Loved

by P. C. Cast

  17

  Damien

  On autopilot, Damien made his way from the basement under the Field House to the room that had been assigned to him in the guest wing of the professors’ quarters. He walked slowly, gazing out at the snowy predawn morning, noting that all the students, fledgling or human, seemed to finally have retired to the dorms.

  He envied them.

  Sometimes he wished he could go back to being one of them. Actually, lately he’d wished it a lot more often than not.

  The truth was Damien felt empty and alone. Adam had tried diligently to get him to shake off this terrible melancholy, but all of his attempts—be they romantic and sexy, or, toward the end, angry and confused—had only served to make Damien feel more alone.

  It was like there was something wrong with him.

  His parents used to say that he thought too much and didn’t go outside and play enough. Well, one good thing about being an adult vampyre—he didn’t have to suffer through his parent’s pathetic attempts to pretend like they wanted him around.

  Actually, after he’d been Marked, they had pretty much stopped being his parents. Though they used to send the same sports-themed birthday gifts every year. But this last year, after he made the Change, the gifts stopped. The sporadic calls stopped. The visits—not that there had been many of them to begin with—stopped. Period. It was a relief. Or, at least that’s what he told himself.

  He’d reached out. Not long after he’d moved to New York. He’d called. Their phone number had been changed. The email he sent them had bounced back undeliverable. He’d sent them a postcard—a gorgeous shot of the Statue of Liberty—letting them know he’d been transferred to New York, inviting them to visit any time. It had been returned with a handwritten note refusing delivery. That was the last time he’d tried to reach them.

  He had friends. A lot of them, actually. At the New York House of Night he’d been welcomed eagerly—as had most of the changes Zoey’s new Council had initiated. Basically, things were going well. Really well.

  Except he missed everything about Tulsa. Even the moronic redneck Bubbas and Bubbettes. At least they were Okies, and his redneck morons.

  His homesickness was his guilty secret. His new friends were great—smart, well-traveled, interesting, and a lot of fun. There definitely was a lot of fun to be had in the Big Apple.

  Yet, still, Damien found himself alone in his very hip condo on the New York House of Night campus pulling up Tulsa’s midtown real estate sites and looking at houses for sale—just so he could see the old neighborhood that surrounded the House of Night. Home. Just so he could see home.

  There was definitely something wrong with him.

  Damien reached his room and entered the spacious, luxurious suite. He went straight to the kitchenette and began brewing a pot of tea, and while it brewed he held the delicate porcelain teacup in his hand and stared at nothing.

  When the electric pot beeped, he jerked and shook himself. He put the tea service on a tray and placed it on the coffee table. Then he easily located his carry-on and suitcase where one of the fledglings had put them on the luggage holders just outside the closet. Inside his carry-on he found the book he’d grabbed at the airport, Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig, and went to the plush velvet settee. While he added almond milk and cubes of sugar to the cup, he lifted the school’s landline and pressed 9 for the administrative office.

  “House of Night, Tulsa. This is Shaylin,” she said after one ring.

  “It’s Damien.”

  “Hi! I heard all about Other Jack trying to bite your neck, and the zombies and such. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m in my guest suite, but with the cell service still out I’m not sure how to find Zoey.”

  “Oh, she’s in and out of the office. I can tell her to call you next time she comes in,” Shaylin said.

  “That’d be nice. Thank you. She’s planning to send Warriors downtown to trap the other red vampyres, isn’t she?”

  “Well, yeah, that seems to be the plan.”

  “Would you let her know I’m ready to go with her if she needs me?”

  “Absolutely. Hey, are you sure you’re okay. You sound a little—I don’t know—off. No offense.”

  “No offense taken. I am off. Probably more than a little—what with Other Jack and everything. But I’ll be fine. Just let her know I’m here if she needs me.”

  “Will do. Damien?”

  “Yes?”

  “Remember we’re all here for you. All of the Nerd Herd. We love you.”

  Damien’s head bowed as he fought against tears. “Thank you,” he managed to say faintly before hanging up.

  Damien wiped his eyes and tried to sound cheery. “Okay. Well, Z knows I’m here, and she’ll call if she needs me. I’ll have a pot of chamomile tea, read a little, and then maybe even nap. Actually, napping sounds like a good idea.” His shoulders slumped and he stared at the closed cover of the book he had been looking forward to reading.

  He missed Jack. His Jack. But his Jack was dead. Other Jack, as Aphrodite and everyone was calling him, was downstairs. Alive. He wasn’t his Jack, but he looked like him. He even sounded like him sometimes. And any part of Jack was better than the horrid gaping hole that was his absence.

  “What would happen if I went back down there—to his room—and just sat with him?” Damien murmured to himself. He glanced at the clock on the mantel of the unlit fireplace. It was a few minutes after six, so he had about an hour and a half until Jack was unconscious.

  “No. I have to stay away. I have to remember he’s dangerous, and he’s not mine.” Damien pressed his hand against his mouth, trying to stifle a sob.

  There was a soft knock on his door.

  Damien cleared his throat and wiped at his eyes. “Who is it?”

  “Grandma Redbird. Might I come in, please, Damien?”

  Surprised, Damien hurried to open the door. She was standing there with a small picnic basket held in the crook of her arm, smiling up at him and looking sweet and familiar and so filled with grandma-love that he wanted to put his head on her shoulder and cry himself to sleep.

  Instead, he said, “Of course. It’s really good to see you. Would you like some chamomile tea?”

  “I would, dear,” Grandma said.

  He motioned for her to have a seat on the settee while he went to the cupboard for another cup.

  “These guest rooms turned out beautifully,” she said. “Zoey told me you did most of the redecorating work on them. You’re really very talented, Damien.”

  “Thank you. I enjoy design. Before I was Marked I planned on going to SCAD. That’s the Savannah College of Art and Design. They have a program located in Lacoste, France. I was going to try for a study-abroad semester there. It’s why I started learning French in middle school. Would you like almond milk and sugar?”

  “Just a little milk, please. Well, you’re certainly a gifted decorator.” Grandma’s face wrinkled into a cherubic smile. “Though I believe decorator is probably the wrong title for something this grand.” With a sweeping gesture, she took in the beautiful suite.

  “The more official title is interior design, but I don’t think it’s offensive to call it home décor, or home decorating. Of course I also don’t have a degree or a career in the field, so I could definitely be wrong.”

  “Ah, semantics. They can certainly bog us down, can they not?”

  Damien nodded and sipped his tea before asking, “Can I do something for you, Mrs. Redbird?”

  “First, you can promise never to call me Mrs. Redbird again. I’m Sylvia or Grandma, whichever you prefer.”

  “I prefer Grandma,” Damien said.

  “As do I, dear,” she said. “I came here not because I need you to do something for me, but because I would like to do something for you.”

  “Me?”
He stopped the motion of his cup midway to his mouth.

  “You,” she said firmly before opening the lid of the small picnic basket. Carefully, she pulled out a bundle wrapped in a brightly colored scarf. “I see your sadness, wahuhi.”

  “Yes, I’m sad. Jack is downstairs. But he isn’t. Jack is alive. But he isn’t. I think being sad is a correct response.”

  “I was not admonishing you, child. I was only acknowledging the depth of your grief.” Grandma Redbird touched his cheek gently. “But you and I know this sadness has nothing to do with Jack.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” His words denied it, but the fact that he spoke them in a voice pitched much higher than usual revealed the truth.

  Grandma said nothing. She simply watched him with knowing eyes and a kind expression.

  Damien bowed his head, unable to meet her gaze any longer.

  “You have no reason to show shame. Sometimes our spirit weeps. When it does you must work at comforting it, and then healing it.”

  “Can—can you do that for me?” he asked hesitantly.

  “No, wahuhi, no one can do that for you. That is something you must do yourself. I can help strengthen you, though, so that you may begin the job of healing.”

  He lifted his head. “What if I can’t heal?”

  “Then you will either live miserably, or you will die. It is your choice—and only your choice.” Grandma cocked her head to the side, studying him. “But I believe you will choose wisely. I have always sensed much wisdom and kindness within you, though you rarely use either for yourself. May I ask you a rather impertinent question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to heal? Do you want to live embracing joy and all the messiness it brings with it?”

  Damien opened his mouth to give an automatic reply, but Grandma Redbird lifted her hand in an imperious gesture. “Do not answer by rote. Many people do not want to embrace joy—not in this lifetime. If you are one of those people, have the courage to speak your life path in truth. I will not judge you—that I swear.”

  “Why would someone not want to embrace joy?”

  “Because a life filled with depression—sadness and stress and the tumult and drama that comes with such a life—can be addicting. After you live with it long enough, you only feel normal if you are mired in darkness. No, I do not mean the Darkness that is accompanied by evil. I mean the darkness that is an absence of joy, of lightness of spirit, of happiness. Depression is an abyss—a pit from which it is difficult to emerge. You must truly want everything that the absence of sadness brings with it—all the victories and defeats of a life lived open to the endless possibilities of love and light and laughter.”

  “In other words, a life where I could get my heart broken. Again.”

  “Yes, child.”

  “Or I could be disappointed by friends and family.”

  “Or, in a life lived fully, embracing joy, you could choose the wrong career path or make decisions that hurt others even though you do so with the best intentions, and so, so many other mistakes you would not make if you retreated within yourself and closed off those possibilities. Or if you ended your life. So, think before you answer me. Do you want to heal?”

  Damien felt his eyes well and then overflow, but he didn’t look away from Grandma Redbird’s knowing gaze. Finally, he whispered, “What if I’m not brave enough to open myself to that kind of pain?”

  “Then you will not know that kind of joy, either.”

  “I want it, though. I want joy,” Damien whispered desperately.

  Grandma leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “Then believe in yourself. Believe you are brave and worthy of such joy.”

  “Yes.” The word came out as a whisper and Damien stopped, cleared his throat, and began again—this time in a voice that filled the room. “Yes. I want to heal. I want to live a life filled with joy.”

  Grandma’s smile was like the full moon beaming on a winter-white field. “Of course you do, child. And you shall. Now, let us begin.”

  She opened the folded cloth, pushed the tea set aside, and began placing items on the table: a large shell, two smudge sticks, a dove’s feather, a purple candle which she lit, and a handful of turquoise that he realized was a long necklace.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t heal me,” he said.

  “I cannot. But I can cleanse your spirit and wrap you in protection so that you might begin to walk the path that will lead you to joy,” she said as she lit the purple candle.

  “All right. I’ll do whatever you say I should,” he said, sitting up straighter.

  “I say you must make your peace with Jack.”

  “Jack’s dead.”

  “Jack is in a quaint little room under the Field House.”

  “That isn’t my Jack, Grandma. That’s Other Jack.”

  “Does it truly matter whose Jack he is supposed to be?” Grandma spoke as she held a thick smudge stick of white sage to the flame of the purple candle. “Isn’t he, in any form, eternally your Jack? Would you not love him in any body—male or female?”

  “I would.” Damien felt a rush of emotional shock as he realized his automatic response was actually the truth. I would love Jack no matter what body he returned to me in—male, female—it just wouldn’t matter. He would still be my true love.

  “And couldn’t you understand that his spirit—that essence that is truly Jack—might be the same, even though the body it houses, the personality that goes with it, could be somewhat different because of different life experiences?”

  Damien nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, Grandma, I think I could.”

  “So you believe you could learn to love Jack again, even if he’d been reborn into a totally different body. Perhaps a lovely Asian man who has never known a vampyre or even a fledgling? Or a woman whose only experience with the gay community is her homophobic family railing against what they call sinners?”

  “It would still be Jack in there somewhere. Yes, I would want to be with him. Or her.”

  “Then learn to love him again in his own body.”

  Damien jerked back as if she’d slapped him. “Oh, Goddess, Grandma! I didn’t think of it like that.” He felt a sudden, amazing lightening of the rubber band of stress that squeezed his chest. “I was so wrapped up in him being Other Jack that I couldn’t see the truth. It doesn’t matter. If he’s not my Jack at this instant, I know he can be, will be, my Jack again.”

  “That is right, wahuhi. Follow that path. Hope will lead you to joy.”

  “We fell in love once. We can fall in love again.”

  “Of course you can, child. Of course you can.” Grandma reached for the long strand of turquoise beads and lifted it, settling it around Damien’s neck so that it draped down his chest. Then she took the smoking sage bundle in her left hand and the dove feather in her right. “Please stand.”

  Damien did as Grandma asked, stepping a little to the side of the settee so that she could easily move around him. Then she began smudging him, rhythmically moving in a tight, clockwise circle, using the dove feather to waft the smoke as she sang a heartbeat of a song in Cherokee.

  She circled him four times and then rested the smoking sage bundle on the oyster shell. Still singing and moving her feet rhythmically, she lit the long braided strand of sweet grass and began the process all over again.

  When she finished her four rotations, she motioned for Damien to bow his head so that she could rest her hand on it, blessing him.

  “Oh, great Earth Mother, help this soft-hearted wahuhi to always speak the truth, to listen with an open mind, to remember peace must always first be found within. Protect him as he walks his life path, open to joy, speaking the truth, and believing in carrying peace within.”

  Then, she tiptoed and oh, so gently, kissed the filled-in crescent moon in the center of his forehead. �
�Nyx, I seal my blessing with a kiss from me to you.”

  “Thank you, Grandma.” Damien felt as if he stood taller, and as he moved he seemed lighter. He started to lift the turquoise beads over his head to return them to her, but her hand stayed him.

  “These are yours now. I strung them for you, singing each bead into place with a protection prayer. I don’t want you to take them off until after the next full moon.”

  “You mean, wear them all the time? Even in the shower?”

  She smiled and nodded. “Yes, child. And to bed as well. They will help you on your new path. They will also help Jack.”

  “Jack?”

  “I understand that as he is now he has trouble controlling his impulse to feed.”

  “Yes, Stark and Zoey don’t want me to be alone with him because of it. They’re probably right.”

  “They are concerned for your well-being. We all are. But it isn’t Jack’s hunger from which you need to be protected. It is the illness of his spirit. I felt it as soon as I saw him. His spirit is steeped in Darkness.” Grandma Redbird pressed her palm against the turquoise beads. “Darkness is pained by this sacred stone’s protective powers. It will weaken the Darkness in Jack’s spirit enough that he will be able to control his terrible hunger for a time.”

  “That’s amazing, Grandma. Thank you so much!”

  “Child, this isn’t a cure for Jack’s illness. I do not have that power—neither do these stones. Neither do you. Remember that. Be wise. Go to him now. Talk with him. Get to know this Other Jack who is just another version of your true love.”

  “I will.” Damien’s sense of relief was overwhelming. He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “How much time will these beads give me with him?”

  “You should be safe until he sleeps with the rising of the sun.” She closed and handed him the small picnic basket. “Take this with you. I packed it with a little something for you both.”

  “It’s a lot smaller than your normal picnic basket, Grandma.”

  “Oh, I have many such baskets—each the correct size for its purpose.”