Naomi opened her eyes.
I snatched my hand away from hers. She frowned at me, but turned her attention to the rounded swell of her belly beneath the covers, rubbing her hands over it anxiously.
“He’s okay,” she said after a long moment. “He’s kicking. He must be okay.”
“He is, according to my mother. She’s, um… sort of a midwife.” I’d been trying not to think about the baby much. It wasn’t going to matter in a few days that my Lumi was carrying someone else’s baby. It wasn’t going to matter whether she was married, divorced, in a relationship or out of it. It didn’t matter that the hormonal effects of pregnancy included a rosy-cheeked maternal glow that probably made everyone she met want to hug her. These were things that didn’t matter.
She reached for her throat, fingering the bandage swaddling the entire left side. “What happened?”
“You passed out. Probably just the sudden blood pressure change — you didn’t lose that much blood.”
“Oh. Good. But I meant, what happened before that. All of… that.”
I took a deep breath. “Where should I start?”
“Start with Peter.” Her voice shook. “What was he?”
“My friend.” It was hardly a helpful thing to say, and I knew it.
Naomi looked at me curiously, thoughtfully. Then she touched my hand. “I’m sorry.”
I pulled my hand back and turned away from her, biting my lip hard enough to leave a mark. My throat tightened until I could not breathe, let alone speak.
“You and he,” she said, “are not human.”
I swallowed. “No.”
She took a slow breath, color draining from her face. “Okay,” she said, her voice faint and high. “What are you?”
“We’re called Tenebrii. Shadows. We’re… symbiotes, I guess. We bond to a human. If that bond is lost, we… well, usually we die. The only thing that can keep us alive,” I took another deep breath, “is human blood.”
I glanced at her. Her eyes were like a frightened horse’s, white-ringed, and her hands clutched the blanket as if she feared floating away, or falling over. But she wasn’t screaming or running away. That was something.
“Is your father… is he a…”
“No. He’s perfectly human.”
She nodded slowly. “I would like to speak to him, please.”
A chance to escape. I took it.
I found Dad in the hallway, eavesdropping.
“Is she your Lumi?” he asked.
I nodded.
He rubbed his forehead, drew his bathrobe tighter around himself, and walked past me through the bedroom door. I leaned against the wall outside the door, listening.
“How are you feeling, Naomi?”
“Your son tells me he’s a vampire.”
I could almost hear Dad shuffling different responses in his mind. We were all so accustomed to keeping the secret, it was hard to say it. “Yes. He is. Or he was. Things will be different now, with you here.”
“What?” She sounded almost as alarmed as I felt. What are you doing, Dad?
“He told you Shadows need to bond to a human,” Dad said. “He picked you. Well, he didn’t pick you consciously. But it happened anyway.”
There was a long silence.
“I’ve had a lot of weird dreams lately,” Naomi said, and now her voice was quite calm, “but this one takes the cake. I’m going home now.” I heard her sliding out of the covers.
Leaving, no, she couldn’t leave. I stepped into the doorway. “You dreamed about me last night.”
She didn’t look up, just pulled her bloodstained bathrobe off the nearby chair and shrugged into it.
“We were in front of a fireplace. Toasting marshmallows.”
She froze. “I didn’t remember the marshmallows until just now,” she said, still not looking at me. “But if you’re a figment of my imagination, of course you’d know what I dreamed.”
“It’s not uncommon for Lumii and Tenebrii to share dreams their whole lives. But the first night after they… meet, they always dream together. I dreamed the same thing you did, Naomi, because we’re linked now. I don’t like it any more than you do. But it’ll go away in a few days, and you won’t have to worry about me ever again.”
My father looked sick. “Gabriel—”
“Damon, Dad. My name is Damon.” I turned back to Naomi. “Until that happens, however, you’re going to attract every kathair — vampire — for miles around. Some of them a lot nastier than Peter. Which means I can’t leave you unguarded, not for a moment.”
“Even in broad daylight?”
“We may prefer the dark, but we’re not restricted to it. And there’s some of us too far gone to care.”
“Right. Yes. Vampire bait. I can handle this.” She sat down on the bed and hunched over her belly. “I can’t even put my head between my knees. I guess this isn’t a dream. If I was constructing my own reality, I would certainly not be pregnant in it.”
“You should eat,” Dad said. “My wife’s cooking up something in the kitchen. She says you’ll be fine, but we’ll take you to a doctor if you like.”
“Food sounds good,” she muttered at her stomach. “How does she know I’ll be okay? Damon said she’s a midwife?”
“Yes. Shadows don’t go to hospitals, for obvious reasons, so… She’s more experienced with Shadows than humans, of course, but her senses are better than yours and mine. She says your heart rate is good and the baby seems unaffected. You didn’t lose any more blood than you might have given to the Red Cross.”
“Your wife is a Shadow, too. They’re everywhere. Okay. I fainted last time I gave blood to the Red Cross.” She rubbed hair out of her face, then glanced at the sunlit window and gasped. “What time is it? I have class—”
“It’s a little after eight,” Dad said. “I don’t know that class is a good idea today.”
“I have Shakespeare’s Comedies at ten. Dr. Hayes is a shrew and I’m already making a C.” Her calm was crumbling, her voice edging toward tearful panic. “I have to go to class. That’s what normal people do in the normal world. When they have class they go to class.”
“I can talk to Dr. Hayes,” Dad offered. “She’s not that bad.”
Meaning Naomi could hang around here some more. No thanks. “I’ll get you to class, Naomi. You’ll be fine with me along.” Dad furrowed his brow at me, but I was in no mood to clarify anything to anyone, myself included. “First order of business is to put food in you.”
Naomi made her way to the kitchen without falling, though she had to catch my arm once. I gasped at the unexpected contact, and she pulled away as if I burned her.
These next few days are going to be so much fun.
.
The kitchen swelled with the warm odors of bacon and pancake batter. Mother stood at the stove, looking as cool and elegant as ever, even in a terrycloth bathrobe, with her hair falling out of a butterfly clip. This was her room, her element; she had painted and decorated it herself, with glass-front cabinets and mosaic-tile countertops. On the shelves and windowsills, pots of sage, mint and rosemary competed for space with big jars of gem-colored candy and fruit.
“I’ve poured you some orange juice, Naomi,” she said. “It’s good for your blood sugar. And your immune system, too.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Naomi looked intimidated by the paragon of domestic divinity before her — or perhaps by the knowledge that said paragon was not, in fact, a human being. I sat down at our tiny kitchen table, as far from Naomi as I could get, wondering if she was going to faint.
Naomi eyed her glass of orange juice warily, then took a gulp, knocking it back like a shot. “Gack,” she said. “Yep, I’m awake. Dream-o.j. could never taste as bad as the real thing. This is really happening.”
“Afraid so.”
She regarded me with unsettling intensity. “And the elevator? That really happened, too?”
“Um. Uh. Yes.”
“Thank God.” The words l
eft her in a gusty sigh. “I’m not crazy. You promise I’m not crazy?”
I couldn’t keep one corner of my mouth from tipping up. “I promise.”
She took another swallow of juice. “Shouldn’t you be having some juice, too? You were ripped up a lot worse than me. More of this,” she gestured at the dark stains on her robe, “is yours than mine.”
Mother saw the robe and grimaced. “I’ll take that, dear.” She plucked at the fabric on Naomi’s shoulders. “Frank, take over with the bacon, would you, while I get this in the wash?”
“It’s my roommate’s,” Naomi said morosely, squirming out of the robe. “I might do better to just toss it and buy her another.”
Without further encouragement, my mother folded the robe into a neat packet and dropped it into the garbage, leaving Naomi in her only-slightly-bloodstained pink pajamas.
“Your face is healed up,” Naomi said, staring at the cheek Peter’s teeth had torn.
“Yes.” I fiddled with a napkin. “We heal very quickly. If we have blood.”
She blinked. “Whose?”
“Mine, in this case,” Dad said casually, flipping a pancake. “There’s not enough juice in me to support him full-time, but I try to be available for emergencies.” He flipped another pancake. “The bacon’s done, Damon.”
I was just setting the plate of bacon onto an apple-shaped trivet on the table when the doorbell rang. I glanced at Dad. “Expecting anyone?”
He frowned. “No.”
I went to the door, almost sorry I had changed out of my torn and bloody clothes. Some salesman would have had a juicy story for his colleagues.
I glanced through the peephole and cursed. It wasn’t a salesman. It was the Formyndari.
“Good morning, Priscilla, Lincoln.” I opened the door but made no move to invite them in.
A respectable young black couple, nicely dressed, expressions polite and alert. Missionaries, perhaps, or fundraisers for charity. Last I heard, they had a round dozen confirmed vampire kills on their record. I had very nearly been one of them.
“One of your pet projects has gone off the rails, Damon,” Priscilla said. To her credit, she looked unhappy about it. “Killed a woman in Montana a couple days ago.”
“I know. He’s dead.”
She raised her brows. “That was fast. Can we come in?” She crowded through the doorway without waiting for an answer.
I sighed and closed the door behind them. “He attacked a local girl last night.”
“She survive?”
“Yes.”
“What have you told her?”
I shrugged. “She thinks it was a dream.”
“Hmm.” Her posture relaxed, but only somewhat. She suspected that I wasn’t telling the whole truth.
“How did you know to find me here, anyway?” I asked.
“You weren’t at the Orphanage. You don’t have many places to go.”
Ironically, she was right. I could go anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye, and I rarely went further than the outskirts of a smallish Alabama town.
Standing at Priscilla’s shoulder, Lincoln had his head cocked, his green eyes — always a surprise against his dark skin — unfocused. “A new Lumi,” he said. “Just through that door.”
“Oh?” Priscilla looked at me.
“I’m mediating between her and her Shadow,” I said. “They’ve had a hard adjustment.” My pulse seemed to get a bit louder as I realized what a knife-edge I was on. If the Formyndari found out I had an opportunity to leave the blood-sucking lifestyle, and was planning to pass it up, they would be Very. Unhappy. With. Me. That wasn’t good for my life expectancy. “If we’re done here…”
“There’s debate,” Priscilla said, “about the possibility of Peter being Liberty.”
“Liberty? Why do you think that?”
“All we know, or surmise, about Liberty is that he was abused by his Lumi and is somehow connected to you. Peter fits those requirements. And he never was very stable.”
Nor was he ever violent. The moment he regained lucidity, he faded rather than hurt anyone else. Besides, the first Liberty murder was almost a year ago. Peter wasn’t even breached then. I bit back the urge to defend Peter. Let them think Liberty was dead. It would give me more time to find the real murderer without Formyndari breathing down my neck.
Lincoln must have seen the resistance on my face. “Of course you don’t want to think it was Peter. You were friends. But you know as well as we do that it probably is one of your friends. At least this way it would be over.”
Priscilla said, “There are still plenty of people pointing out that you fit the profile best of all.”
If Priscilla thought it was me, I knew I wouldn’t be standing here wondering about it. But she wasn’t convinced of my innocence enough to disobey orders if she received them. Well, it’s nice to know where you stand with people. “I’ll take that under advisement, Priscilla. Now, if you don’t mind, I had a rough night.”
“I assume you’ll let us know if anything else happens,” Priscilla said.
Assume away. “Of course.”
We exchanged nods, then Lincoln put his arms around her, and they vanished.
I turned around, and jumped when I saw a slim wedge of Naomi’s face peering through the kitchen doorway. She was back in her seat at the table by the time I came through the door.
“Did you eavesdrop on the entire conversation?” I asked her, and shot a glare at my parents.
Dad took a calm swallow of coffee. “I didn’t want to draw attention to her by calling her back.”
I almost growled. You want her up to her ears in this so I can’t just put her aside.
“They called me a looney.” Naomi sounded hurt.
“Lumi,” I corrected. “I’m Tenebri, you’re Lumi. It means ‘light.’”
“As opposed to shadow. Makes sense.” She forked a pancake pensively. “Why not just say ‘light’?”
“Lumi means ‘light’ the way, I don’t know, the way your name means ‘spear-carrier’ or ‘from the meadow’ or whatever the baby name book says. There’s more to it than that, centuries of accumulated meaning.”
“Well, how did I come to be one? I don’t remember signing up to be a Lumi.”
“You become a parent by having a child, and a wife by having a husband, and a Lumi by having a Shadow. You weren’t one yesterday but now you are. You didn’t sign up for it, neither did I, a beautifully fair situation all around.” I reined in my impatience. She hadn’t signed up for this.
“Why did you lie to them about me?”
“It’s complicated. They’re Formyndari. Their job is to kill vampires. They’re still adjusting to the idea that not all vampires deserve to die.”
“Who’s Liberty?”
“A murderer,” I said grimly. “Nothing you need to worry about, though. You don’t match his victimology.” So far.
“How did they disappear like that?”
“Shadows can do that. It’s part of how we got the name. We’re made of something much more… fluid than you are. We can sort of merge with the shadow of an object, and re-emerge from the shadow of something else. Anything else in the world, in fact.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Shadows aren’t made of anything, they’re just an absence of light.”
I looked to my father, helpless to explain what had always been a simple fact of life.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Dad said, because heaven forbid we get through a conversation with the English professor without him quoting Shakespeare. “On a metaphysical level, a shadow is an inverted copy of the object, sort of a dark twin. Light and dark, presence and absence, solid and fluid… male and female… Lumii and Tenebrii…”
“And this shadow-travel stuff,” Naomi said to me, “that’s how you got me here?”
“Yes. I’m sure it was uncomfortable. It’s not that bad once you get used to it.”
“Is that how you were planning to get me to class?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have a car. Do you?”
“No.”
Dad could have offered to drive. He was going to campus anyway, after all. He didn’t offer. This is no time for matchmaking, Dad.
Naomi wiped her mouth on her napkin, downed the last of her orange juice, and stood. “We’d better get going, then. I have to stop by the apartment and change clothes. A shower would even be nice.”
“You’re, um… taking this well.”
She gave a half-hysterical little giggle. “Reality’s not what I thought it was. That’s actually a little better than just thinking I’d lost my grip on it. Besides, it’s hard to have hysterics over a plate of pancakes with whipped cream and syrup. I can freak out later.”
“Sounds good to me. Ready to go?”
“I guess.” She looked over at my parents, still serenely eating. “Um, thank you for your hospitality, Dr. DiNovi, Mrs. DiNovi.”
“We’ll see you later,” Mother said.
“And we’ll work out something about the term paper,” Dad said. “Even I consider ‘vampire attack’ a valid excuse.”
She gave him an embarrassed smile that grew more awkward as she turned to me. “I take it you have to touch me?”
“Not just touch. If you were a Shadow, that would be enough for you to follow me, but since you’re not, it’s sort of an… all-around… thing. Otherwise, I’ll go somewhere and you’ll just stay put.”
“Ah.” She waited, and seemed to be wishing as hard as I that my parents were not in the room. Dad, ever oblivious, crunched a piece of bacon.
Well, it wasn’t going to get less awkward. I took her hand and led her into the shadow of the open door, then pulled her to me, folding myself around her as much as possible. I tried to shut out my watching parents and the bright glow that I wasn’t seeing with my eyes. I tried to shut out how well we fit together, baby belly notwithstanding, how warm she felt through the thin fabric of her pajamas, and the sweet vanilla scent of her hair. These were things that didn’t matter.
The world flattened, and darkened, and went away.
Secondhand Shadow Page 4
