Chapter Seventeen #2
But he didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t do anything. He just made his way across the threadbare rug-covered floor, until
he got to the bed. Old looking and a little rickety, with what looked like a metal frame. An iron frame, she realized with a start. And that wasn’t the only thing that got her in the guts.
There was also the window above it.
The one that looked a little off, to her eye. She glimpsed a deep twilight-colored sky, a hint of velvety grass, maybe a tree
in one corner, and went back for a longer look immediately.
And sure enough, it wasn’t a look through to the outside at all.
It was a painting. Someone had painted a window view onto the wall.
And this seemed so odd, for a second she forgot everything else.
She just stared at this thing—and then at other strange things in the room, too.
Old statues and busts stacked about the place, rugs rolled into corners, what seemed to be a large brass tub in some small, dank room beyond.
And the bookcases—oh, there were so many bookcases.
It was practically a cave of them.
Gorgeous to her, of course.
But absolutely wild for someone like him. He mocked her love of them constantly. The most interest she’d ever seen him pay
them was that one he’d had in his hand, at the start of one of their lessons. Yet here they all were, jammed into shelves
and spilling onto the floor and surrounding her on all sides. It made her want to take a closer look, to see what exactly
it was that he liked.
She only resisted because of the sound he made.
It was so desperate now it cleaved her heart in two. Her feet actually tried to step toward him; she only held them back by
the skin of her teeth. Though it wasn’t any easier just watching him. He seemed to be searching for something, desperately.
He had an old suitcase out, from under the bed, and was trying to unfasten the straps.
And failing, obviously. His fingers fumbled awkwardly.
Like they were already frozen.
“Let me help you,” she said.
But he batted her away.
“No. No, you’ve helped enough.”
“But you’re going to just turn into a husk down here, on your own.”
“I have someone. They will do what’s needed.
You don’t have to worry,” he said over his shoulder, offhandedly, quite obviously not thinking about what he was saying.
But she thought about it the moment he had.
She actually jolted to hear it, for the second time, and immediately went over all possible candidates for such a thing.
A friend of his? The lithe, long-limbed girl?
No, no. It sounded like he’d known them a while.
He would have had to, if he had leaned on them as long as he’d been here. And she felt pretty sure he’d been here more than
the three years it would take someone like him to graduate. So what did that leave? A professor, she thought. Someone like
Cobble, who you could trust.
But she couldn’t bank on that. She had to ask.
“Well, tell me who they are, and I’ll go get them.”
“Who they are isn’t your business.”
“Then let me at least open that suitcase for you.”
“You wouldn’t want to if you knew what’s in there.”
Lilibet, she thought.
But even the parts of her that hated him recoiled from the idea.
No, it had to be something less horrible. Something simpler.
“I’m guessing it’s blood. Or maybe body parts,” she said.
Though even that made him balk. He looked at her, incredulous.
“You think I have body parts stored under my bed?”
“Well, I was thinking of animals, not people.”
“So just a dead dog, then.”
“No. No. More like a rat. Or a bird.”
He stopped fighting with the suitcase at that. Laid his head on the bed, turned away from her, as if he was too exhausted
to continue. It even seemed like he might have gone to sleep—until he made a sound. A wretched thing that seemed to go through
his whole body. “Just please leave me now,” he moaned.
But she definitely couldn’t after hearing that.
“I will when you manage to make yourself better.”
“Nothing can make me better. I’m too sick for you to ever be.”
“So what you’re saying is that nothing but my blood will do.”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“Well, why not?”
Another sigh then.
But this one was gentler. Almost wistful. And so was his voice when he finally spoke. “Because you are too kindhearted, little
bookworm. Even toward me, a man you have every reason to loathe—I see the way you’re starting to soften. To talk yourself
into thinking maybe I’m not so bad, and that even if I am, is it really all right to watch me suffer and starve? And so when
I say, yes, you will think that perhaps, just perhaps, it might be okay to offer me a taste. Just one little taste, you’ll
say, because one little taste isn’t really so bad, is it? And I’ll want to tell you, yes, it’s very bad indeed—it’s the worst
anything could possibly be. But instead, I will say, no, no, it will be all right. And it won’t be. It won’t be, because I
won’t be able to stop,” he said, each mad word building one on top of the other, until she was practically bursting to tell
him he was wrong. About her kind heart, about her softening, about what she would want to offer him.
But somehow, none of that was what came out.
She thought instead of how strange it would be for a monstrous double to confess something like that. To persuade you not
to put yourself in danger, even if it was only fear of being caught that made him. And she answered, before she could stop
herself “So then we take away your choice to,” she said.
As if this was all just some puzzle to be solved by a scrap of logic.
Instead of something so strange and terrifying even he looked aghast. “You mean you want to tie me down,” he whispered, voice hushed and hoarse. Gaze full of a kind of fraught light. Waiting, she thought, for her to step back from the precipice.
Even though he was the one who’d accidentally led her there.
“I didn’t mean anything at all. But yes, I imagine that would work.”
“It won’t. There isn’t anything in this room that could hold me.”
“Then make something. Make something out of magic.”
He gave her a withering look. “You know full well I’m too weak.”
“I also know that you’re just saying that in an effort to put me off.”
“I don’t even understand why I have to. You should be put off anyway.”
Maybe I would be if you stopped saying things like that, she thought.
But that didn’t cover it, and she knew it. She had to scramble for other excuses.
“Yeah, and I’ve already told you the reason I’m not: I still need you to help me do this. Quite clearly, because if I didn’t,
I would be making some goddamn manacles myself right now. But I’m not, because I just know when I try that it won’t be there.
I can feel that it isn’t there,” she said, unsure as she did who she was really trying to convince. But surprised when it
worked.
The words built to a crescendo of actual stress.
Actual fear of all the things she couldn’t do.
And she could see that idea sinking into him, too.
He stared after they were out, long and assessing. As if he was weighing something up. Then finally, he seemed to decide. She almost saw him nod, as in, well, that’s settled, then. Before he took a slow breath and spoke in the most suddenly casual and kindly way she could imagine, coming from him.
“You’re just exhausted.”
“Yes, I know I am.”
“Not to mention stressed out and frustrated.”
“Well, of course. Wouldn’t anyone be, in my place?”
He nodded sagely. “You’re right. Things like this happen to a lot of people.”
“Right,” she said. “Exactly. Exactly. This is absolutely understandable.”
“You probably just need to give it a minute. We can always try again later.”
She went to say something in response. But then she saw his expression, with just that hint of amusement to it. And suddenly
everything he’d said turned on its head. It took on another meaning entirely, of the sort you might offer to a man having
performance issues. In the bloody bedroom.
“You fucking arsehole,” she burst out.
But he just shrugged.
“Relaxed you, didn’t it?”
“Honestly it made me even more tense than before.”
“You can’t get away with that with me, bookworm. I can hear your heart rate. I can see every minute change to your body, from
the softening of the muscles in your shoulders, to the slight tension around your lips that tells me you wanted to smile.
You wanted to laugh even. But you held it back, to stop me having the satisfaction,” he said, his expression a picture of
got you.
Even though he hadn’t.
“So you’d be satisfied by my amusement, then.”
“You say that if it seems so strange that anyone would be.”
“Not anyone. Just you.”
He tilted his head on one side. “Liar,” he said.
So confident about it that she couldn’t try a denial.
“Can you hear that in my heartbeat too, can you?”
“Sometimes, yes. When you’re most scared of the truth.”
“So tell me what exactly you think the truth is, in this situation.”
“That you can never imagine you make someone happy. That they might want to see you laugh and be pleased if they manage. That
your delight is their delight, your pleasure is their pleasure, their dreams are whatever makes your dreams come true. The
very idea is alien to you, impossible. Even if it was right in front of your face, you would struggle to see it,” he said,
hands spreading as he did. One shoulder almost lifting in a shrug. Just as casual as everything else he’d told her.
But this one left her breathless.
She couldn’t even hide the shake in her voice when she replied.
“Maybe if someone actually told me these things, I wouldn’t,” she tried to shoot back. But it lacked the tone she wanted.
It sounded like sadness over scorn. Vulnerability over a sense that she didn’t really care.
And of course he hooked his claws into the softest things.
“And exactly how do you think that hoped-for conversation would go?”
“The whole point is that I have no idea. You can see I have no idea.”