Page 2 of Old Flames

Her sour expression confirmed she was in the camp of people who thought him overrated. He loved it.

“This event was on the calendar for months,” she explained. “When they published the list of authors, I challenged myself to read their work.”

“I’m challenging myself to stay awake during dinner.”

“Hang in there,” she said. “The chocolate mousse is delicious.”

He tossed back the lighter. What did he need it for? He was already playing with fire.

“You read the one on the First World War?” he probed.

“I love a wartime epic.”

He approached and, adopting her posture, leaned against the wall next to her. “The one on the Great Plague?”

“All of them.”

He hesitated. “Did you like mine?”

“Does it matter?”

“Does it matter?”

“I thought it raised an interesting question,” she said thoughtfully.

Nice to see the mask of impassivity slip away. “Yes?”

Leo didn’t write books about war or plagues. He wrote about immortals. He was the only horror writer featured tonight. Some people, like his family, regarded the genre like a processed candy: good only for the dopamine release.

“I find it interesting that your character chose to live forever,” she said. “We’ve bought into the idea that you don’t have a choice. If you’re good, you’re ushered in through the pearly gates. If you’re bad, you take the elevator to the basement. Either way, you don’t have a choice. It’s too late. For your character, death was just a door. He had so much more living to do on the other side.”

“If you can call it living.” The premise of the novel was that immortals lose their humanity with time and, within a decade or so, start to see people as prey, even those they swore to love and protect for an eternity.

“Want to know what I really think happens when you die?” he asked.

She turned to him with wide, brilliant eyes. Leo had her full attention. He teased out the moment to savor it.

“Go on,” she said.

“Ashes to ashes. You’re compost.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Well, he didn’t believe in pearly gates. “It’s for the best. It gives me a blank canvas to work with. If I were too attached to one theory over another, I couldn’t write as freely as I do.”

She nodded, pensive. “That makes sense.”

This was the debate he’d love to have had earlier with his fellow authors, not whose work was overrated, whose prize was deserved or not.

“Which would you choose?” he asked her. “To live on or rest?”

In the book, choosing death was a positive. It meant choosing to rest in peace. Even so, it wasn’t an easy choice. The human heart was never content. It always wanted more. Before she could answer, her phone chimed. She tapped on the screen to silence it. “That’s my time,” she said, pulling away from the wall—and from him. She pocketed the phone and made her way to the heavy iron door.

“Which would you choose?” Leo asked again.

She paused with her hand on the doorknob and turned to him. She studied him with open interest. Her diamond gaze drilled straight into the clay wall of his heart. Leo wasn’t sure he would ever recover.

“I don’t think I could rest if I had unfinished business.”