best friend just died and it’s all your fault. Dr. Duggan says it gets better after that-she’s helped some lucies who got retired-but I’m not interested in finding out.”
“Ouch,” Ellen said. Sounds like quitting smoking, only worse. “Well, I asked.”
“That you did. I want her to go on biting me as long as possible. So what else happened?”
“We went to the town house.”
“God, isn’t it gorgeous? That heated infinity pool on the edge of the terrace, where it makes you think you can swim out over the city?”
“Yeah. And, um, we made out. I mean actually made out, not the… painful and really absolutely frightening stuff. A little feeding with that. I didn’t know if I could relax enough to actually get going, but I did.”
This time the smile was sly: “Like having a tiger in the sheets with you when she gets in that mood, isn’t she?”
“Ummm, yes. That’s just exactly what I thought.”
For good and bad. You can’t forget the claws and fangs are there, even when it’s purring.
“And oh, don’t the little nips of feeding add to it? You just wish it could all go on forever.”
“Except that your brain would explode and run out your ears or your heart would rip loose or something.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” Monica said, then continued thoughtfully: “That part was hard for me at first. I was, you know, very shy and prudish and only twenty-one, and I was very religious then. For a while I thought I must be, you know, a bad person.”
“That must have been hard.”
A shrug. “Sometimes life is hard. We both know that. And I’m not a bad person, I think. I just… came to terms with things. I’d never been with anyone but my husband. And now I’ve never been with anyone but him and Adrienne.”
Ellen hesitated. Well, let’s be helpful and honest at the same time, she thought, and went on: “It wasn’t my first time with a woman, more like the third, but it was the first time it was more than, ‘Oh, this is interesting but not something I’d like to make a habit of.’ So I think it’s that Shadowspawn mojo at work.”
The more so because Adrian is also dynamite in the sack, even more so than his sister, but that would be oversharing. God, even better in bed than his sister. That’s an odd thing to be able to say. Or even think.
Monica nodded. “Well, it was never very exciting for me with Tom. I wondered what all the fuss was about. It was always over so quickly, and I wondered if other women were having a better time.”
A sigh. “Now that I look back on it all, I’m sort of regretful I didn’t try more to find out what I wanted. I envy you being able to go to college and have all sorts of experiences. I thought he was sort of, you know, small too…”
She made gestures with her hands. Ellen looked and said clinically: “No, that looks about average to me. Unless he’s deformed, size doesn’t really matter. A lot of men don’t have a clue and then, yes, it’s sort of dull from our point of view.”
“Oh, I know all about that.”
Ellen blinked at her. Didn’t she just say she’d onlyMonica chuckled, with the sly note back. “You know about the night-walking?”
“About how they can get out of their bodies and turn into wolves and tigers and birds?”
She laughed. “Silly, if they can turn into birds and things, it’s even easier for them to turn into other people. She likes to… come to us lucies… night-walking, sometimes. Not very often-she says she wants to enjoy her birth-body while she’s still got it-but every once in a while.”
“Oh,” Ellen said. Then…
Think of the implications, as Dr. Duggan said. Eerrrrk!
That must have shown on her face. Monica went on gently: “She can be anyone she’s bitten. The first time she turned into me right in the middle of things I nearly jumped out of my skin, let me tell you!”
“Ah… that would be extremely strange.”
“At first. After a while, it was sort of flattering. I knew I was pretty and had a good figure even after the kids, but that convinced me I was, you know, actually really hot stuff. And I felt so naughty. You can tell it’s her-the personality’s her, no doubt about it-but it’s really you, too. Or she could be you with me, or me with you.”
“Ah… yeah, I suppose it would be, umm, interesting.”
Errrrk! “And, of course, she can be a guy, night-walking.”
“She can? And-”
“Everything works, right. Anyone she’s bitten; Jose, Jamal, Peter, lots of others.” A giggle. “Except that it’s a guy who can read your mind, and knows exactly what it feels like from the other side as well.”
“That sounds…”
Oh, Jesus, Ellen thought, as her heart skipped in alarm. Keep calm, Ellen. It’s… well, yes, it is weird, but weird is now your normal, and you can deal with the icky part.
“… like it might be fun now and then.”
Monica nodded. “It’s always fun when she wants it to be, whatever shape she’s in. And when she wants us scared or hurt… well, then we just have to go with that.”
Yes, we do. But I got away from being hurt. And now I’m right back in it, only worse. And you’re in a position where you need to think it’s all right. I won’t think that. I just won’t.
There was a silence for a moment, and then Monica rose, looked in the stove again, turned it off and then faced around with her hands on her hips.
“I’m not stupid, you know,” she said.
Ellen blinked. “I never said-Monica, I never thought you were-”
“I’m not crazy either. I know she hurts me, really hurts me, and that’s going to happen sometimes. Whenever she feels like it. I just… I’ve decided to accept that. She cares for me in her way, but she needs to hurt. The Shadowspawn aren’t like us; they’re like cats and we’re mice. I was born a mouse, I just didn’t know there were such things as cats. OK, I’m a mouse, and I’m lucky my cat wants to play with me and not finish me off.”
“Do cats enjoy hurting mice?”
“Yes, they do,” she said flatly. “Adrienne told me. She can read their minds… well, their feelings.”
“Oh.”
Damn. I always hoped they didn’t.
“So I can take that, it’s not all the time. I’m not going to let it spoil my whole life. My life was over when I came here. I was going to end up homeless… I was homeless. I just didn’t know where to go or what to do or how to take care of my babies. Mom’s sister couldn’t have put us up, not for more than a few days. Things… things worse than anything that’s happened to me here could, would, have happened. And bad things are going to happen to the whole world. There are good parts to this, lots of good parts, and my children and I are safe. So there!”
“I’m not judging you, Monica. You’re doing what you have to do to survive, and this is my second time ’round. At least this time it isn’t someone I should have been able to trust absolutely.”
“Oh,” Monica said, then: “Oh.”
She put a hand on Ellen’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” A hesitation: “Does Adrienne know? Because… well, you know how it is about trying not to think of something…”
Ellen shrugged. “I’m pretty sure she does. She did that memory-searching thing on me the day after I got here, and I had flashes of things right back to when I was about four. It… started a long time after that.”
Monica put her fingers by her own temples and wiggled them. “Doesn’t that reading your memories thing make you itch inside your head?”
“Yes, it does… Monica, you’ve been very good to me. I think you were right that first day: we are going to be friends. Let’s get this stuff out and have a good time at the barbecue, shall we?”
Adrienne looked up and tossed aside her copy of Architectural Digest as the door opened. A nude Shadowspawn woman walked through onto the terrace, her face and forearms and breasts dotted with blood. Beside her sprawled and slithered a ten-foot Komodo dragon, three hundred pounds of reptilian predator with red- running serrated teeth.
“Bonsoir, Maman, Papa,” she said, embracing the woman and kissing her on both cheeks.
There was a faint tang of blood from the drops there-cooling, but still savory, like a slightly overripe banana.
