Chapter 19
I may or may not babble something about the perfect fit of his athletic pants while Reid guides me down to the subway platform.
He tells me he sent Elliot and Sophia home for their safety as soon as he lost track of me, but I can’t remember when or how he said it.
Reid sits me down on the metal seat like a child, and when I begin to tip over, he takes off his sweatshirt and props it behind my head, keeping me upright.
I try to say thanks, but it comes out like gibberish.
My brain is looping and everything smells like lemongrass and cozy boy sweat.
Reid takes a seat two spots away from me in the empty railcar and hunches over to run his hands along the back of his neck with a sigh.
I find his humanity kind of adorable and then want to smack myself face-first into concrete for the thought.
But before I can look away, my gaze catches on the raised flesh of his brand. What an awful practice.
“Did it hurt?” I ask slowly. Words are a little hard.
Reid’s eyes stay glued to his shoes, but I can tell he knows what I mean. “Yes.”
“They brand you because tattoos can be removed, right?” It’s a theory I’ve had for a while.
Finally he looks up, chestnut hair curling over his eyes. “They brand us because we’re cattle.”
“That’s why I hate you, you know.”
“Because I was in the Brood.” It’s not a question.
“Yeah.” The world is whirling, the train we’re on moving both too fast and too slow. “The Brood killed my dad.”
Reid shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
It’s a challenge to blink, let alone say thank you.
After a beat Reid mutters, “It was a different time in my life.”
The railcar sways to the right and I brace myself against the darkened, foggy window. I’m so dizzy.
“Like a lot of people who take up with the wrong crowd, I was trying to please other people.”
I open my mouth before I know what I’m going to ask. “Who?”
His laugh is a little bitter. “My parents.”
“Wait.” I jolt up with the revelation. “Nobody gets that like me!”
“Is that so?” His eyes are down on his folded hands again, as if he can’t quite decide if he should be having this conversation.
“Yeah,” I tell him, scooting closer. He’s still not looking at me, so I tug at his arm until he turns my way. “My mom can’t stand me. That’s why I’m dating that guy you called my pet. She loves him.”
Some tiny corner of my brain shrieks at me for sharing such personal information with the closest thing I’ve ever had to an enemy, but I drown out the noise with all the warm fuzzies from the sedative. Like pillows of ease I can stuff into all my most painful nooks and crannies.
“Sounds like a healthy thing you’ve got going.”
“His sister is my closest friend. She matters more to me than anyone on earth, including my dog, which is saying a lot. The three of us were close growing up. Me and Penny and her brother—not me and Penny and my dog. My mom likes that he can take care of me. My boyfriend. Not my dog.”
Reid’s entire body stiffens with my words. Like something’s hurt him, which makes no sense. “You don’t need anyone to take care of you, huntress.”
“That’s what I think too!”
His dimple pokes out with his half smile and I fight the urge to lick it.
“Why can’t your own mother stand you?”
“You would know. You can’t stand me, either.”
He runs a hand down his face in exasperation. Or maybe annoyance? I can’t tell. I’m floating.
“Are you going to answer me?” he says quietly.
“When your friends murdered my dad, I was there. She thinks it was my fault.” I sit back a little, swaying with the railcar as it rounds a curve.
“I didn’t save him, so I guess she isn’t wrong.
I don’t know, she’s never said that exactly.
Just a hunch. Mostly I just don’t fit in with the rest of them. I zig, they zag, you know?”
When Reid finally peers up from his shoes, he looks like he could crush the steel grab bar in front of him with one pinch. “Your dad died and your mom blamed you? When you were, what, a kid?”
“Yep.”
“That’s…” He pushes his hand through his hair. “She didn’t take care of you when you needed her most. That’s inexcusable.”
His words stun me into silence. He’s kind of got a point. I make a low whistle like a day-um, and Reid’s anger melts into a smirk. “You’re zooted, huntress.”
“I don’t do drugs,” I tell him. “But I think I’m on drugs.”
“Do I have news for you.”
Why is he being so cute right now? “Stay right there,” I tell him, fishing my camera out of my bag. I snap a picture of his incredulous smile before he has a chance to look away.
“What was that?”
“Just my half-frame.” I scoot a bit closer and tuck my knees up onto the seat. “One day I’ll buy a thirty-five-millimeter film camera. You know they make them out of silver?”
“I did not know that.”
“You should probably steer clear.”
He wipes a hand down his face to hide the precious grin, but I already caught it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“What about you? Do you ever do anything?”
“Do I do anything?”
“Yeah, hobbies. Like cooking or skateboarding or girls.”
Reid stares at me for so long I begin to wonder if I even said the words out loud. Finally, he says, “I like memoirs.”
Makes sense to me. “You like to step into people’s heads.”
“Is that why you like photography?”
“Kind of,” I say around a yawn. “I like to step into people’s lives.”
And though I can tell Reid has no idea what I mean, that’s the only real way to explain it.
My eyes drift over the empty subway car.
The scuffs left behind from kids climbing on tired parents, a smear of lipstick that serves as the only remnant of a date gone well, a wine cork from someone coming home from the most miserable shift of their life.
At my worst, being an aeon makes me feel more predator than person.
More deviant, even. I can grow so dead set on the kill, on tracking, trapping, and murdering my prey, I find myself untethering from what it is to be human.
Photography allows me to peer into the lives of other people.
To see the beauty and the pain in everyday experiences.
It grounds me. And it makes me remember that I’m alive.
I want to tell Reid all that, but I’m getting so tired, my head too heavy for my neck to support, so I allow my eyelids to droop and my jaw to go slack. Just for a minute, I think. Sleep will feel so good.
A jolt of electricity courses through me when Reid catches me with his body and props me back up. “Not yet,” he says quietly. “We’ll be home soon.”
Home.
At Harker.
I’m shocked to find the word feels just right.
By the time the subway car gets uptown, I’ve thankfully sobered up quite a bit. Reid and I walk in awkward silence back to the Windsor, and I spend the whole journey battling shame at my multiple overshares. I think I may have asked him if he does girls. Gah. I want to wash my memory with soap.
Once we’re through the gateway to Harker, I make a beeline for Elkfore without so much as a goodbye. I follow the haunting candelabra light from our commons entry all the way up to my dorm. My creaky wooden bed is calling to me: I’ve never needed a good night’s sleep so bad in my life.
But when I crack open our door, I find a furious, scowling Sophia. “What the hell was that?”
My eyeballs ache with how tired I am. “Soph—”
“You abandoned me in that hallway.”
“I like to hunt alone,” I say, dropping my things on my bed and kicking off my shoes.
“And I like to masturbate when I wake up in the morning, but I have a roommate now and have to share the dorm like an adult, don’t I?”
“Sophia.”
“Don’t Sophia me. If I can learn to change my ways, so can you. We’re friends now, Viv. And friends don’t leave each other behind.”
I stare at her enraged face. The lines carving into her forehead beneath her wispy bangs. The tension in her pursed lips. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Bullshit. You did it because you hunt first and think second. Which is a great way to get yourself killed. But let’s just pretend you meant that, what about me? Huh? I was worried about you. We didn’t know if you’d lived or died when Reid sent us home. Can you imagine?”
The thought of not knowing if some vampire had drained Sophia makes me nauseous. “No,” I admit. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. You should be. It’s your weird abilities that caused all this fucked-upness.”
My blood stops. “What weird abilities?”
Sophia sits back down at her desk and pulls her feet up under her. “No need to play dumb. Your secret is safe with me. Even when you’re being a selfish little loner.”
But I can’t relax. It’s not that I don’t trust her, it’s just that my dad never faltered on his very first rule: Nobody can know you’re an aeon. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay.” She shrugs. “But I saw the way you followed the trail of that vampire. It was like you had a homing device in your brain or something. And don’t give me some hunter instinct crap. I’ve seen you rely solely on your senses. It was like watching someone play Marco Polo in the Atlantic.”
I’m so anxious I don’t say anything. Nobody knows. Nobody has known but my dad my entire life. And he’s dead, so…Nobody knows but me. And now Sophia.
She seems to clock my anxiety, because her brows meet in concern and she quiets a little. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I might be shaking.
“I won’t tell anyone you’re an aeon. You have my word. I’ll always have your back, Viv.”
Sinking into my bed, I exhale a thousand sighs in one. “You aren’t scared?” Of me? Of what I could do?
“Scared? I fight creatures from hell. Eerie girls with Victorian-era lockets don’t frighten me. Even if they do crave the kill. We all have vices.”
I close my eyes. “I’m really sorry about today.”
“It’s fine,” she says, standing up and coming over to sit with me. She pulls me into a hug and pets my hair like my mom used to when I was little. “It was fun having the moral high ground. Doesn’t happen to me too often.”
“You’re welcome, then,” I say with a weak laugh.
“Are you…the last one alive?”
I shrug. “No clue. It’s not like I’ve had anyone I can talk to about this.”
I feel her nod beside me. “That must have been really fucking lonely.”
Though I’m sure it’s just the waning effects of the sedative, exhausted tears prickle at my eyes. It’s been such a long day. A long life, honestly. “I’ve been so scared I’ll hurt someone.”
“You would never do that, Viv. Never.”
We stay like that for a while. Sophia running her fingers through my hair. My eyes fluttering closed. Before I nod off, I make sure to tell her, “I’ll always have your back too.”