The Vengeful Vampire by Marissa Farrar Page B

frames, delicate wine glasses, embroidered cushions. She shouldn’t get sad about such frivolities, but she couldn’t help it.

    They’re just things, the little voice whispered to her. They can be replaced.

    The voice spoke the truth. Material belongings didn’t matter. What mattered was getting out of her present situation with her dignity, soul, and most importantly, her body still intact.

    Somewhere, at the back of her mind, Sebastian lurked. Two days had passed since they’d visited the pier together. She knew he wouldn’t come to the house with her husband home. The two days felt like a lifetime. Serenity wished she could tell him she was finally leaving Jackson. She wanted to see the look in his eyes, knowing how proud he would be of her.

    But she wasn’t doing this for Sebastian. Serenity was leaving for herself, for her life and sanity. He had opened her eyes to the possibility of another life but that didn’t mean she was leaving her husband for him.

    Did it?

    Serenity sighed again. She didn’t want to be a woman who couldn’t stand to be alone, always jumping from relationship to relationship.

    No, it wasn’t like that. She had no idea if she would see Sebastian again. She had no way of getting in touch with him and didn’t know where he lived or worked. Tomorrow she would leave the city and never come back.

    She wasn’t only leaving Jackson, Serenity realized. She would be leaving Sebastian too.

    A hard lump tightened in the back of her throat and her eyes flooded with tears. She reprimanded herself. She needed to focus; she had bigger things to worry about.

    Filled with sadness, the thrill of possibility gone, she pulled open her top drawer and pulled out a selection of underwear. From the other drawers, she took out t-shirts and sweaters and stuffed them in the bag. She packed her toiletries and then wondered what else to take.

    Serenity looked around the bedroom she had shared with her significant other for the last ten years. Bad memories lingered everywhere; the dresser he had pushed her up against when she knocked over a glass of water in the middle of the night. The door he slammed her fingers in when she’d been late home from work. The wall he threw her against because she dared to ask how much money he’d spent at the bar.

    This place held nothing but bad memories

    She was nearly thirty years old and, once she left, wouldn’t have more than a few hundred dollars and some old clothes to her name.

    The threads of depression threatened to bind her heart and drag her down.

    Jackson had done this and she’d let him. If she didn’t get out of her marriage, she would look back when she was forty, fifty, or God-forbid, sixty and realize her life had amounted to nothing and she could never get the time back.

    She glanced at the clock. Almost five. Jackson wouldn’t be home for hours but she had no reason to hang around.

    Except this is the only place Sebastian knows where to find you.

    Serenity shook her head. She needed to stop thinking about him. This was her life now and she had to take control.

    She remembered a photograph of her mother as a teenager, which she kept in her nightstand. Despite Serenity’s feelings about the woman, it felt wrong to leave the photo behind, so she fished it out of the drawer and added the picture to her bag. She didn’t have a passport, but kept her birth certificate in the same drawer, so she stuffed the slip of paper into the side pocket of her bag.

    She picked up the pack and slung it across her shoulder. A compulsion to say goodbye to her bedroom, as though the room was a person, swept over her.

    From downstairs, came the sound of the front door slamming open.

    Oh God.

    Serenity’s breath caught in her chest, every muscle in her body tensed, ready to run. Her head swam with the sudden rush of blood and she forced herself to focus.

    What the hell was he doing back so soon?

    Her heart pounded and her eyes darted around the room,