am not miserable,” I told him. “I just . . .” I sighed, looking out over the lawn to the school. The long row of mullioned windows stretched to my north, the sun glancing off the panes so that nothing could be seen inside. “I fear I have botched this entire thing,” I said at last.
    “There, there, what are you saying?” He pulled me to the bench and made me sit with him. The wind blew, but it did not trouble me now. Sebastian was here, and his warmth could not be dulled by the winter wind.
    I told him the entire tale—Madge’s cryptic warnings, Lord Suddington, the coven girls, Miss Thompson. “I had to shrive her,” I said. I brushed the tendrils of hair from my eyes, where the wind had caught them in my eyelashes.
    His gloved hands reached for mine. “I am sorry. It must have been dreadful.”
    I felt as if I was confessing a terrible deficiency, but made myself tell him: “I was afraid.”
    “Yes.” He said it simply.
    I shook my head. “It is difficult to see myself as a coward.”
    “But you are a woman, Emma. That is all.”
    “I am supposed to be Dhampir,” I told him in a sudden rush of heat. “What good has that done me? I’ve accomplished nothing here.”
    He held up a staying finger. “You expect too much from yourself.”
    I sulked slightly, lulled into the comfort of having him at my side. “I felt something. Someone.” My eyes slid tentatively to his face. “In my head. I could hear him speaking, like thoughts but they were not mine.”
    Sebastian cocked his head. “What do you mean—like when Marius spoke to you in your mind?”
    “A little, yes.