He could have pulled back. I made a point of not holding him, even releasing his collar, while I still had the presence of mind to do so. For a few seconds it was like kissing a mannequin.
Then a funny, helpless growl rumbled in his throat, and something fell when my back hit the wall, but that did not make the top ten list of our priorities, and neither did the knocking on the door until Dr. DiNovi’s voice called out, “You okay in there?”
Damon pulled away with a gasp, stared at me a moment in stark terror, then stepped backward into a shadow and vanished.
“Naomi?” Dr. DiNovi called again.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Be right down.” I sank onto the edge of the bed, and when I had stopped shivering and gotten the tears under control, I wrapped the blue-striped afghan over the torn shoulder of my nightgown and went down to breakfast.
.
Nothing that happened the rest of the day was important. I went to class, I ate lunch, I went to work, but none of it mattered. None of it penetrated the gray film that wrapped me like a cold and unpleasant afghan. Damon was leaving me, and I couldn’t stop him.
You survived Tyler. You can survive this.
Never mind that I hadn’t survived Tyler particularly well. In fact, I had been pretty much spinning in place, like a hamster in a wheel, since the day I walked in on him and Tori. Until Damon.
And just what difference does Damon make? He sure doesn’t make your life easier. Okay, he makes transportation easier. Trade him in for a Volkswagen. You were doing all right before you met him. Not great, but all right. And you’ll do all right when he’s gone. Are you really this pathetic, that you need a man to validate your life?
No, not a man. Just Damon.
Well, he certainly doesn’t need you. You are a thing that happened to him, not something he wanted. If Claire was still alive, no matter what a basket case she was, he would still be with her. A basket case right alongside her, by now, but with her all the same. After the way she mangled him, he can’t love anyone else, even if he wants to. He needs to be alone.
I had been wrong to kiss him this morning. Not just stupid, but wrong. I had proved him right, hadn’t I? Used his Shadow instincts against him, knowing he couldn’t resist. I was no better than Claire, was I? I couldn’t do that anymore. This was his decision, not an easy one, and I had no right to force him, trick him, or mess with his mind to make him stay.
No more of that. I’ll be good, I promised silently, and bit my lip hard to keep from crying.
“Naomi? Customer?” Jana’s sharp voice brought me out of my reverie with a start. I flashed an apologetic smile at the woman in front of me and starting checking out her movies.
Halfway through the transaction, I caught sight of Damon outside the glass doors. I dropped the customer’s DVDs, fumbled them into her hands with an incoherent apology, then clocked out, hands shaking, a full five minutes before my shift was over, and ran for the door, not even caring that I was probably fired. Damon versus livelihood, not much competition.
Once I was out of the building, though, all the hurry drained out of me. I stood in front of him in my khakis and swollen feet, and did not touch him and did not kiss him, and he did not touch me or even look me in the eye. Wordlessly, we turned and walked around the side of the building.
Words backed up in my throat. I could hardly breathe through them. This was the last chance to say… something. Anything. Once we shaded, we’d have an audience of orphans, and I could not say any of the things I was thinking, not in front of them. Not in front of anyone.
The first time I saw you, you looked so strange and scary in your black leather, glaring at me like I was a war criminal. This is worse, not looking at me is worse, like you’re already dead. How could you have ever looked unfamiliar to me? When did I not know how to read the way you hold your shoulders and hands, recognize the fall of your hair? When did I not want to touch you more than I wanted to breathe?
He had left without his jacket this morning, but he was wearing it now. If I tried to touch him, would he even feel it?
Behind the building, in the shadow stretched by the setting sun, he pulled me against him — and nothing happened. He just stood there, holding me tight.
“I’m glad it was you,” he said at last, the words hardly more than a breath against my hair. “If it had to be someone, I’m glad it was you.”
I swallowed, trying to memorize his scent, the warmth of his skin, the feel of his hair in my fingers. “Me, too.”
Then came the crushing weight around me, and when I opened my eyes, we were in the living room at the Orphanage.
The orphans stood in a ring around us. Dove, tense and sad; Galatea, arms crossed, face stony; Jewel, eyes glittering with triumph; Westley, near-frantic with worry. Behind him, a familiar medical bed with restraints, and an open cooler packed with bags of blood.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“Adonis take Audrey away,” Dove said. “She not need be here for this. Darling, I don’t know. I very worried.”
“Dove thinks we should wait until we know where Darling is,” Westley said to Damon. “The timing—”
“There will never be a good time for this,” Damon said. He had stepped back from me, but still held one hand. I saw Jewel eye that hand and frown.
“I know, but—”
“No buts.”
“He’s already put this off too long,” Galatea said, putting a hand on Dove’s shoulder. “The longer he waits, the lower his chances for survival. He has to do this now.”
“Keep looking for Darling while I’m… indisposed,” Damon said, “and I’ll help as soon as I’m able.”
Dove reluctantly nodded.
“We have the drugs, too,” Westley said.
“I told you I don’t want them.”
“I told you I don’t care. If it keeps you alive, you’re getting it.”
I was shaking now, long quivers jerking down my spine, remembering the awful twisted-metal sound of Audrey’s screams, like a hundred nails down a hundred chalkboards. Damon’s hand in mine was cold.
“You’ll be fine,” Damon said to me, his voice almost too low to hear the hoarseness. “Dove will take you back to your apartment. It won’t even hurt, really, I promise. Like swatting a mosquito.”
I looked past him, at Westley. “Don’t you dare let him die.”
“I’ve no intention of it,” he said, and I tried to pretend I saw confidence in his eyes.
“Hold out your hand,” Damon said, stepping back from me.
No. No no no. I raised a hand, palm up; he gently turned it palm-down, like Ye Olde Student awaiting the teacher’s strap. I closed my eyes.
I heard the sharp sound of the slap, felt the sting. Waited for the screaming to start.
Silence. Only the sound of my own breath scraping my throat.
Cautiously, I opened my eyes.
Damon glanced at me, at my hand, at his own. Tried again, harder.
Nothing.
A gasping laugh, quickly choked off, from behind Damon; he spun to face Westley, accusing.
“A strike in anger, Damon,” Westley said. “It has to be a strike in anger.”
Damon turned around, and this time the raised hand was coming for my face, and I couldn’t help it, I flinched, tried to turn away—
The blow didn’t fall. Damon looked as if I’d punched him in the gut. After a moment his hand came down, both hands drawing into fists, and a snarl escaped his teeth.
“Anger at you,” he said. “I have to be angry at you. And I can’t.”
His snarl this time was closer to a roar, and I flinched again. When I looked up, he was gone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Favor
DAMON
I paced the confines of my old bedroom, taking the turns at a speed that threatened my balance. Who are you kidding? You lost your balance a while back.
Stop it. Do not swear, scream, or break anything. Just keep moving.
/> I nearly stepped on the clock Naomi and I had knocked off the wall this morning. Oh, this was the wrong place to come.
“Gabriel?”
Definitely the wrong place.
My mother stood in the bedroom doorway, holding a vacuum cleaner and wearing, I kid you not, heels and pearls. “What’s wrong?” she asked, setting down the vacuum.
“Nothing.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Son, have you ever successfully lied to me?”
I thought a moment. “Not that I recall.”
“Well then.” She waited.
I sighed, closing my eyes a moment in resignation. “It didn’t work.”
“You tried to breach?”
I started pacing again.
“And you didn’t tell your father.” She sighed and leaned against the doorway, crossing her arms. “Sometimes I don’t know which of you is the bigger idiot.”
“You married one and raised the other. What does that say about you?”
With a wry smile, she inclined her head, acknowledging the point, and remained silent, waiting for me to break.
I broke. “I don’t know what to do, Mother! I can’t stay, and I can’t leave. I can’t hate her, and I can’t — I won’t — gaaah!” I kicked the fallen clock against the wall, smashing the glass face.
“You always were one for tantrums,” Mother said dryly.
“I’ll clean it up.” I resumed pacing.
Mother waited, silent, sphinx-like.
I sat on the edge of the bed. “How do you live like this, Mother? I know Dad’s good to you, gives you respect and independence. He loves you, he’d die for you — except that he’d never be cruel enough to leave you behind. But doesn’t it bother you that everything you have is dependent on his goodwill? That all the rights and privileges he’s given you, he could take away just as easily?”
“Your father would never do that.”
“But he could.”
She sat beside me, stroked my face, as she had years ago when I was fretful and wouldn’t sleep. “Love is vulnerability, little one. You cannot love from behind a wall.”
“That’s all well and good for humans, who get to choose whether or not they love. We’re not given the luxury of a wall.”
She sighed, pulled my head down against her shoulder, and I put my arms around her. How long had it been since I hugged my mother?
“Don’t you see how blessed we are?” she said. “A human might go his whole life without finding what we are freely given, simply for existing. Independence, choices, of course you want these things. But what good are they, what good is anything, if your life has no one in it to love?”
“I love you and Dad,” I said. “I love Westley, Teya, Dove — all the orphans. They’re my family.”
“Yes,” she said. “But it’s not the same, is it?”
I whispered, “No.”
“For some it might be enough. Maybe even for some Shadows. But not you, little one. I wonder if you even know how lonely you’ve been. Every year you seem darker, angrier, more eaten away inside… But since you found Naomi, you’re… easier, if only in patches. I know you don’t see it, I know that to you things seem worse, but you are easier. You have a center, as you have not had for thirteen years.”
I could make no reply to this. Overall, having Claire as my center had not been a positive experience. But Mother was right. I had not felt whole, or well, or balanced, since her death. Not until Naomi had befasted me, passing up her best opportunity to get me out of her life, risking the wrath of a superhuman creature she barely knew, because she couldn’t stand to see me suffer.
Hadn’t I said it to myself a hundred times, as I assigned hunting partners and roommates, that Shadows functioned best as part of a pair, half of a whole? Why had I imagined myself somehow different?
I didn’t. I just did my best to ignore it, and not let myself hope for anything better.
The question is, is this better?
To my mother, it seemed obvious that I would be happier with Naomi, as obvious as if I were choosing between a featherbed and a stone floor. But I couldn’t trust featherbeds anymore.
She’s not Claire, you know. She really isn’t. Even in the very beginning, when things were still good between us, Claire had been the one calling all the shots. Confident, in control. Whereas Naomi was vulnerable to me — not just in general, but vulnerable to me, as I was to her. I didn’t enjoy having power over others, I refused to be that person. But I couldn’t deny that it was… heartening, to know I was not utterly helpless this time.
It was also terrifying. I didn’t know how much I could trust Naomi — but I also wasn’t sure Naomi could trust me.
Kathair. Abomination. Lumi-killer.
Maybe what I feared more than a life as a good little Shadow was another chance to be a bad one.
“What if you were right,” I said. “That day at the hospital. When you said I would go to hell.” Less like a belief than a command, as I remembered it.
“Oh, my son.” She hugged me again. “You’re not… you’re not what I was taught you would be. None of them are — your orphans. Even the ones that have to be… put down. They seem so much more sad than frightening. Or frightening because they are so sad…” She trailed off. “I shouldn’t have said what I did, Gabriel. I was so scared, scared of losing your father, scared of losing you… I’ve never been so scared in my life. I pray I never have to feel that way again.”
You won’t. Because I’m not going anywhere, and when Dad goes, you’ll go with him.
“Damon.”
The voice sent me scrambling to my feet. It was not a voice at all, but a Call, intentional this time. Naomi.
“Damon Damon Damon Damon!”
The Call dissolved into a shriek of pain, and then cut off into silence.
NAOMI
The orphans seemed utterly at a loss for a moment after Damon’s departure, Dove frozen with her hand around my arm, Galatea and Jewel gone rigid.
“Javek,” Westley spat, snatching a hand through his hair. That, I remembered, was the word that had once gotten Damon’s mouth washed out. “I have to find him, have to talk to — oh, of all the—”
“What about her?” Galatea said, nodding toward me.
“She can stay here with us for a while,” Jewel said.
“No,” Westley snapped. “Dove, take her home. Now. And don’t leave her alone.”
Dove looked puzzled, opened her mouth, but Westley barked, “Go!” and she threw her arms around me and went.
It was strange being shaded by someone smaller than myself. The crushed feeling was scarier, knowing that little Dove couldn’t protect me from it. Never mind that Damon couldn’t either, nor did he need to. It still felt awful.
I expected to open my eyes and see my own living room; instead we stood in the shadow of the sign at the entrance to Easton Apartments. Of course; Dove had never seen my apartment.
“Damon find me picture of sign on website,” Dove said, right on cue. “Which way from here?”
I silently led the way to Carmen’s apartment, and tried to sort out the swirling mess currently passing as my brain.
Reason one to rejoice: the breach hadn’t worked. Reason two to rejoice: it hadn’t worked because Damon couldn’t muster the proper negativity toward me. I could not deny that these were sunny bright spots in the universe
Damon’s obvious distress over these same things was less happy-making. I didn’t want Damon to stay with me because he had no choice.
It’s probably a non-issue. Surely it won’t take him long to get plenty ticked at me now.
Where had he gone? What was he doing? The idiot was fully capable of doing himself harm in the proper mood. After all, how else could he vent frustration? Being Damon, he would try his best not to take it out on anyone else.
Come to me, I wanted to scream. Whatever claim I have on you surely cuts both ways. If you need someone to scream at, who better than me?
Carmen’s
door was in sight now, and her car parked before it — rats, she was home.
My feet stopped in the middle of the road. The car next to Carmen’s was a dark blue Honda Accord. With a stuffed bulldog in the back glass.
Jonathan.
A flurry — rather, another flurry — of conflicting emotions shuffled by with dizzying speed, dread and relief competing for top slot. It would be so good to see Jonathan. Too bad his presence right now was a flaming catastrophe.
I was running toward the door, now, Dove struggling to catch up. I crashed through like a wave, and stood panting.
Carmen looked up from her languid sprawl on the couch. “Hey, Red. How’s tricks?”
“Naomi!” Jonathan barely reined in his usual attack-hug before it smashed the Wonder Tummy. “Good grief, I’ve been going crazy — your phone’s out of service, in case you didn’t notice — Carmen said you’re staying with some guy — wow, you’re huge!”
“Aw, thanks.”
“Sorry. Just, you know, I haven’t seen you in three months.”
A surprise weekend visit, that, and the only reason even Jonathan knew anything about the Wonder Tummy. I burrowed into his hug, soaking up the comfort of years of skinned knees and food fights and running for the school bus hand in hand. “It’s so good to see you. I think you’ve gotten taller. Freak.” I’d had to look up to my little brother for a couple of years now, but the distance seemed greater now.
“Who’s this?” Jonathan asked, and I turned to see Dove hovering in the doorway.
“Oh, this is my friend Dove. Dove, this is my little brother, Jonathan.”
Dove smiled uncertainly. “I can go now? Your brother, he will protect you?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Protect her from what?” Jonathan stepped toward Dove, but she was already gone. “Naomi, protect you from what?”
I waved a hand airily. “Her English isn’t great. Jonathan, what are you doing here? Mom and Dad are gonna flip—”
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