Chapter Fifteen #2
Mila had taken the call in the bathroom.
It was probably easier to lie when she didn’t have to look at the thrall she had tied to her bed.
But even then, Lucy didn’t know how she got through it.
How could she pretend that they hadn’t seen Whitney just hours ago, fighting her would-be sisters to taste a single drop of blood?
The call couldn’t have lasted that long. But Mila was still in the bathroom by the time Lucy slipped into an uneasy sleep. She could hear Mila’s muffled voice in the dream, somewhere at the end of a hallway that kept growing longer.
Lucy crawled into wakefulness a little after sunrise, feeling even worse than she had the night before. But she woke to a bit of good news, at least. When Mila saw that her eyes were open, she flashed a deeply subdued thumbs-up.
“Library vampires are a go,” she said. So Lucy pried herself out of bed and prepared for yet another day of trying to keep herself alive.
Lucy must have looked as rough as she felt, because as soon as they arrived at L. Roman’s office on B2, Hiro bundled her into Laurentius’s nice chair and furnished her with a hot cup of sencha tea. Lucy sleepily allowed it. She was so far beyond having too much pride to be fussed over.
“You poor thing,” he crooned. “Just relax. Take a moment to catch your breath.” He paused a moment before turning his sunny smile toward the other side of the room. “Can I get you something, too?”
Mila had positioned herself in a chair by the open door, her bow perched on her lap. She had once again left her quiver at home. Though in exchange, she’d fished one of her spare arrows from her bag to place onto the chair next to her.
“No thanks,” Mila said. “Caffeine makes me jittery.”
“Fair enough,” Hiro said. “Wouldn’t want those hands shaking.”
Laurentius watched them with his usual withering eye. “If everyone is settled,” he said, “then I suppose we should get to the point. You said you’ve come to practice?”
“I mean…I get what you showed me the other night,” Lucy said. “Obviously I know how to lock a door. But maybe it would be good to try it a few more times. Just to make sure I’m fast enough.”
Laurentius, as always, had a look like she was wasting his precious eternal life.
Though now that they were meeting for the third time, Lucy was beginning to suspect that his face was just like that.
Sitting next to him, she felt oddly at ease.
His presence was comfortable in the same way that watching the river on a winter day was comfortable.
There was something soothing about keeping company with something that could kill you but wouldn’t.
“Close your eyes, then,” Laurentius said. “Deep breaths. I can’t enter your dreams this time, but maybe a relaxed state will do.”
“You’re going into her mind?” Mila said. Lucy didn’t miss the shift in her voice.
“Mila,” Lucy said. She hoped that she sounded comforting. “It’s okay. If I need help, I’ll tell you.”
She closed her eyes. Even as the office slipped away from her, she could hear Mila, muttering on the other side of the room. “If you need help, you’d better scream at the top of your lungs.”
Though she was awake this time, when she opened her eyes, the scenery was just as it was the last time Laurentius had entered her mind.
She was lying on Mila’s bed, unbound, in the blue-lit darkness of the dorm.
When she sat up, Laurentius and Hiro were watching her from the little kitchenette table.
Lucy blinked into the dark. “I thought you were going to try to break in.”
“Well, about that.” Even in her mind, Hiro had somehow procured a pot of tea. “We actually thought you’d be better served by a bit of a breather.”
Laurentius ran one pale finger around the edge of his mug.
It was one from Mila’s cupboard. A party favor from a family reunion.
“You don’t need any more practice. You understand exactly what you need to do.
But your body and mind are both under tremendous stress.
The infection is demanding all your resources. ”
Lucy bristled. Now Laurentius cared about her resources? He hadn’t seemed to care that much when he’d cost her a night of sleep. “You think I can’t manage it?”
“Obviously I think you can’t manage it,” Laurentius said. “You were never managing it.”
“Lucy,” Hiro said, “I’d say you were running on fumes, but I think you spent the fumes days ago. If you don’t slow down, you’ll end up like that poor sweet boy your friend back there came here to avenge.”
“Don’t get in her head,” Lucy snapped.
“Frankly, I don’t need to,” Hiro said. “It’s pouring out of her every time she looks at you. She thinks that this is how he must have looked before he died. And she’s probably right.”
“You need to stop attending classes, at the very least,” Laurentius said. “They’re an unnecessary drain on your energy.”
“I’m not doing that,” Lucy said. “If I survive this, I’m going to end up weeks behind.”
“And if you don’t survive this, you’ll never attend classes again,” Laurentius said. “Seems like simple math to me.”
“I came here to go to college,” she shot back. “If I don’t actually get to go to college, all of this would have been for nothing.”
“That’s a patently ridiculous thing to say,” said Laurentius. “You came here because you wanted to live your life, correct? As of now, your classes are a risk to your survival. Why not cut them out?”
“Dear,” Hiro said gently. “Perhaps this is one of those things we no longer understand. Obsession is a very human foible, isn’t it?”
The word stopped Lucy short. “I’m not obsessed.”
“Oh, child.” Hiro’s sympathy had shifted over into pity.
Lucy had much preferred the sympathy. “Your leader has devoted three years to chasing Vanya’s shadow.
Your archer still half believes she should trade her life for the one she lost. And you’ve traveled all this way, far from your only family, because your own home felt like rot and decay to you.
Even your friend, the one who got hurt yesterday, would risk her life for the kind of loyalty I doubt many of her peers would give her in turn.
Obsession is the mortal’s bread and butter.
Even little Vanya still carries his grudges from life. ”
Lucy sat back on the bed. The fight, for the time being, had gone out of her. “You know what he was like when he was alive?”
“I only know what he told us, back when we were on better terms,” Hiro said. “You read that article I sent you, didn’t you?”
Lucy nodded. “He was a Russian aristocrat.”
“And as he tells it, he was the darling of the old empire,” Hiro said with a grand wave of a hand.
“A prodigious fighter, a talented musician. A playmate of Tsar Nicholas’s little daughters.
And in the years leading up to his death, a loyal soldier to his honored father and brother.
” He took a sip of his tea. Lucy wondered if it tasted like anything.
“Bullshit, of course. His thoughts are almost as open as a mortal man’s.
He was a second son. He’s never gotten over being a second son.
He died like a second son, cowering under a table and watching his parents beg for the life of his brother.
And worse, it was some passing monster that brought his family to its end.
If the Bolsheviks had gotten them months later—well, at least that would have been a story. ”
“He’s not what I’d call a complicated specimen,” Laurentius said.
“People like Ivan Volkov fall into two molds. They enjoy their neglect, or they come to resent it. I don’t think you have to guess which type our boy falls into.
He was never given the keys to the kingdom, so he decided he had to create one. ”
“Three college students aren’t a kingdom,” Lucy said.
“You assume he’s in a hurry,” Laurentius said. “And if he gets his way, it won’t be three for much longer.”
Lucy’s head swam, her mind full enough to burst. Hiro rose gracefully to his feet and crossed the room to squeeze her shoulder.
“I should go entertain your lovely bodyguard before she shoots us both,” he said. “Why don’t you and Laurentius stay and chat for a while longer?”
Apparently, it wasn’t a difficult process, leaving someone’s mind. In the space of a blink, Hiro was there, and then gone.
She lifted her attention to Laurentius’s clouded face. “I apologize if he seemed flippant,” he finally said. “Human nature was of interest to him in life. It has remained so in his undeath. I suppose to humans, it sounds insensitive.”
Lucy summoned a smile. God. She really was tired. “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s not as insensitive as you.”
Laurentius actually laughed. Just once, but he made no attempt to hide it. “Yes,” he said, “that’s true.”
The silence that followed was expectant. Lucy had the feeling that she was being invited to explain why she was here. But she waited until Laurentius put the question into words. “You didn’t really come here to practice something you already know, did you? Are you doubting your human friends?”
“Not doubting…exactly,” Lucy said. Doubt made it seem like it was their fault, somehow.
It was the furthest thing from their fault.
But still. “We took a risk, and Natalie paid for it. If we take more risks, we’ll probably keep on paying for it.
But…if we keep playing it safe. If we keep waiting for him to make a stupid mistake. Then Mila thinks I might not last.”
She confessed the next part much more quietly. “And I think she’s right.”
Laurentius’s ever-present look of consternation had faded into the background again. His moments of blankness no longer scared Lucy. But they did mean he was thinking of something that he didn’t want her to read.
“Those aren’t your only options,” he said.
Lucy straightened. Even in her mind, Mila’s twin bed creaked. “I’m listening.”