Chapter 32
Raven could tell that it was dark when he woke, and he knew he’d dreamed of something.
The exact details of the dream escaped him, but he remembered warmth and feeling safe.
Desperately, he pushed against the wakefulness in order to go back to that dream, but it dissolved and left his mind filled with longing.
He sat up. He was on the couch in the penthouse, Umeboshi stirring by his legs. A blanket was draped over him, and a scent clung to the fabric, faint yet comforting.
When movement in the dark caught his attention, Raven looked up to see Maxim standing by the elevators, silent and almost fading into the shadows. Raven could almost have dismissed him as a mirage.
“Sorry. I think I fell asleep.”
Maxim smiled. “That’s fine. It was a long day.”
Raven rubbed his right eye. “I guess.”
Maxim hummed. “Rest has a tendency of coming to the industrious.”
Raven lifted the blanket off his legs, off Ume, who promptly yawned, then stretched.
He looked back at Maxim, who seemed…different.
No, not different. Raven knew those clothes.
They were the ones he’d worn when they’d first met, when he’d told Raven about having become a vampire, and about how he was safe here.
“You changed.”
Maxim shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Yes. I had to go out. Hunter business.”
“Ah.” Raven pulled his feet off the couch. Whether Maxim minded or not, it was the kind of nice furniture you probably shouldn’t put your feet on. “Was it… How was it?”
Was it another crime? he’d meant to ask. A crime like the one that had brought them together. With sudden urgency, Raven wished he could forget about it, could turn off that knowledge of what he had experienced, just for an hour. Or even ten minutes.
Maxim heaved a sigh, crossed the distance from the elevators to the couch with noisy steps, and dropped onto one side of the L.
“Oh, Raven. It was disastrous. I had to fine someone. I do not enjoy fining people. One has to write a report for that sort of thing. Not me, obviously. Heath writes the reports. But I had to report to him. Have you any idea how trying that is?”
Raven blinked. “I…don’t actually know.”
Maxim looked at him with big green eyes. “Ah. Say, have you spoken with Heath recently?” He crossed his legs. “Has he maybe made…certain suggestions?”
Raven bit his bottom lip. “Well…”
Maxim nodded. “It’s all right. You can tell me.”
“He just… He didn’t mean anything by it. He’s just not a fan of your collection.”
“I know! Isn’t that a mystery. It’s a nice collection, don’t you think?”
“It’s…extensive.”
Maxim nodded. “Oh, very much. Did you have any favorite parts?”
Raven thought for a second, then pulled out his phone. “I’m not sure. But it’s cool to have everything on file now, right? Easier to sort through? I have to send everything to you.”
Maxim made an annoyed sound. “Nonsense. I trust you fully. Feel free to organize everything on your computer before sending me the files.”
Raven pulled at the sleeve of his hoodie. “I don’t think my computer can handle that many audio and video files, honestly. I’m sorry. It’s kind of old.”
“Ah. In that case, I will buy you a new one. For work.” He gave Raven a lopsided grin. “Unless you and I can agree on something.”
“Okay?”
Maxim uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and folding his hands in front of him.
“Heath is so much better at setting up computers, but he shouldn’t know all the reasons why you might need one. It would…unsettle him.”
“But I just…I can use yours if that’s easier?”
Maxim made a shocked face. “And have you exposed to all the work things I have to deal with? Absolutely not. But you mustn’t tell Heath the computer is for your digitizing and cataloging work.”
“But—”
“We’re going to tell him it’s for fun.”
“But—”
Maxim raised a finger. “Like video games. Do you play video games?”
Raven ran his hands through his hair. It was probably messy. He couldn’t remember when he’d last brushed it.
“I never did. As a kid, I mean. But I did when I moved in with Jason. He has a Switch.”
“Like an off switch?”
And Raven…cackled. The sound almost scared him. “It’s what the console is called.”
Maxim nodded. “Heath will get you one of those too. Also for fun.”
“But we were just talking about digitizing stuff.”
Maxim scooted closer on the couch. “That is the ultimate goal, but this will help with what we’re going to be telling Heath. That you enjoy gaming and need gaming things. I gamed a little myself not too long ago. I acquired a broadsword rather quickly. If you find the correct game, I can show you.”
Raven nodded, more or less flabbergasted. Maybe I’m still dreaming. “Okay.”
Maxim beamed. “Fabulous.” He pointed at a book that was sitting on the table. Raven hadn’t noticed it before. “I shall go change, and then I’ll be reading some more.” He frowned. “Unless… Would you enjoy a game? Analog, while we wait to ply Heath for the digital kind.”
Raven was still confused, but at least this confusion had nothing to do with what was going on in his own head. First he drags me up to that storage floor with all those personal memories, and now he asks me for a game?
“Do you mean like cards?”
“Hmm. I was thinking chess, in fact. Do you play? It can be enjoyable.”
Chess. Raven had read up on the rules, had even, back in the dorm, downloaded an app and played a few rounds.
He’d read about the game in books or stories often enough to feel like he was missing out for never having been taught it, and being wiped out by that app within minutes hadn’t really been fun.
It had made him wonder what he was missing about it.
“I don’t really know how to play.”
Maxim’s eyes warmed. “Not a worry. I will teach you.”
It was the rounds of chess he played with Maxim that helped Raven keep it together over the next few weeks.
Maxim had carried down a massive wooden game board and big game pieces carved from stone that had a comfortable weight to them.
They kept the board on the table and would play whenever the fancy took them, sometimes in the mornings before going downstairs for blood, sometimes in the evenings.
During the day, Raven worked on what he began calling the Forbidden Floor. Maxim came upstairs with him often, but not always, and answered questions about what things were and where they should be put.
Ume stuck to Raven’s side unless they were at the restaurant. He had befriended the kitchen staff, or rather, had learned to make cute eyes at them to get homemade food.
Jason became a regular visitor to 43 Ruthaven as well. He took care of in-house mail or did coffee runs. He also visited Raven on the Forbidden Floor.
One day, maybe a month after he’d arrived, Raven had retreated to a set of old armchairs on the Forbidden Floor for a break when he heard the elevator arrive. It was early in the afternoon, and the light was so bright that there were no dark corners here to fear.
Despite rationally knowing that he was safe where he was, the sound still made him jump. Maxim wasn’t here. He was never as jumpy when Maxim was there with him, often chatting, but sometimes being quiet.
“Hello?” Jason called.
Raven paused the game he had going on the Switch Heath had gotten for him with a bewildered look on his face, but without so much as a huff of complaint.
“Here.”
Jason wasn’t all that close, but Raven still heard him snort. “Here where? It’s a labyrinth.”
Raven stood and waved. “Go straight, keep the gramophones to your right, then head left toward the windows.”
Not two minutes later, Jason arrived at the armchairs, his brows going up at the sight of them. “Wow. Did you just unearth these?”
Raven nodded. The armchairs were a set of four, Chippendale style, with a beigy cover that showed use and discoloration around the edges.
“I found a lot more furniture, actually.” He pointed to where cabinets, couches, desks, and more had been neatly Tetrised away under white sheets. “I thought setting it up and putting some stuff inside it might be a good way to, you know, structure everything.”
Jason gave him a look. Increasingly, Jason had shown doubt about Raven’s ideas. No, that’s wrong. It has nothing to do with me or my ideas. He’s on Heath’s side now. He doesn’t like the clutter and is all for setting an accidental fire.
The realization made a smile pop onto Raven’s face, and he had trouble hiding it.
“You’re baiting me,” Jason said. “You want me to tell you that there aren’t enough boxes to shove all this stuff inside of.”
“Well, it’s not supposed to be shoved inside of anything. It’s supposed to be a living museum.”
Jason sighed. “Living museum? You didn’t come up with calling it that. All this dust and…old stuff turned you too agreeable. You know what you need?”
Raven buried his fingers in Ume’s hair as he scratched the dog’s head. “Another list of superhero names?”
Jason waved that off. “We settled on the Throw. You need to go out.”
Raven had been afraid of this. Jason had always enjoyed being where people were.
He was gregarious, and it came easy to him.
Being who he was, he’d always made a point of including Raven, and in doing so had made it possible for Raven to meet and make friends with people he wouldn’t have run into otherwise.
I didn’t think he’d want to take me anymore. I’m…different now. I’m no good for fun anymore. I thought he’d realized that.
“You want to…go to a party?”
Jason made a face. “Look, if I take you to any college thing, everyone is going to want to be your bestie. You’re a fancy vampire now, clothing choices aside, and they’ll want a piece of you.
Or of that canine attention seeker.” Ume looked up at him pointedly, and Jason shook his head.
“Yeah, that one’s bad. Anyway, I was thinking we could go to a real club.
Heath mentioned one that’s for, you know, humans and then some without being all about blood groupies and whatnot.
I think maybe if we take him, we can even get in without having to stand in line. ”
“You…want to go to a club?”
Jason swayed back and forth on the balls of his feet, all excitement. “Yup! They don’t turn the music up too loud. That’s a plus, right? You hated that even before you got your fangs, so it’s no longer a good excuse.”
“My fangs.”
Jason raised a finger. “You still haven’t shown me those, but I forgive you.”
Maxim had explained, when Raven had clumsily asked about biting people, that his incisors would elongate.
Apparently, the fact that they didn’t when he sipped donor blood from a cup meant he was well in control and ate when he should, but there was always a lingering fear that he’d accidentally show his fangs when he didn’t want to and then be unable to get them to retreat.
As far as Raven was concerned, it was a lot like the vampire version of standing naked in front of a group of people.
“They’re just teeth.” He scratched Ume behind his left ear. “I’m not sure going out is a good idea.”
Jason walked up to the chair next to Raven’s and sat, carefully, as if he were afraid the old furniture would buckle under him.
“Tell you what, we’ll give it an hour—maybe half an hour—and if you don’t like it, we head back here and, uh…have some blood, hang out. Come on, apart from taking your weirdo dog out, you haven’t seen daylight. Or fresh air. Or people, really.”
That had been by design. Raven was scared of a lot of things these days, but when he was here, at the house and on the Forbidden Floor, it was almost as if he were invisible.
As if he’d vanished from the world he’d known, the world he couldn’t go back to.
Jason was the only thing that still tethered him to the before, and Jason stubbornly refused to let go.
Sometimes Raven wished he finally would.
Other times, he was glad Jason was there.
“I don’t know…”
Jason sighed. “Dude, I get it, okay? I mean, I’m trying to get it. But just come out with me for an hour. Or for a drink. Please, Raven. I miss you.”
I’m here, Raven wanted to say, but the truth was, he wasn’t. Hadn’t been. One day after another, like Maxim said, but there was no room for anything else there, was there? And he looked for me. He was here all the time, every day.
Cold misery washed over Raven, and he grimaced. “I’ve been an asshole, haven’t I?”
“What? No. Fuck no. Has anyone been saying that? Make them talk to me. Uh, unless they’re vampires or werewolves, in which case, make them talk to Mr. Vallois.”
“I think you can call him Maxim, actually.”
“Yeah, but if I call him Mr. Vallois, it’s easier to remember that he’s sort of my boss. Doesn’t matter. You’re not an asshole, you just need to get out of this stuffy storage floor.”
Raven sighed. “An hour?”
Jason beamed, and Raven could feel his excitement, just like he had back when Jason had dragged him to all the college parties. That seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Yeah. One hour, and we’re taking Heath to get us inside.”
“He might be busy. There’s no rush.”
Jason hummed and pulled out his phone, typed. “Yeah… Yup! He’s game. Tonight good for you?”
Raven felt a creeping sense of unease, even as Ume licked his hand. “Sure. Sure, that’s good.” Maxim won’t mind if we play chess after, will he?