by Jana Janeway
Nodding in resignation, Shea muttered, “Make the call.”
Immediately, Jeramey fished his cell phone out of his pocket, dialed the number he knew by heart, and then addressed whoever answered as he started to walk away. “Hey, the Humans have agreed to relocate.—Yeah, start the process.—He calmed down, yeah.—Yeah,” he laughed, his words fading as he left the room, “too bad saccharin doesn’t work on Humans! I woulda slipped some in his tea or something!”
“What does that mean?” Shea asked, slightly offended. “Saccharin doesn’t work on Humans?”
Marcy rolled her eyes, irritated with her boyfriend for making the comment. “It’s like a drug to us. Mengliads. Closest comparison, to Humans, would be marijuana.”
Jessica nodded in agreement. “But. . . floatier. Trippier. Everything is just. . . very serene, and, like, nothing is a problem. The few times I did marijuana, I was just tired and hungry.”
“You’ve been a Mengliad for how many days,” Shea scolded her, “and you’re already doing their drugs?”
When he glared over at Craddock, silently accusing him of being to blame, Jessica spoke up in his defense.
“He didn’t give it to me, Shea. I was. . . freaking out. They just wanted to help calm me down.”
“Who’s they?” he asked. “Why were you freaking out?”
“Bibi and Josiah,” she answered reluctantly, “and I was freaking out, ‘cause I had a bad reaction to the conversion.”
“What kind of bad reaction?” Shea asked through his teeth, his jaw clenched.
Everyone still in the room rolled their eyes.
“Okay, Shea, you are gonna have to calm down,” Jessica shot at him. “If everything we say sets you off, we’re gonna stop telling you stuff!”
“Fine,” he said with forced composure, “I’m calm. What kind of bad reaction?” he asked again.
“Remember what Mom told us a while back?” she asked, explaining her ordeal with a story of comparison. “About that guy who was having some surgery done, but the anesthesia didn’t work? And he could feel and hear and understand, but couldn’t move or respond or communicate?” When Shea nodded, she continued. “It was like that, only, I wasn’t in any pain. But I couldn’t move or speak.”
“Why?” he asked. “What caused it?”
“It’s called muddy conversion,” Bibi answered, “and it happens when the donor’s blood is too weak to complete the transformation.”
“So, she would’ve turned back into a Human?” Shea asked with a sort of controlled agitation. His tone implied that they should have left her alone, and allowed that to happen.
“No,” Marcy answered. “Once the conversion begins, there is no going back.”
“And the saccharin fixed it?” Stacy asked, confused.
Marcy shook her head, but it was Bibi who answered.
“No, the saccharin was just to calm her down. To fix it, we had to do the BTR again, with pure blood.”
“Pure blood from whom?” Shea asked, though, instinctively, he knew the answer already.
Bibi glanced in his direction before saying his name. “Craddock.”
“Why?” Shea appeared to be struggling to keep his emotions in check as he stared over at the man he was questioning, though his clenched jaw was the only sign that he was upset.
“Why, what?” Craddock was fairly certain he knew what was being asked, but decided to feign ignorance.
“Why are you doing all this?” Shea asked more specifically. “Why are you helping her? Marrying her? Relocating with her? Giving her your blood? What’s in it for you? What are you getting out of all this?”
When Craddock seemed to be straining for a way to answer, Bibi offered the semi-honest explanation for him. “He’s just that kind of person. I’ve known Craddock since you people have been in diapers, and he doesn’t have a malicious or selfish bone in his body.”
Taking the conversation in a different direction, Stacy asked, “You’ve known each other since you were in diapers?”
“I didn’t say we were in diapers.” Bibi’s inflection instantly called Shea and Stacy’s attention to the fact that there was another piece of the confusing puzzle hidden within her words.
“Meaning?” Shea’s belligerent expression softened when Jessica glared over at him pointedly.
“I’m forty-eight years old,” Bibi answered, ignoring the tone he’d used with her, “and met Craddock in my late twenties, shortly after he turned eighteen. Twenty years ago.”
“Wait a minute,” he stared at her, scrutinizing, “you’re forty-eight years old?” When Bibi nodded, he exclaimed, “That’s impossible! You don’t look to be any older than we are!”
“Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving.” Bibi offered nothing further in explanation.
Her lack of answer irritated him. “Care to elaborate?”
Annoyed by his attitude and tone, Bibi looked to Marcy to answer for her. When Marcy said nothing, and only shared a look of understanding with her, Jessica spoke up.
“Mengliads age differently. They live longer than Humans because they don’t get sick. They don’t get cancer, or heart disease, or even colds.”
Scoffing, Shea argued, “Even if that were true, presumably, their bodies would give out at some point!”
“Yeah,” she shot back, “but, like, when they’re closer to two hundred.”
Stacy’s surprised gasp went unacknowledged.
“Then why would a Mengliad need a doctor?” Shea continued his interrogation.
“We can still break bones,” Josiah answered, his exasperation obvious by his tone and glare. “We can still get cuts, and bruises, and get stabbed, and shot, and injured, and—”
“Okay,” Shea interrupted sharply, conceding the point.
“You asked,” Josiah muttered, pushing off the arm of the couch where he was seated. “Are we done here? Can I go take a nap or something?”
The moment Marcy nodded, Josiah turned on his heel and left the room.
“I’m not trying to be difficult,” Shea said with a sigh. “There’s just a lot to take in here.”
“Look, why don’t we take a break.” Marcy suggested. “It’s late. Everyone is tired. It’s been a long, stressful day. Let’s get some sleep, and we’ll continue this in the morning.”
“Fine,” Shea agreed, moving to stand. Stacy followed his lead. “What are the sleeping arrangements?”
“Bibi and Josiah in the back bedroom, you two in the room you were in, and Jessica and Craddock in the first bedroom.”
He tensed, his eyes growing wider by the second. “Why? Why them together?”
“Oh my God!” Jessica pushed off the couch and turned to face her brother. “I can see now why Jeramey wanted to shove a ball gag in your mouth! I love you, and I want to!”
“They have to start acting the part of a married couple anyway,” Marcy explained, “and the sooner they start doing that, the more comfortable they’ll be around each other, which will make them more convincing to others, subsequently.”
Exhaling sharply, Shea grabbed Stacy’s hand, leading her out of the room, muttering as he did, “Not liking this.”
When Jessica made a face behind his back in response, Craddock laughed, which caused a slight smirk to appear within her pulled expression.
“You have an interesting relationship with your brother,” he commented casually, shoving his hands in his pockets, scuffing his foot on the carpeted floor. It made no sense to him, he couldn’t explain why, but suddenly, he was nervous in her presence.
“He’s just set in his ways,” she offered in explanation of Shea’s behavior, “and not very open to new ideas or concepts.”
He just shrugged, not at all interested in discussing her brother right then. “Ready to get some sleep?”
“I’m ready to try, but whether or not my brain will shut down long enough to actually let me, is yet to be seen.”
“If we can’t, we’ll at least get some rest, right?”
Something was different. His stance and demeanor had changed, she noted, to something resembling distance, or maybe it was anxiousness of some kind. Whatever it was, it caused her nerves to prickle, and an uneasiness to consume her. “I guess that’s better than nothing.” She glanced at him briefly before looking away, in the direction of the hallway.
“Get past it, guys,” Marcy spoke up, startling them both, as they had pretty much forgotten she was still there. “Married couples don’t act weird around each other.”
“Right. Sorry,” he apologized. “We’ll get the hang of it, in time.”
“Time is a luxury you don’t have. Go into the bedroom, crawl into bed, sleep, talk, sleep some more, talk some more. . . whatever it takes to get comfortable with each other.”
“Gotcha.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets, his right reaching for Jessica’s left. “Shall we then?”
Smirking, she slipped her hand into his. “Coming, dear.”
****
Just behind him, their hands still linked, Jessica entered the bedroom with a sense of hesitancy. She had slept in his arms, in the oversized chair at Nicholas Brady’s apartment the night before, and had spent near about the entire day wrapped in his arms, frightened of what their fates would be. Why now, she wondered, did being near him have her so flustered?
Almost as if he could read her mind, he offered an explanation out of virtually nowhere. “I think it’s because of Shea. This weirdness between us, I mean.”
Seeing the logic in that, she halfheartedly agreed. “Maybe. How do we get past it?”
He shrugged as if indifferent, though he was far from it. “Maybe we should just try what Marcy said? Crawl into bed and just. . . work through it?”
Sighing, she stared at the floor for a long few seconds. When she finally looked up, into his eyes, tears were in hers. “It’s not too late to get out of this, Craddock. You don’t have to do this. I’m sure they can hook me up with someone, somewhere, who can help me figure out the stuff I need to know.”
“Jessica. . .” He hung his head for a moment, searching for the right words to say. “Jessica,” he repeated, reinitiating eye contact with her, “I’m not looking to get out of this, and I know I don’t have to do this. I’m doing this because I want to.”
She said nothing at first, looking lost and confused as tears slipped down her cheeks. He wanted to reach out to her, wipe her sadness away, hold her and console her, but with the way she had him locked in her gaze, he found himself frozen, awaiting what she might do next.
Eventually, after what seemed like a very long while, she took in a deep, shaky breath and whispered only one word.
“Why?”
Chapter Twenty
Stalling for time, uncomfortable over the direction the conversation was headed in, Craddock answered her question with one of his own. “Why, what? Why am I doing this, or why do I want to?”
“Both.”
A part of her knew the answer already. The way he touched her and comforted her was clue enough. But then she overheard Josiah talking to Bibi, when they thought she was asleep, and then again at the Purists’ headquarters, Josiah had blurted it out in a moment of frustration.
But even with all the implications and circumstantial evidence, until she heard the words from him directly, she refused to wholly believe it.
For the briefest of moments, he considered telling her the truth, just to be out with it, but doubt and fear assaulted him, preventing the admission from leaving his mouth. Up until that point, anything resembling mutual attraction had been surrounded by and wrapped in fear and danger. Even though she had always accepted his consoling affection readily and easily, beyond that, she had given no real indication of her feelings.
Maybe she wasn’t even aware of them yet, he thought to himself as he continued to stare back at her. Would a new convert even recognize it for what it was, he wondered? Since Bibi already thought him a fool, he couldn’t very well ask for her take on the situation. In his opinion, gaining her insight on the issue simply wasn’t worth the lecture he would certainly receive in return.
“Well?”
At her prompt for an answer, he blinked several times to rid his brain of the racing thoughts that bombarded him, then offered an unsure shrug of his shoulders. “It’s complicated.”
She sighed in frustration. “In what way is it complicated?”
“In a way that makes answering that question impossible.” He smiled a little, sympathetic, adding quickly off her annoyed scowl, “For now.”
“So at some point, it’s going to become. . . uncomplicated?” she asked, a slight amount of skepticism in her tone.
“Less complicated, yes.” To reassure her, he gave her hand that was still in his a gentle squeeze.
“And then you’ll tell me?” She inched one step closer to him, searching his eyes intently, as if, somehow, the answers to her questions could be found within the blue depths.
“Yes,” he whispered, fidgeting under her intense stare.
“And there’s no way you can just. . . try to explain it to me now? So I’m not sitting here, confused and wondering?”
“It would only add to your confusion if I did.” It took every ounce of strength he possessed to fight off the urge to kiss her.
Yielding, she moved away from him and towards the bed, bringing him with her as her hand continued to hold his. She pulled the blanket and sheet down before releasing his hand, climbing in and across to the far side of the mattress, making room for him to join her.
Climbing in after her, he instinctively slid his arm under her, gathering her to him as they settled in. A long, semi-comfortable silence filled the room, causing her words, when she finally broke it, to startle him slightly.
“Tell me about your father?” She placed her hand on his chest in a comforting manner when she felt him tense, hoping the soothing gesture would relax him enough to open up to her.
Even with as brief as it was, his momentary hesitation told her just how painful the subject was for him. Before he even uttered a word, she somehow knew what he was going to say. Only the details, like how, when, and why, were missing from her understanding.
“When I was nine years old, my dad died of malnutrition, because of his saccharin addiction. It was horrifying. Gruesome. No amount of food stopped the hunger pangs. Near the end, he was almost mad with hunger. Ironically, the only thing that eased his suffering even a little, was the damn saccharin that had caused it all in the first place. Of course, by then, it took cups full of the stuff to effectively work.”
“Which is why you didn’t want Bibi to give it to me,” she mused in a sad whisper. “Because you’ve seen firsthand what it can ultimately do.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes tightly to stave off the tears that were threatening to well, anticipating the next obvious question with a sense of dread.
“Then why do you do it?”
“I could give you reasons, but there are no excuses. There never are, for something like that.”
“For how long have you been doing it?” She didn’t want to upset him, but she was invested enough in the answer to brave the possibility that she would.
“Off and on, about ten years,” he admitted honestly. “More off than on.”
“Is it a problem?”
“Only in that I do it at all,” he answered. “But, no, it’s not a problem.”
“Is that the truth?”
The worry in her tone caused his heart to pick up pace. “Yes,” he whispered, then added in the hope of easing her concerns, “The first sign that it’s becoming a problem is when it takes more than one packet to get you high. I had less than that yesterday, after Bibi gave some to you, and I got good and high, no problem.”
“True.” She paused for a moment before asking, “If I wanted you to, would you give it up?”
His answer came instantly. “Yes. Do you want me to?” He brought his hand to rest on hers, which was still lying on his chest, caressing
the back of it lightly with his thumb.
“Probably.” She gave an indecisive shrug. “I mean, I guess if it was on a rare occasion, it wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t want it to become one.”
“It won’t,” he promised her. “I’m careful with it.”
“I don’t know why you want to help me,” she said, “but since you do, and since we’re obviously going to be around each other for at least a few years, I think it would be better for both of us, if we didn’t have something like that looming over our heads, ya’know?”
“You’re not being unreasonable,” he assured her, picking up on the somewhat guilty tone she’d used. To him, it signified that she was having doubts about making the request of him in the first place.
“Thank you.” A soft sigh escaped her as she snuggled deeper against him. “Maybe we should try to get some sleep. I have a feeling, tomorrow is going to be a busy day.”
Nodding in agreement, he asked timidly, “Are you. . . comfortable like this?”
“Yes,” she answered, asking in return, “You?”
“Yeah.” He bit his tongue to keep from telling her just how comfortable he was. “And you’re welcome.”
“I’m not just thanking you for the saccharin thing. Thank you for. . . for everything.”
“You’re welcome for that, too.” He planted a gentle kiss in her hair, holding her protectively. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Try to get some sleep now.”
“I’m not sleepy, so much as mentally exhausted.”
“Part of it is the lingering effects of the conversion. The rest is because of all the trauma you’ve been through.”
“You’ve been through it, too,” she reminded him, sighing. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused.”
“I know you are,” he whispered, “and I know you feel guilty, but try not to, okay?”
“Kinda hard not to. I’ve single handedly ruined lives. Killed people. My parents are dead,” her tears spilled onto his chest, “all because of me.”
“It’s not because of you, Jessica,” he insisted. “This war has been going on for decades! You just, unfortunately, got caught up in the middle of it.”
