Page 77 of Nocte
Colleen, however, dwells in the mortal realm and she speaks to me. Whenever I answer back, she doesn’t cringe away in disgust. Spew rules and decorum. Remind me to be proper.
She responds. Happily, excitedly, and giddy, her mind full of topics and things so foreign to me. She speaks not of the ceremony but “classes.”
“I’m in general anatomy now,” she explains, her body curled on the floor, chin perched on her raised knees. “It’s a bore, the lecture part, I mean. But we get to dissect cadavers so I can’t complain.”
“Cadavers,” I echo. The word is strange and unfamiliar.
“Bodies,” she elaborates, her eyes alight with a mixture of disgust and curiosity. “Gross work, but one can’t understand how the body works without seeing it up close in gory detail. It’s what my professor says, anyway.”
A professor. Like a master, only, she doesn’t refer to them in the same awed reverence that I do the Lord Master. Not with fear.
Excitement. This professor feeds her new information, and they have her full respect.
“I can’t wait until cell biology next term. In that one, we get to use microscopes. That’s what I want to do by the end of it. Be a microbiologist. Study bacteria and viruses. I’d like to get a job at the CDC like my dad… Oh, look at me, talking you to death.” She giggles and shrugs. Her supposed indiscretion doesn’t make her shrink with shame. She laughs it off. It’s a topic she likes to speak about and so she will, her subject’s opinions unheeded.
“I don’t mind,” I say. My body is hunched toward her, my fingers trembling as they press against the mattress on either side of me. I love hearing her talk.
I wish I could make Caspian talk. I’d make him tell me about all the things he knows that I don’t. Dark things. Dangerous things.
But I can’t forget; he is one of a collective. His mind isn’t his own. His thoughts aren’t his own. Even when he touches me… The will isn’t his own.
“What about you?” Colleen asks me, her head cocked to the side, gaze wistful. “I don’t even know if your kind have a university or the like over there. Do you study for degrees, or do you just conjure them up?” She laughs again. The idea thrills her.
I feel my lips curl into a frown. Because I don’t know. She’s given me so much, but I can’t repay her. My topics are small and little. In terms of knowledge, I don’t have much.
“I’m not sure,” I admit.
Her eyes widen. “Ah. I take it you aren’t like that vamp. Are you a fae? I’ve never seen one of you in person before.”
Her wide gaze drinks me in even as I try to speak. No, I should say. Not fae. Something else. Some dirty, broken, in-between creature.
But I can’t speak.
And she has already flitted to another topic that interests her. “What’s the deal with that vampire?”
“Vamryre?” I say, confused by her phrasing.
She laughs and shakes her head. “We just call them plain ol’ vamps out here. No matter the name, they’re dangerous creatures all the same. Did he hurt you?” Her tone turns cutting at the thought.
Did he hurt me? Yes and no. He has, but it’s a price I would pay over and over again in exchange for him existing near me. Staying near me.
Pretending to be mine.
“He is Caspian,” I say.
“Caspian?” She sneers at the name. “I’ve heard of him, a right prick! I’m surprised old Mo even let him back in here after the mess he made the last time.”
My interest is piqued. “Mess?”
Colleen grits her teeth, her lips pursed in anger. “He went fucking mad last year and drained no less than ten people dry downstairs. Right in view of everyone! It was a right fucking mess, it was. Mo nearly went bankrupt bribing the uppers to keep quiet, and I had to—” She breaks off, arms crossed, chest heaving. “It doesn’t matter. But you let me know if he’s threatened you or hurting you…” Her voice turns soft, her pale hands curled into fists. “I’ll make him pay. Has he? You can tell me.”
Tell her. Tell her the truth.
“He hasn’t hurt me,” I say. “He saved me?—”
The door flies open and Caspian himself appears. He crosses to the bed and snatches up my bag of things. Slings it over his shoulder. Turns to face me once more. “Come,” he says to me, ignoring Colleen completely. There is another parcel in his hands. He holds it awkwardly as if it is a dirty thing. I want to reach for it. Carry it for him, whatever it is.
Then I hear Colleen’s voice in my head warning,“He went fucking mad. Drained no less than ten people dry.”