Our room had hardwood floors, and it had that same nice, generic look any other hotel would have. They had internet access and a television. Based on the amount of cars in the parking lot, it was relatively busy.

Ezra busied himself with unpacking, while I had just dropped my luggage on one of the beds. I claimed the double bed closer to the window.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Ezra said and gathered up his change of clothes and toiletries. “Then we’ll get some rest and have a go at finding Peter tomorrow.”

“Do we really have time to waste?” I tried to ask without accusation. We left in such a hurry, and I wasn’t sure how imminent the danger was.

“We have to rest, or I’ll be of no use to Peter.” He shrugged, as if he couldn’t see any way around it.

Once he’d gone in the bathroom and I heard the shower running, I changed into my pajamas. They felt tremendous after spending the past twenty hours or so stuck in jeans and a sweater.

I had gotten sleep on the plane ride over the ocean, and with the time difference, I’d just be getting up in Minneapolis. Plus, Ezra had amped me up when he dropped the news that we were really chasing after werewolfian vampires, so I didn’t feel like sleeping.

I pulled out my cell phone, and I was surprised to find that I had a signal (subconsciously I guess I had been thinking that Finland was in the stone ages).

Crossing my fingers, I sat down on the bed and hoped Jack’d be awake. This had been the longest we’d gone without talking to each other since I’d turned, and it felt very strange. Like the chemicals in my body were off-balance without him.

“Hello?” Jack sounded frantic when he answered the phone. “Alice? Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Irrational tears welled up in my eyes. It was stupid how much I missed him. “We just got to the hotel. I was calling to let you know that we got in alright.”

“Good. Good.” He was genuinely relieved but didn’t relax. “How was your flight?”

“I slept through most of it,” I said. “This is my first time being out of the Midwest, though, and it sucks. I was in New York City, and I didn’t see any of it. I barely got a glimpse of Helsinki when we were coming in.”

“You’re in Finland?” Jack yelled, and I realized that I might’ve said too much. “That’s where Peter’s in trouble with vampires?”

“Um…” I shifted on the bed, thinking of a line to feed him.

“They’re not really vampires, are they? It’s lycan.” He sighed when I didn’t say anything, and he held the phone away from his mouth. “Mae! Mae!”

“Why are you yelling at Mae?”

“Because. If she knew that’s what you guys were doing-”

“What?” I interrupted him. “What would she do?”

He grumbled something under his breath but didn’t have a follow-up for that. Even if Mae had known about it before we left, she would’ve tried just as hard to talk Ezra out of it. Ezra hadn’t told anybody where we were going for that reason. He had made up his mind, and he didn’t want to waste time fighting about it.

“I should get on a plane right now,” Jack said.

“Don’t be silly. Ezra wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I’m just here to try and talk Peter into coming back, not to fight any stupid vampires,” I said

“Peter doesn’t need to come back,” he muttered.

“Have you been to Finland?” I quickly changed the subject. I couldn’t make him feel good about me being here, but maybe I could distract him enough where he worried a little less.

“Yeah, once, a few years back,” he said disdainfully. “We went skiing, and it was terrible. I broke a snowboard and rolled down the hill. It wasn’t that fun. Finland’s not that great. You should just come home.”

“Jack.” I smiled when I pictured him tumbling down a hill, but it faded when he went back to trying to convince me to leave. “You’re wasting this call. My phone’s going to die, and I don’t have a charger. Do you really wanna spend this time arguing with me, when you know you’re not going to change my mind?”

“Yeah, I kind of do,” he replied. “Besides, I’m sure Ezra has a charger that’ll work there, and you can use that.”

A few weeks ago, Jack bought me an iPhone. It was the exact same phone that both Ezra and Jack had, so if Ezra had a charger, it worked on mine.

“Ezra speaks Finnish,” I said, keeping the subject away from Peter or coming home. “It’s pretty fancy, although I can’t understand a word of it.”

“Ezra is fluent in like every language known to man, even the dead ones. He thought he was so cool when he watched The Passion of the Christ without subtitles because can he speak Aramaic, but I’m pretty sure that’s the only time that’ll ever come in handy.” Jack lightened up, just a tad, and it made me smile.

“Can you speak any other languages?” I asked.

“Spanish and German,” he informed me with pride. “I learned Spanish in high school, and German in college, so I’m not fluent in either. But I can ask if you speak English in both languages, and I think that’s the only thing I really need to know.”

“Yeah, that sounds helpful,” I laughed, but my happiness made fresh tears in my eyes. “I miss you.”