Oh, so I take it the Cullen girl rescued you. Hardly a net benefit to the world.
I still froze up when she laid a hand on my arm.
"I'm asking you not to do that."
"Very defiant. I keep cautioning you against that. You're a slow learner."
I saw her clearly: lines of her bones below her face, a long arm, a red-and-purple shirt with three lines of dull ribbon. I couldn't escape it or distort it.
The ways you can punish me are limited. The time I have with you is limited. Saying it aloud would ruin it.
Stranger things and you don't know the least of them.
"What do you want to know? I'm clear-headed enough." Slug-slow and resenting it. "Don't touch me." This time there wasn't a well to draw on, dazzling, dappled shapes in the air. But she lifted her hand, as if before it had been the same few seconds and my mind deluding me.
Her walls were dull. Her books and papers smelt flyblown and yellowing. Her smoke lingered in the air. No trick of perception softened the angles of her furniture; no pictures sprung from the air.
"What's the latest distraction you feel spares you from making an effort in these sessions?" She flicked open her green glass lighter.
"Must be the medication variant." You still have power over me. "I'll talk with him about it."
You couldn't say, I'm frightened it's eaten me away and I don't know it. I wouldn't take anything at night: I should have felt the walls moving into a small box, but the room remained where it was. As most real things.
"You have an interesting collection of aversions," she said coldly. As if she nourished a sense of righteous indignation against me. "People. Touch. Inability to cleanse yourself. Children."
"Interesting? Not at all." I drew my knees up on the chair, locking myself in. "I survive. With them. Intact."
"Your mother was right. Probably for the wrong reasons. Stay away from people," she said. "You haven't been spending time with Jenessa out of class, have you?"
She had friends; I barely knew their names. Bodhi didn't count. "No." Close to the truth.
"Much more sensible. If I hear again you're a threat to anyone..." She glared. I thought she meant it; not just playing a game. I couldn't start to understand why; tired and greying and disgustingly slow. "You can go now."
I wound up in the cafeteria again. Keep Jenessa safe from Bodhi; if that wasn't needed I'd go alone. I couldn't see either of them and turned away.
An icy cold hand reached up to grab mine.
"Hello," Alora Cullen said as I wrenched away. "Don't squawk so loudly, or people will think I'm hurting you. Come and sit down."
"I should escape." People stared already. "I'm not supposed to...and I don't..." I glanced behind and saw the bearded one. He'd crept up as if he'd hunted. I found myself taking a step in Alora's direction.
That was the problem. The likes of Erin--sitting between Imogen and Misha over by the mashed potatoes--were sheltered in ways I wasn't. Some threats you knew to walk away from. Two golden-eyed vampires behind and before failed to raise the same kind of fear.
"We'll help you," Alora said, "tell you answers. I'll be sad if you don't come. You want to be nice, don't you? It's much easier to be nice than mean."
"--Answers. I ought to want answers."
Her head barely cleared the table when she sat up. She pushed a carton of strawberry-flavored milk toward me; I took nothing. An overstuffed notebook lay on the bench near her right. Black-and-white photocopies of dress designs fluttered out, the lower half of a dress like a flower and a section of long flowing sleeve. Her handwriting looped generously in a purple shade of ink, like a child's attempt at copperplate; she dotted her i's without ornament. Upside down I read sateen, ribbing, chiffon, sloper.
Her friend Killigan sat on my other side.
I'd yell out what I think you are and they'd come to take me away.
"Some people do horrid things to you if they think you're mad," Alora said, pouting. "But I just want people to be happy. You can smile for once, can't you? Don't you want to be happy? Just turning your frown upside down by itself can make you feel happy, because of endorphins and things like that in your blood. And it takes twenty muscles to make a frown, but only three to make a smile."
"I don't think it does. I think that's a myth." I looked down at my hands; my fingers twitched, slightly weathered and nail-bitten.
"I like to be happy. Killigan's good at making me feel happy," Alora said, surprisingly definite about it. "How are you feeling? Do you like strawberry milk? I like the color. No--" She tilted her head to the side. "I can see, I think, that you're not going to drink it. But it's fuzzy."
It was sealed, but I could imagine a needle in the carton--or the equivalent of a pomegranate from the underworld.
"You're not an easy person," she said.
"You're wasting time. What answers?" I fiddled with my hands, drew out a pen and turned it over. I felt drained; half eager to run from them and half only bored. I hated being made to feel things; I needed the pills to stop. "Your hands were cold," I said, reminding myself of an unreality.
"I forgot to put on my mittens." She drew pink-colored gloves from a string around her neck; they'd been hand-stitched in jagged mountain-like patterns of a darker pink. "Do you like them? How do you feel, Xavier Swan?"
"Mind your own business." I pulled up a sheet of paper. "Would this be better? Worried about eavesdropping?"
"Well, actually we just wanted to try a few little things on you because Jon said so," Alora said. She reached in her lacy shoulderbag and displayed a set of painted pasteboard cards; perhaps tarot, a set of dancing figures in bright, frilly clothing and candy stripes. "A promise of answers was only a lure. We do that. Are you sure you can't smile even once?" She flicked open her cards and laid them out like a game of solitaire, and giggled. Killigan glared at me as if he was badly constipated. "I feel so happy!" she added. "The happiest I've been in a whole two weeks, at least. Sitting here with an old friend and a new friend--so happy! I want to hug everyone!" White teeth flashed in her face. I shoved the chair away and backed into the next wall. Then she shook her head; I saw her companion raise his glare. "There, there. I didn't mean to scare you."
I heard laughter from the muscular blonde girl at the table ahead; a strange grin from the boy next to her. Some turned their heads and stared because of the noise I'd made--and all smiled cheerfully. I thought madly that there was nobody left who wasn't grinning wild and sharp as dogs' pointed teeth--
A piece of paper.
What are the treaty limits to you? You can answer this without overhearing, I passed to her.
"You don't need to answer him," Killigan said; voice rough and low like syrup over pebbles.
"But I want to." Alora smiled. "It's anyone who comes from here, who little Monty's friends say lives here, and anyone who passes through, and it's where it used to be." Her voice sang it. She said it as if she knew exactly what I meant.
"Little Monty? Is he less little than you?" I asked. She pouted and tossed her pigtails.
"Don't ask a lady her age, silly! I'm only sixteen this year. Just about!"
I stole a blank page from her book, leaning over the girl. What about strange gifts? Bodhi... I wrote.
She's a mindreader, fucking leech, Monty said. Let it slip because she's so bloody cocky. Alora thinks she can tell fortunes. The rest are close-mouthed. Chances are Jon's got something for he's in charge of the lot...
Alora dealt herself a solitaire rematch. Her friend rested his thick elbows on the table.
"You feel angry or sad if she didn't feel like answering?" Killigan said. A British accent or Scots rather than southern like Alora's.
"Too bad apathy isn't an option." They'd told some things--let some things go--I felt nothing. Nothing like the fear driving me running to that tree. He shook his head. Alora spoke up again in her small, high voice.
"Then I don't like to let people go," she said, "but I leave it to Bodhi to be popular. Sometimes it's hard for me to be careful, and it's hard for Killigan too. You'll be safe as long as you stay away. Or as long as you stay in the boundaries. Actually...I don't find it easy to tell. It's going to get worse." She blinked her yellow eyes. "Have some nice pink desserts and watch some films with happy endings while you can. It's good for you."
"You should go," Killigan said, possibly growled.
Perhaps that was better. If Ms Enn troubled to find out. If I couldn't find out more, yet. The girl thought she knew what would happen.
Nobody believed Cassandra.
A map of old Quileute territory. Suggestions for how and why. Senescence. Laws of mass and energy. Possibly dust.
Stop making excuses and think it through.
Did you tell Imogen that story about Rhoda Jansen? I'd asked Jenessa--before realising that the time was wrong; neither two hundred years ago nor at all near the time the Cullens had returned. It was interesting.
NAH. GO ASK HER NICELY, she'd answered.
Vampire shapeshifters into fog. Or blurs from speed alone.
Imogen brushed still-lank hair back from her face impatiently with her left hand, her right wrist loosely bandaged. "I said it was a Hallowe'en edition and the source was a Jansen, what more journalistic integrity do you want? It was a good story--oh, yeah, you're still a bit new here and you still haven't gotten too much of a clue. Basic tip here: if it's a Jansen story, you check the secondary sources. Simple enough for you?" She sat back on the steps above me, outside a classroom.
"Hey." Imogen flipped to a new page in the notebook around her neck and started to spill thick ink over it, clumsy with her wrong hand: one point here and another point there, sharp lines between. I recognized it. She dipped her fingers in a dismembered pen and drew two thick lines that took a sudden veer. "I changed direction. Nothing on the road said why. Although when I looked again the ice was all melted and people had stepped everywhere, over most of the tracks. It's like there was some kind of guardian angel.
"A couple of people place Bodhi in different places when she started--Rick says one thing, Cady another, all the usual eyewitness stuff. Over there, it's like she'd be Wally West in high heels," Imogen said. "The superhero, duh? Heh, they'll say I'm mad too. Seung Ji was pretty nice about it even though it was her car I smashed--she kind of blames it all on careless men who don't look both ways. Erin and Misha are all worried about me. But you won't be."
She was right and knew it.
"You can't trust your mind and your memory. Not even if people say you're sane. So what do you remember?" she asked, but she left no chance to answer. "I'm like, major-league grounded forever." She slumped her chin against her left hand, creasing her skin like the red jacket around her shoulders. "No driving, no afterschool stuff, no detective field trip to Los Angeles. And I convinced Jen to hack into her biodad's email to set up an interview appointment. Never mind that. 'Course, I know I deserve it--I should've put on snow chains, I should've stayed home, I should've asked Dad to drive, should've driven better. I said I was sorry for nearly running you down."
Being sorry for carelessness did not stop it from harm.
"Like you said, I don't care about your inner turmoil." She looked for answers. "Have you chatted to Bodhi lately?"
She scowled. "Why d' you want to know?"
"Does she keep changing stories?"
Imogen leaned back, lowering her hand on the stairs. "Oh, plenty! Usual Bodhi. Making herself rescue me from the van totally going up in flames with the engine exploding. Making you cry at her feet in gratitude. Anything that makes a van into an exploding doomsday device and her into an angel with a flaming sword. Or whatever. I swerved like someone was looking out for me, or you, but who'd w--wait, not remotely what I meant. I've gotta figure why."
"Your mother's still protecting you," I suggested; that supernatural concept was one among several that came to my mind. Another buzzing question--ghosts, ogres, chupacabra, leviathan-- Imogen narrowed her eyes.
"Disgusting," she said, and scrambled to her feet. She blazed again. "You don't get why you shouldn't use stuff like that, do you? You don't get some prize for not caring about anything, I've seen Leon and all that walk up on you and you barely retaliate, but it's not because you're nice. Sometimes I can't read you at all and I can read 'most everyone else, so that suggests--
"I've got that Bodhi told her friends to try and patch things up with you lately," she attacked. "Half a cookie for her I guess--but you try to put people off no matter what. I guess it's understandable for acting like a person. You're weird, and you're new, and things started happening after you got here--I-- And another thing I know. Trisha at the grocery store gossips you get mostly cheap ramen--so if your father's giving you food money, what're you doing with the rest of it? Yeah. You're not as hidden as you'd like to think.
"You hate me for noticing things?" she asked. Imogen whirled down the stairs, steadying herself with the back of her left hand. She seemed to think not.
"Sorry." She spun back to throw a few last words at me. "Mouth works faster than brain. I'm kind of stressed lately. I've gotta go and get a ride with Misha--it's not just an excuse to get away from awkward conversations. My dad tried to raise me right, really. You can tell me without caring if I'm acting crazy or not--or would it be better to get an appointment or two with the school shrink?"
"No and no. I hope you're done talking."
"Mostly." Her friend Misha, easily recognizable at a distance, called her as if she hadn't lied. And Imogen ran across to join him.
I still had to wander away from Gordon's house while the daylight lasted; I kept by the roads.
Mother.
I can see grey fog in the distance again, like a small cloud of dust rising up.
--
