That was still true. So why did my life before Naomi suddenly seem so bleak? Why was the thought of going back to it so heavy and hollow?
In fifty years, a hundred years, my life will still be the same. Helping kathairna that can be helped, killing the ones that can’t. An endless parade of death and despair. It’s a worthy cause. I’m not ashamed of it. I just don’t know how long I can keep it up alone. And I will be alone, eventually. My parents will die. Westley will find some way around his blood oath. I’ll learn to accept it, I’m sure. Get closer to the other orphans. Find new sources of support. But one by one they’ll leave me. Until the day I’m the one who fades and abandons them.
I shook myself. Stop that. Looking too far into the future is like holding a gun to your head, you know that. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous — one day at a time. One hour at a time, if need be. One minute.
But I could have a different life if I chose it. A life with a kind, sweet, beautiful girl who loved me. A life with laughter and food and dancing and kissing. Maybe children. Grow old with her. Die with her. All I had to do, to have that, was… nothing. Stop resisting.
Speaking of abandoning the orphans…
I wouldn’t, though. I wouldn’t be with them full-time, but that didn’t mean I had to abandon them altogether. Naomi seemed to like the orphans; she wouldn’t try to make me stop seeing them.
Why was I even considering Naomi’s opinion? If she did hate the orphans, if she did want me to leave them, would that matter?
I shuddered. You’re acting like a Shadow, seeking your Lumi’s permission for living. That is why this life is better. That is why you spend so much time persuading other Shadows to follow your example. It hurts, but it’s your pain to do with as you will, without consulting someone whose only claim on you is that she walked by your window when you were sixteen.
I took a deep breath and held in my mind’s eye the vision of the life I could have with Naomi. As Naomi’s pet, her cuddled, pampered, beloved dog. Slowly, I crumpled up that vision and threw it away, and turned back toward the bleak, spartan beauty of a life that would be mine.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, jerking me out of my reverie. I set aside the plate — long since clean — hurriedly dried my heat-reddened hands, and recognized my father’s cell number as I flipped my phone open.
“Dad?”
“I just dropped Naomi off at her roommate’s party. She’ll need a bodyguard.”
“Dad, this is no time for your blasted—” He had already hung up. I slapped my phone shut with a curse. She would need a bodyguard. And I would rather send anyone but myself. But who else could I trust absolutely with her safety? Paris, perhaps. But he wasn’t here.
I cursed again, and shaded.
NAOMI
I was right about the Princely Pig; Carmen loved him. She tore away the pink tissue paper — all I could find to wrap it in — with the eagerness of a child, and laughed so hard at the sight of His Majesty that I began to fear for her health. She dubbed him King Bradley, after one of her ex-boyfriends, and though her other gifts included such drool-worthy tidbits as a zombie movie, an iTunes gift card, a shot glass from Italy, and a T-shirt with a cheerfully offensive slogan, mine was the gift that was passed around the party and chuckled at by all. Well, that and the T-shirt. It was almost enough to make me glad I came.
The party was going down at the abode of Carmen’s friend Lola, who lived in a demolition-worthy Victorian townhouse with her fiancé and six dogs, all of whom — including the fiancé — had been evicted for the night. Which I thought was a shame, since I would have much rather played with them than with Carmen’s friends — the dogs, I mean, not the fiancé. I’d take fuzzy fluffies any day over tattoos and eyeliner and loud laughter over cans of beer. They were all perfectly nice to me, and I was scared to death of them.
Irony: the realization that you are less comfortable in a house of humans than you were in a house of vampires.
“So where on earth have you been, anyway?” Carmen asked, shouting over the music. “I tried to call you when you didn’t come home last night, but your phone’s out of service!”
“What?” I pulled my cell phone out of my purse, but verily, it profited me little. Out of Service. Mom wins again. “I’m sorry I didn’t call, Carmen, I just didn’t think of it. I’m staying at the DiNovis’ for a couple days.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really. Moving in with him already?”
“Not him. His parents. And I’m not moving in. It’s just for a couple of days.”
“What in the world for?”
I scrambled for an answer that didn’t include the statistics for vampire attack, but fortunately a couple of Carmen’s scary friends called her away, and she went, shooting me a we’ll-talk-about-this-later glare. I smiled and gave a little finger-wave.
With the excitement of gift-opening and cake-cutting over, the party quickly became a dance-off, with tipsy college students — I sneered, choosing to ignore my own educational status — competing on separate Dance Dance Revolution mats. I picked up another piece of cake, a slice of pizza, helped myself to the tap water as the only liquid fairly certain not to be spiked, and took a seat at the back of the enormous living room, as far from the noise as I could get.
I had asked Dr. DiNovi to drop me off without thinking of how I was going to get home. Carmen would be, almost by definition, the last person to leave, probably sometime between two and three in the morning. Whereas, in Naomiville, it was already past bedtime. Why had I even come to this thing? I’d been having a very productive afternoon all by myself. In the gap of time between getting off work and leaving for the party, I’d gotten a decent start on my history paper and nearly finished the English one.
Oh. Yeah. That’s why I’d decided to come to the party instead of doing more homework. About the third time I tried to write a paragraph about Mrs. DeWinter’s feelings of inferiority to her husband’s dead first wife, getting wasted at a party started to sound like a really great idea.
‘Twas not to be, of course. I patted the Wonder Tummy reassuringly. Don’t worry, Mommy’s not going to dump any brain-stunting toxins on you. Unless you count high fructose corn syrup. I took another bite of birthday cake.
“That’s spiked, you know.”
I choked, and spat into a napkin as delicately as I could while sneaking a glance up at the warning-giver. He had brown hair, as near as I could tell in the dim, multicolored light, with big blue eyes and very nice cheekbones. No tattoos, piercings, or discernible make-up, and his T-shirt and jeans were utterly unthreatening. Dude, you just became my favorite person at this party.
“Who spikes a birthday cake?” I managed at last.
“Diva J’s Party Favors, apparently.” He sat down next to me. “You must be Carmen’s roommate.”
“I guess the number of pregnant redheads in her social circle is limited.”
He laughed. “I’m Zack Morley.”
“Naomi Winters.” We shook hands. “So, Zack, not a DDR kinda guy?” I nodded toward the revelry at the other end of the room.
“Oh, I gave it my best shot. Fell flat on my butt and figured that was enough fun for one night.” He looked so embarrassed that I had to smile. “To be honest, this isn’t my usual kind of thing. I think Carmen only invited me because I was standing nearby when she invited my buddies.”
“What is your usual kind of thing?”
“Well, my original plans for tonight involved a tripod and zoom lens.”
Damon was in the room. I knew just as certainly as if I’d heard his voice, seen his face, though I’d done neither. He was just ahead and to the right, in the shadow of a dark wooden china cabinet.
“Uh, what — wha — what were you shooting?” I managed.
Zack shrugged. “I was just going to wander around campus and see what there was to see. I get my best pictures that way. Serendipity.”
“I’m a bit of a shutterbug myself, when I can afford film,” I said. “Wh
ich I usually can’t, so I sketch.”
“Oh, really? Art major?”
“Art minor. English major.”
“Journalism, for me.”
I tried not to stare at the china cabinet while Zack talked about photography in war zones and rainforests and Making a Difference in the World. I turned away from the cabinet and toward Zack, adopting an expression of Rapt Attention that, unfortunately, went a little glassy-eyed as I strained not to turn my head.
“I’m boring you,” Zack said sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I tend to get a little overenthusiastic.”
“No, no, you’re not boring me at all! Actually,” and this I could say with perfect truth, “I kind of envy you. You seem to have a real sense of purpose. Whereas the grandest goals in my life are ‘make it to work on time’ and ‘don’t get a zero on the term paper.’”
“Well, I would consider motherhood a pretty grand goal,” he said, nodding toward the Wonder Tummy. “Who knows, you could have the next Gandhi in there.”
“Wow, no pressure.”
He laughed. “Seriously, though, bringing life into the world, raising a child, that’s a lot more important than taking pictures.”
“That must be why they make it so uncomfortable. To emphasize the seriousness of it all.” I shifted my weight and started fanning my face with an empty plate. The room, a bit cool at the beginning of the party, had gradually transformed into a sauna. Everyone says saunas are so relaxing. I prefer the ability to breathe.
“You want to go outside, get some air?” Zack asked.
I hesitated, thought about Shadow jealousy, Damon watching from the corner. Damon, who wanted nothing to do with me. Fine. We’ll see if you mean that.
“That sounds marvelous,” I said, and let Zack take my hand to help me to my feet.
I could almost swear I heard Damon hiss, and I knew the moment he vanished from the room.
No, I’m sorry, come back… I tried to control my expression as Zack and I stepped onto the porch, where I took a deep gulp of non-sweat-stained air, and was immediately cold.
I’d been doing okay without Damon, I fancied. Until now. Now I needed him beside me, warm and solid and strong, to give me his coat and kiss my cheek. The yawning, sucking hole of his absence nearly brought me to my knees; I clutched the porch rail, gasping.
“Naomi? Are you okay?” Zack’s alarmed voice barely reached my brain. I didn’t respond until he touched my back, with a hand that was revoltingly not Damon’s.
“I’m okay.” I straightened, brushing off the hand. “I’m sorry. Um. Sometimes the baby kicks really hard.”
“Sometimes I am so, so glad not to be a girl,” Zack said nervously, and I gave him the most sincere smile I could muster. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m just tired. Carrying extra luggage, you know.”
“Would you like me to take you home?”
I hesitated. “Actually, I would.”
Zack left me on the porch to go fetch his car from the empty lot down the street, and I leaned against the rail post, still struggling to put the devouring abyss back into its box.
Would Damon’s need to protect me outweigh his anger and jealousy? Did he realize I was leaving the party? Surely he wouldn’t leave me unguarded for long.
But the night remained silent and Shadow-free.
It occurred to me, as we pulled away from Lola’s house, that a kathair was not even the only threat Damon might need to guard me from. I was driving off into the dark with a boy I knew nothing about, without even telling anyone where I was going. I looked sideways at Zack’s wholesome, clean-cut face and couldn’t imagine him as a psycho, which probably only made it more likely.
“You feeling any better?” he asked.
“Yeah, some. Thanks for the ride, Zack. I’m sorry to have interrupted your partying.”
He rolled his eyes. “Let me think about this. Stay at boring party with drunk people failing to dance, or get in car with pretty girl. Tough decision.”
I went red all the way down to my toes, and could not think of a thing to say.
“Which way should I turn at the intersection?” he asked.
“Left. No, sorry, right. Right? Right.” Stop talking, Naomi.
Zack thought I was pretty, even when I was hugely pregnant and sitting alone at a party like a loser. Zack was cute and kind and considerate and artistic and wanted to save the world. Zack was not a mythological not-quite-human creature, did not appear to have anger issues, and would never need to suck my blood. Zack might have a share of bad break-ups in his romantic history, but it was unlikely that he was still mortally hung up on a murdered girl who had abused him. There was every chance that Zack was perfectly normal.
It was completely not his fault that ‘normal’ seemed suddenly repulsive.
It’s not like I wanted things to be complicated. I didn’t seek out angst and drama. I never swooned over the romance of the undead — good thing, since vampires turned out to be pretty much alive. As far as I knew, I had no deep subconscious need to fall in love with someone who didn’t love me back.
I just wanted Damon.
I wanted to make him happy. To take away his anger and pain and give him peace. He deserved peace. And even if he didn’t want me, I knew that on some level he needed me. No one had ever really needed me before.
Well, except you, Belly Boy. I rubbed my tummy. But it scares the crap out of me coming from you. You’re so perfect now, but the second you’re born I’ll start screwing you up, if I haven’t already. Damon’s already screwed up. Surely I can’t make it much worse.
“Am I going the right way?” Zack asked.
I blinked, looked out the window, recognized the guitar shop. “Yeah. Turn right at the light.” He’d taken the long way, but that was my fault for zoning out and not giving him directions.
Wait.
I knew where Damon was again, as certainly as I had at the party, though he was miles away. I could feel him again, my Compass had found him. I held my breath and clutched at it, that tiny thread, that single drop of water that only seemed to emphasize how thirsty I was. Which way? Which way?
“Left,” I said, aware that my voice had gone breathless. I cleared my throat. “Sorry. Left at the light.”
He turned left, and gave me a sympathetic smile. “New around here, huh? My first three months here, I got turned around every time I stepped out my door. I felt so silly, it’s not like it’s a big town. It’s nice to know it’s not just me.”
I smiled sheepishly, and forbore to mention that I’d lived here for almost two years.
The “lost” cover story came in handy, as we had to backtrack a few times. My Damon-Compass was a straight-line endeavor; the roads, not so much. It was almost half an hour before we pulled up in front of the Orphanage.
What are you doing? Why are you here? You know he doesn’t want you here. I didn’t care. With him this close, it would have been easier for me to breathe underwater than turn back.
“I’ll walk you to the door,” Zack said.
“No, no, I’ll be fine.” I started scrambling out of the car.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” I fumbled the door open, and cool night air rushed over my legs. Getting in and out of cars with decency was a problem even when I wasn’t packing a watermelon, but I didn’t care a whole lot right now.
“Um, Naomi… could I call you sometime?” The shy bewilderment in his voice cut through my impatience to reach Damon, and I turned to lean back into the car.
“Zack, thank you so, so much for the ride. You’re a lifesaver. But.” I glanced toward the house. The lights in the windows looked so much more inviting than they had any right to. “The thing is, I just got divorced, and my whole life is sort of Lifetime Movie material, crossed with Anne Rice, and I just can’t right now.”
He swallowed and nodded, and didn’t try to give me any bull about just wanting to be friends. He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and scribbled on
it. “Here. You can call me anytime, okay? Even if you just need someone to talk to.”
I took the paper and poked it into my purse. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I stood in the grass, trying not to bounce with impatience, while he pulled out of the yard. Then I turned and ran to the door.
DAMON
The party was excruciating. Bad enough to watch Naomi sitting alone, clearly tired and uncomfortable. Worse to watch her smile innocently at the blue-eyed predator moving in for the kill.
Zack Morley was probably a perfectly decent human being. I really, really wanted to disembowel him.
Definitely time to breach.
She knew I was here; I could see it in the way she continually looked-didn’t-look at the shadow where I hid. I could see it in the way she let the boy chat her up, gazing at him with every appearance of rapturous interest. I could feel my temperature rising.
Flirting with another boy right before my eyes. Jamming needles under my fingernails. Just like Claire. Just. Like. Claire.
You left her first, I reminded myself. But logic seldom won against Shadow instinct.
“You want to go outside, get some air?”
“That sounds marvelous.”
Zack touched her hand, and I made the split-second decision to get out of Dodge before I did the boy serious damage.
The moment I shaded out, she started Calling me — subconscious, unintentional, and utterly crippling. I gripped the kitchen counter to keep myself upright.
When the Call faded, leaving me cold and gasping, I tried to distract myself with a prowl of the house, a quick check on its inhabitants. Audrey was inside now, watching a game show with Adonis and Jewel. Dove was sketching in her room; I confirmed that she and Galatea had found no sign of Darling. Westley, Dove said, had gone to the store “or something.” Not what I wanted to hear, but the man wasn’t a prisoner, he could come and go as he pleased.
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