Chapter 20: Last Call
The funeral was small, which George would have wanted.
I watched from the church doorway, unable to cross the threshold, as the minister spoke about a life well-lived. The domino players sat in the front pew—old men who'd outlived their friend, waiting for their own turns. Janet and Delia were there, along with Frank and Barbara. Elena stood in the back, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
The eulogy I'd written was read by the minister. George had asked for that specifically—wanted his vampire friend's words spoken in a place the vampire couldn't enter. The final joke, he'd called it. I wasn't laughing.
He was a good man. Dying in a world that didn't understand what that meant anymore.
After the service, I met Elena at the cemetery. She'd kept her distance during the church service—not religious objections, just the discomfort of a predator in sacred space.
"You cared about him," she said.
"Is that surprising?"
"A little. You don't seem like someone who gets attached."
"I'm not. Usually." I watched the mourners disperse, carrying their grief to cars and lives that would continue without George Patterson. "He was the first human who knew what I was and treated me like a person anyway. That's... rare."
"You could have glamoured him. Made him forget what he'd figured out."
"I could have. But that would have been for my benefit, not his. He deserved better than lies in his final months."
Elena was quiet for a long moment. The undertakers began filling the grave, the steady rhythm of dirt on wood marking the end of something irreplaceable.
"You're not what I expected," she said finally.
"What did you expect?"
"A businessman. A strategist. Someone who saw humans as resources rather than people." She met my eyes directly. "You're those things. But you're also something else. I'm still figuring out what."
"Let me know when you do."
The Silver Dollar reopened the following night.
I stood behind the bar—George's spot, now mine by right of survival—and poured drinks for customers who didn't know the history they were drinking to. The ship's bell stayed silent. That tradition had died with its originator.
Janet found me there at midnight, her shift ending and mine just beginning.
"He left you something," she said. "In the apartment. The caregiver said it was on his desk."
I found the envelope in George's room above the bar—the space I'd promised would be his until the end, now empty of everything except furniture and memories. My name was written on the front in George's shaky handwriting.
Inside: a letter and a key.
Sam,
If you're reading this, I'm probably drinking with Mary somewhere better than Monroe. Don't feel bad about it—I've had more time than I deserved, and you gave me enough hope to spend it well.
The key is for the storage unit behind Lucky's. There's a box inside with some things I want you to have. Nothing valuable, just... personal stuff. The kind of thing a vampire with too many years ahead of him might appreciate.
Take care of my bar. Take care of my people. And when you meet other humans worth knowing, remember what I told you: cold hands don't mean a cold heart. You proved that every day.
See you on the other side. Assuming vampires have one.
—George
The storage unit contained exactly what George had promised: personal items with no monetary value and infinite emotional weight. A box of photographs from The Silver Dollar's early days. Mary's recipe collection, handwritten on index cards. A bottle of whiskey from 1973—the year the bar photograph was taken. And a small frame containing a single domino tile, the double-six that had won George his first game in this bar sixty years ago.
I sat in the storage unit until my blood reserve dropped below safe levels, surrounded by the artifacts of a life that had ended while mine continued.
This is what it means to be immortal. Accumulating losses until they become their own kind of weight.
When I finally returned to The Silver Dollar, Elena was waiting.
"You look like shit."
"George left me some things. I was... processing."
"Processing." She said the word like it was foreign. "Is that what you call sitting in a storage unit for six hours?"
"You followed me?"
"I worried. That's different."
The admission caught me off guard. Elena wasn't the type to express concern openly—her ninety years had taught her that vulnerability was weakness. For her to admit worry, even obliquely, suggested something had shifted in our partnership.
"The system—" I caught myself before revealing too much. "The metrics I track. Something changed when George died. Something important."
Elena's eyes narrowed. "What kind of metrics?"
"It's complicated. But the short version is: I can do something now that I couldn't do before. Something I've been working toward since we met."
"The progeny thing. Marcus."
"Yes."
She processed this silently. Her fingers tapped against her leg—the nervous habit she thought she'd hidden but hadn't.
"George's death unlocked something for you."
"Not his death specifically. But what he represented. What losing him meant." I moved toward the bar, suddenly needing something to do with my hands. "I'm not explaining this well."
"You're not explaining it at all. But I'm getting used to your mysteries." She followed me, taking the stool George's regulars had started calling "his chair" in the old man's memory. "Are you going to tell Marcus?"
"Tomorrow night. He's been waiting for my answer."
"Your answer? He asked you the questions."
"And the answer is yes. I can offer him what I promised. Transformation. Continued existence." I poured a TruBlood I didn't want and stared at its synthetic redness. "The question is whether he'll accept."
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