Chapter Eighteen
Click-click.
Lucy clawed her way out of a murky half dream.
She wasn’t where she last remembered. The broadcasting studio had been bright with the morning light—wherever she was now, the blinds were drawn.
But she didn’t have time to get her bearings yet.
What’s easier than locking a door? Laurentius had said.
As if he’d ever had to imagine a door like his life depended on it.
But she did imagine it, even as the room spun. She pressed the lock, flipped the deadbolt. And her mind was so quiet, in the wake of it, that she knew he wasn’t there.
Maybe he’d been too slow. Maybe she’d dreamed it. Or maybe he just wanted her to know that he was paying attention.
Something touched the side of her head. She flinched away from it, at first. But the voice that followed it was one she knew.
“It’s okay,” it said. “Can you sit up a little? Let’s get you some water.”
Lucy blinked away that locked door in her mind and finally began to register where she was. She was tucked into a creaky twin bed. The blinds above her, those were Mila’s blinds. And sitting beside her, stroking her hair, was Natalie Baker.
“Natalie.” Lucy’s voice was a rasp. When she tried to move, she found her arms secured over her head, the way they had been for the past two nights. She was restrained again, she realized. In broad daylight.
“Sorry about those, by the way.” Natalie helped ease her head up to take a sip of water. “Mila thought you might feel safer this way. But she’s out for a bit, so if you want those untied, just say the word. No offense, but I’m pretty sure I could take you right now.”
“Natalie,” Lucy said again, clearer now after the water. She was faintly aware that she’d started crying. “I thought you left. You should have left.”
“Oh. Oh, honey.” A sunbeam fell across Natalie’s face as she wiped at Lucy’s cheeks, obscuring her expression. Her voice sounded thick. “Of course I didn’t leave you. Didn’t I tell you I just needed some sleep? I’m so sorry I took so long.”
Lucy closed her eyes, dislodging a few more tears that Natalie hurriedly dried away. “You needed it.”
“Not as badly as you need it right now,” Natalie said. “We’re, um…trying to figure out what’s going on. But whatever it is, it’s doing a number on you. Just try to rest.”
She was probably right about that. Lucy felt delirious.
She probably was delirious. But she felt a strange, feverish clarity, too.
She could hear the sounds of Natalie’s vitals, as usual.
But she felt like she understood the emotions behind the heartbeat now.
It was clear enough, if she listened closely.
Under that breezy bravado, Natalie’s body was singing with fear.
And yet it hadn’t occurred to her not to come back. Or if it had, there was no trace of that, looking at her now.
If she lived long enough to speak to her mother again, Lucy needed to tell her that she was both right and wrong about the world. It had teeth. But it also had Natalie Bakers.
“The infection is progressing,” Lucy mumbled. “I punched a hole in Athena’s wall. I don’t think I should be able to do that.”
“That’s what Mila said, too.” Natalie had moved on to anxiously rubbing at her arm. “It’s still too bright in here, isn’t it? Sorry, we tried to make it as dark as we could. Here, I’ll put this back on.”
A cool cloth settled over Lucy’s forehead and eyes, and the relief was so immediate, she could have cried all over again.
The itchy sunlight faded into a damp cool, sending the occasional shiver through her.
It wasn’t wholly unpleasant. There was something almost grounding about the ripple of goose bumps down her arms.
“You said Mila left,” Lucy said. “Where did she go?”
“Not sure.” Lucy heard the grimace in Natalie’s voice. “She said she had an idea, and she’d be back before sunset. Hopefully it’s a really good idea.”
Lucy made a small, affirmative sound. She was glad Mila wasn’t here, seeing her like this. It was probably how Jon had looked before he died. At least Mila hadn’t been there back then. Even if she had to watch it happen to Lucy, she hadn’t had to watch it happen to someone she loved.
She willed herself to believe she wasn’t there yet. If nothing else, she couldn’t die on Natalie’s watch.
“And Athena?” Lucy said.
Natalie paused. “That Provost woman wants her out of her suite by tomorrow,” she said. “She’s packing up over there now, I think.”
“They can’t shut her down,” Lucy said, although it didn’t sound convincing, even to her. They could shut her down. They had. She wondered if Athena would come see her, too. But no. That wasn’t safe. If Vanya asked Lucy, right now, to hand Athena over—Lucy didn’t know what she’d do.
Maybe they’d at least get to talk one more time, if this was the end. It would be nice to tell Athena that there were some things it was okay to run away from.
Not that Athena would listen. She wasn’t going to run. Not from Rollins, not from Vanya. She didn’t have it in her to fail. It was why Dr. Horne knew she’d reflect well on Rollins one day.
Maybe Athena could rid this place of Vanya before graduation. And maybe, if that happened, she could be convinced to try to get through to Sadie and Addison. To see if they were suffering like Whitney had suffered. Mila could convince her to try, probably. If Mila believed it herself.
“They offered to turn me,” Lucy blurted out. All at once, she could no longer keep it to herself. “Laurentius of Rome. He said he could turn me into a vampire.”
Even with her eyes covered, Lucy could hear the change in Natalie’s breath, the shift of her posture.
Fair enough—Lucy hadn’t exactly eased her into it.
But she hadn’t seen Natalie since Laurentius made her the offer.
And now that she was giving it some thought, she realized Natalie was the only one she wanted to talk to about it.
“Oh,” Natalie said. It was a supremely restrained response. But she sounded more curious than afraid. “Are you, um. How do you feel about that?”
Lucy laughed. She’d been feeling every possible emotion about it since the second Laurentius asked. But that wasn’t really Natalie’s question. The question was Are you considering it?
“Sometimes, when I think about it, it makes so much sense to me.” Lucy was quiet as she spoke. As if making her voice softer would make the words softer. “More sense than anything has ever made. And that’s the entire reason I came here, right? To find something I really wanted from my life?”
In the pause that followed, Lucy waited for Natalie to shut her down.
It was the only smart thing to do at a declaration like that.
But Natalie took one of Lucy’s bound hands and squeezed it.
“Well,” she said. “You’d have to find somewhere with a nightlife, of course.
The mountain doesn’t have much of that to speak of, unless you count coyotes and possums.”
“Natalie,” Lucy said. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” Natalie said. And she was. She was using the voice she used for her orientation week library tours, the one that gently pulled everyone into line.
“Athena and Mila aren’t here. It’s just us.
And—and I don’t know how much longer this is going to last.” This could have meant any number of applicable things.
Vanya’s game. Lucy herself. Probably both.
“So, if you’re seriously considering it, you should tell me.
I’ll bring him here myself if I have to. ”
Lucy was thankful for the cool cloth—it caught her fresh round of tears.
She really didn’t know what she’d do without Natalie.
“Athena thinks that when you become a vampire, the person you are is gone,” she said.
“Or at least, she thinks that if our instincts make us what we are, then new instincts make us something different. That we can’t truly love the people we used to love if we come to see them as prey. ”
“Hmm,” Natalie said. “And is that why you’re hesitating?”
Of course she was hesitating. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I believe that, exactly. But…I am hesitating. And there’s no reason why I should. I’m dying anyway—what do I have to lose?”
Suddenly cold, Lucy shook her head to dislodge the washcloth.
“There are things I was supposed to do,” she said, as Natalie dutifully pushed the cold cloth aside.
“Live somewhere with public transportation. Pay too much for an apartment with people I barely know. Eat a meal at a restaurant with multiple courses. Work at a job that isn’t retail.
Maybe in an office. And I’d hate my boss and complain constantly and dream about quitting, but I’d stay anyway, because I’d be able to afford the apartment and the train pass and the prix fixe meal. ”
Natalie laughed softly. “You can dream a bit bigger than that, you know.”
“That already feels like a pretty big dream sometimes.” The sun glittered against the ceiling.
Lucy watched the shifting light. It still hurt her eyes.
But if she wasn’t going to be able to look at it for much longer, she should take it in.
“Doesn’t feel very big now, next to the promise of civilizations living and dying at my feet.
But it’s still enough. Enough that I don’t know what to do. ”
“Oh, Lucy,” Natalie said, barely audible. And looking up at her, Lucy knew that, for once, her friend had no idea what to say.
“It’s okay.” Lucy squeezed their joined hands, then untangled them. She’d gotten it off her chest. That was enough. “I think I should sleep.”
“Of course,” Natalie said. “Get some rest.”
Rest was a tall order, though. It wasn’t long before Lucy fell back into fitful dreams. She was faintly aware that in the dream, she was climbing the steep hill to Johnson Library.