A Shade of Vampire 26: A World of New (8 page)

M
y gut twisted
as I made my way to the hospital the next day. I felt nervous about seeing him again after the way we had left off. Arriving outside his door, I pressed my ear against it, listening cautiously. I heard the familiar clinking of metal against porcelain. I knocked three times and then opened the door to find him sitting up in bed, eating breakfast. It was some kind of beet-colored soup this morning. He did not seem to get very hungry during the day, and breakfasts appeared to be the only meal that he wanted to eat. Perhaps his body just did not burn enough energy for him to work up a decent appetite.

The large throbbing bump on his head was no longer. He did not even have a bandage around him. At least that was something Shayla had been able to cure.

Our eyes met for about a second before he glanced away. But not so quickly that I did not notice the slight flush in his cheeks.

As I approached his bed, he swallowed and said in a low, hoarse voice, “I… I’m sorry for my behavior yesterday. I did not wish to upset you.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

An awkward pause followed. I found myself staring at his bowl as he continued draining it.

“Does your head feel completely better?” I asked.

“Yes,” he muttered.

All right… Enough beating around the bush.
“After you’ve eaten, I have a surprise for you.”

His eyes met mine again, and they brightened ever so slightly. “Surprise?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you,” I replied.

He finished the last of his soup, and when he confirmed that he was full, I helped him out of bed and into his wheelchair. After wrapping him with blankets, I pushed him out of the hospital. I pushed him faster than I usually would have, even though it made the ride a bit more bumpy for him. I was eager to arrive at our destination.

I sensed his wonderment as we reached the borders of the Residences, and he let out a breath as he realized that I was approaching the elevator leading up to one.

“You’re going to take me up there?” he asked, craning his neck to gaze up at the treetops.

“Yup. This is where I live.” I felt a sense of pride as I said the words. Even though I had lived in this penthouse since birth, I hadn’t lost sight of the fact that my upbringing had been extremely privileged. My parents had made a point of instilling gratitude into me and making me aware of the kind of living standards that most of the world was subjected to.

I wondered where Josh had been brought up. I wished that I knew where he had been plucked from by the hunters. Josh’s accent indicated that he was from England, but that seemed kind of an odd place to kidnap someone from when there were far closer countries to the portal IBSI had located that led to The Woodlands. Why not just find someone from the Philippines? If they had wanted to experiment on a half-blood, they could’ve easily created one from scratch. We knew for a fact that they had a stock of imprisoned supernaturals in their custody—vampires included—those they had caught causing trouble for humans, or so they claimed. My own mother had once been taken by them to one of their research centers. She had witnessed firsthand the myriad of creatures they had access to.

Drawing myself back to the present, I pushed the button in the elevator. We ascended to the veranda that lined our apartment and I pushed Josh inside. Before revealing my surprise, since he seemed so fascinated by The Shade’s tree houses, I decided to give him a little tour of our apartment first. I showed him the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, before taking him to my bedroom.

On stepping inside, I realized that, apart from Benedict and my other male relatives, this was the first time I had brought a boy in here. Now that I had, I felt painfully aware of how girly it was and frankly… juvenile. My shelves were still filled with keepsakes from my childhood, silly trinkets and plastic toys, but mostly fluffy animals. I used to collect them… when I was nine.

I was about to clarify that my constantly busy schedule had been keeping me from doing a much-needed clear-out when Josh’s lips curved in a smile. He had just laid eyes on Podgey, a stuffed elephant almost the size of my desk chair, slumped in one corner.

“What?” I asked, defensive.

He coughed. “Uh… How old are you?”

Oh, man. Here comes the humiliation…

“I’m seventeen,” I murmured.

He nodded, his smile broadening.

At least his mood had lifted, even if it was at my expense.

Time for a change of room.

I gripped the handles of his chair and backed him out of the room, even as my cheeks heated to a rosy red. “Well, while we are on the subject of age,” I said, “you really have no idea how old you are?”

There was a pause, then he said, “Eighteen.” As my eyes widened, he clarified, “I’m not sure why I believe this, since I don’t remember my eighteenth birthday. It’s just a feeling.”

“Okay… that makes sense.” When he wasn’t scowling or grimacing, he looked about eighteen to me.

I wheeled him down the corridor toward the spare bedrooms before finally reaching our destination. My pulse was racing stupidly fast as I reached for the handle and pushed the door open.

As I pushed him inside, my eyes were glued to his face. His first reaction was to frown as he gazed around at the elaborate setup I had worked hard on yesterday. And then he looked up at me, cocking his head to one side and raising a brow.

“This is… for me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, beaming. “All for you. For as long as you’re with us.”

His hands slipped to the wheels of his chair and he moved himself forward on a tour of the room. He eyed each of the apparatuses closely. He reached out a hand and grazed his fingers over two of the smallest weights. Then he looked out of the main window. It was low enough that he could comfortably see through it while seated, and it was broad enough to be able to get a breathtaking view, even when standing on the other end of the room. And we were so high up that if one blocked out the walls from one’s vision, one would almost feel like they were flying.

“Thank you, Grace,” he said. “When you said surprise, I… really didn’t expect this.”

He returned to the pair of small weights that he had touched earlier. Although they had been the lightest and smallest in the whole of the school’s gym, they weighed down his arms instantly as he picked them up. It looked like it was a legitimate effort to even bring them up to his lap.

But I did not even consider going to help him. This was his playground now. I would be here with him to make sure that he wasn’t putting himself at risk of any serious damage, but otherwise, I wanted him to feel like he was completely on his own here. Free to do whatever he wanted. His fingers tightening around the two weights, his face scrunched, but slowly, he raised them up over his head. They dropped down swiftly, but he pushed them up again and again.

Then he rested, letting out a breath.

I went to fetch some water for him, and by the time I had returned, he had resumed lifting.

“I thought that you could come here in the mornings,” I said as I handed him a glass of water. “I thought it would be more fun than wheeling up and down that same old corridor.” Taking a swig from my own glass of water, I set it down before moving over to the MP3 player. I had no idea what kind of music he might like. I just played the first song that was on there, a pop song.

He didn’t seem to pay much attention to the music, however. In fact, he barely even registered the sound. After he’d finished drinking, I took the glass from him and he continued his gentle exercises.

Rather than just sitting here, I decided to join him. I absolutely abhorred working out in a gym, in truth. I found it mind-numbingly boring, even with my favorite songs blasting in the background. I preferred to jog, walk or climb. But it made sense that I accompany Josh now.

I didn’t fancy weights, but there was a machine thingy that looked fairly interesting.
Machine thingy.
That spoke of how much I visited the gym. I needed to consult my notes to remind myself what it was called. I lay down on the backrest before reaching up and grabbing handles. I pulled them downward, feeling the muscles in my upper arms burn.

I’d barely pulled down three times when Josh commented, “You’re doing that wrong.”

I let go of the handles like they’d turned iron-hot and stared at him.

He had put down his own weights and was moving over to me. His face was serious, his eyes squinting in concentration, as he eyed the apparatus I was resting on.

“You were craning your neck every time you pulled downwards,” he went on. “You shouldn’t do that. You could hurt yourself.”

I was still staring at him. He was awfully knowledgeable about this for a man who had no memory.

“You must’ve learnt that somewhere,” I remarked.

He nodded thoughtfully, running a tongue over his lower lip. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I must have.”

His age, and now this… I wondered how many other memories were just bubbling beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered. The fact that he had suggested that I call him Josh so quickly made me wonder whether that had actually been his name… or perhaps the name of somebody he had once known.

Maybe with time, he will heal by himself.
The drugs or whatever else the hunters had inflicted on him might simply fade away. That was a hopeful thought. I hoped not unrealistically hopeful.

“Well,” I said, “let me try again and you can tell me if I’m doing that thing with my neck.”

I retook my hold around the handles and pulled downward, this time making a concerted effort not to strain my neck muscles.

“Better,” he muttered. Then he paused again, staring at my hands wrapped around the handles. “Though,” he remarked, “your wrists don’t look right.” Reaching up, he grasped my wrists and straightened them. I realized only now that I had been bending them at a weird angle when I’d pulled downward. I really was clueless at this.

“Thanks,” I said.

I tried again, and this time, Josh approved. He watched me continue before returning to his own weights and picking them up again.

I exercised for about another ten minutes before I got fed up. Around the same time exhaustion took its toll on Josh. He set down the weights and leaned back in his chair. He reached for the blankets wrapped around him and cast them aside.

I handed him some more water, which he drank readily. Then I wondered, “Are you hungry, by any chance?”

“Hm,” he said. “You know… I think I am.”

That was certainly an improvement. “Come with me and I’ll cook something for you.”

I waited for a second to see if his arms moved to his chair’s wheels, to gauge whether he wanted to move himself, but since he didn’t, I moved behind him and pushed him to the kitchen.

“Is there anything in particular you want to eat?” I asked. “Do you have any idea what you like?”

He shrugged. “Just… whatever you’ve got, I’ll try it.”

“I think you should try eating something solid for a change. If you throw up, then, well, you throw up.”

“All right…”

I wasn’t great at cooking.
Really
not great. Usually when my parents were away, I visited my grandmother for main meals. My mom also packed up meals for me and put them in the freezer so I could take them out and heat them up when I wanted to stay at home to eat. But now that I had a guest, I was feeling a little more adventurous. Unwisely so.

I looked in the fridge and saw that we had all the ingredients needed for omelets. And so began my endeavor. Unfortunately, I ended up burning the first two, but the third one came out all right. At least, it came out looking all right.

I flopped it onto a plate and put it in front of him before reaching for a bottle of ketchup and a tube of brown sauce. I set them down on the table. He picked up the ketchup and squirted a bit on his plate before cutting up a piece of omelet and dunking it in the sauce. He put it into his mouth and chewed slowly, tentatively, as if afraid of what he might taste.

Then, to my dismay, his face took on an expression of quiet disgust. He didn’t mean to be rude to me, I was sure. But I’d cooked bad meals enough times for enough people to detect when somebody wasn’t enjoying what I had put in front of them.

“You don’t like it, do you?” I said. “You can be honest with me. I promise I won’t get offended.”

He stopped chewing and furrowed his brows, looking down at his plate. “I, uh, don’t think it’s the omelet. There is nothing much to dislike about it—it’s rather bland. What’s really pretty unpleasant… it’s this stuff.” He poked his fork at the tomato sauce and curled his nose. “Ketchup.”

Aha
. That I had cooked food that was merely bland was actually a compliment by my standards. “Why don’t you try this brown sauce instead?”

He poured a few drops onto his plate and tried it. But he didn’t like that any better.
Not a ketchup or condiment fan in general, it seems
. I was the total opposite. I loved ketchup. When I was a kid, my mother used to joke that I ate more ketchup than fries. I had a sweet tooth in general.

After a few more bites of pure, “bland” omelet, Josh seemed to change his mind about it. He set aside his fork, admitting defeat.

“Do you want something else?” I asked. “How about cheese on toast?”
That’s British, isn’t it?
“Or I can see what’s left of the frozen food my mom left…”

“I’ll try your cheese on toast,” he replied.

“Okay,” I said, half chuckling. I took away his plate and fixed him some good old cheese on toast, after adding a bit of dried oregano to it to make it a bit more flavorsome. He had a better time eating that. My main concern was not so much how much he enjoyed the food, but the fact that he was able to hold it down at all. He finished two whole pieces of toast, and after ten minutes, he was still showing no sign of vomiting.

Taking away his empty plate, I was about to suggest that he try a small piece of strawberry pie that we had in the refrigerator when a deafening explosion rocked through the apartment. I dropped the plate, my heart shooting to my throat.