So far.
She was only human. Sooner or later, she’d realize that she was in a position of absolute power. She didn’t have to wait for me to offer to rub her feet. She didn’t have to write her own term papers. She didn’t have to wear secondhand clothes, when I could shade into the best stores after hours. She didn’t have to cook, or clean, or sleep alone. Anything she asked me to do, I would do, and it was only a matter of time before she figured it out. And I went back to being someone’s dog.
Relax. She couldn’t befast you if she wanted to. She doesn’t know how, doesn’t even know what it is. You’ll breach tomorrow, maybe the next day. Bond broken. And you’ll be free again.
For the first time, as we turned off the sidewalk toward the English building, I let myself acknowledge what breaching was going to feel like. I would need Westley, and I would need blood. I would need all humans kept far away from me, including my father. I had helped others through this too many times to have illusions — my chance for survival increased with the number of friends and family present. But I wouldn’t risk Dad again. Westley and Mother would have to do. Surely Mother would come, even if she didn’t approve of my lifestyle choices…
Maybe another two days to breach. Maybe three days to get through the worst of that. Then your life will yours again. A broken, screaming wasteland, perhaps, but mine.
“Naomi! Damon!”
I jerked my head around at the sound of Dad’s voice. I had hardly noticed entering the building, but we stood in the middle of a corridor of classrooms, chattering students swirling around us.
“I’m glad I caught you before class,” Dad said, shifting an armload of books, folders, and a cup of coffee. “How’s everything going?”
“Fine,” I said guardedly. “Naomi’s making good progress on her paper.”
He gave me a look. “Other than that. Any more… surprise visitors?”
“No.” And not that I was hoping for one, but I would feel rather silly if I subjected myself — and her — to this ridiculous bodyguard duty, only to have her remain completely unmolested the whole time…
There’s no reason it has to be you, you know. You could have Westley, Jewel, Teya, any of them take over for a bit. But I knew I wouldn’t. The torture of being with her wouldn’t compare to the torture of being away from her.
“Glad to hear that,” Dad was saying. “I have some good news for you, Damon. Your cousin’s getting married.”
I had two cousins, both Tenebrii, which made mine a large family by Shadow standards. “The older one, I assume?” Surely it had to be; her brother was four.
“Yep. The ceremony’s this evening at five, and I got us all invitations.”
“Us? You mean me and Naomi?” I was almost as confused as Naomi looked.
“Not to worry, I didn’t tell them you’re… together. I just inveigled invites for my son and a ‘family friend.’”
“They invited a kathair to their befasting ceremony?” My voice came out flat with disbelief.
“She’s your cousin, Damon. She told me she’s missed you these last few years.”
I couldn’t say I’d exactly missed her, there hadn’t been energy left over for that, but I did remember her fondly. If she wanted me there, I hated to turn her down.
I realized I was seriously considering attending a befasting ceremony. With Naomi. That was impending disaster on so many levels, I couldn’t even articulate them all.
“I think that sounds interesting,” Naomi said. “I’ve been wondering what this whole ‘befasting’ thing is. Hint, hint,” she added.
Dad gave me a disapproving glance. He didn’t like me keeping her in the dark. Tough luck, Pops.
“We’ll be most pleased to add you to our party, then,” he said. “Of course, Damon, if you don’t want to come, that’s your choice.” Some of the smug mischief in his voice faded. “Your cousin will understand, and your mother and I can look after Naomi. I know attending would have to be… uncomfortable for you.”
Uncomfortable? Try agonizing. The more I thought about it, the more the very idea made me sick. “We can discuss this later. Don’t you have a class to teach?”
“Indeed.” He led us into the classroom.
I had forgotten how much I liked Dad’s classes. I had taken several during my failed attempt to get a degree almost a decade ago, and found it an interesting contrast to the homeschooling duties he had shared with Mother. Having older students was doubtless a factor, but it seemed to me that he became a much more demanding and incisive instructor when he wasn’t trying to compensate for Mother’s strictness. It made a better teacher of him.
Naomi scribbled notes madly, trying to keep up with Dad’s lecture on beauty versus the sublime. As he spoke he slapped examples onto the board, mostly pictures from magazines. Under “Beauty” he taped a peach, a butterfly, a nicely-shaped blonde facing herself in a mirror.
“Symmetrical things,” he said. “Smooth. Perfect. A comfort and joy to look upon.” He turned to the “Sublime” section of the board. “Nothing comfortable about the sublime, though.” A cliff. A storm at sea. Fog on the mountains. The dark immensity of a cave. “No, no comfort here. But joy, of a sort, isn’t there? The kind of joy that sends the sailor back out into the storm instead of marrying Brandy the barmaid. It’ll kill him one day, and that’s part of the appeal. You can keep beauty in a box and pull it out when you want to look at it. Just try that with the sublime. Try putting a thunderstorm in a box.”
Naomi had stopped scribbling and was looking at me sideways, under her lashes. She looked away when she saw me watching, and her cheeks reddened. That roses-and-milk complexion at work again. I swallowed and looked away.
Hunting became a highly sexualized sport for some kathairna. They sought victims who resembled their Lumi, tried to relive the good times. I found that mindset twisted and unhealthy, and firmly discouraged it among my orphans. For myself, I tried to choose donors who were as little like Claire as possible, tried to think of hunting only as a medical necessity. Sure, it felt nice — it felt amazing — but so what? There wasn’t necessarily any sexual component to it. As a rule, I never particularly wanted to bite one person more than another.
But I was all about breaking the rules, these days, wasn’t I?
Something nudged my arm on the table, and I turned to see Naomi sliding me a piece of paper.
What does befasting mean?
Dad would tell her if I didn’t; maybe this way I could hide the details. I tugged the pen from her hand, careful not to actually touch her, and wrote back.
Step 1: covanting
Shadow bonds with human
Step 2: befasting
human accepts Shadow; bond made permanent
if Shadow not befasted within approx. 3 days, bond dissipates
There, that sounded appropriately harmless.
She wrote back.
Westley said you’ll die.
I suppressed a snarl and dug the pen deep into the paper.
Westley is wrong and needs to mind his own business.
Naomi went back to taking notes, and I thought the conversation was over. After several minutes, however, she wrote again.
So—
No befasting, the bond goes away, and we go back to our normal lives. Is that the idea?
Yes, I replied.
What will happen to me? If it hurts for you, will it hurt for me?
No. Actually, I had never considered what happened to a Lumi left behind, and had to think for a minute to remember what some of the other orphans had said. It will feel strange because you can’t sense where I am anymore. But you’ll feel normal again very quickly.
Class was winding down, students shuffling in their seats and surreptitiously packing away their books. Naomi mercifully put away her paper and pen, and by the time Dad said “Class dismissed” was halfway to her feet, struggling to get her backpack onto her shoulders.
I fought the Shadow-need to help her with it, decided being
independent didn’t mean I had to be rude, and took the bag.
“Thanks,” she said, sounding so gratefully surprised that I wanted to hit something.
“See you later!” Dad called as we left the classroom. I waved over my shoulder as non-committally as I could.
It was colder than I expected outside, and I was glad I had my jacket. Naomi’s shirt, a drapey lavender thing with picturesque folds, was long-sleeved but thin, and she shivered every time the wind blew.
“People think of the South as eternal summer,” she muttered. “Mostly people who have never been here.”
“To be fair, we were in the lower eighties this time yesterday.”
She grunted. “Welcome to Ilium, Alabama, home of the world’s greatest roller-coaster weather.”
“How far is it to your next class?”
She frowned and stopped walking, her face wrinkling into what I was beginning to recognize as her deep-in-thought expression. “I’m not going to my next class,” she said after a moment. “It’s Advanced Grammar. If you made a sandwich out of cardboard and rusty nails, it would taste like this class. I’m cold and tired and hungry and I’m not going.” She sounded like a stubborn toddler, daring me to enforce the rules, and I had to smile.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll shade you on home, then.”
“Okay.” She sounded pleased but cautious, as if suspicious of my motives, and I smiled again as we moved into the shadow of a cedar tree.
“All this shading,” she said as I put my arms around her. “It’s not going to hurt the baby, is it?”
“No. I’ve never heard anyone say so, anyway. Your physical state isn’t actually changing at all — only mine is. You’re just along for the ride, like my clothes and anything I might have in my pockets. That’s why we have to… be so close together.”
“Oh.” She fiddled with her hair. “You’re sure?”
I shrugged. “People have been doing it for centuries. But we can ask Mom and Dad about it tonight if you like.”
“Does that mean you’re coming?”
“Let’s talk about this somewhere warm, shall we?”
“Excellent idea.”
At the apartment, she immediately headed for the fridge. “Are you sure you don’t want something? Whether you’re hungry or not, you can want something.”
Ain’t that the truth. I shrugged, keeping my lips closed over teeth gone sharp.
“Suit yourself,” Naomi said, unwrapping a block of cheddar cheese. I expected her to cut off a slice; instead she took a bite out of it. “The doctor says I’m not gaining enough weight,” she said after swallowing. “It’s hard when you can’t afford much food.”
“I’m surprised you can afford a doctor.”
“There’s a free pregnancy-crisis center on Brundidge Street.” She took another bite of cheese. “What should I wear to this befasting ceremony?”
“They’re pretty fancy,” I admitted.
“Like a wedding?”
“Yeah.” Or a funeral.
“I have some dresses,” she said doubtfully. “Carmen lets me hang those in the closet.”
She brought them out to me — all three of them. One had a tight waist and was clearly out of the question. The other two were better suited for her new silhouette, one a sea-green A-line with white trim, the other a blue empire waist overlaid with black lace flowers.
“I shouldn’t have even bought this,” she said, holding up the blue dress. “It was just so pretty and only ten dollars at the thrift shop. And after all, how many times can you wear the same black skirt to church? And how often do you find maternity dresses that are actually pretty?”
“Go try it on. I bet you can dress it up a little and look fine.”
She ducked into the bedroom, and came back out wearing the dress, silver hoop earrings, and a necklace with a shimmery blue pendant. She looked shy and delicate and utterly captivating.
“Well?”
The other one. Wear the other one. I swallowed. “Yes, that’ll do.”
“Oh, good. I can wear my black strappies with it.”
“Your what?”
“These.” She held up a pair of shoes that were, indeed, black and strappy. “What do you think? Or should I wear something closed-toed? I don’t want my feet to look like bread rising through a grate. Are they even fancy enough? I’ll look so stupid if the shoes don’t match the dress. Do you think these will be okay?”
“Um. Sure.”
She laughed. “Thank you, Damon. You’ve reminded me that even gorgeous, brooding, tragic-eyed vampires are still, at the end of the day, just men.” She went back into the bedroom to change.
Gorgeous? Tragic-eyed? Brooding I would have to acknowledge. Tragic-eyed?
“You know, actually, before I change,” Naomi said, opening the door again, “I was thinking… it’s not even lunch time, and the befasting isn’t until five, and I don’t even have to work today, and I’m sort of term-papered out, and I’m only going to have a teleporter hanging around for another day or two, so maybe we could go somewhere. You know, somewhere nice.” She gave me a teasing smile. “You never take me anywhere nice.”
“Um… like?”
“Well, you can go anywhere, right? Anywhere at all?”
“I have to be able to see it in my mind. I couldn’t take you to Jupiter or anything.”
“Hm.” Her deep-thinking face came on again, and she leaned against the door, a smooth curve with one hand grasping the edge above her head, and bit her lip. I almost fled the room. “Hawaii? Paris? I want to go somewhere I’ll never get a chance to go, ever again. I know!” She darted past me to one of her piles of stuff, and pulled out a folder full of pictures — sketches, photographs, magazine clippings. “Here. Look at this one. Isn’t it awesome?”
She pressed a picture into my hand, a beach with vivid Caribbean-blue water breaking against rough chunks of stone. The beach itself looked too rough and dark to be sand, though dotted with paler shapes that might be shells. At one edge of the picture, the landscape rose up into a rocky cliff; at the other, I could just make out a sun-faded orange cabana.
“It’s not quite a conventional-looking beach,” she said. “That’s why I like it. It’s odd. It’s not all smooth and pretty like most beaches. It’s like what your dad said. You can’t keep it in a box.”
“I like it,” I admitted. “Where is it?”
“Cuba. I cut that out of an article about the U.S. Navy Base there.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “For an afternoon of fun and freedom, you want to go to Guantanamo Bay?”
“Well, not the detention camp part, obviously. The beach.” Her face flushed with excitement. “Can we? Please?”
No. I don’t want to be your magic taxicab. But it was hard to feel ill-used looking at her pleading expression. And this certainly would be her only chance to visit that beach. Stop trying to please her. You don’t have to be that.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t want to take you into some kind of dangerous area or, or, Militarized Zone. I don’t even know if this photo is still accurate enough to get us there.”
“Oh, come on, Damon. Live dangerously.”
My knees malfunctioned, and for a second she was Claire, throwing me that flirty, teasing look, knowing she would get her way, knowing I would get the test answers, steal the car, take the drugs. “Come on, Romeo. Live dangerously.”
“No!”
Naomi stepped back, wide-eyed.
“Okay,” she said after a long moment, her voice small and thin. “That’s fine. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.” I fled as far as the room would let me — to the bookcase — and stood with my back to her. As if she would believe I was looking at the books.
“It’s okay.” She was closer behind me than I expected. “Damon? It’s okay.” She touched my arm, gently, hesitantly. Fearfully.
My Lumi was afraid of me. That was all wrong.
And still she was trying to
comfort me.
I turned around, faster than I meant to, and pulled her to me, burying my face in her hair. She gasped but didn’t pull away. I could feel her heartbeat, pounding against mine, and tried to breathe slower. I could not be calm until she was calm. And she could not be calm while I was frightening her. Oh, it should not feel this good to hold her. It wasn’t allowed.
“If you want to tell me what’s wrong, you can,” she said. “But you don’t have to.”
I stayed silent until both our pulses had slowed. Then I let her go.
“Sorry about that,” I said as lightly as I knew how. “Are we going to the beach or what?”
.
I did a trial-run first, leaving her alone for the few seconds it took to see if the picture would work and if anyone would shoot me on sight. Yes and no, respectively; in fact there were several other people at the beach, including a nine-year-old’s birthday party. I was unconscionably relieved to return and find Naomi still intact, smearing her snow-pale face with sunblock.
“Oh, man, what am I going to wear?” she said. “You must think that clothes are all I think about, which I promise is not true, I’ve just been bombarded with Closet-Pillaging Events today. I have a swimsuit somewhere, but it’s a one piece. No way is it going to accommodate the Wonder Tummy. I’ve got a khaki jumper somewhere that only comes to my knees, we could still wade…” She began digging through her overflowing suitcase. “What about you? You won’t need the leather jacket, I promise. It’s probably a hundred degrees there.”
I had already discovered that. Reluctantly I folded my jacket over the back of a chair.
“So, we’re ready to go, then?” she said when she had changed into the jumper. She was actually bouncy, excited as a child.
“Yes, we’re ready,” I said, and she put her arms around me as fearlessly as if I had never given her a harsh word.
Secondhand Shadow Page 8
