Dark Companion (31 page)

If Ms. York had been able to make a good life for herself after being out on the streets, then so could Wilde. When I had a minute alone with the counselor, I said, “I’d really like to talk more about the Family and what’s expected of me.”

She placed her hand on mine and squeezed, and I noticed that she wore a gold ring with a red gem on her right hand. “I’ll be coming for your initiation and staying a few days. I’ll set aside a few hours exclusively for you. How about then?”

“That would be great.”

Lucky waited through the long meal before asking, “Jane, may I walk you home?”

“I’d like that.”

He tried to keep a relaxed pace, but halfway down the trail he said, “Come on,” and began jogging. I stumbled in the darkness, and he dashed back and swung me up in his arms.

In a sudden panic, I shoved at Lucky’s chest and he let me down, saying, “What?”

There was something about being outside in the darkness and being grabbed up. My heart raced, but it was only Lucky and only the grove. “I don’t like it when you pick me up without asking! I don’t like the way you drag me around like a possession, not a person.”

“Chill, Jane. I was just trying to help,” he said, irritated. “Okay, I’m sorry.” He took out his phone and used it to light the way for me.

We got inside the cottage, and he waited while I turned on the lights and closed the curtains. “Jane, will you please let me have a taste?”

“All right.”

“Do you want to try the topical anesthetic?”

“No, I don’t need it, but try to be careful.”

He opened my bag of supplies and selected the lancet. It was a scalpel with a two-sided blade. He disinfected it with the same anticipation I’d seen in the faces of addicts setting up their works. “Lie facedown on the bed.”

I pulled off my flats and did as he asked.

He sat beside me and began to stroke my back under my blouse, and my anxiety and longing became almost unbearable. Lucky hitched up my blouse and unhooked my bra. He began rubbing my skin, all the way from my shoulders to my waist. His fingers kneaded the tense places. “Your skin is so smooth, Jane, so soft.”

I closed my eyes and gave in to the petting and stroking, making those small animal sounds of pleasure as he caressed my legs, massaging them from my feet upward. His fingers moved in circles at the backs of my knees, then pressed the skin to make my veins appear.

His hands moved upward to examine the insides of my thighs, pushing up my skirt, and I held my breath wondering what he’d do next—and wondering what I wanted him to do.

“There are good arteries here, rich with your blood, Jane.”

But his hands moved to my back again. He explored a spot under my shoulder blade and gently rubbed until I relaxed with a sigh. That’s when I felt the knife slice into my skin.

I bit the pillow to keep from crying.

When Lucky groaned I knew he was watching the blood rise in the cut and then he put his mouth to it and began feeding from me. He fell to the bed beside me and gripped my shoulders as he alternately sucked the wound and probed it with his tongue.

He became more aggressive and his teeth nipped at the edges of the cut, sending darts of pain through me, but the pillow muffled the whimpers that escaped me.

When Lucky finally became aware of my discomfort, he began stroking my back again, soothing me while still latched on the wound.

I have Lucky, I have him,
I thought, but I kept recalling the lust on his face when he’d seen the video.

Lucky’s hand stopped massaging and he bit down hard, bringing tears to my eyes. And when he moaned, I felt the reverberations from his chest against me more than heard the sound. He took his mouth from my flesh, and his breathing was ragged.

Then he bent over me again and gently licked the cut and the area around it. He smoothed a hand over my hair. He did this for long exquisite minutes until the pain was forgotten and all I felt was happiness at being the center of his attention.

Lucky sighed deeply and then he rolled to my side and dozed off.

I watched the rise and fall of his chest and the tiny movements of his eyelids. I admired the thickness of his pale lashes and the perfect arch of his eyebrows and the straight line of his nose. I put my hand on his arm and saw the contrast of my skin against his.

I got up and went to the bathroom. I struggled to put ointment and a bandage on my back before changing into a t-shirt and pajama pants. When I returned to the bedroom, Lucky was sprawled asleep on the bed.

An hour later, I shook him. “Lucky, we
still
have to go over your chemistry and I have work to do for class tomorrow.”

“Hmm? Oh, we don’t need the tutoring anymore. That was only so you’d get to know me.”

“Oh.”

“Well, okay, my folks
did
hope you’d push me to do better, but it’s not like I’m going to major in the sciences. Do you want me to take care of your cut?”

“I already did that.”

“Okay. I gotta get going. See you.”

“When?”

“I’ll want a taste again in a few days. We can try something new with our toys. I mean, medical equipment.”

I stood on the porch as he walked up the path and out of sight.

I had a place to live, clothes, cash, a position, and security for life. I had a permanent relationship with a stunning boy. I’d dreamed about having all these things, but I’d never expected to get them so soon and so completely.

Why, then, did I feel so desolate?

In a moment she thought she heard the step of some person. Her blood curdled; she concluded it was Manfred. Every suggestion that horror could inspire rushed into her mind. She condemned her rash flight, which had thus exposed her to his rage in a place where her cries were not likely to draw anybody to her assistance.

Horace Walpole,
The Castle of Otranto
(1765)

Chapter 28

I had two weeks until the initiation and I became more anxious with each passing day as I tried to make sense of my place within the Family. In Chem class, whenever I noticed Mr. Mason patting his pocket absentmindedly, I thought of Claire Mason at my age, eager to become a Companion.

I carefully tracked the times Mrs. McSqueak said
hypotenuse
in Trig. I lost myself in the beauty of the equations and came to love the unit circle, the circle with a radius of one. I began to see how angles and circles on infinite planes could describe everything. Even Lucky’s face, his voice, and his lanky stroll could be expressed by trigonometry.

Mary Violet caught me daydreaming once and whispered, “Quick, tell me what you’re thinking!”

“I was thinking that I wish our personal identities could be expressed as a formula so that we could prove or disprove equality in relationships.”

She put the back of her hand against her forehead. “You’re making me nervous, Jane.”

“I know—it’s tragic.”

Lucky stopped by on Thursday, just after I’d gotten home from class. He was wearing a forest-green Evergreen hoodie with a white polo and navy cords.

“Hi, Lucky! Come on in!” I could hear the frantic need in my voice.

He dropped his messenger bag on the sofa and sat down. “Glad you’re home. I keep telling my mom she needs to get you a phone but she’s holding off until after the initiation. You should ask her for a laptop, too. She won’t give you a car until you’re a senior though.”

I didn’t mention the burner I had hidden behind the washing machine. “I have the landline. You could call here.”

“But what if you weren’t here?”

“You could leave a message.”

“
I
don’t leave messages unless my mother is standing over my shoulder making me. You need to get a phone, so I can text.”

He seemed to be in a mood, but I was still happy to see him. “Why don’t you stay so we can study together and make dinner?”

“I’m going for burgers with Seasick tonight.”

“What?”

“My friend, Christopher Sycamore. C. Syc. I
told
you about him. We’re on a paintball team. I was passing by and wanted to say I’ll come by tomorrow for a taste to hold me through the weekend.”

“Tomorrow is Latin Skit Night and I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”

“Latin is stupid. You should study a real language, maybe Japanese. I plan to go to Japan and if you knew the language, you could be my translator.”

“Latin will be useful for my science career.”

“Whatever.” His bored expression quickly changed. “Hey, we’ve got the venipuncture kit. We can use it now and I won’t have to stop by tomorrow.”

I tensed. “I don’t know. It just seems really clinical.”

“Jane, it’ll free up your time for studying because you know you need good grades or my mom’s not going to let me see you so often.” His smile lured me in. “Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

He had me sit in the armchair. His pupils dilated as he wound the rubber hose around my arm and thumped at my vein as it grew full. He was transfixed as he filled the tube with deep red blood.

He drew out the needle and capped the vial. Blood beaded on the puncture wound and he licked it until it stopped bleeding. With his forefinger, he circled the wound. “That’s going to bruise some. You’ll have to show me later. You can clean up yourself, right?”

I nodded. “No problem.”

He lifted the vial of blood close to his face and his lips parted. Then he put it in the pocket of his hoodie. “See you.”

I washed and sterilized the venipuncture equipment and felt the throbbing of my arm.

After my dinner of a peanut butter and jam sandwich and fruit, I rehearsed my part for Skit Night. My study group was performing two scenes from Roman plays by Terence. Although I’d read the English translation, I got lost with the complicated plots of trickery and manipulation. Everything lately made me think of my situation with the Family, including one of my lines:
“Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto,”
or “I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me.” But the Family was both human
and
alien.

*   *   *

Lucky was right, and I did have a plum-purple bruise on my inner elbow the next day. I had to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt under my toga, which Mary Violet had helped me fashion from an old sheet. The event was at Catalina’s house. The girls from my study group picked me up and we drove to an imposing stone mansion. The interior was starkly modern with abstract sculptures on bare stone floors and huge paintings on vast walls.

Catalina’s younger sister escorted us downstairs to the ballroom. I didn’t even know that private houses could have ballrooms. A maid served elaborate nonalcoholic cocktails garnished with fruit kabobs and edible flowers. Catalina’s salmon-pink toga draped so gracefully that it must have been made for her. Her smooth tan arms were bare and she wore heavy gold earrings and a gold collar necklace.

My teacher, Ms. Ingerson, in a saffron-yellow toga, was happier than I’d ever seen her. She got on the small stage and welcomed us in Latin. The seniors did their skits, with the girls wildly exaggerating their parts as both male and female characters. Then it was time for my group to perform our scenes.

After the skits and dinner, Catalina came to me. “I thought you might humiliate yourself. However, you performed competently although dully.”

“I’m not stupid, Catalina.”

“No, but still naïve, I think, and odd. A frog out of water.”

“You mean a fish out of water.”

“No, a frog, because a frog is so common, yet it has the peculiar ability to breathe in and out of water,” she said with a spark of humor in her amber eyes.

It almost seemed like a compliment. When Ms. Ingerson had left and we were all saying good night at the front door, I heard a familiar voice. Lucky was coming into the house with several of his tall, loud friends. They were shouting, “Toga, toga, toga!” and were dressed in sheets. One hefted a mini-keg on his shoulder and others carried bottles.

Had he come because he knew I’d be here?

But Lucky and his friends went right to Catalina. They fell to their knees and bowed with their arms forward, saying, “Oh, goddess, we are not worthy! We are not worthy!”

She struck a pose, tossing back her long, tawny hair and pointing at them. “Crawl before me, you miserable mortals!” Several of the senior girls giggled and danced around the guys, play-kicking them and then leaping away.

My heart was in my throat when I saw Lucky stand, pick up Catalina, and carry her back toward the ballroom while she laughed.

I dashed away from the doorway and out into the night, so my classmates wouldn’t see my face. I pressed my thumb to the bruise on the inside of my elbow until the pain spread along my arm.

My classmates began talking excitedly and finally the word went around that juniors could stay. A girl in my study group saw me waiting by the car. “Jane, aren’t you going to come back? God, did you see Lucky Radcliffe carrying Cat? He’s so hot. I would do him in a heartbeat.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m going to walk. See you Monday.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “It’s late and dark.”

“I’ll be fine.” I began walking and waved back at her. I was so upset that I didn’t care that I was wearing a sheet and tennis shoes. My vision was blurred by the tears I was holding back and by a drizzling fog that covered the hillside.

The streets were unfamiliar, but I walked in the direction of Birch Grove, too miserable to care that I might be taking the wrong roads. I was caught up in my anguish when I noticed the hum of an engine on the street behind me. I slunk away from the curb, waiting for the car to drive by.

But it didn’t. I peered back over my shoulder and saw the black shape of a car idling in the street with its headlights off, and that was all I needed to see.
Get away as soon as possible!
I hiked up my sheet and tore off as fast as I could, and the car followed, keeping back the same distance.