I waddled into the bedroom and fell asleep on Carmen’s sheets.
DAMON
By the time I had torn the last headstone in half, I had burned through the first wave of rage, and I collapsed face-down on the grass, gasping. My hands throbbed, scraped and bruised by stone, and my throat was raw with screaming. I tried to focus on the pain rather than on the blinding, searing, nauseating joy of the Newly Befasted. I breathed carefully, trying not to vomit.
I can’t believe she did this. How could she do this? Has everything about her been fake? I had thought her sweet, kind, harmless. Had this been what she wanted all along, to trap me, make me into her special toy?
I won’t do it. I won’t — I lurched to my feet with a half-formed plan to go back — any strike in anger would cause a breach—
This time I did vomit, though there was precious little to bring up — whether from the clashing desires or the mere thought of harming my Lumi, it was hard to say. I tried to block out everything, everyone, focus on breathing. In. Out. Each breath was ragged and painful but that was okay, in fact it was preferable. In. Out. My muscles, tensed to the breaking point, began to ease the tiniest bit.
So I was all the more unprepared when the Call hit.
With it came another wave of gut-wrenching rage. How dare she Call me? Call me to her like a strayed puppy? I dug my hands hard into the turf, teeth grinding, and would not go.
I lost consciousness at some point. When I came to, the sky was a watery silver, primed for dawn. I hurt all over, and for several minutes all I could do was lie still and drag in air through cracked lips, past aching teeth, down a raw and swollen throat. The past few hours felt like a dream. A nightmare.
The nightmare wasn’t over. I could still feel the blood-link between us, like a singing crystal, a sparkling light, a warm embrace. I had forgotten how good it felt. I wanted to fight it, to rage and scream and destroy things some more. But I didn’t have the energy.
Fact: you are now befasted. Throwing another tantrum will not make it go away. What you need now is not anger, but reason. Cool, calm, emotionless reason.
By the time the sky started to ripple pink and gold, I was able to dispassionately take stock of myself. No major injuries. Rage, betrayal, terror, joy, all successfully locked down. She wasn’t Calling me anymore. I got the sense that she was asleep. Good. Things would be easier while she was asleep.
I sat up, slowly, gently, each movement spawning a half dozen aches and twinges. What had I done to myself?
What had I done to the cemetery?
Not a single headstone stood unmolested. Some were beaten, dented, cracked. Others were ripped from the ground and scattered in multiple pieces. I felt sick in a whole new way. These anonymous dead had done nothing to me. Their families had done nothing to me. But they would suffer for my loss of control. It would take thousands of dollars to replace these stones, and many, I was sure, had historical value that could not be duplicated. Not to mention the shock and distress of having your loved one’s grave vandalized.
I’m sorry. I touched the jagged break across the nearest stone. Only its dates remained; 1820-1822. I’m so sorry.
At least seeing the destruction I’d wreaked killed my desire for more.
I want to go home. I couldn’t go to my father. This was what he had wanted. He would never understand. Orphans. I needed other orphans. Westley.
The Orphanage was silent when I arrived, still as stone. Worry spiked through my concern for my own problems. Audrey…
But when I topped the stairs, I could see Audrey in her bed, looking thin and breakable, but with outlines as crisp as my own. An IV stand by the bed dangled a bag of blood and another of something clear — Darling’s sedative?
Dove, drooping in a chair by the bed, started at the sound of my footsteps.
“Ai ya, Damon, what happen to you?”
I looked down at myself. My hands were torn and bloody, crusted with dirt, as were my clothes. I imagined my face was just as bad. I probably looked more like a kathair than ever before, and the irony was so amusing that I choked down the laughter, afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop. “Where’s Westley?” My voice came out raspy and thick.
“Asleep. Finally. Do you must wake him up?”
Only the thought of talking to Westley had gotten me this far. I was afraid of what I might do, left to my own devices. But I hesitated, eyeing the plastic pouch dripping scarlet into Audrey’s veins. My body hurt all over.
“Here,” Dove said, and opened a picnic cooler at her feet. She tossed me a bag of blood from it.
“Looks like you guys have everything under control here. I’m impressed.”
She smiled. “IV tube Darling’s idea. Cooler mine.”
I bit off the bottom corner of the bag and immediately began to choke. It didn’t taste right. It tasted the same as it always had, it just didn’t taste right.
Dove took the bag from my hand, wide-eyed, and pinched off the leak. “Damon, you not heal at all. What wrong? What happen?”
“Get Westley,” I croaked, and she hurried to obey.
I sank into the chair, my head pounding, and looked at Audrey. It didn’t seem so bad to be in her place now. Not nearly as bad as this.
The first time around, I dove headfirst into all these beautiful new feelings. The desire to love, touch, serve, protect, all of it bright and wondrous and more than welcome. My real life at last, my real purpose at last. All centered around this one brilliant, beautiful girl, who so miraculously loved me back, who so generously wanted me in return. I had sealed off those memories like a mausoleum, locked away in the deepest parts of me for thirteen years. I could feel them wriggling loose now, memories of when things were good, when we were happy, so long untouched that they felt new again. They hurt like blood returning to a frostbitten limb.
befasting night, too shy even to kiss her until the champagne was half gone
sunlight through the curtains, “What do you want for breakfast?”
Take me to Paris, Romeo, let’s go to Paris
I love you more than ice cream, I love you more than Christmas, I love you more than puppies
“Damon?”
“She befasted me, Westley.” My voice was dull, but I could feel the locked-down emotions stirring again. “While I was asleep. She didn’t ask me. She just did it. She knew I didn’t want it.” My voice was rising. “She knew and she did it anyway. Just like Claire. Just like all the psychotic Lumii whose broken dolls end up here. The kind Liberty kills. He’s right! They don’t deserve to live! They’re the destroyers, not us! The worst we can do is kill you! They — they—” I shook with rage, trying to bottle it back down.
Westley grasped my shoulders. “Damon, she did it to help you. I told her to. I told her you’d die if she didn’t and it’s the truth—”
I stared at him in disbelief, then shoved him away. “You? You of all people—” I strove for calm, battled for it. “And how has it worked out for you, Emily’s orphan, having your free will shut down for your own good?”
He looked stricken. “It’s not the same—”
“It is exactly the same.”
“It is not. You still have options, Damon. You don’t have to be a toy. If any of us has the strength of will for it, it’s you. You can even breach if you want to, I just want you to think it through first. You’ve had three days to absorb this — this second covanting, something no one thought could happen. You barely know the girl. Give her a chance.”
“And how would you like a replacement for Emily, Wes?”
He was silent a long moment, and when he spoke again his voice was very quiet. “Humans remarry all the time. They fall in love over and over.”
“We’re not humans.”
“You’re right. We live by different rules. We live and die for our Lumii. Oh, wait, we’re orphans. We didn’t die. We didn’t go by the rules. And you’ve covanted again. That’s not exactly by the book either. Against all the rules and all the known la
ws of metaphysics, you have a second chance, Damon. Don’t crumple it up and throw it away without even looking at it.” He rubbed his face wearily. “Besides, what’s the hurry? You can breach any time you choose. I’d take it as a personal favor if you chose to wait until Audrey is better and you have some chance of survival.”
I was silent.
“I assume that all this,” he gestured at my general state of disarray, “is a result of one of your tantrums. I hope you didn’t destroy Naomi’s house.”
“No. I got out of there the moment I realized what she’d done.” Dragged from a sound sleep by that horrific sensation of being invaded by a warm bath, vivisected with intense and infinite affection…
“You left her alone?”
“She’s fine. I’d know if she wasn’t.” But she had Called me, and I hadn’t come…
Westley, of course, saw the flicker of guilt and uncertainty. “I’ll send one of them to keep an eye on her.”
I glanced up and realized the doorway to Audrey’s room was crowded with orphans, all wide-eyed and confused.
Well. I guess the cat’s out of the bag.
Jewel stepped forward, helpless and adorable in a white nightgown with pink ribbons. “I’ll go.”
“No!” Westley snapped, loud enough that I jumped. “Audrey needs you here. Paris, you go.”
“Go where?”
“To the newest befasted Lumi in town. Surely you can track that. Go!”
Paris rolled his eyes and shaded out.
“When did he get back?” I asked.
“Not long after you left. He’s hardly the most diplomatic… Maybe I should have sent Dove.”
I shook my head. “Paris’s self-control is more reliable.” The most reliable in the house, in fact, with the possible exception of Jewel.
“Go get cleaned up, Damon,” Westley said. “Then we’ll figure out what to do.”
The doorbell rang.
I swore. “If it’s the neighbors, apologize for the noise and get rid of them. If it’s missionaries, take their pamphlets and get rid of them. If it’s my parents, say everything’s fine and get rid of them. See the pattern?”
“How about if it’s the Formyndari?”
I spun toward the voice and bit back another curse. The orphans around the doorway had parted, making way for Formyndari Hunter Priscilla Kirby and her Shadow, Lincoln. More Formyndari filled the hallway behind her, weapons at the ready. I backed up a step towards the window, glanced down. Yep. Surrounded. Priscilla wasn’t dumb enough to come after me on my own turf, surrounded by my own people, without some serious back-up. I could probably still get away — if I was willing to abandon the others to be taken in my stead.
“Well, Damon,” Priscilla said, “it looks like you were right. Peter wasn’t Liberty.” I could see her taking note of my torn clothes, the bruises on my face, the blood on my hands. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us.”
NAOMI
I dreamed about Tyler. Specifically, the moment I walked in on him and Tori at work. We’d had a cataclysmic fight the night before — about having children, in fact — and I wanted to apologize. I was frantic to apologize. But the dream wasn’t about my conflict-avoidance issues. It was just a repeat of the moment I came through the door, and there they were, and at first what I was seeing didn’t make sense, and then it did. Everyone says ‘the bottom dropped out of my stomach.’ It was the opposite for me. It was like my stomach was trying to rise out through the top of my head, pulling me up so my feet couldn’t reach the ground. Tyler turned and saw me, and his eyes went big and round, and he opened his mouth, but it was too late to say anything, because I was already running away.
And that was the dream. That two-second interval, over and over, getting slower every time, until it seemed to take hours for me to turn around and run.
When I woke, feeble baby sun-rays were leaking through the curtains, and the first thought my groggy mind managed to grind through was that I’d missed my church’s Easter Sunrise Service. My second was that Carmen had the car, anyway.
“Well, Happy Easter anyhow, Sunny Bunny.” I staggered to the window, Sunny Bunny in one hand, and pushed the window open to spread my arms in the sunlight. I took a deep, deep breath of cool spring morning, hope, light, a new day. ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall — ‘
“Are you Naomi?”
I gasped and spun toward the strange voice, still sleepy enough that my first instinct was more embarrassment than alarm.
The person standing at the foot of my bed was not the sort to provoke alarm anyway. A child, no more than twelve, with a delicate face, big Bambi eyes with killer lashes, and dark hair curling past the shoulders. I squinted at the child’s face, second-guessing my initial assumption that it was a girl. Jeans and a blue T-shirt were no clue. “Yes, I’m Naomi,” I said hesitantly. Last time something ambigender dropped in, it tried to eat me. “Who are you?”
“Paris. Westley sent me to watch over you for a while.”
“Oh.” I hovered in uncertainty for a moment. “Well, I guess if you intended to kill me, you would have done it right off.”
“Probably.”
“And if you tried, there’s not much I could do to stop you.”
“Nothing whatever.”
“And so I might as well be polite. Welcome to my apartment, Paris-the-orphan.” I extended a hand. He didn’t shake it. “Um. Do you live at the Orphanage?”
“I come and go.” The voice was a neutral tenor, but I was increasingly convinced this was a boy. And not, perhaps, as young as he looked. He didn’t hold himself like a child. In fact, he held himself like a panther, all liquid grace and sheathed violence. He looked me up and down in an unsettling sort of way. “So you’re Damon’s new Lumi.”
My chest seized up. “He told you that? You’ve seen him? Is he okay? Where is he?”
“He came to the Orphanage. Looked like he escaped a train wreck.”
“What? What do you—”
“Went on and on about how some chick befasted him in his sleep and deserved to die for it.”
I sat on the bed and fumbled Sunny Bunny into my lap, clutching him as hard as I could. As if that would help somehow.
“Why did you do it?” Paris asked, eyes flat and hard.
“I just didn’t want him to die.” You will not cry you will not cry. “He doesn’t ever have to see me again if he doesn’t want to. I just didn’t want him to die!” Suddenly I was screaming, throwing Sunny Bunny across the room, and Carmen’s pillows after him. “I was trying to help him and if he had an ounce of sense mixed in with his endless stupid angst he would know that!”
I was out of pillows. Cheeks hot, I glanced at Paris, who had backed away from the bed to lean against the wall with a cautiously amused expression.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry. I don’t usually do that.”
“Hey, what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is none of my business.” He handed Sunny Bunny back to me.
Poor Sunny. I’m sorry I threw you. I snuggled him against my chest. “Did Damon actually say I deserved to die?”
“Yep. Though he was speaking of Lumii in general. Lumii like you, that is, who treat their Shadows like toys.”
“He’s not being fair.” I rubbed my tear-clogged eyes. “I know, I know he wanted to breach. But I saw Audrey and I just… I couldn’t…” I rubbed at my eyes again and sank back onto the bed. “I couldn’t let him go through that kind of pain.”
“Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
I paused mid-sniffle. “Did you just quote The Princess Bride?”
Now Paris was the one who blushed. “I live with Westley, what do you expect?”
“What’s with that, anyway? Mrs. DiNovi told me to never comment on a Shadow’s appearance, and I’ve been trying to keep my mouth shut, but some things just cry out for explanation.”
Paris looked down a
t himself and raised an eyebrow. I blushed, but decided that trying to qualify my statement would only make it worse.
“Westley’s Lumi was obsessed with The Princess Bride. Westley was her ideal man. End of explanation. Interestingly, Damon’s appearance doesn’t seem to have changed, assuming that the bruises and lacerations are temporary.”
“What? What happened to him?”
“I wondered if you felt he needed some discipline.”
“What? Ugh, no! That’s sick! Besides, do you really think he’d just stand there and take it?”
He cocked his head as if I’d said something curious. “Well, either way, since he’s hurt, he’s going to have to see you again whether he likes it or not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Um, he needs your blood to heal?” He said this as if it were something as obvious as daylight.
I looked down at my wrist, the blue veins there, and swallowed. “Oh. Unless he wants to stay like that indefinitely, I guess.”
“I saw him keep a black eye for a month, once, just to prove he could do it.”
“Oh?”
“When he finally snapped, there was nobody around to stop him and he put a girl in the hospital. He didn’t do that again.”
“Oh,” I repeated, then raised an eyebrow at him. “Somehow I doubt Damon would appreciate how… forthcoming you’re being with his life history.”
He blinked innocently. “You’re his Lumi. Why would I hide anything from you?”
“Do you have a problem with Damon?”
“He annoys me. Most people do. But unlike most people, Damon tries to control me.”
“By which you mean, he tries to keep you from getting yourself killed.”
“I’m one of the few non-suicidal orphans, actually. Damon mostly just wants me to be one of the Big Happy Family. It’s very irritating.”
“Uh-huh. I can totally see why having a home and family would be irritating.”
“I don’t need mothering. I’m forty-six years old.” He shook hair back proudly from his fine-boned child’s face.
Secondhand Shadow Page 15