My face went so hot I feared the smoke alarm would go off. Which would at least change the subject.
Damon hardly looked up from his breakfast. “We’ll do it after breakfast. Nice weekend?”
“Well, it ended with Mom’s latest scumbag getting his clothes tossed out the window, and for once, Mom actually thanked me for opening her eyes. She said she had really thought it was true love this time.” She snorted, and kicked the duffel bag out of the way so she could shut the door. “True love. Opiate of the masses. So, any pancakes for me?”
I indicated the plate of unclaimed pancakes, which she doused with syrup and began cutting with her fork. The lack of a chair did not seem to bother her. “Mom was sooo happy to have me home for Easter. Made me dye eggs and everything. Such a child. And she wanted me to stay for my birthday. What, we’re back to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey? I got plans here. You’re invited, you know.”
I’d forgotten that Carmen’s birthday was tomorrow. Words failed me, but I managed to raise my eyebrows.
“Don’t look all surprised. Of course you’re invited. You need to get out more. Everybody’s meeting up at Lola’s at eight o’clock tomorrow night. I’ll get you directions.” She glanced at Damon, and her voice went chirpy. “You’re welcome to bring a guest.”
“Igottagetreadyforclass.” I battled, then abandoned, the blue comforter and locked myself in the bathroom.
Of course, locks are for humans.
I was halfway through a rushed but scalding shower when Damon’s voice nearly made my feet slide out from under me.
“Thought I’d leave the blanket in here.”
Because I hadn’t brought any clothes in here with me. Whoopsie. “Good grief, Damon, you preserve my modesty by entering a locked bathroom while I am in the shower? Get out of here!”
No answer. I peeked around the curtain. The comforter was folded neatly on the lid of the commode. Damon was gone.
I let the curtain fall again, picked up my Vanilla Chai shampoo bottle, and told it, “I don’t know how much more courtesy I can stand.”
By the time I was dressed, he had already changed Carmen’s sheets. And straightened up the couch. And cleared the table. He sat in the recliner, meandering through TV stations, while I frantically stuffed books into my bag and searched for shoes.
“Where in the world did Carmen go?” I asked, and winced as the “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” song immediately entrenched itself in my head.
“She left.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
He smiled faintly, without looking away from the television. “She told me we were cute together, that I’d be even cuter with her, and floated the idea of a test spin. I said thanks, but my life is complicated enough already. Then she left.”
I stared, my bookbag dangling from one hand. “She — she — you—”
“Are we leaving or what?”
We’d gone through several phases with the shading thing, from Painfully Awkward to Acceptably Strange to Strangely Acceptable. Apparently we had just entered a new one, Painfully Polite, which had all the personal warmth of a dental appointment.
The shade turned my stomach like it hadn’t since the very first time, and I had to sit down on the cool cement steps outside the English building and breathe.
“Naomi?” Concern leaked into his voice, and he touched my shoulder.
I felt ridiculously better. Of course he still cared. He was just trying his hardest not to show it. What kind of effort did it take, to rein in all those Shadow reactions? What would happen if I turned around and kissed him right now?
Well, I would earn his hatred, for one thing. Not just acquire it, but earn it, by deliberately playing games with his free will.
And how terrifying was it, that I had the ability to do that to him? I’d never had any true kind of power in my life, and it scared me to death to think of what I might do with it. From what I’d seen and heard so far, it was not hard to believe that if I put my mind to it, I could make him do pretty much whatever I wanted. The joke was on me, though — all I really wanted was for him to choose me, without coercion or manipulation.
Hadn’t I gotten attached to Damon rather too quickly? Shouldn’t I still be despondent about Tyler? I was, in point of fact. Thinking about Tyler was like sloshing alcohol onto a cut. But that seemed to be a very separate matter from Damon. I had the uneasy suspicion that, when it came to Damon, it might not have mattered if I was still married to Tyler.
Or was I fooling myself completely? Was it just that, after Tyler’s betrayal, the idea of a Shadow who would dote on me forever was too good to pass up? Was I tearing Damon’s life to pieces just to make myself feel better?
“Naomi?” he asked again, more urgently.
“I’m okay,” I lied, and let him help me up. It was an effort to let go of his hand.
.
Class had already started; we slithered along the back wall and found the last two empty seats. I refused to look up at Dr. DiNovi, concentrating so hard on taking notes that it took me a full paragraph to notice my pen was out of ink. I banged my head softly on my desk, then fished another pen out of my bag. The ink was orange. I threw it back and pulled out another, which was yellow. I didn’t throw it across the room. I just dropped it in an aggressive sort of way, which caused it to roll off the desk. I decided the floor was a good place for yellow pens to live, that orange was an acceptable color for notes after all, and that if Damon would rather be strapped to a bed with his face covered in blood than live with me, then that was just perfectly fine.
By then I had lost track of what Dr. DiNovi was talking about, though it seemed to involve the Bronte sisters. My orange pen hovered over the paper, desperate for something to write down. I settled for a to-do list.
finish the thrice-cursed term paper
start the quadruple-cursed Shakespeare
study for Adv. Grammar exam that you will def. fail
finish — or rather, begin — art project
Was it really the last week of classes before Spring Break? Was all of this really due this very Friday? Well, no. The term paper was due last Friday, which was obscurely comforting. That one was already late; less pressure. Like walking-not-running to work when there’s already no chance of getting there on time. Why kill yourself hurrying and still be late?
Enough to-do list. Preserve what sanity you have left. Write something else. My pen began moving.
Westley
Dove
Darling
Paris
Jewel
Audrey
Galatea
Adonis
Well, it wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but it would do. I looked down at the list of Damon’s orphans and realized what it was. A list of suspects. Damon had said Liberty was probably someone close to him. Surely it didn’t have to be one of these people. But it could be.
I had met these people. Was I really suspecting one of them of being a serial killer?
It was something to do, anyway.
Audrey — victim or …?
It seemed unlikely that she would do this to herself. But I couldn’t imagine anyone doing that to themselves, and apparently plenty did. Maybe the other victims were warm-ups, to brace herself for getting rid of her own Lumi.
Westley, Darling, and Adonis were the ones whose relatives, or Lumi’s relatives, had been victims. I put stars by their names, and Audrey’s.
Darling — self-control issues, bad attitude, came home covered in blood. adonis thinks it’s her. connected to two victims. but she didn’t eat me.
Paris — jumpy around Formyndari. probably not a unique trait. threatened me with violence — if I hurt Damon. lumi-protectiveness vs. lumi-hate.
Jewel — witchy little thing.
Galatea — explosive temper. where was she when martin died? Like Paris, threatened me with violence — but again, protecting Damon.
Adonis — hated “that snake Martin.” wanted to protect Audr
ey from him.
I needed more information if I was going to be serious about this. Some things I could guess at — Paris, stuck in his androgynous child’s body, might be expected to have issues with Lumii in general. Dove, on the other hand, seemed to still have positive feelings about her Lumi, and it seemed to me that a psyche would need lots of abuse-fueled rage to do something like this. I was no psychologist, but surely spattering a person across their entire apartment was an act with lots of feeling behind it. I needed to know how the orphans were treated by their respective Lumii to make any kind of judgment.
Of course, motive was only one side of the classic Suspect’s Triangle. Means — well, they all had pointy teeth. No help there. Opportunity, now…
Thanks to Audrey, we knew exactly when Martin Iverson died. Anyone who could be positively placed somewhere not-Martin’s-apartment at that time was off the hook, weren’t they?
I tried to remember exactly which orphans had been present for those first excruciating minutes of Audrey’s breach. Dove had come to fetch Damon, then baked cookies to keep up morale. Westley was there, wrestling Audrey into restraints. So was her roommate, Adonis the gardener, who had been so glad of Martin’s death. Jewel, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, wringing her hands uselessly. Darling — oh yeah, her presence was unforgettable, blood-splashed as if she played in arteries for fun, snapping and snarling at Adonis and Jewel’s accusations.
Galatea hadn’t been there at all, as Darling pointed out, nor Paris. I made notes.
Of course — again, as Darling had pointed out — when all your suspects could teleport to the other side of the world and back in the space of a breath, was there such thing as an airtight alibi?
Damon pulled my paper toward him, read it, pushed it back with a polite question mark on the next available line. I wrote back.
Time for Orphan Superlatives. Vote for “most likely to rip someone apart with their teeth.”
He didn’t reply, and I wondered if I had made him angry by suspecting his orphans. But after a long pause, he pulled a folded paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to me.
It was a list of his own, with five names circled.
Audrey — free of Martin. But why the others? No apparent connection. Don’t know her well enough to say.
Adonis — history of violence. Wanted to protect A. from Martin. Longstanding antagonism with Ray J. Suspected in death of his own Lumi. Brought Audrey home mid-breach — in on it together?
Paris — Lumi issues. Violent temper. History of breaking the rules. Largely unsupervised. Alibis make it a tight fit, but… maybe.
Darling — impulsive, serious temper issues. Had been encouraging Kitty and Dolly to breach. Maybe she was with Dove, maybe not. No known connection to Ray & Mia. Surely smart enough not to show up covered in blood. Can’t believe I let her shower w/o getting a sample. Idiot.
Westley.
That last name was written separately from the others, and Damon’s handwriting changed in that one word — became slower, heavier, less certain. The notes jotted beneath it seemed fragmentary, reluctant.
Kitty
acting strange
repressed anger at Emily?
something going on
I traced the circle around Westley’s name with my finger. The other three circles were firm, definite. This one was drawn lightly, and didn’t quite close.
I looked at it for a long minute. He hadn’t written this list today — the paper was soft with much folding, notes jotted in a variety of inks, crammed between each other. How long had he been walking around with this on his shoulders? He’s hardly the Dread Pirate Roberts, he’d told his father. Can you really see him ripping someone’s throat out with his teeth? Trying to convince his father, or himself?
I pulled out a clean sheet of paper.
How do you know Westley?
Damon waited at least as long before writing back.
We grew up together. Our mothers were friends. He breached about three years before me. I wouldn’t have survived without him.
What happened to his Lumi?
Leukemia. Emily made him promise not to follow her. A blood oath. He can’t break it; not just won’t, can’t. I don’t know what kind of life she thought he’d have without her.
My brain stuttered a bit. Of course. How could any Shadow enjoy life without their Lumi? Even if they have another one?
Stop it, I told myself. This is not about you. This is about Westley.
Westley, who had encouraged me to befast Damon. Westley, who had hugged me last time we met. If he had a problem with Lumii, he was hiding it well.
Was Emily abusive?
Other than the blood oath, no.
You said your mothers were friends. Could we talk to his parents?
They’re dead. His dad was killed in an accident not long after Wes befasted, and of course his mom went with her Lumi.
Of course.
My fingers itched to ask what had happened to Claire. My predecessor. The girl who looked like me. The girl he could hardly speak of without choking. Bad idea. Stay on target. Better yet, change the subject.
You said Adonis has a history of violence. I saw him punch a wall.
He has some impulse control issues. Beat the snot out of Ray once before. Vowed to “break every bone in Martin Iverson’s body” if he ever hurt Audrey again.
Why didn’t you tell the Formyndari this?
How do you think they’d react? How could I do that when I’m not sure?
The word “sure” was underlined three times. I wrote back,
Paris has had plenty of opportunity to take me out and hasn’t.
If you convinced him you’re not abusive, Damon replied, he may have seen no need.
I thought of Jewel and the Chinese checkers game.
I think some people consider Lumii abusive by definition.
We managed to escape Dr. DiNovi’s classroom without speaking to him. Second-favorite professor or not, I had no desire to discuss either my Very Late Term Paper or my relationship with his son. If Damon gave his father a warning look over my shoulder as we slipped out the door, I chose not to notice it.
Advanced Grammar was a disaster. We couldn’t find two seats together, so Damon had to sit two rows away from me. My concentration was shot. On the best of days, I spent that class scribblings notes so frantically that my hand cramped and my handwriting turned to chickenscratch, and still barely kept up. Today it was hopeless. I’d skipped the last class to go to a Cuban beach, and I was so behind that the teacher might as well have been speaking Korean. My eyes kept wandering away from the markerboard diagram of the Forms of Discourse, and toward the seat two rows down where Damon stared unblinkingly ahead.
Today was the sixth day of our acquaintance. And it felt horribly wrong to have him so far away.
I made myself look down at my paper. This is how things went kablooie with Tyler, you know. You went all Clinging Ivy on him until he couldn’t breathe. You knew it even when it was happening, but you couldn’t stop it. Nothing could stop Naomi the Mosquito, the Leech, the Remora, sucking endlessly at your very soul!
I paused, and turned my own words over in my mind. I sucked him dry. I’m a vampire.
I glanced at Damon, and caught him looking back. It took a good, solid second for him to drag his eyes away. When he did, I felt dropped.
I put my head down on the desk. I can’t live like this.
In high school, drawing was my main stress outlet. I hadn’t drawn a thing since leaving Tyler, except for that one sketch of Damon. It worked once… I pulled out a clean sheet of paper.
It wasn’t like the first sketch, where everything flowed out the end of the pencil like water from a broken dam. I had to work for this one, glancing sideways at Damon’s profile, erasing, trying again to get the jawline right, try to capture the angle of his eyes, erase, try again. That was okay. I was glad it was hard. Because that was normal. A visit from the muse was always nice, but somehow it
was a relief to go back to Plugging Away and show I could still draw all by myself.
When the sketch of Damon was as close to looking like Damon as it was likely to get, I moved my pencil to the bottom of the page and let it wander, enjoying the feel of the pencil on paper too much to even care what it was making.
What it made was a baby, curled up inside a circle.
Very subtle, Psyche.
Wonder Tummy Occupant was busy today, fluttering back and forth and up and down and around and around. I put down the pencil and followed him with my finger for a while. Hey, we’re dancing, little one. You’re dancing with Mommy. One two three, one two three. You’re sort of a vampire, too, I guess. Living off me. There’s certainly days I feel like you’ve drained me dry. But I’ll forgive you, as long as you pick out a really great nursing home for me down the line. One two three, one two three.
“Naomi?”
Me and the baby both jumped. Damon was standing by my desk, and we were alone in the classroom.
“Class let out,” Damon said.
I smiled sheepishly. “I was just spending some quality time with the Great Mooch here. He says he wants to be a ballet dancer when he grows up.”
“He’s going to get pounded at school.”
“Probably. But what can you do? Let the kid follow his passion.” I gave the Tummy a reassuring rub. “I never got pounded at school, but I did get teased, I guess because I reacted so nicely — turning red, crying, stomping my feet…”
“One of the many reasons Tenebri kids get homeschooled. Not so great with the coping skills.”
“I have a hard time imagining you as such a fragile little flower.”
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