Chapter 16 #4
None of these thoughts were going to help me sleep, so I carefully got out of bed, moving slowly so that I wouldn’t disturb Raj. He’d rolled over in his sleep so that he wasn’t curled around me, so it was easier than it sometimes would have been.
I grabbed a pair of sweatpants off the floor, waiting until I was in the main room before pulling them on. I went into the kitchen, where the light was less likely to disturb Raj, and made myself some tea, then sat at the kitchen table.
A squeak from the floor got my attention.
“Hey,” I whispered to Victor, who was sitting by my feet.
He squeaked again.
“You going to keep me company?” I asked the undead rat. Not that he could understand me.
He squeaked.
Could he understand me? If not the words, maybe the emotions? I tried to remember some of what Mason had said about revenants and zombies and other kinds of undead. Not that we actually knew what kind of undead Victor was.
I bent and picked him up, then set him on the table in front of me.
“You want to try some necromancy?” I asked him.
He blinked his beady little eyes at me, then squeaked.
I had no idea what that meant. Except, according to Mason and one of the books I’d finally managed to read at the Library of Virginia—found for me by Fiona—I should be able to get a sense for what Victor was feeling.
He was a rat, so both Fiona and Mason thought he probably wouldn’t have any complex thoughts, but things like approval, disapproval, fear, and hunger should be things I could pick up from him, if I could figure out how.
I stared down at Victor, who just sat there, looking at me, as though staring at him would somehow reveal to me what his little ratty head was thinking.
“How can you talk to me?” I asked him, not expecting an answer.
He squeaked.
I supposed I deserved that.
I sighed, then got up and went to pull a container of peas out of the fridge. I could usually encourage Victor to do things with peas.
Not that I knew what I needed him to do.
I took the peas back to the kitchen table.
“Okay,” I said to the rat. “I need to feel what you feel. No idea if that makes any sense to your little rat brain, but that’s what’s going on. So.” I held up a pea. “Do you want this?”
I deliberately didn’t hold it out to him because that would make it clear that it was his food, not my food. He understood what “no” meant.
Or maybe he just understood when I thought no at him?
I had no idea how any of this worked.
Victor’s tiny eyes stared at the pea. He sniffed the air. Then he looked at me. Then back at the pea.
Want.
I half-fell back in my chair. “Holy shit.”
Victor cocked his head at me.
Want? It was… confused?
I was definitely confused.
I held the pea out. “Go ahead,” I told him, feeling awed.
Happy.
He scurried forward the few steps needed to take the pea out of my fingers and stuff it in his cheeks.
I swallowed. I could talk—sort of—to Victor.
And if I could talk to him, maybe I could… The fact that I might be able to control him felt… dirty.
“Hey, Victor.”
The rat looked up at me, chewing. That was weird. Rats weren’t supposed to know their own names, were they? Especially not random city rats. Because Victor was definitely not a pet rat.
Maybe that meant he was responding to my emotions. That he had more access to me than I did to him.
“I—want to try something,” I told him, still speaking softly. “I want to try making you do things—if that’s okay with you?”
Want? He looked at the small container of peas.
“How about I trade you peas for this… experiment?”
Content.
This was so weird. Because it’s not like I got words from him. The same way that I didn’t really get words from Grace or Zane’s toys, or, at least, not yet, anyway. Except not, because people’s emotions had layers that Victor’s really didn’t.
I tried using Archie’s exercises, mixed a little bit with some of what Mason and I had been working on. Feeling for the existence of another being. Looking for its soul.
There was something bright—not… quite like a living thing, but not unlike one, either. Which probably meant Victor.
I gave it a tug, and Victor moved toward me, eyes fixed on my face.
I tugged him toward the bowl of peas.
Want? It was a question.
I tried just thinking at him. Yes.
He let out a squeak, then reached in, standing on his little rat toes, and scrabbled out a pea.
Content.
I moved him all over the kitchen table, had him run up one of my arms, across my shoulders, and down the other. Had him push a pea across the table. Had him try to pick up a spoon, then just drag it when it was clearly too unwieldy for him.
He got as many peas as he wanted.
Full. Content, he sent me after the last time I offered him another pea. Then, Scritch?
I rubbed at his head.
Happy.
“Okay, Victor,” I said softly, picking him up and carrying him back to his box. “You can go to bed.”
Happy.
My brain was buzzing, but I also felt exhaustion heavy on my shoulders and eyelids. It was almost three in the morning, and I’d just used a lot of magic.
Maybe I’d at least get some sleep.