Sunshine (25 page)

“And you don't run a gang,” I said.

“No.”

I thought of saying, So, what now, do we hold hands and jump? How long a fall can a vampire walk away from? How high do we have to climb first? A mere almost-human pretty reliably goes splat after about four stories, I think. I was beginning to feel sorry that he'd come. No. I'd rather jump out a window and get it over with fast than fall into Bo's clutches again. I was merely resisting the idea that jumping was my best choice.

“I have thought of it a good deal, these last weeks,” he was saying, “for I knew what happened at the lake would not be the end. Not with Bo. I also know that singly you and I have no chance.”

I do wish you'd stop saying that, I thought.

“But together,” he continued, “we may have a chance. It is not a good chance, but it is a chance. I do not like it. You cannot like it. I do not understand what it is that you do, and have done. I am not sure we will be able to work together, even if we attempt it. Even if we are each other's only chance.” He was sitting in the darkness beyond the moonlight, and I could not see his face. I could—a little—see movement as he spoke; vampires also speak by moving their mouths. But this conversation was a little too like talking to a figment of your own imagination. Your darkest, spookiest, most bottom-of-your-unconscious-where-the-monsters-lurk imagination. Even the shadow in the chair was half-imaginary.

No it wasn't. There's really no mistaking the presence of a vampire in the room.

“Will you help me?” he said. It is very peculiar being asked a life-or-death question in a tone of voice that has no
tone
in it. Emotionally speaking the response feels like it ought to be something like passing the salt or closing the door.

“Oh,” I said intelligently. “Ah—er. Well. Yes. Certainly. Since you put it so persuasively.”

There was a pause, and then there was a brief noise that, mercifully also briefly, unhinged my spine. He had laughed.

“Forgive my persuasiveness,” he said. “I would spare you if I could. I do not wish this any more than you do.”

“No,” I said thoughtfully. “I don't suppose you do.” If I'd been honest I suppose what I'd really wanted him to do was say, “Oh don't worry about it. This is vampire business and I'll take care of it.” Dream on. “So,” I said. I didn't want to know, but I guessed I should make an effort. “What do we do now?”

“We start,” he said, and paused. I recognized this as the middle of an unfinished sentence, and not one of his cryptic pronouncements, and waited. Then there was a funny breathing noise that I translated provisionally as a sigh. Vampires don't breathe right, why should they sigh right? But maybe it means vampires can feel frustration. Noted. “We start by my trying to discover what assistance I can give you.”

Somehow this didn't sound like the usual movie-adventure sort of “I'll keep you covered while you reload” assistance. “What do you mean?”

“We must face Bo at night. Your abilities would not get us past the guards that protect his days.”

I didn't even consider asking what those guards might be.

“Humans are at great disadvantage at night. I think I may be able to grant you certain dispensations.”

Dispensations. I liked that. Vampire as fairy godmother. Or godfather. Pity he couldn't dispense me from getting killed. “You mean like being able to see in the dark or something.”

“Yes. I mean exactly that.”

“Oh.” If I could see in the dark I would never again have to trip over the threshold of the bathroom door on the way to have a pee at midnight. If I lived long enough to need to.

“I will have to touch you,” he said.

Okay, I told myself. He's not going to forget himself and eat me because he comes a few feet closer. I thought of the second night in the ballroom:
Sit a little distance from the corner
—
yes, nearer me. Remember that three feet more or less makes no difference to me: you might as well
.

And
he'd carried me something like forty-five miles. And only about the first forty-two of them had been in daylight.

And somehow pointing out that I now was in bed and wearing nothing but a nightgown and would like to get up and put some clothes on first, please, was worse than not mentioning my inappropriate-for-receiving-visitors state of undress. So I didn't mention it.

“Okay,” I said.

That fluid, inhuman motion again as he stood up and stepped toward me. I'd forgotten that too—forgotten how strange it is. How ominous. Too fluid for anything human. For anything alive.

He sat down near me on the bed. The bed dipped, as if from ordinary human weight. I pulled my feet up and turned toward him, but I did it carelessly, more conscious of him than of anything else—which is to say, more carelessly than I had learned to move over the last two months, carelessly so that the gash on my breast didn't just seep a little, but cracked open along its full length, as if it were being cut into me for the first time. I couldn't help it: it hurt: I gave a little gasp.

And he
hissed
. It was a terrifying noise, and I had slammed myself back into the pillows and headboard before I had a chance to think anything at all, to think that I couldn't get away from him even if I wanted to, to think that he had declared us allies. To think that there might be any other reason for a sound like that one but that he was a vampire and I was alive and streaming with fresh blood.

“Stop,” he said in what passed for his normal voice. “I offer you no harm. Tell me about the blood on your breast.”

He didn't linger on the word “blood.” I muttered, “It won't heal. It's been like this for two months.”

He wasn't as good at waiting as I was. “Go on,” he said immediately.

I'd stopped shrugging in the last two months too: you can't shrug without pulling at the skin below your collarbones. “I don't know. It doesn't heal. It seems to close over and then splits again. The doctor put stitches in it a couple of times, gave me stuff to put on it. Nothing works. It just splits open again. It's a nuisance but I have been kind of learning to live with it. Like I had a choice. This is—er—worse than usual. Sorry. It's only a shallow gash. You may—er—remember.”

“I remember,” he said. “Show me.”

I managed not to say,
What
? It took me a minute to gather my dignity as well as my courage, and my hands were shaking a little when I raised them to unbutton the top two buttons of my nightgown, and peel the edges back so he could see the bony space below my collarbones and above the swell of my bosom, where the blood now ran down in a thin ragged curtain from the wicked curved mouth of the long ugly slash. I barely flinched when he reached out a hand and touched the blood with his finger and … tasted it. Then I closed my eyes.

“I offer you no harm,” he said again, gently. “Sunshine. Open your eyes.”

I opened them.

“The wound is poisoned,” he said. “It weakens you. It is very dangerous.”

“It was for you,” I said, dreamily. I felt like one of those oracle priestesses out of some old myth: seized by some spirit not her own, a spirit that then speaks from her mouth. “They wanted to poison you.”

“Yes,” he said.

I thought, I have been so tired, these last two months. I have got used to that too. I have told myself it is just part of—having had what happened, happen. You do not get over something like that quickly. I had told myself that was all it was. I had almost believed it. I
had
believed it. The cut didn't heal because it didn't heal.

Poisoned. Weakening me. Killing me is what he meant. Note that vampires can also be tactful.

All those hours in the sunlight, baking the thing, the hostile presence on my body. I'd known it was hostile, although I hadn't admitted it. I hadn't taken the next step of thinking “poisoned.” Sunlight was my element; and so I turned to sunlight. And sunlight was the only thing that did any good, and it didn't do enough. Because the wound was poisoned. That was out of some story where there would be an oracle priestess somewhere: the poisoned wound that did not heal. I'd already been wondering how I was going to get through the winter, when I couldn't lie outdoors and bake some hours every week. Been learning not to think about wondering how I was going to get through the winter.

He was silent, waiting for me to finish thinking. I looked at him: glint of green eyes in the moonlight. Don't look in their eyes, I thought. Tiredly.

This would have been a nasty shock to him too, of course. Finding out his ally is a goner.

I was too tired to look at him. I was too tired for almost anything. Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.

“Sunshine. I know a little about poisons. This is not something your human doctors can distill an antidote for.”

This was even better than his repeating that neither of us had any chance against Bo. By dying I was going to ruin his chances too. It's funny: I was actually sorry about this. Maybe I was a little delirious. Maybe too much had been happening lately. Maybe I was just very, very short of sleep.

“There is something that can be done. Can be tried.” Pause. “It is not easy.”

Oh, big surprise. Something wasn't going to be easy. I tried to rouse myself, to react. I failed.

“But can you trust me?”

More happy news. Not just
something
to be done, but a
vampire
something. Which doubtless meant it would have more blood in it. I don't
like
blood. I mean, I like it fine, inside, circulating, carrying oxygen and calories to all your stay-at-home cells, but slimy seeping pink
hamburger
gives me the whim-whams.

Can you trust me, he said. Not
will
you.
Can
you. Good question. I thought about it. It will not be easy. Yes, okay, that was a given. I didn't have to think about that. Can I trust him?

What have I got to lose?

What if his something is something I can't bear? There are all sorts of things I can't bear. I'm not brave to begin with, I'm very, very tired, I'm spongy with post-traumatic what have you, and I very nearly can't bear what I did last night with a table knife. And I may be a homicidal maniac.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I think so.”

He didn't exhale a long breath, as a human might have done, but he went motionless instead. It was a different kind of motionlessness than not moving. Having said yes I felt better. Less tired. Evidently still delirious, however, because I bent toward him, touched the back of his hand. “Okay?” I said.

A little silence.

“Okay,” he said. I had the sudden irreverent notion that he'd never said “okay” before. Spend time with humans and have all kinds of unusual experiences. Laughter. Slang.

“It will not be tomorrow night,” he said. “Perhaps the night after.”

“Okay,” I said. “See you.”

“Sleep well,” he said.

“Oh, sure, absolutely,” I said, trying for irony, but he was already gone.

I left the window full open. I wanted as much of the fresh night air in the room with me as possible. There was a tiny chiming from one of the window charms. It was a curiously serene and hopeful noise.

I
MUST HAVE
looked pretty rough that morning too. It occurred to me that everybody at the coffeehouse was treating me like an invalid while trying to pretend they weren't treating me like an invalid. I wanted to tell them that they were right, I was an invalid, that mark on my breast that only Mel knew was still there was poisoned, and I was dying. I didn't say any of this. I said I was still short of sleep.

Paulie turned up an hour before time that morning saying he didn't have anything better to do, but I was pretty sure Mom had called him and asked if he could come in early. I think Mom had figured out that the charms she was giving me were going somewhere like into the Wreck's glove compartment, so she had begun stashing them around the bakery where maybe I wouldn't find them but they could still do me some good. Since my unwelcome speculations about dark family secrets the other night in Jesse's office I had begun to wonder what all Mom's charms were for, exactly. She's always been something of a charm freak; I'd put it down to eight years in my dad's world. I found two new ones that morning: a little curled-up animal of some sort with its paws over its eyes and a red bead where its navel should have been, and a shiny white disc that rainbows ran across if you held it up against the light. I left them where I found them. Maybe I should let them try to defend against whatever they could. I had some fellow-feeling for the small curled-up creature with its hands over its face, even if the red alien parasite was lower down on it than it was on me. Charms are often noisy, which is another reason I don't like them much, but you aren't going to hear extraneous buzzing and burbling above the general din at Charlie's. Especially on shifts when I had to spend some time in the company of a genially humming apprentice.

Mel was working that afternoon but Aimil had the day off from the library. She wandered back into the bakery with a cup of coffee toward the end of my stint, said she'd just found out about an old-books-and-junk sale in Redtree, which was one of the little towns between us and the next big city to the south, she was going to go, and did I want to come along? I should probably have gone home and taken a nap, but I didn't want to. So I said yes. A nice little outing for the doomed. Furthermore Aimil talked about library politics the whole way there and didn't once mention nocturnal neighborhood excitements. So by the time we arrived at the village square in Redtree I was in the mood.

Ordinarily I love this kind of thing without any effort. Someone who does coffeehouse baking for a living doesn't have huge amounts of disposable income, but the point about books-and-junk sales is that you never know what you may find for hilariously cheap. There are fewer people since the Wars than there had been before, and less money (don't ask me how this works: you'd think if there were fewer people there would be more money to go around), so there is a lot less motive for dealers to discover specialist markets for old, beat-up, weird, or obscure-looking and possibly Other-related stuff. Plus a lot of people don't want to think about old, beat-up, weird, obscure-looking, and possibly Other-related stuff because it reminds them of the Wars, or what life had been like before the Wars, i.e., better. The result is that a lot of very interesting nonjunk gets heaved into the nearest box for the next garage sale.