But she had to take it. Truthfully, some part of herwantedto take it. As if she was starting to shed some fundamental part of herself, some small, sad part, that always tried to say she couldn’t. And in its place was a girl who got to her room, and sat on the edge of her bed, and waited for the boy who thought she didn’t belong.
She stared at the door, willing him to cross that last line.
To cut that tension and end whatever this was.
Still—it jolted her, when the doorknob stirred. Just a little, almost like someone had brushed against it by accident. But as she watched, it moved a tiny bit more. It started to turn, slowly. Excruciatingly slowly. She knew she wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been paying attention. If she’d just been brushing her hair and getting ready for bed, oblivious, she might have had her back to the door when it began to open.
It was possible he even thought she might be asleep. She knew her breathing was slow and calm enough. That she was still enough.
She made herself be, just to get that satisfaction.
And itwassatisfying, too, to see him revealed. He simply stood there, in the open doorway, once he’d finished his careful attempt to enter unnoticed. Face a picture of surprise, and something else. Something like exasperation, it seemed.
Though it was his clothes that really struck her. How casual they were for someone about to commit murder. He had on a V-necked sweater, in deep burgundy. A pair of jeans, some sloppy sneakers. He looked like he was going to play Frisbee somewhere on the grounds. He looked like an advertisement for summer, if a season needed something like a marketing campaign.
No one would ever know that twilight turned beneath his skin.
That he had taken some real boy’s place, or maybe just learned to hide his true face—or something else, something she didn’t really understand. But she did have some idea how to fight it. Their eyes met for a moment. And then his gaze flicked to the crucifix in her hand. The one she’d made herself out of pencils and string.
“So you do remember, then,” he said simply.
Mask dropped. Almost amused about it really.
“It’s sort of hard to forget when someone tries to kill you,” she replied, and the ghost of a smile on his lips faltered. Those black as pitch eyes darkened even further. Like they had in the hall of headmasters, she remembered and wondered again how long he’d thought of biting her.
“I didn’t try to kill you, bookworm.”
“In the same way you’ve not come to kill me now, you mean.”
“That isn’t what I’m here to do. I’m just here to talk. To explain.”
“Is that why you opened the door like a thief, hoping to steal in before I saw?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He simply stared at her, in a way that made her think of that shadowy place he came from. Those endless gray hallways, that upside-down sky, the glittering emptiness. And that sound some explorer had described.It is as if there is a constant desolate wind blowing, somewhere just beyond whatever walls surround you, he had said.
He’d never been the same after hearing it.
She was sure she would never be the same after seeing it in his eyes.
“I knew you wouldn’t let me in if I knocked,” he said finally. But he had dropped some of the pretense now. His voice was flat and dark, as if he was no longer interested in convincing her.
He was just waiting for an opening.
“You make it sound so unreasonable that I might not want to.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing. I was dying.”
“No you weren’t. Areifen can’t be killed like that.”
Hollister’s Complete History of Vampirismhad told her that one. And all the other texts had agreed. A creature like that could be dismembered and drained of all blood, and after a while they would be back to their old self again. It was the reason her own wound had healed—vampiric saliva was apparently wonderful at knitting a wound back together.
It just took time.
Though not a lot of it, if he was anything to go by.
God, she thought. You would never know his face was a ruin a week ago.
“So you’ve learned a few terms and a few facts, and you think you’re safe,” he said. Not quite jeering at her. But certainly there was something withering in there.