Chapter 3 #3
“Thanks,” he says as he takes them, presses them to his face, and straightens his nose with an audible grating sound. As I take a step back and wince, he adds sharply, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!”
His eyes narrow and he looms forward, so I tack on, “Really, it’s nothing.
I think my foot might be a bit bruised from where I— Uh, from where your chair hit it.
” I try to make it sound like it was an accident, maybe even one he caused with his reckless and unprofessional behavior, rather than me deliberately sabotaging him.
It doesn’t work.
“Oh, from where my chair hit it, hmm?” He raises an eyebrow superciliously. I wonder if I can yank it off his face and make him eat it. “Sit down and let’s have a look.”
What?
“Uh, what?”
He gestures to my chair while bending over to right his, which is lying on its side, castors still spinning. “Sit. Down. I want to check your foot.”
“It’s fine,” I protest. “Maybe a little bruised. That’s all.”
He plants himself in his chair and rolls over to where mine is waiting. “Then it won’t hurt for me to look.”
I’m not going to win this fight, am I?
I begin to wonder whether the whole Andrew-flying-through-the-air thing is going to come back to bite me.
Sighing, I shuffle over and slump into my chair, then bend over to take off my shoe and sock.
No sooner have I straightened and started to wonder how exactly we’re going to do this, than Andrew grabs my leg and yanks my ankle up to rest on his knee —completely unbalancing me.
I yelp and grab the arms of my chair to keep from falling off.
“Hey!”
“I thought you did yoga,” he mutters, turning my foot carefully in his hands. “You should have better balance.”
There is absolutely no good response to that. Asshole.
I suffer the indignity of having him examine my foot, twisting my leg this way and that, ostensibly so he can see everything properly, but I’m sure he’s just tormenting me. Finally, he lets it go—without warning, of course, so it drops sharply and I’m thrown off balance again.
“It doesn’t seem to be broken, but there are a lot of small bones in feet. If it’s still bothering you after a while, we’ll arrange an X-ray.”
“We?” I say snidely, putting my sock and shoe back on. “I think I can manage that myself, thanks. There’s a radiology clinic down the street from my apartment.”
The look he gives me is so patient and long-suffering, I feel like a kid having a tantrum. “I mean ‘we’ as in CSG,” he says. “I’m sure Percy has told you it’s better if you don’t visit human doctors. Your bloods and scans all appear fully human now, but we don’t—”
“Yeah, I know, sorry,” I interrupt, face hot with embarrassment.
“I wouldn’t have… I don’t intend to give you guys away.
This might not be what I always pictured for my life, but I am grateful.
” Ugh, I nearly choked on those words. Why is it so much easier to say thank you to Percy than to Andrew?
Even knowing that Andrew was part of the group that raided the compound and freed me?
He pats my knee. “I know. So… I’m guessing you weren’t able to concentrate while I was moving around.”
I don’t even bother to reply, and he laughs.
“Well, at least we know it’s something you can do and an area to work on. Why don’t we check out your reflexes and spatial awareness now? We can come back to charisma another time.”
“Spatial awareness?” The wary feeling is back. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like this much. And after everything else we’ve done today, that’s really saying something.
He nods and stands, pushing his chair so it rolls to the side.
“Up. Your job is really easy this time. All you need to do is be aware of where I am and dodge me. It’s a bit like tag.
You’re going to stand mostly still, and I’m going to move around you and try to tap you with my hand.
Be aware of where I am and try not to let me touch you. ”
That sounds easy enough—except for the part where he’s a vampire with super speed and reflexes and I’m not.
But hey, whatever.
I sigh. “Sure. Let’s give it a shot.”
He tsks. “Come on, Noah. What’s with the defeatist attitude? You never know what you can do until you try.” And then he winks.
Have I mentioned how much I hate him? It bears repeating.
Less than five minutes later, my arms are flailing wildly in a desperate attempt to stop him from touching me. There’s no way, absolutely no way I’m ever going to be able to beat his reflexes. Right now, I just want to wallop him.
Unfortunately, my tentacle-waving-kraken impression gets a little too enthusiastic. Next thing I know, I’ve lost my balance and am flat on my back on the floor. Please note that Andrew did not use his super speed or reflexes to catch me. Just in case you thought I was exaggerating the asshole bit.
“Ow.” I lift my hand to probe the back of my head. There’s a sore spot where it smacked the floor. “Happy fucking birthday to me.”
“What?”
I glare up at Andrew. “What? Help me up, would you?” It’s the least he can do.
He reaches down and hauls me to my feel so fast, I get a little dizzy.
“Did you say it’s your birthday?” he demands. I’m so busy trying to regain my balance while simultaneously checking for a lump on my head that it takes me a second to answer.
“What? Oh. Yeah.” I think I’m done for the day. We made a little bit of progress amidst a whole pile of nothing, and I’m ready to call it quits. It’s close enough to the end of the workday that I won’t feel bad about leaving.
But first, I’m going to grab another bottle of water and sit down for a minute.
I’ve raided the fridge and am cracking open the bottle when I hear Andrew talking. Only it’s not to me.
“Sam? I’m either devastated that you didn’t invite me or shocked and appalled that you didn’t plan anything.”
What the fuck? I spin around to see his phone pressed to his ear and his usual smirk on his face.
“I’m talking about the fact that it’s Noah’s birthday”—oh, no, no, no! I feel my eyes widen with horror—“and yet I’ve heard nothing about a party. You didn’t even bring a cake to the meeting earlier.”
“Shut up!” I hiss. “What are you doing ?”
“I’m with Noah still, and he seems really upset right now.
” I can tell he’s trying to sound serious, but there’s no hiding the note of laughter in his voice—especially when I abandon my water and lunge for him.
“This is really not what I expected from you, Sam. I thought you were one of those friends who remembered important events and made a fuss.” He puts a hand on my chest and extends his arm, and that’s it. I can’t get any closer.
I give up trying to get his phone away from him and glower. “I hate you.”
“What’s that, Sam? I couldn’t hear you; Noah was saying something… I think about how he hates to be a bother. Isn’t that awful? He doesn’t even want to trouble us to celebrate his birthday.”
If it wasn’t my life he was fucking with, I’d probably admire the way he’s gone about this.
With one phone call, he’s managed to torment two people…
three if you count Gideon, who doesn’t strike me as the birthday party type but will probably be roped into helping Sam organize one.
That takes skill. And wrongheadedness, but hey, what else can I expect from him.
Conceding defeat and leaving Andrew to his puppeteer act, I go back to my water bottle and plant myself in my chair. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Sam will decide to take me out for lunch tomorrow or something instead of a par—
“No, I really think it has to be a party, Sam,” Andrew insists. “We want Noah to feel like part of the group, don’t we? He should know he belongs. What better way than with a gathering to show everyone how much we care? A quiet meal somewhere might make him think you’re ashamed of knowing him.”
I shake my head. “You’re the one who should be ashamed.” Sam’s not really falling for this, is he?
I sigh. Maybe he is. As grateful as I am to Sam, I’ve been kind of standoffish.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to convince him it’s because I don’t feel like I’m part of the group.
Especially since I don’t—but that’s not actually something I’m sad about.
Is it terrible that part of me just wants to be an ordinary human?
And ordinary humans don’t fit in with… whatever this is.
“Sure, I can do that. We have a few more exercises I want to try”—oh, hell no—“but then we’ll come to your place. You should ask David to get the cake from that place near his house.”
Is it just me, or does Andrew seem really hung up on the idea of cake?
That’s the second time he’s mentioned it to Sam.
Could it be that the vampire who is rumored to have witnessed the signing of the Magna Carta (and no, I don’t actually believe that, but it is a cool story) has the sweet tooth of a small child?
I wonder if that’s because sugar was so hard to come by in Europe when he was a kid.
Actually… was sugar hard to come by back then?
I assume it was, because shipping was much slower and more perilous, not to mention processing and refining would have been very different, but I’ve never really looked into it.
I should ask Andrew—if nothing else, it will give me the chance to slip in a few jabs about his advanced age.
He’s ended the call now and is grinning at me expectantly. I’m about to start yelling when my phone rings in my pocket, vibrating pleasantly against my leg.
I groan.
“You’d better get that,” he says, and this time I actually do get to throw my water bottle at him. Such a shame it’s empty. And that he dodges it.
I fish out my phone and glance at the display before answering. “Hi, Sam.”
“Happy Birthday! I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” He sounds anxious for me to understand that he didn’t just forget my birthday, and I wish I still had the bottle so I could throw it again.
“Thank you, Sam. Don’t worry about it, there was no way for you to know. I didn’t want any fuss, anyway.” I tack the last bit on in the hopes of avoiding a party.
“No fuss,” Sam assures me, “but we have to mark the occasion. It’s not every day you turn twenty.” He pauses. “It is twenty, right? Math has never been my strong point.”
I snort. “Yeah, I’m twenty now.” Man, I never really considered it, but I must seem so young to all the people here.
Like, I’ve always thought about it in terms of how old they all are, but I must be a baby to them.
Even Sam is nearly twenty years older than me, and he’s the youngest one here by far…
as much as I can tell. It’s not like everyone wears a badge with their age on it.
“But we really don’t need to mark the occasion.
I don’t want you to go to any trouble.” I wince. Fuck, that was the wrong thing to say.
Sure enough, Sam falls all over himself to assure me that it’s no trouble at all, and I find myself agreeing that a small gathering would be great, and yes, I’ll come with Andrew later.
“Or I could come over now,” I offer in a last-ditch effort to escape the dastardly vampire.
“I’m sure Andrew’s got other things he needs to do.
I don’t want to take up all his time.” Oh my god, what is wrong with me?
As soon as the words are out, I know they were a mistake.
I need to stop with all the polite expressions I don’t mean, because Sam is instantly asserting that Andrew’s glad to help me and that I’m a priority to them all.
Andrew just laughs, the fucker.
I end the call with Sam feeling both glum and murderous. It’s an interesting combination.
“Ready to move on?” Andrew asks in a perky voice best associated with those people who do telemarketing surveys and assure you they have “just a few questions.”
“I’m done,” I say bluntly. And just so there’s no room for misinterpretation… “No more tests or activities or anything. I’m done.”
He studies me, then nods. “Fair enough. It’s been a busy afternoon. What if we try some meditation?” He holds up his hands when I start to protest. “Just meditation. Something to help your brain process everything you’ve done today—including your attempt to maim me.”
“I did not attempt to maim you.” Not that I’ll admit to, anyway. “It was an accident. Your chair hit me.”
“Sure, sure. An accident. Anyway, meditation?”
Is it wrong of me to be suspicious? “Just meditation? Nothing else?”
“I swear. Just meditation. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we pushed hard today, and you did something with your mind that you’ve never done before. It’s a good idea to let it relax fully.”
He seems to be in earnest, and honestly, I really would welcome the opportunity to just sit and be quiet and still for a few minutes.
So I grudgingly agree, then close my eyes as he starts with the whole “breathe in through your nose and clear your mind” spiel.
My gym teacher at high school was really into meditation and always started class with a five-minute session, so this is nothing new…
although I have to admit, when Andrew’s not trying to be a dick, his voice is kind of soothing… .