by Chloe Garner
“You mean dayfeeding,” Tina said, using a word she’d heard him and Tell use at one point. He nodded.
“I do. If you can’t get yourself together before the sun comes up, I don’t want you to leave yourself burning all day because you’re stubborn and don’t want it getting back to me that you had a hot young doctor share your bed. Because, while it will get back to me, and while I will mock you for it, I want your word that you’ll do it anyway, because you need it. That you aren’t going to not take care of yourself because you’ve got my voice in the back of your head. I can’t change, and I also can’t live with that.”
“Why do you want me staying away from Ginger?” Tina asked. “Sometimes she’s useful.”
“Let Tell go on his own. Things are just… they’re more complicated than we have time or use for, the two of us, and it’s simpler if you don’t get tangled up with it. She isn’t going to like it that I’m with another vampire. Doesn’t matter how long we’ve been apart, she isn’t going to like it, and she’s…” He shook his head. “She’s too unpredictable for me to even guess at what she’d do.”
Tina nodded.
“Okay.”
He rolled his jaw to the side.
“We need to be able to get out of this without completely paralyzing Tell. So we need to head it off before it becomes irreparable. No clinging and hoping. No trying to change me into the prince you’re hoping for. No trying to change you into the bad girl who’s going to go out and party with me and sleep in a pile of naked bodies.”
“You’ve done that?” Tina asked.
“Oh, honey,” Hunter answered. “This year.”
“This year isn’t that old,” Tina warned.
“Well, last twelve months,” he said. “Some fountains are just down. And Ginger?” He shook his head. “Mmm.”
Tina pulled her knees in against her shoulders, watching his face.
“Those aren’t necessarily promises I can make,” she said after a minute. “If I love you, I’m probably going to hold on past the point where you’re talking about.”
He nodded.
“That’s why we put it in the contract. You’re too honest to lie or obfuscate. You’ll say it, we’ll talk about it, and we’ll end it. Because it’s best.”
She tipped her head, feeling a bit reckless.
“Then why even do it?” she asked. “We both know that we’re already there, don’t we? You think that I’m going to change, and my rules already change you.”
He smiled.
“Why indeed?”
“Hunter,” she yelled at the ceiling. “Are we or aren’t we?”
He grinned.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Yeah.”
She felt her shoulders drop, easing.
“Wow.”
He nodded.
“Yeah. Wow.”
Something in the kitchen beeped and he stood, kissing the top of her head on the way by.
“You can stop lurking, Tell,” he called. “Dinner is ready.”
Tell’s file had atrocious organization.
Tina sat with the dish of bits and pieces that she had left over from dinner, picking at them as she worked through everything he’d put together on the Order. He’d tried to sort it by individual, but there was too much structural stuff missing, too much overlap among individuals that she kept having to cross-reference as she tried to digest everything he’d put together.
It needed a wiki.
The fact that it was so completely obsolete weighed on her, seeing man after man marked dead with a date, knowing that the sequence that they had died mattered and being unable to put her hands - her mind - around the whole of it and understand exactly what Tell had been through, dealing with these men.
Men.
Every last one of them.
That figured.
Finally, she went back up to her room, digging out a new binder to start her own file on the Order. As she was pulling out the tabbed dividers and the various sizes and colors of three-holed paper, she saw the notebook she’d been working on the last time she’d been a vampire, the box of samples and supplies from Ginger.
The right question.
She hadn’t been asking the right question.
Tina was struck, looking at it, that she’d managed to forget it for this long.
The witch’s words, about Tina being one who might be able to figure out the secret of what was going on with Tell’s blood.
She picked up the other notebook and the box of stuff and she brought that down as well, just sitting it down on the floor next to her and returning to Tell’s notes.
One thing at a time.
“There’s trouble,” Tell said from where he sat opposite her.
“Hmm?” Hunter asked, looking up from his computer.
“That’s Ginger’s stuff,” Tell said. “Means she’s looking at blood and DNA and stuff again.”
“I don’t have the tools to do DNA,” Tina said, not responding to the rest of it. She glanced over at Hunter. “This doesn’t count in the ‘stay away from Ginger’ thing, right?”
He shook his head.
“Nope. You’re welcome to use anything she gives you, so long as you never breathe the same air.”
“Please tell me you’re better at contracts than that,” Tina said, turning her attention to the Order papers again. “It was pretty, but the loophole is big enough to drive a truck through.”
Hunter grinned, going back to what he was doing.
“Thing is, you’re too honest to use it,” he answered. “Weakness, really, not being able to take people literally against their interests.”
She snorted.
“This guy,” she said, holding up a picture. “He’d have been on the hot track after you managed to get free of them, right?”
“Elroy,” Tell said, nodding. “Yeah. I took out everyone over top of him and had most of the structure shifted to him by the time I was done with them. Good chance he’s running them, now.”
“Tell me about this political summary,” she said, handing him the page. It was written all but in code.
“Right,” he said. “Elroy is a scientist. You’d actually have liked him when he was nineteen or twenty, I think, just looking at trajectory. Smart and motivated and independent without having the god complex a lot of them have, coming into this. They’re trying to prove that nothing can beat them, and they just focus on this single thing so completely. The great loss, they call it. They’re trying to win at the great loss. Anyway, he just formed a fascination with the science of dying, I think, at some point along the way, and the magic of it isn’t quite so seductive. He knows that it’s magic that they’re messing with, but he treats it like science.”
“Besties,” Hunter teased. “That’s exactly how you do it.”
Tina pursed her lips at him then jerked her chin at Tell again.
“Keep going,” she said.
“Right,” he said. “The downside to letting him really get his footing with them is that he likes the scientific method. A lot of them are eureka guys, who want to get to that last final theory and then go into testing with a sense that they are invincible. Elroy has probably been killing a guy every six months or every season since I walked away, just testing variables. If they were even able to replicate the original test, he’ll probably still be failing, just trying to figure out why the thing works. Might have even killed the original guy again, for all I know. That’s how he is.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“That’s… Are you sure we can’t just go in there and kill them all?” she asked. He grinned.
“You keep saying it, you might actually convince me,” he said. “Elroy will remember me, and he’ll remember Colette, though he knows how complicated what they did was, and he never thought that a commoner like her would have had the capacity to grasp anything but the simplest pieces. It’s why I put him in the lead. She was safest with him in ch
arge.”
“Fair enough,” Tina said. “Save one life to sacrifice the many. I get it.”
He grinned.
“You do. Save the client and to hell with the volunteers.”
Tina drew a slow breath, looking over the rest of the notes on the man, taking some notes of her own, then sitting back again.
“If he’s in charge, then why are they talking about torturing Kyle in order to find Colette?”
“Things change,” Tell said. “If he is in charge, twenty years of doing it might have made him more power-hungry and more possessive than he was before. Could be that he’s balancing power within the organization under him, and there was a swell of interest in finding her and killing her once and for all. Could be an insurrection. Could be he’s not even in charge.”
“You’re very unhelpful,” Tina said, and he grinned.
“Just how you like it,” he said, handing back the photo. “I let you have your own ideas.”
Hunter spun his computer.
“What do you think of that?” he asked.
“Try again,” Tell said after the briefest of glances. Tina leaned forward to see what Hunter had up.
“Is that a whole room unto itself for your conference calls?” she asked. “Is that a plan of the library?”
“It is,” Hunter said. “I took a panoramic picture with my phone and the software models out the whole place in beautiful detail. Isn’t it amazing?”
“It’s a security risk,” Tina said.
“Nothing in that picture is going to compromise my security,” Tell said dismissively, not looking up from his notes. Tina raised an eyebrow at him, then turned back to Hunter again.
“You should be careful what information you load onto your computer,” she said.
“Hi, have you met social media?” Hunter answered. “Every inch of this apartment is documented online already.”
Tina looked at Tell, who nodded still without looking up.
“Even your room,” he said before she could ask it. “Before it was your room it was just another private place to go.”
Tina shuddered.
“I need to change my mattress.”
Hunter grinned.
“With the three of us all penned in here, there really isn’t that much space for a good party, is there?”
Tina looked around the expansive first floor, bewildered.
“No parties, anyway,” Tell said.
Hunter wrinkled his nose then turned the computer back around resuming what he’d been doing.
Tina turned the page in the notes and continued her own work, even as the box sitting next to her called to her.
Finally, she put away Tell’s work and pulled out her own, going through her notebook and remembering viscerally the days that she’d done most of the work. Seeing the mania of it in her own handwriting.
“How much does he know?” Tina asked.
Tell sat up, looking directly at her and setting aside what he was doing.
“What are you thinking?” he asked carefully. Hunter’s eyes were sharp with meddlesome and playful curiosity.
“I mean, what if it is possible, and I’m the one who can do it?”
“It’s dangerous,” Tell said. “You understand that.”
She looked around the apartment.
“There’s a man here with a five million dollar bounty on his life, and we’re about to go tangle with a cult of necromanical wizards,” she said. “I’m not saying it isn’t, but just… aren’t we a bit past that at this point?”
“The bounty is just where he is,” Tell said. “And the Order is pretty limited in scope, if it really came down to it. It’s five-hundred men, tops, most of whom would be like going through cotton candy.”
“That big?” Hunter asked.
“What you’re talking about would be of pressing, intimate interest to thousands of people around the planet, all of whom would be willing to take dramatic action if they knew that you were the source of the knowledge.”
Tina swallowed, then nodded.
“What if we just didn’t tell them?” she asked. “What if we didn’t tell any of them?”
“You just want it for you?” he asked. She shrugged.
“Want what?” Hunter asked. “Guuuuys.”
Tell turned his head and drew a slow breath.
“I haven’t told you because of Ginger,” he said.
“Well, that’s a good explanation for a million things,” Hunter answered.
Tell nodded.
“Keeping the details of it private, I have a lead on a cure, and… a reliable opinion from an outsider that Tina might be the one who could figure it out.”
“A cure,” Hunter said, not getting it, then his eyes went wide. “What? Why? No. No, you can’t do that. It’s not possible, anyway, but even if it was… You don’t do that. Better to mess around with raising the dead than turning vampires human again.” He looked over at Tina. “For you. You mean… You still want to go back. And you could, couldn’t you? Tell’s got the plague or whatever, but there’s nothing wrong with you.”
She shrugged.
“I’m thinking about it,” she said.
“You can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “The universe would come crashing down on your head. I mean, you joke about hiring a helicopter and blasting your way in here… those guys have got to make a profit on a five million dollar bounty. Ginger would drop a hundred million on this without batting an eye.”
Tina hesitated, sucking on her lips for a moment then nodding.
“Okay,” she said. “And if I figured it out and I only ever used it on me? Didn’t tell anyone, but suggested that I bought it and wasn’t going to tell anyone where?”
Hunter held her eye.
“Tell them that I bought it for you,” he said. “And you don’t know where I got it.”
“I’ll be the one buying it,” Tell said. “Not you.”
Tina almost smiled.
“What if it just showed up at the front desk with a bow on it?” she asked.
Neither of them seemed that amused. She shrugged.
“We could be years away from that being a relevant question,” she said. “I just… I think that I want to do it. And I got some good samples, last time, but I need more.”
Tell blinked at her slowly, nodding.
“You want me to hire the nag again.”
“I can’t get smallpox from you this time,” she said. “I could actually handle your blood and work with it and all of that. Just make sure not to contaminate any humans who end up here.”
“There are lab conventions for that,” Tell said. She nodded.
“You can’t be human right now, man,” Hunter said. “I don’t like that she’s in the middle of this, as it is. You as a human?”
“I’d take a week off and watch TV,” Tell said. “I think we all know that someone would have to turn me at the end so that the smallpox didn’t get me. I probably have less time than I did last time.”
“We wouldn’t tell anyone,” Tina said. “You can keep a lot of secrets up here.”
“We’re kind of good at those,” Tell said.
“Are you actually considering this?” Hunter asked. “Letting her do this?”
Tell blinked at him for a moment, then nodded.
“I am. I’ve been living with this for a long time, dude, and I’m ready to know if it’s even possible.”
“You’ve known about how to make a cure for a long time?” Hunter asked, and Tell nodded.
“Since before we came here,” he said.
“So what does it have to do with her?” Hunter asked.
“New development,” Tell said. “It means it’s time.”
Hunter shook his head.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“I don’t require that you do,” Tina answered. “It’s just asking questions and seeing what happens, at this point. We can figure out if it’s worth testing once I even have an idea of what to do, if
I ever do. It’s jumping the gun big time, worrying about what to do once I have a validated cure.”
Hunter nodded.
“Still don’t like it.”
Tell looked at his watch.
“About time for you to get everything back where you want it for the day,” he said to Tina. “Sun will be up soon.”
She checked her phone.
“I might be doing a little better,” she said. “I don’t feel it yet.”
Tell and Hunter gave each other a look and she tipped her head.
“What?” she demanded.
“Early eagerness to be rid of the curse,” Hunter said. “You’re lying to yourself because you want it so bad. We both feel it. It just doesn’t flatten us like it does with you.”
“I don’t think I’m lying to myself,” she said. Tell shrugged.
“Up to you.”
She looked at Hunter, who grinned.
“I can carry you upstairs when you suddenly realize that you’re in denial,” he said. She shrugged.
“No harm. I’m tired of losing so much of my days.”
Tell nodded.
“Just wait until summer.”
She looked at him, frowning.
“How can you bear it? Why wouldn’t everyone go back, if they could?”