I’m contrasting mythical vampires with real vampires. Time to call the men in white coats.
The house wasn’t very vampiric, either. No Gothic arches or stone corridors; I wiped my feet on a red-dirt-stained doormat that read “Hi, I’m Mat,” and stepped from that to hardwood that had worn through its varnish many moons ago. The living room was a study in Broke Student Chic; a comfortably saggy couch in shades of blue plaid and duct tape, chairs of at least three contradictory styles, a scarred and scuff-cornered coffee table. Flames crackled in a fireplace on the opposite wall; a row of hooks by the door shouldered the weight of half a dozen coats, two scarves, and a pair of fuzzy blue mittens. What was with these people? It was seventy-five degrees outside!
The sound of “The Baby Elephant Walk” hit my ears and I reached for my cellphone, but this was no tinny electronic ringtone. The shiny licorice slide of a clarinet filled the room, played by a tall black woman in red plaid and capris. She stopped and looked up as we came through the door. So did two handsome gentlemen playing checkers on the coffee table.
I did not want to be here. Jewel was still weeping quietly, and I could already feel the others in the room picking up the vibe, their eyes wide and fearful. They were about to find out that two of their friends were dead, and I did not want to be there for it. Before Damon could speak, I slipped past him into the kitchen. It was no substitute for a sound-proofed Fortress of Solitude, but it might shield me from the worst of the wailing.
Damon had said food did nothing for vampires. Judging by the Orphanage kitchen, nobody thought to tell the vampires. Chocolate chip cookies, blueberry muffins, pink-frosted cupcakes, and a bowl of Easter-egg candy occupied one counter, under a dangling octopus of bananas; the other counter was dominated by loaves of homemade bread, still warm, and edged with a box of pancake mix, three cans of Spaghetti-Os, and a half-empty bowl of fettuccine alfredo. I opened the fridge and found all manner of foil- and saran-wrapped goodies, including pizza, fried chicken, and one carton of melting pistachio ice cream.
Pregnant women, in my intimate personal experience, are always hungry. Correction: if they’re not actively throwing up, they’re hungry. And this kitchen presented Temptation with a capital Cupcake. But I resisted. For all I knew, eating in a vampire’s house might have the same significance as eating pomegranates in Hades.
Also, there were bags of red fluid in the crisper.
Muffled sounds of distress began filtering through the closed door. I backed away from it, wincing — a fortunate decision, since moments later, the girl with the spiky hair and combat boots stomped through, and past me to the back door. Only to freeze there, staring open-mouthed at me. For a brief second she shifted toward me, hand outstretched. Like Peter.
I stepped back, but before I had time to panic, she was out the door. I watched through the window as she hurtled across the yard. A fallen pecan limb as thick as my leg lay in her path, holding up an obstructing fan of its lesser branches; she crashed through it without pausing.
Before I could move, the Asian girl followed after, catching Spikes in a tight hug at the edge of the yard.
When no one else came through the door, I eased toward it and peeked into the living room. Audrey leaned against a wall, hugging herself, seeking no comfort despite the hand Damon extended to her. Jewel was still sobbing her heart out in Damon’s lap. I wondered nastily if she had even liked Peter.
The clarinet player had dropped to the floor by the front door, amid the pile of shoes. As I watched, she yanked the laces out of a brown boot and tore each lace in half, muttering. “Two. Three.”
Note to self, I thought. Vampires can snap shoelaces like dry spaghetti. Human spine might cause grimace of effort. Avoid testing this hypothesis.
Just in case that one had been too subtle for me, a hunky young man with red-gold curls chose that moment to express his pain by driving a fist through the living room wall.
Okey-dokey. Back into the kitchen we go.
I shouldn’t be here. It was my fault, if indirectly, that their friend was dead. Even aside from that, they shouldn’t have a stranger in the house at a time like this. In their place, I would desperately want to be left alone.
Cue flashback. Ten years old, crying myself sick in the bedroom Jonathan and I shared at our grandparents’ house. Grampa Charlie picking the lock to come sit beside me on the bed, not saying a word, just stroking my hair until I fell asleep.
We spent that summer with Grampa Charlie and Grandma Georgia so our parents could shout and throw things at each other in peace. Me and Grampa Charlie did everything together — us and Patton, a big whiskery mutt with dainty mannerisms and the most human smile I’ve ever seen on a dog. Patton was as old as one and a half of me, Grampa Charlie said, and he was pretty creaky, with a mask of gray fur and eyes that went milky in certain lights. I loved to scratch his chest; he’d rest his head on my shoulder and relax until he nearly fell over. I always gave him my vegetables under the table — he’d eat anything — and helped him into the bed with me, even after Grandma Georgia forbade it.
One morning, near the end of the summer, he didn’t wake up.
When I finally stopped crying, we buried him in the backyard, and then it was Grampa Charlie who cried. I’d never seen a grown-up cry before.
“Animals die, and people die,” he said, “and other things, too — friendships, dreams, houseplants, marriages. But love doesn’t die. Every love we’ve ever felt lives forever, because God is love and God lives forever.”
“There you are,” came a British accent from nowhere.
The man in the doorway had been playing checkers with the wall-puncher when we arrived. Wisps of blond hair fell in his eyes, and a faint mustache dusted his lip. He had not been crying; he looked too bleak and grim to cry. He also looked strangely familiar.
“She’s in here, Damon, safe and sound,” he called toward the living room. When he turned back to me, his voice went hushed, almost reverent. “You are quite the dazzler, aren’t you?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“A new Lumi, I mean. Sorry. My name is Westley.” He extended a hand.
I took it, feeling lightheaded for a moment. Westley. As in played-by-Cary-Elwes-in-1987 Westley. The words I overheard through Dr. DiNovi’s office door floated through my already-rather-floaty mind.
“…hardly the Dread Pirate Roberts, Dad. Can you really see him ripping someone’s throat out with his teeth?”
Westley raised an eyebrow. “You’ve seen the movie, I perceive.”
Damon burst through the door with an expression much like a parent who, having found their lost child, can’t decide whether to hug or spank them. He settled for crossed arms and a Scowl of Doom.
“If the words ‘young lady’ cross your lips,” I said, “I’m going to shove them down your throat and out your butt.”
Damon blinked. “The words, or my lips?”
“Both,” I stammered, my cheeks warming. “Now explain this to me. We’ve got Strider, Shirley Temple, Audrey Hepburn and the hero of The Princess Bride. Where’s Mickey Mouse?”
He glanced sideways at Westley, who appeared to be choking. “We should be going. You have to get to work.”
“She has spirit, anyway,” Westley muttered. “I vote we keep her.”
Damon gave him a startled glance, but before he could speak, a voice called his name from the living room, and he ducked back through the doorway.
Westley stepped toward me, his voice suddenly low and urgent. “Let me guess, he’s told you this will all be over in a few days? Don’t let him do that. Don’t let him breach again. I know it’s a lot to ask of you, I know that, but he’ll die. You can’t have any idea what it’s like. He’ll never survive it a second time.”
“What?” I said.
“If you befast him, he’s yours forever, and he’ll hate us both until the end of time but he’ll live.”
He cut off and turned around as Damon came back through the door. “I know you nee
d to get to work, Naomi. Westley, you think you can handle things here? You might want to organize a hunting party. Don’t let anyone go off by themselves.”
“I know. I’ll call you if we need you.”
Damon cast a concerned glance back at the living room even as he motioned to me. “Come on, let’s go.”
Westley had the courtesy to leave the room while we stepped into the shadow of the refrigerator and vanished.
DAMON
I was quietly evicted from Movie Barn halfway through Naomi’s four-hour shift. A sour-faced woman with black-dyed hair, apparently the manager, “suggested” that I check out some of the surrounding stores while I waited for Naomi. It hardly mattered whether she had a personal objection to me, or had simply noticed the way customers were eyeing me and edging toward the exit. I wasn’t about to let Naomi out of my sight, of course, so I stepped obligingly out the door, then withdrew to the shadow of the doorframe.
It took Naomi all of a minute and a half to notice my absence. She looked alarmed, briefly, then confused — doubtless because though her five conventional senses told her I was gone, her new Shadow-centric one was telling her the opposite. I should have thought to mention what I was planning, but it was too late now.
Movie Barn was a terrible place for a pregnant woman to work. Not the environment itself — shelves of DVDs and an island of computers, innocuous enough — but the hours on her feet. I could practically see her ankles swelling, but she smiled and chattered with the customers as cheerfully as if the blimp beneath her red uniform shirt were full of helium. The girl was a trooper.
At least I could save her the walk home. She had hiked that half-mile after dark often enough, I wondered that she hadn’t already been vampire food, Lumi or not. For all I knew, she had. Despite our efforts to spread our hunts to other areas, plenty of Ilium U students had little or no memory of how they acquired some wound or other. At least I had finally persuaded my orphans to use a blade to disguise the teethmarks when they were done.
Stop watching her neck, pervert.
There was only so much to look at here, only so much to occupy my attention. Letting my mind wander was dangerous. A kathair could spring a surprise visit. I could lose my grip on the shadow I was occupying and pop out of nowhere in front of — I counted — eight witnesses. I could flash back to the time Claire and I came to this very store and argued over whether to rent Braveheart or Apollo 13 or Toy Story.
I counted movie posters. Counted shelves, and racks on each shelf, and DVDs on each rack. I counted orphans I had taken in who were dead now, and those who were still alive. Peter and Mariposa tipped the scales in favor of the dead. There were four dead faces I remembered and could put no name to, and two names whose faces I had lost. I counted the deaths, human and orphan, that I was at least indirectly responsible for, and stopped counting when I reached a round dozen.
By the end of her shift, Naomi was flagging, almost pale and drawn enough to move into the Orphanage. The sour-faced boss snapped at her when she caught her attempting to sink down onto a stool, and I bit back an impulse to slap the bad dye right out of her hair. The Shadow’s protective instinct had never quite gone away — I had simply transferred it, first to Westley and Galatea, then to more and more others. I had forgotten how strong it could be in its undiluted form. I had tried very hard to forget, anyway. The memory of Naomi bleeding under a streetlight was going to give me nightmares for some time to come.
Every time you enjoy her smile, draw comfort from her touch, worry for her safety, you are reducing yourself. Packing yourself back into that Shadow-shaped box that you have spent thirteen years fighting free of. It was not a whisper in my head, but a snarl, the sound of a wounded animal backed into a corner. How long could I maintain this medium distance, walk the line between running toward her and running away? Two more days. You can make it two more days. You have no choice. I tried not to think about the cases I’d heard of where successful befasting had taken place up to a week after covanting.
“Damon?”
Naomi was sidling uncertainly out the door. I stepped out of the doorframe’s shadow and she jumped.
“Watch it, Drac,” she said. “I could have a shotgun in this belly. You never know. Where did you go, anyway?”
“Nowhere. I was right here.”
“Oh.” She digested this a moment as we walked out into the parking lot. “So, is that like the song? ‘Every move you make, I’ll be watching you’?”
“Pretty much,” I admitted. “For your own good, of course.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls you stalk.”
I smiled despite myself. “Shadows do tend to be a bit… possessive.” Or stark raving obsessed.
“Possessive? Like… bothered by their girl having someone else’s baby?”
“You’re not my girl. This should be far enough.” Deep into the shadows of the parking lot, we stopped, embraced, and stepped back from each other in the dim confines of Naomi and Carmen’s apartment.
Shading Naomi home plugged into every Shadow-style receptor I could think of offhand. Touch, being helpful, protecting her, making her happy. I would have to be remarkably self-deceptive to miss the way she leaned into me. I doubted she could help it. Tenebrii might get the short end of the stick, but they weren’t the only ones with pre-programmed responses; rare indeed was the Lumi who could resist their new Shadow’s charms, however twisted the relationship became later.
You don’t want to be saddled with me forever, I promise you don’t. You don’t want to end up like the last girl who trusted me to take care of her.
“Is it hard for you, doing that?” Naomi asked, looking around the apartment — for signs of her roommate, I assumed, but I knew better than to shade into a room without checking it for witnesses. “Shading, I mean. Does it tire you out, or anything?”
“A little. Like taking a long walk, maybe. Shading you to my parents’ last night, when I was hurt, that was rough. But normally it’s no big deal.”
“So I guess it’s not possible to hold a Shadow prisoner. You can go anywhere, anytime.” She pulled a pizza pocket out of the freezer and stuck it in the microwave.
“It’s hard to hold an orphan prisoner. A Shadow is already a prisoner.”
She looked at me sharply, and I winced. I hadn’t meant to speak so freely. I had to remember that none of this was her fault.
“Shadows are bound to their Lumi’s needs,” I said carefully. “They can’t come and go as they please. But they normally don’t want to.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “You say it’s hard, for an orphan. But not impossible?”
“A photography darkroom, maybe, or a bank vault. Total darkness means no shadows. No shadow means no shading.” And I was being awfully free with potentially damaging information. That wouldn’t do. Except that, much as I might hate it, I had to let her in on one more trick. If she was attacked again, it might be the only weapon she had. “It’s also very difficult to shade if someone looks you directly in the eye telling you not to. Shadows are… vulnerable to authority.”
“Yeah? It didn’t work so hot on Peter.”
“It would have, if he’d been even a little bit more or less lucid. There’s a very dangerous middle stage there, but it doesn’t last long.”
“So… they’re like little kids. If you project the proper presence, they do what you want even though you’re not their mom.” She smiled at my startled look, pulling her pizza pocket from the microwave. “I did a lot of baby-sitting.”
“Yes. Shadows are drawn to… strong personalities.” We regarded each other for a moment.
“I don’t have one of those,” Naomi said. “I let Carmen bully me, I let my boss bully me, I let my parents bully me. I avoid confrontation, I’m indecisive. I have difficulty facing up to unpleasant realities. Such as my own pregnancy.”
“You’re attending school and holding down a job — while pregnant — with absolutely no support from anyone, as far as I can t
ell. I wouldn’t call that weak. You may not have the more usual bull-in-a-china-shop personality, but that doesn’t make you spineless.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t exactly make me alpha dog, either.”
She was, I realized, exactly right. What she lacked was not strength but dominance, and that was exactly what most Shadows were drawn to — powerful presence, leadership, confidence. I knew exactly how it worked; to hold my orphans together I’d had to adopt all those traits, force them onto myself, pretend them until they became real.
Naomi wasn’t a dominant personality. I was.
Unnerved, I gestured at the laptop she was pulling onto her lap, or what remained of her lap. “Dad’s paper?”
“Yeah, I finally remembered my topic.” She was as relieved as I by the change in subject. “Sense and Sensibility versus Rebecca. Specifically, Marianne and Colonel Brandon versus Maxim and what’s-her-name.” She frowned. “What is her name?”
“She doesn’t have one,” I said dryly. “Drove me crazy, too.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve read Rebecca?”
“Son of a literature professor. You do the math. So to speak.”
“Still… kind of a chick book, isn’t it?”
She was laughing at me, the little monster. And I was blushing. “The classics,” I said loftily, “are for everyone. Speaking of which, I saw a copy of The Hobbit on your shelf. I’ll go read that and let you concentrate on your paper.”
I was halfway to the bookcase when she said, “Are hobbits real?”
I turned around and raised an eyebrow of my own.
“Well, if vampires can be real,” she stammered — I hated how cute she was when she was embarrassed — “why not hobbits, and elves, and werewolves and fairies and mermaids and Martians—”
“That’s not an uncommon question among new Lumii,” I admitted. “Some Tenebrii hunt Sasquatch through the swamps of Florida, some believe aliens landed in New Mexico in 1947. But they’re in the minority, just like in the human population. If anything, I’d say we’re slightly less credulous about such things, because we know for a fact things can exist outside the norm, but we still haven’t seen them. That’s my take on it, anyway.”
Secondhand Shadow Page 6