Dark Companion

by Marta Acosta

  “Pants on fire!” she said, and started tickling me.

  “I love the birch tree paintings!” I said before laughter overtook me.

  She jumped up. “Do you want to stay for dinner? I can see what we’re having.”

  “Okay.”

  She went inside, swiping her skirt down and mooing, “Moooom!”

  The Holidays chatted and bickered over dinner while I kept thinking that in a few days I would be initiated as Lucky’s Companion. Mary Violet drove me back to campus and I asked her to leave me at the gate. I impulsively kissed her cheek before I got out of the car. “You smell good. What’s that perfume?”

  “Marc Jacobs Violet, because—”

  “Because violet is your signature. Good night, MV!”

  When I got close to my cottage, I saw Lucky standing on the porch. He was wearing a charcoal leather jacket over a black t-shirt and jeans. I admired his long athletic body even as I hurried my footsteps. He had his phone out and kept texting for a minute while I stood in front of him. He finally raised his head. “I was about to send you a message. Where were you?”

  “At Mary Violet’s. You could have told me earlier that you wanted to see me, and I would have been here.”

  He gave me an icy look. “I already have a mother.”

  “Then you are lucky, aren’t you?” I snapped.

  I could see his expression shift from irritated to regretful. “I’m sorry, Jane. I forgot what it must be like for you.”

  “You always do that, Lucky. You’re rude and then apologetic. If you were more careful before speaking, you wouldn’t have to apologize later.”

  “Correction noted,” he said. “I have something for you.”

  “Come in.” I unlocked the door and we went inside.

  After I put down my book bag and turned to him, Lucky pulled a small red velvet box out of his pocket. “This is for you, Jane.” I savored the surprise as I rubbed my fingers over the plush velvet box. Then I opened it and saw a gold ring with three small red stones, similar to the ring Ms. York had worn.

  “It’s a Companion ring from the Family. My mother said to tell you that the gold was mined from the Apuseni Mountains and the garnets come from the Banat Mountains in Romania.”

  I turned the lovely ring so that I could see the inscription inside. There was an L over a J in curlicue script. Lucian and Jane. Lucky took my hand and slipped the ring on my right ring finger. It fit perfectly. “Is this why Hattie made me try on rings?”

  Lucky nodded. “You’ll need to take it to the initiation and you can wear it after that. All the Companions have them.”

  I threw my arms around him. “Thank you, Lucky.”

  After a moment, he hugged me, too, and said in a husky voice, “Why don’t you change into something that shows a little skin?”

  I felt suddenly shy. “Okay.”

  He waited in the living room while I went to the bedroom. On my shopping trip with Hattie, I’d bought rose-pink silk boxers and a matching cami. I put them on and moved my hair forward to cover my scar. I rubbed lotion over my skin and put on lip gloss and mascara. My dresser mirror reflected the same plain Jane I’d always been.

  I wanted to be sexy for Lucky, but I felt awkward and nervous. Maybe things would change when he kissed me. I opened the bedroom door and said, “Lucky,” twisting the ring on my finger.

  He came to the bedroom and his eyes skimmed over my body. “You look good, Jane. I like seeing your skin.” He touched the lilac and yellow bruise on my inner arm. Then he kicked off his shoes and peeled off his jacket. His hair shone golden against the black t-shirt.

  “You’re right and I’m too rude. Maybe I should have paid more attention to Bebe and been nicer and she wouldn’t have left.” He sat on the bed and said softly, “I’m not going to make that mistake again, Jane. Come here.”

  I stood in front of him and he pulled me onto his lap. “I want you to enjoy this with me.” He stroked my arms slowly and let his fingers linger on the blue veins at my wrists and elbows. Then he pushed me back down onto the bed and I shivered with nerves.

  He took off his own shirt and revealed his sleek chest, toned abs, and flat stomach. He was so gorgeous, but I tensed as he lay beside me and ran his hand up my leg and up along my thigh.

  “Lucky…”

  “Ssh.” He nuzzled and bit and sucked hard at my neck. One hand went under my cami and I gasped as he began caressing me. His hand edged under the waistband of my silk boxers.

  I was turned on, but suddenly I knew I didn’t want Lucky. I wasn’t even sure I liked him. I gripped his wrist before his hand went any farther. “Stop it!”

  Lucky drew back. “I thought you wanted that.”

  I sat up and scooted away from him, bewildered at my own reaction. “I did, but it’s all gotten too confusing and it’s happened too fast. I know you don’t…” It was all so impersonal and he’d never even kissed me. “We don’t feel that way about each other, Lucky. Can’t we just be friends for now?”

  He let out a relieved breath. “Sure. Jane, I really like you, but … I like your blood. Anyway, there’s someone else.”

  Catalina, of course. “It’s okay. I don’t want a … a pity coitus.”

  “Hey, guys think any coitus is good coitus, and if this was only a hookup, I’d go for it, sure.” He laughed and the tension between us eased. “But we’re going to be with each other a long time so why mess it up now?”

  I’d turned down sex with Lucky Radcliffe and all I felt was a surprising sense of relief. “I totally agree.”

  “Great. Is it okay to draw a taste since I’m already here?”

  “Sure.”

  He went to the bathroom and came back with the venipuncture tube. “Can I do it behind your knee? I want to tap that vein.”

  I rolled onto my stomach and remembered that I was doing this for a college education and a career, for a home, for security. There was the sharp jab of the needle and I heard Lucky’s intake of breath. A few seconds later, I felt him slide the needle out. He said, “No sense wasting any,” and bent to lick at the puncture mark before disinfecting and treating it.

  “You’ve gotten good at it. That hardly hurt at all.”

  “Thanks. It’s better this way anyway, isn’t it? Less complications.” He gazed yearningly at the tube of blood.

  “Maybe we can set up a regular schedule, or I can withdraw the blood myself and you can pick it up, so it won’t interfere with our classes and other things.”

  “Sure. We’ll figure it out. Gotta go.”

  I watched Lucky putting his shirt on. I had craved him the way some girls crave a diamond ring, or an expensive car, or a closet full of designer clothes. I’d wanted to possess him as a spectacular and precious thing—a TSB, a Trendy Status Boyfriend, to impress others and boost my ego.

  Lucky was not a possession. He was a person with his own issues … and that’s what Jack had been trying to tell me when he’d driven me home from the county club. But I hadn’t believed him. Now I wondered about all the other things Jack had said to me, and wondered what else was true.

  He found himself more and more attached to the almost fairy form before him. He would tear himself at times from her … but he always found it impossible to fix his attention upon the ruins around him, whilst in his mind he retained an image that seemed alone the rightful possessor of his thoughts.

  John William Polidori, “The Vampyre” (1819)

  Chapter 31

  On Tuesday, I had to stay late in the Flounder classroom to finish my story about the school’s upgrade of water faucets for the Birch Grove Weekly. I filed a copy in the archives and then helped proofread the other articles. As I walked out of the empty building, I got the spider-crawling-on-my-spine feeling that someone was watching me.

  I didn’t see a soul as I went around the outside of the building to the drive. When I reached the grove I listened for sounds other than the trees. I thought I heard a footstep on gravel and then I heard that sof
t crunching sound again. I was close enough to make it to the cottage if I ran.

  But I was sick of being chased, being harassed, being scared.

  I whirled around just in time to see someone in a hooded sweatshirt step off the path into the bushes. I dropped my bag as I ran, and I hurled myself at the person. We both tumbled backward into the shrubs.

  “Damn!” As he rolled over, I wiggled so that I stayed on top, but we were both trying to get our balance and I was saying, “What the hell!” as I recognized a too-familiar grin.

  Jack Radcliffe said, “I’m a troll taken down by an elf in her magical forest.”

  I became excruciatingly aware that our bodies were intertwined. It was too dark to see the color of his eyes, but I saw the shine of them and the shadow of his black lashes. I felt the strength of his arms around me, and my hands were braced on his chest as it rose and fell. One side of his mouth lifted upward, showing the gleam of white teeth, and desire surged in me, more powerful than anything I’d ever felt for his brother. Because Jack always made me feel.

  “I can’t believe you’re laughing about this!” I was angry and confused, pushing up from his body and standing.

  “Come on, it is kind of funny.” He stayed lying on the ground. “You’re such a tiny thug, assaulting an innocent pedestrian.”

  “Since when have you been innocent, Jacob Radcliffe?”

  “Well, when you put it that way…” He stood up and swatted at the dirt and leaves on his jeans. “See you around.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re coming with me.” I grabbed a handful of his sweatshirt and yanked it as I walked back to my book bag.

  “When did you get so bossy? I kind of like it. Beat me, whip me, make me write bad checks.”

  “I’d like to slap the sass right out of you.” My heart was racing and I was glad it was too dark for him to see my face. I picked up my bag and put the strap over my shoulder. I let go of his sweatshirt. “Why, Jack? Why do you hate me?”

  He stepped so close that I had to tilt my head back to look at his face. “I don’t hate you, Jane. I’m trying to save you.”

  I was overwhelmed by the nearness of him, and I breathed in the chill night air, and resisted the crazy urge to press myself against Jack and feel the roughness of his beard on my face and taste his lips. “Lucky won’t hurt me.”

  “Not intentionally. Let’s get out of here. We need to talk.”

  I don’t know why I went with him. As we walked toward the street, I saw the chem lab’s lights on in the main building.

  Jack pulled the strap of my book bag from me. “I’ll carry it.” He hefted it onto his shoulder. “What the hell do you have in here?”

  “Books.”

  “You could have said something funny, like ‘the weight of the world.’”

  “You’re the king’s fool, not me.” I glanced at his profile. I wanted to touch his hair and his jawline. “Were you the one following me in the car the other day?”

  “You know that I would have used my bike.” His expression became serious. “My parents told me about it. It seemed strange.”

  “They think I’m paranoid because I freaked out about a car trailing me. Evidently the last crime in Greenwood was when Mrs. Holiday ran over a possum.”

  “Did MV recite her poem? It’s genius. I think you’re cranky, but not paranoid.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Okay, maybe you are paranoid. I’m not taking you anywhere. You’re a consenting emancipated minor coming along with me for pizza.”

  “Why can’t you say whatever you’re going to say now?”

  “I think better when I’m consuming melted cheese and tomatoey crust.”

  We walked silently for a block. Jack lifted his face toward the sky. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?” The moon had risen and shone icily among gauzy clouds. Jack whistled and I recognized the tune as “My Titania.” He said, “It was my childhood dream to take a midnight walk with a halfling.”

  “It’s not midnight.”

  “It’s midnight somewhere in the world. Maybe we’ll meet your kin, pixies and elves, and you can sing one of your fairy songs to me. I don’t have pretty ribbons to give you, but I can play music for you.”

  I turned my head so he wouldn’t see my smile.

  Once down the hill, Jack led me to a narrow lane off the main street. A little restaurant was tucked between brick buildings. He opened the door for me and we went inside to a place with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and candles in wine bottles. Clusters of plastic grapes hung from a trellis on the ceiling, and the walls were painted with murals of gondolas on canals. The other customers were old.

  A waiter came to us. “Hi, Jack. Here or to go?”

  “We’ll get a table, thanks.”

  “Wherever you want is fine.”

  Jack chose a cozy table in an empty corner and pulled my chair out for me. He sat across from me. The candlelight accentuated his cheekbones, his strong nose, his firm jaw, and his sensuous, expressive mouth. Lucky was a stunning boy, an overindulged, petulant boy, but Jack was a man already, with a man’s confidence and ease.

  I recalled the day we’d met and how his touch warmed me. When I’d walked up the hill, I’d seen Lucky and I’d associated him with my heightened perceptions. But it had been Jack’s touch and voice and being that made colors brighter, sounds clearer, and sensations sharper. Now I knew why I had stopped Lucky the other night. Because I wanted someone else. Because I cared for someone else.

  Jack said, “Only me and the old codgers come here. The food is good. What do you like on pizza?”

  “Pepperoni and mushrooms.”

  He ordered and we were quiet while the waiter returned with a basket of breadsticks, a beer for Jack, and a soda for me. When the waiter had gone, Jack stared at me. “You’ve got some dirt here, Halfling.” He reached toward my shoulder, but I jerked away, afraid of how I’d react to his touch.

  He sat back and took a drink.

  “Okay, Jack, why were you stalking me?”

  “It’s a little complicated. What have you heard about Bebe?”

  “That she was another scholarship girl who lived in the groundskeeper’s cottage. She was supposed to be your brother’s Companion, but then she went to Europe with her uncle.”

  “Does that sound entirely credible to you?”

  “Which part?”

  “The part where she goes to live with her uncle.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve known foster kids whose relatives show up out of nowhere. On the other hand, it’s more likely that she did a runner with a boyfriend.”

  “Why would she run when she thought that Lucky was her ticket to the good life?”

  “Because running is what you know. When something gets uncomfortable or scary, you know you can take off. When someone whips you or…” I put my hands under the table and clenched them hard, trying not to remember some of the houses I’d lived in. “Most fosters run at least once or twice.”

  Jack’s expressive brows went together. “Did you run?” His hand moved across the tabletop toward mine, but he stopped before touching me. “Did anyone ever hurt you, Halfling?”

  I kept my face down, but my voice was thick when I said, “We’re talking about why you were following me.”

  “Okay.” Although no one was nearby, he leaned forward and dropped his voice so that I had to lean toward him, too. My knee touched his under the small table and I let it stay there for a moment as I thought about the muscles in his legs, and then I shifted my leg away. Jack’s eyebrows briefly rose—he knew I was avoiding his touch.

  “On the weekend Bebe left, the band had a gig in San Francisco, and Lucky went with us. When we got back, my parents were meeting with the Council’s security adviser behind locked doors.” Jack hesitated. “I’ve thought all the things you’re thinking now—that Bebe couldn’t take the life here, or she decided that a faster way to make money was to blackmail the Family and they decided she was a liability.�
�

  “What would they do to her?” I knew what happened to snitches and blackmailers in Helmsdale.

  “You’d have to ask Ian Ducharme, and that might be the last thing you’d ever ask. Not that I’ve met him, but nobody risks making him angry,” he said. “I don’t think she tried to extort the Family, though, because I get this sense of uncertainty from my parents, like they don’t know what happened, either. They’re committed to the long-lost-uncle story, even though I’ve told them I don’t believe it.”

  “Bebe probably took off, end of story. Your parents reacted for the same reason I did when that car followed me—when you’ve been a victim, you respond to everything as a threat. And you called me paranoid.”

  Jack tipped his head by way of agreeing. “There’s a real history of violence against us. That’s why they built the school with secret tunnels and hidden corridors to escape in an emergency.”

  “Seriously? That explains one thing. I saw a girl near my locker once and thought she was trying to break in. She got away somehow.”

  “Did you see who she was?”

  “No, and she vanished down a dead-end hallway. Maybe your mother asked one of the other Family girls to snoop on me.”

  “I can ask her about it.”

  “Don’t. The next time something like that happens, I’ll deal with it myself. I thought I was going crazy—it never occurred to me that there was another way out of the school.”

  “Our house has false walls and tunnels, too. My parents made us practice escape drills.”

  We stopped talking when the waiter came with the pizza and served us slices. Then we went over everything we knew, but for every concern, there was a reasonable explanation. This wasn’t the conversation I wanted to have with Jack, but I was grateful for the chance to watch his face in the candlelight.

  After we’d finished eating and there were a few slices of pizza left on the tray, I said, “When I first moved here and you brought pizza, I was worried you’d take or toss the leftovers, but I was too timid to say anything.”

  “I know, Halfling, that’s why I left them.” Jack pushed his hair away from his face. “Especially after you’d been so welcoming and shared your morbid analysis of life and death with me.”