Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  Although the implications of its original power were daunting, it was hard to argue its usefulness, especially since it implied that the horned boy had taken the risk to heart and was planning on waiting outside. Keith swallowed, fumbling with the small clasp, trying to get it to hook into place behind his neck.

  "Let me," the horned boy said, and shifted in behind him, nimble fingers getting the hook to catch almost at once. "There. Not too tight?"

  It hung just over his clavicle, where it felt really damn weird. Keith wasn't sure if it was the enchantment or how unfamiliar he was with wearing jewelry at all. "No, it's fine."

  The horned boy stepped back and looked at him, at the locket hanging around Keith's neck, then at Lucas. His expression was hard to read, smile not gone but somehow different. He lifted his hands, hooking the second half of the locket on its own chain around his own neck. "Alright," he said as he got that done up—considerably more easily than Keith had on himself. "Now. You're right. I do I want to rush out there, but I know up here it's not a good idea." He tapped his forehead.

  Keith nodded slowly. "I know that taking too long will be… dangerous for her, if what you've said is true and her essence was gathered to be used in something. But…"

  "But it's fall and it gets dark early," Lucas interjected.

  "Yes, exactly." The horned boy sighed, sinking down onto his bed and rubbing his face with his hands. "It'd take us a while to get back out there, and that wouldn't give you enough time to work safely before it got dark, even if you do just want to get in and out. We can almost guarantee failure if any of us are on that land by the time night falls."

  "When failure means death," Lucas said, "kind of best to hedge your bets on succeeding. Nobody's going to help her if you all end up in the same boat."

  Keith nodded again, looking down at his hands to avoid making eye contact with anyone. That fear of what he was committing to do was rising again, barely held in check. "Tomorrow's the best bet."

  "No helping it," the horned boy said, in a tone as though he wished for anything else, but still smiling.

  Lucas said, "Will you be safe here by yourself until tomorrow?"

  "Are any of us truly safe in this world?" the horned boy asked, presumably rhetorically. At their joint annoyed look, he shrugged. "I don't see I have a lot of options but to play it safe. I'll stay indoors and keep the lights on and be prepared to run if I have to. When should I pick you up tomorrow?"

  Keith shivered slightly. Being inside hadn't helped the bone girl, not after the power had gone out. Not all alone. "I have a class with a test from nine until ten tomorrow morning," he said. "I can skip, but I'd rather not if you think an hour or two in the morning won't make a difference. Look, why don't you come stay with me tonight?"

  Only a half-second's pause at that. "Thought you'd never ask, darling," the horned boy said. His lascivious smile faded into apology without any prompting. "I'm sure it'd be fine if I stayed here. There's no reason to think they'll come after me specifically. There are plenty of Others in this city."

  "Yeah, but…" Keith began, stumbling over the feeling of words thick in his mouth. Lucas was giving him a bit of a strange look, and he met it with his own helpless look, worried. "You were at the bone girl's house, both before she was caught and after. You were sniffing around that creepy house today, too. Sure, we were too, but we're not Others, like the Terrors are going after."

  Lucas's face cleared. He seemed to recognize the risk, turning to look at the horned boy as well, who was chewing his lower lip with flat teeth.

  "Yes…" he said. "But the car should really have made it impossible to trace back here."

  "Sure, maybe they can't track the car. But if they caught your scent again anywhere in the city, they'd go after you if you were alone," Keith said. "They'd be less likely to come onto a university campus because of all the humans still around. Downtown isn't exactly deserted at night, but it's a lot… more so. Right? Plus the sheer number of people and weight of memories of the place would probably confuse the scent."

  "Undeniably…" the horned boy looked down at himself and sniffed, as if he were trying to see how easily he could be scented. It should have been comical, if it weren't in a circumstance like this. His shoulders slumped. "If three wouldn't be too much a crowd in your room, then."

  Lucas sighed, the sound more affectionate than resigned. "I don't take up much space."

  It wasn't exactly true—sure, he didn't take up any physical room, but Keith always gave him his space anyway, and he still was there. But it was clear that one way or another, Lucas agreed with him: it was the safest bet for the horned boy right now.

  "And you shan't be embarrassed, sneaking a beautiful boy like myself into your room?"

  "Believe me, people already think I'm weird," Keith said dryly. "If anything, them knowing I'm gay would probably make them think I was less weird than thinking I'm some sort of—"

  The word sounded belatedly loud to his own ears. He realized, flustered, as the weight of it rolled out of him, that it wasn't something he'd ever said aloud before. He'd known it for years, but he didn't talk about it, much as he didn't act on it. His situation had never given him the space to date, so he'd just put off actually using any words that might make Lucas think it was more of a priority to him than it had been.

  He stole a glance at Lucas, even though he was sure Lucas already knew. Keith might not have said anything, but Lucas had been with him through his teenage years, saw who he was looking at. The way Lucas had acted about his attraction to the horned boy was as much a sign of his awareness as anything else, too. Even so, Keith couldn't help but worry, and check his friend's reaction to hearing it said so blatantly.

  Lucas blinked back at him in clear confusion at the sudden attention. "Uh, yeah," he said. "I'm sure they'll just decide you were furtive because you were hiding that or something. Not that you saw ghosts and monsters." He gave the horned boy an apologetic glance at the last.

  "Or something," the horned boy agreed wryly. "Well, I'll do my best to be beneficial to your social life, then. Let me pack some toiletries and then we can go over. What's your test in?"

  "Test? Oh—Ancient Greece."

  "Have you studied?"

  "I've… gone to class and done the reading," Keith hedged.

  "I'll quiz you tonight, then," the horned boy said. "It's not my specialty, but I remember Greece well enough. Then you can have your exam in the morning, and we can eat a fortifying lunch and then go do something stupid and wildly suicidal."

  Keith huffed a weak laugh. "Great," he said. "Sounds fun."

  ***

  The horned boy did, in fact, know quite a bit about ancient Greece and, even better, he understood that whatever it was he knew personally didn't matter so much as the ability to regurgitate course information. So they got into Keith's room, and the horned boy grabbed the syllabus and Keith's notes, skimmed them, flipped through the relevant chapters, and began to quiz Keith on the names, dates, and terminology which were relevant for the upcoming test and only for that. Whatever moments of history the horned boy had lived through ended up coming out as a lot less anecdotal than Keith had expected, and more just a way for him to quickly narrow down the information Keith would need to know.

  The result left Keith with rather more of a refreshed awareness of the political makeup of the polis than he'd had in his head previously, what with all the visions of death and shock of the bone girl's disappearance. He wasn't sure if he'd still remember it by the next day, but he had hope. Reading on his own was one thing, but hearing things said back to him in the horned boy's lilting voice seemed to make them more memorable.

  "Enough, enough," he said finally. "I've got to eat something."

  "I should too," the horned boy said, groaning and stretching. "Are non-students allowed to eat at your cafeteria?"

  "Yeah, just not on the meal plan." Keith got up, grabbing his jacket. It was weird, something as normal and human as grabbing food together, an
d his shoulders relaxed a little. "You'll have to pay real cash."

  The horned boy laughed, getting up as well. "I can manage that."

  The three of them headed across the campus lawn. Night had already fallen, and Keith felt hyper-aware of the shadows, but the campus lighting was fairly bright, and he didn't get any sense there might be a Terror nearby as they headed into the student union building.

  Food was as unremarkable as he’d expected, but at least the horned boy seemed to get some enjoyment out of complaining how completely bland the vegetarian meal he'd gotten was. Lucas was fairly quiet, as usual when out on campus, trying to keep Keith from being in a position where he'd have to reply to him too often, but kept making little amused snorts at the horned boy's dramatic declarations.

  "If you hate it, you can always go off campus. Or to the campus pub—" Keith began, smiling.

  "No, no. I dug my grave, and I'll lay in it."

  It had been well-intentioned, but under the circumstances, Keith couldn't prevent the chill that ran up his spine at the words. He could only hope that the reaction he felt was simple superstition and no kind of premonition.

  After they ate, they wandered back over to his room and sat together on the bed while Lucas perched on the desk. "So, what now?" the horned boy asked aloud.

  "I, uh…" Keith began to clean up his notes and the flash cards they'd started to make. "I think I'm done on studying. It'll save me on the test tomorrow, or it won't. They say cramming's a bad idea, anyway."

  "So what do you want to do instead?" the horned boy asked, watching him from beneath lowered eyelids.

  Keith had almost managed to forget the sheer physicality of the horned boy's presence. But it came back again with a sudden heaviness of intention, the horned boy watching him as if he looked particularly good to eat and only a small space between them on the bed, the scent of wet leaves hanging around him.

  Lucas really would give them privacy if Keith asked him, he knew.

  Swallowing, Keith squared off his pages and rose abruptly, going over to the desk and dropping them next to Lucas. "I, uh, I'm heading down to the bathroom. Going to go brush my teeth and stuff. You can do the same when you're ready, but, yeah."

  He'd meant to just show he was getting ready for bed, sticking them to the schedule they'd laid out earlier, study, sleep, wake up for test—but realized once it was out that might seem as if he was offering to brush his teeth for kissing or something. Or was that just his own perception? Maybe, he thought frantically, nobody else thought that—

  "Go on, then," the horned boy said. "I'll go once I'm done with my drink." He held up the to-go coffee he'd brought with him from the cafeteria. "Might be a little much for your floormates if I followed you to the bathroom, too."

  "Yeah, maybe," Keith said in a squeak. "C'mon, Lucas."

  Lucas hopped off the desk and gave the horned boy a little shrug. "Coming."

  Keith fled, and felt as though it was blatantly obvious to both of them that he was making his escape. He splashed his face in the bathroom, then glared at himself in the mirror. What was he getting all flustered over? There was too much to deal with right now for him to allow himself to get mixed up like this. He'd invited the horned boy over just to keep him safe.

  On the plus side, it was just him and Lucas in the bathroom right then, but on the other hand, it was just him and Lucas in the bathroom. He drew several steadying breaths, only to start to breathe too quickly again as Lucas cleared his throat. "Keith?"

  "Yeah?" he muttered, falling back into his standard under-his-breath habits in the off chance someone came in and heard him talking to himself. Or worse, heard whatever they were going to talk about.

  "—Do you want some privacy tonight?"

  He swallowed, throat gone dry. "Lucas—"

  "Hear me out, man," Lucas said. He was leaning against the hand dryer, not material enough to trigger it unless he tried. "We're going to do something dangerous tomorrow. You're lonely and scared, and you and he are… you're obviously getting along well. If you want a chance to just… enjoy yourself or blow off steam or whatever…"

  Keith splashed his face again. "I'm not kicking you out. It's your room too."

  "I'm not getting kicked out," Lucas said, with a strange, awkward, embarrassed tone. "I'm offering?"

  It was impossible to find the words to voice his tangle of feelings, wanting to take advantage of the offer but having not had enough time to decide what he wanted to do about the horned boy. Wanting to rush forward, mixed-up and scared—but acting on it because the next day was going to be dangerous would be almost like admitting that he was terrified, and that if he did that, he wouldn't be able to escape the fear.

  Of course he longed for a moment of privacy, space to breathe, to just do whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted without having to live with the repercussions after. But even so, he felt sick to the stomach at the thought of Lucas sitting outside, waiting for him to finish playing around.

  "If you wait outside," he said carefully, "I'd probably… I'd probably do that, yeah."

  "So—"

  "I don't know if I'm ready for that, so can you stick with me? As… insurance."

  "Insurance," Lucas said, his tone so disbelieving it was almost amazed, eyebrows raised so high his forehead wrinkled. At least all his features were clear, even if it meant Keith could see the incredulity in high definition. "Insurance against acting on your desires to sleep with him."

  Keith wasn't sure his expression could get any redder. He stared into the mirror—at least he couldn't see Lucas in that. "Yeah. Because I'm not going to do anything while you're there."

  It wasn't exactly what he meant, what he thought, what he felt. His heart was pounding and he could feel Lucas's presence behind him, a warm familiar constancy.

  "Okay," Lucas said finally. "Whatever you want."

  When they got back, the horned boy was just throwing out his coffee cup and passing them on the way out, giving a smile and a wave as he went past. It was a moment of discordance, seeing an Other just walking down his dorm's corridor and knowing that anyone else who saw him would just see a human. Not a resident—clearly someone's guest, his guest, a pretty young man who'd be staying in his room—but a human.

  Keith was just as glad for the horned boy's going now, though, because it meant that he had a brief chance to get his thoughts back in order and to treat the room as if it was his own again. He took a deep breath, sitting down on the bed, checking the clock, looking around for something that couldn't possibly seem sexual.

  It was remarkably difficult to think of anything.

  The horned boy came back soon enough, dropping his bag of toiletries back beside the bed. He sat on it with Keith. "By the way, am I sharing the bed tonight, or do you want me to take the floor?"

  "We're sharing," Keith said, half-garbled by the knot his tongue seemed to have tangled itself in. "If you don't mind."

  "I don't. You'll want me to take the outside if you don't want a face full of antlers, though."

  Keith nodded, then felt himself blush again. Being between the horned boy and the wall felt charged and dangerous, a literal rock and a hard place.

  "And where does Lucas sleep usually?" the horned boy asked, tone light.

  "I usually just curl up in a corner," Lucas said. "I can't really sleep, and it doesn't matter to me where I am. A bed doesn't feel like anything more than anything else. Don't worry. You're not taking my place."

  It sounded to Keith that he'd said it with a little more emphasis than Keith himself knew what to do with. "Have you read Lord of the Rings?" Keith blurted non-sequiturially into the answering thoughtful silence.

  "Of course I have," the horned boy said, almost affronted. "Do you know how popular it was in the 60s? Why do you ask?"

  "It’s just—" Keith couldn't look at either of them. "I've been reading it aloud to Lucas before I go to sleep, so, uh—"

  The horned boy grinned, eyes lighting up. "That does sound like a way
to pass the time. What part are you at?"

  Keith gave him a quick summary, picking the book up before he could doubt himself. Lucas came to sit on the bed with both of them, and Keith read until he started to go hoarse, keeping his eyes trained on the page and forcing himself to not check their reactions, to watch them watching him or each other or whatever they were doing.

  "I think that's enough," the horned boy said, when Keith coughed into his hand for the tenth time. "You've got a test in the morning, after all. And we could all use good sleep before what's coming."

  It had seemed as if they'd all been doing a good job not thinking about it—or pretending they weren't, anyway—but then Keith lost even the little distance from things that he'd managed to gain. It all came back, not in a rush but pulling Keith down into the mood again like quicksand. He swallowed. "Yeah…"

  "You can read more tomorrow, after we've rescued her," Lucas said to Keith. "Invite him over to celebrate and hear the end of the chapter."

  "Sounds good. Let's plan on it," the horned boy said.

  Keith closed the book and put it on his bedside table. He'd already changed for bed in the bathroom. The horned boy had not, but didn't seem to particularly care for privacy, just stripped down to his boxers with no sign of shyness. Keith watched until it seemed weird to, then just looked at the hairs on his knees as if he could count them before tugging the sheets up around himself and shuffling over toward the wall.

  "Well," the horned boy said. He climbed into bed beside Keith, lying on his side with his arm supporting his head. He was lying a little lower in the bed than must be comfortable, but it kept his antlers from brushing the wall. "Goodnight, then."

  Swallowing, Keith leaned over him and checked the alarm was on, turned the light off. "Goodnight. Goodnight, Lucas."

  "Goodnight," Lucas said, a dark mass in the corner.

  Keith fell silent, closing his eyes and willing himself to go to sleep. The smell of the horned boy was thick in his nostrils, that heady rich scent of old leaves, and he felt incredibly aware of his presence, that warmth, how close he was, with the two of them crowded together in the old twin bed.