Page 35 of Thrall
CALLER #2: I’ve been listening to your show for the past week. You said it yourself. No one believed you when you were attacked. We’ve got that in common, too.
PALLAS: No, caller number two. I mean, that’s not very nice to yourself. Just because they say it to you doesn’t mean you have to repeat it.
[Pause.]
CALLER #2: I haven’t seen him. Not like you have.
PALLAS: That’s all right. If you’re calling me, I assume you know his work.
CALLER #2: Not as well as I’d like to. But someone I care about…well. I think he got to know your friend’s work extremely well.
PALLAS: So you have questions. And that person you care about…they aren’t around to answer them, are they?
CALLER #2: Hah. I guess we do understand each other.
PALLAS: Well. First of all, caller number two. I’m so sorry for your loss.
And I’m sorry to all of our curious listeners—I’m sure you’d like to hear caller number two’s questions as much as I do. But I think perhaps—we’d best take this conversation off the air. Don’t you agree?
CALLER #2: All right, then. Your place or mine?
“Well,” Natalie said. “I still don’t like her.”
Lucy wrapped her sweater tightly around her shoulders. The wind felt more like autumn than late August. The temperatures would soar back to the eighties later in the afternoon, but Lucy was finding that she didn’t mind the frostbitten mountain mornings. The clear air made for a clearer head. “I don’thaveto like her,” she said. “If she keeps me from turning into a vampire, I’ll kiss her on the mouth.”
“Yes,” Natalie said. “I can tell it would be a real hardship for you to kiss her on the mouth.”
Lucy flipped her a double-middle-fingered salute. Clearly she was right. And clearly Lucy could stand to make more of a secret of that. But it wasn’t worth thinking about Mila’s steady confidence and tragically sculpted arms anymore. For one, Mila was at the ready to kill Lucy if things went south. Also, even if they weren’t in this situation, it would have been doomed anyway, since Mila wasn’t allowed to date a resident.
Although if they weren’t in this situation, maybe Mila wouldn’t have been an RA at all. Maybe she’d still be that long-ago people pleaser, trying to figure out how to break up with poor Jon. Maybe she wouldn’t have come to Rollins to begin with.
Athena had been a transfer student in her sophomore year. Jon had been hundreds of miles away from the girl he thought he’d be with forever. Even without knowing Addison’s or Sadie’s circumstances, Lucy thought she was starting to understand how Vanya operated. That he gravitated toward those on the edges of the crowd.
In any case. She put Mila, who was back at her dorm catching up on sleep, out of her mind for now. She’d been left in Natalie and Athena’s custody for the morning.
She glanced back to Natalie, who was warily looking at the path ahead. “So Athena’s sure that the campus radio station is safe?”
“I don’t think Athena goes anywhere she’snotsure is safe,” Lucy said. Although Athena seemed to have a more optimistic view of Lucy’s chances than Mila did, Athena struck Lucy as the more cautious of the two. Which was saying something, given how cautious Mila was. “The steam tunnels don’t pass under the studio. And also…”
As they approached the gray, vaguely Brutalist multimedia center, Lucy stepped past Natalie and withdrew her ID card. She tapped it to the card reader, waited for the “click” of the lock, and then eased open the heavy door.
“…we’ve been added to the guest list,” Lucy finished. “Athena said everyone who uses the multimedia center gets a similar message to the one they sent to Quincey residents about an abusive ex on the loose.”
Natalie gave the card reader an unusually intense once-over as they passed. Lucy made a questioning noise. “Oh, nothing,” Natalie said. “I was just thinking…the vampire had some power over you even before he bit you, right? He told you to hold still, and you did. Telling people not to invite anyone in is one thing, but—”
“But what if he just tells them to do it,” Lucy mumbled. “Good question.” And one she was sure Athena and Mila would have thought of before. Vanya had been stalking Athena for years now. He was desperate enough to get to her that he had, apparently impulsively, turned Whitney. Thinking of all that he’d done so far, the radio station’s modest protections didn’t seem like much of a barrier.
Maybe there were limits to his power. That would be nice, if that was true.
Or he had patience. Which was a much less promising thought. But the more Lucy thought about it, the harder it was to shake the thought that Athena had been unreasonably lucky so far. Maybe unrealistically lucky.
The two fell quiet as they made their way to the corridor of soundproof suites that housed Pallas Radio. Lucy could see other occupants through the tiny windows—one student practicing trombone, another recording some kind of video essay—but the thick walls did their job. The hallway was silent. Without Lucy’s unnaturally sharpened hearing, she might not have caught the muffled conversation coming through the cracked-open door of suite number thirty-two.
“—give me a minute?” Athena’s voice, first. But it was neither her Pallas Radio voice, nor the soft, even tone with which she spoke to Lucy. It was a voice Lucy knew intimately after her many years behind the counter of the hardware store. The customer service voice. “I think I actually have a call coming in.”
“You can let it go to voicemail.” The other voice was older. And as they drew closer to the door, Lucy caught sight of Athena’s conversation partner: an older white woman in a navy-blue blazer-and-skirt set. “Athena…it’s not as if we don’t appreciate your creativity here. But after three years of this, are you sure you don’t want to pivot this project at all? The Campus Community-Building Grant wasn’t really intended for—works of fiction.”
“Pivoting would defeat the purpose, ma’am,” Athena said. “The committee was very enthusiastic about the concept of building community through audience participation in an immersive narrative. It doesn’t work if I switch gears in the middle of the story.”
