Chapter 17 #5
The box is the size of a deck of cards. The wood is dark and oiled.
There's no clasp; it opens on a hinge. Inside, on a bed of soft black cloth, is a braided cord—dark, fine, the color of river silt, with a small smooth wooden bead worked into the knot at one end.
Long enough to wrap around a wrist twice.
"My grandmother gave this to my mother. My mother gave it to me. I am giving it to you."
"Nellie. No."
"Cal—"
"That's a family thing—"
"I have at least six other ones at home and Mom will give me a new one the minute I ask. This one is supposed to be yours. I can feel it"
"How do you—"
"It's yours, Cal," Shandy says, simply. “Take it before she hits you with it.”
I can't speak.
Nellie takes my left hand and ties the cord around my wrist. Her fingers are quick at the knot—it's a working knot, the kind she’s obviously tied a hundred times. The cord settles against my skin like it's been there for a long time. The wooden bead sits at the inside of my wrist, against my pulse.
She’s beaming beside me. "It's not a fix. It's a touch-up. When the magic wants to spiral, when your head wants to leave your body, you take this out, you breathe three times, and you remind your body that there's a down."
I close my hand over the bead again. The settling is still there. Smaller. Real.
"Nellie."
"Mm."
"I don't know how to—"
"I know,” she cuts me off.
All these feelings and I can’t express them. She’s the best–the only true friend I’ve had. "I want to call your mother. Tomorrow."
"She'll pretend to be busy and then she'll sit on the phone with you for an hour."
“I don’t care,” I say. I look down at the cord on my wrist and turn the bead once with my thumb. The settling holds. "Thank you," I say. It comes out rougher than I mean it to.
"Don't thank me yet." Nellie tips her head back against the couch cushion, easy, like she's decided the heavy part of the night is behind us. "I'm about to ask you for something. Are you walking home tonight?"
"I—yeah. Eventually. I should."
"Or you could stay."
I look at her.
"We have an extra mattress under Tess's bed for emergencies. I'm proposing we drag it out, throw it on the floor, and call the whole thing a slumber party."
"Nell, I'm not sure I'm allowed to—"
"You have a security detail, not a curfew."
"I—I don't—I haven't actually had—"
I stop. I realize I’m not saying no because of my tail, she’s right–it’s not a curfew. I dig down deep inside myself and decide that I can be honest here, in front of them.
"I can’t remember the last time I had a slumber party," I say.
Nellie's face does something I can't watch. A little pity pinch that hurts my chest.
"Okay," she says. She's already standing up. "Hold this."
She presses her empty cider glass into my left hand, throws her curly hair out of her face, and marches out into the hall.
She leaves the door open so everyone and God can hear what she has to say.
"Corvin!"
Corvin's voice, faintly, from somewhere outside: "Miss Marchand."
"Your charge will be staying the night."
A pause. "Uh–Miss Dellaby hasn't informed me of any change to her—"
"Yes she has. I'm informing you. On her behalf. She's currently very busy laughing at me, so this is the official communication."
Another pause.
"Miss Marchand—"
"You have two choices, Corvin. Choice one: you go home.
Get some sleep. You look exhausted–do vamps sleep?
Anyways… Cal is safer in this dorm than she is in her cottage and you know it.
Choice two: you sit in the common room downstairs and wait all night.
There are couches. And at eight in the morning I'll personally walk Cal back to her cottage so you can resume your professional anxiety. "
A very long pause.
I’m laughing into the empty cider glass Nellie pressed into my hand. Tess has slid sideways off the couch onto the rug, her face buried in a throw pillow, her shoulders shaking. Margo hasn't even pretended to look at her textbook in the last thirty seconds. Shandy is smiling at the ceiling.
"I'll sit in the common room, Miss Marchand."
"Excellent choice."
Her boots come back around the corner and she appears in the doorway, hair still flying, a look of supreme satisfaction on her face.
"Margo, go take the vamp a blanket, please. He looks like he hasn't slept in a week."
"On it." Margo is already up and moving, her textbook abandoned. Tess is hooting into her pillow. I'm still laughing—I can't stop, my face is wet again, my shoulder hurts, I don't care.
"Come on." Nellie reaches for me. "Up. We need to get you in pajamas. Shandy, make a snack plate."
"I just made one yesterday," Shandy says, from the rug, not moving.
"Yes, and it was a masterpiece, and Cal hasn't lived until she's eaten one of your snack plates."
"Fine." Shandy unfolds upward. "Cal, allergies?"
"I—what?"
"Allergies."
"No. No, I don't think—no."
"Then I'll surprise you." Shandy floats toward the kitchenette in her leggings and long cardigan, all six feet of her.
I look at Nellie. She bumps her shoulder against mine.
"Come on, slumber-party virgin. We've got work to do."