I looked around for someplace safe to set my underwear to dry, and thought for a dark moment about using the bars on Celine’s bed like a clothesline. Staring at her bed, imagining her horror if she did come in to see my muted blue-floral cotton panties strung up by handcuffs, I crossed the room.
Her bed, the wood it was made out of, plus the chrome playset, had to weigh several hundred pounds. I listened carefully to determine whether I could hear anyone in the hall, and then bent down. I knew about body mechanics from moving patients at the hospital. I squatted, braced my back, set my shoulders into their sockets, put my hands underneath the bed frame, and—
“What are you doing?”
I let go and whirled. I’d been concentrating too hard—and I’d just gotten a lesson in how quiet another daytimer could be.
Celine was standing in the doorway, lips pulled into a frown, her dragon-red lipstick the only bright color on her.
“I—I was just looking around.”
“Don’t ever touch my things.” She stalked over to the vanity to survey her belongings, in case I’d stolen some. Where would I have hidden them in this awful stupid outfit? I imagined her looking for her favorite bottle of perfume in my vagina. When she was done with her circuit she looked back at me critically. “You’d better lose that weight soon. If you’re not careful, you’ll get stuck with a muffin top for eternity.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I said drily. She didn’t know I was pregnant, at least. Maybe if I ate a lot while I was here I could pretend to just be gaining weight, like those people on TV who didn’t find out they were pregnant till they were hovering over a toilet.
Despite my shirt’s high collar, the necklace Asher’d given me popped out, its amethyst stone like the first volley from a Roman candle. Her eyes leapt on it like a cat. “Pretty.”
I quickly tucked it back inside. “Thanks.”
I stared at her, and she stared at me. I wasn’t physically tired—or sore, or hungry, or thirsty, or any of the other thousand feelings I should have a right to be—but I was emotionally exhausted. So far, being a daytimer was like walking on knives. If couldn’t be alone, then at least I’d like to close my eyes and keep to myself and pretend, even if that meant sleeping on a grungy cot without a pillow.
She kept staring. Daytimers must always win at the staring game—unless they were playing against vampires.
“I think this is the part where if we were in a Western the harmonica would start playing really fast,” I said.
Her frown lessened by point zero zero zero one degree, and she snorted. “I’m going to get ready for bed now. Stay on your cot. I’ll know if you get up, so don’t, not even to pee. And if you snore I’ll smother you in your sleep.”
I nodded and, always keeping one eye on me, Celine walked to a black lacquer panel ornamented with carved fans and stepped behind it. Once she was hidden, she started taking her own clothing off.
I crawled into my bed, such as it was, my stupid skirt hitching up around my waist. I didn’t want to keep watching for her, because I felt like some kind of voyeur, but not watching her felt dangerous, like turning your back on a dog known to bite. She must have felt the same way because she kept watching me, her eyes peeking over the panels until she took off her heels and bobbed down four inches, emerging immediately afterward in a simple black slip.
She crawled into her bed-palace, drew all of its curtains, and with a remote turned off the lights. I could tell she was still awake by the sound of her breathing—had vampire blood made my ears better too, taken them back to the pre-bass time of my youth? Or had it changed my brain somehow? How did it work? Now that I was a daytimer—and because the only daytimers we’d ever treated in Y4 had been ones who weren’t getting enough vampire blood on their own, the sick ones on their way out who hadn’t been chosen to change—I realized how much I didn’t know about vampire physiology.
Her breathing was still distracted, and I heard the sound of her skin rubbing on her silk sheets as she turned, waiting for me to sleep first.
Maybe you can sleep for the both of us, baby, because I don’t know how I’m going to.
It was going to be a really long eight months. I didn’t have to enjoy it or make any friends—it would be like biding my time at any other shitty job, and it wouldn’t be the first one I’d had. But I could do it. For the baby, and for Asher.
I concentrated on the thought of seeing him, trying to conjure him up out of the darkness in my mind. I thought about the house we shared and how my things seemed to fit just right after I moved in, and how much happier Minnie was with all the windowsills and sun.
If I thought hard enough on it I could imagine walking up to the door knowing Asher was already home, the fireplace roaring, see him sitting on the couch, reading a book, looking up as I walked in—
CHAPTER THREE
“Edie?”
He put the book down and stood up like he always did when I came home. I stopped in the doorway and covered my mouth with one hand.
Was this a dream? Or had everything that happened before just been a nightmare?
“Is it you?” I whispered, scared I’d break the bubble of this fragile reality.
A familiar smile creased his lips. “Who else would it be?”
I ran across the room to hug him, almost tackling him in the process.
“Hey now—” he began, defending himself while hugging me back.
I knew it couldn’t be all the way real. But it was real enough. I could feel the muscles of his back, the heat of his body, smell the scent of his skin.
My hands ran up into his hair, pulling his face down so I could see him more clearly. He beamed down at me. If I wished and hoped and clicked my heels three times—I leaned up to kiss him and closed my eyes and—
Maybe if I hadn’t had Raven’s blood I wouldn’t have noticed it. But the moment before our lips touched, after my eyes shut, when I was already replaying what was about to happen in my own mind to milk its full sweetness, because knowing what’s about to come is almost as good as when it actually happens—I realized his eyes weren’t right.
I pulled my head back, still holding his in place with my hands. He was beaming down at me, and the fireplace was reflected in his eyes, but there wasn’t any of Asher’s own light.
I shoved him away, and the thing that looked like Asher but wasn’t released me. “Who are you?”
He tilted his head to the side. The gesture was still Asher’s, but the longer I looked into the eyes the more wrong they became.
“How did you know?” he asked, taking a step toward me.
“Stop that.” I gestured wildly at him, and around the room we were in. “Stop all of this. If it isn’t real—or at least really from me—stop pretending.”
“I thought you would appreciate the familiar surroundings.”
I did. Oh, God, I did. “This place is mine. You have no right to be here. Stop it.”
Asher’s living room shimmered and blurred, as if I were looking at it from a great height. “What would you like to see instead?” he asked.
I shook my head strongly. “Nothing. No more games. Who are you? And why did you try to trick me?”
“I thought it would be easier to talk to you if I appeared like this.” He gestured to himself, Asher’s form that he wore like a suit.
My eyes narrowed, even in my dream. “What are you?”
“A vampire.”
“How are you awake during the day?”
“I’m not awake. When I sleep, I can walk from dream to dream.”
“Which one of them are you?”
“No one that you’ve met yet.” He took a step toward me. “I am a prisoner here, just like you.”
“Why?” I demanded.
He grinned just like Asher did, a little rogue. “Why were you imprisoned here? Bad luck, cruel whimsy? It doesn’t matter why—only that we both long to be free.” He reached a hand out. “If you can find me, I can free us both.”