Page 50 of Thrall
“Not an answer,” Lucy snapped. “Why were you trying to get in to begin with? And—how did you just walk in without an invitation?”
“Because none of this is real, of course,” he said, with the enunciation of someone stating the obvious. “Everyone else has been in your head. Why shouldn’t I be?”
She took several breaths, and reminded herself that throttling Laurentius of Rome would do absolutely nothing for her. He’d probably catch her in one hand, with ease. “Okay. Then maybe we can start with what you’re doing in my head.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” he said. And now that the rage-haze was clearing, that made sense. She’d known Hiro Minamoto for a cumulative five minutes, and she could still guess that this had him and his court whispers written all over it. “I didn’t create the scenario, either. We used one of your memories as a base.”
“My memory?” Lucy echoed. This was the second night she’d spent in Mila’s dorm. She hadn’t had a lot of time to make memories there.
“The situation, if not the setting, then,” he said. When Lucy’s stare stayed blank, he added, “You were a teenager. Your mother was away for the evening, with your grandmother at the hospital. And you woke up in the night and remembered—”
“That I hadn’t locked the door,” Lucy realized out loud.Of course.She’d been in bed, mostly asleep, and she’d dreamed she heard someone walk into the apartment. It had started the same way, too. With theclick-clickof the turning knob.
“You think of that moment often, when you’re feeling vulnerable,” Laurentius said. “You thought of it just the other night, when you realized that your thoughts weren’t entirely your own.”
Lucy sank into one of Mila’s kitchenette chairs. It felt very solid for something in her head. “You told me that you didn’t know how to help me,” she said slowly. “A few hours ago, you said that. And now your husband is giving you detailed reports of the goings-on in my head?”
“Don’t mistake me. I still don’t know how to help you,” he said. “But Hiro thought it might help if you visualized the issue in a way you’d understand.”
As Lucy looked up at him, she noticed, for the first time, how wide his pupils were in the dark. Hers must have looked the same to him. Nearly black. “The ‘issue’ being that Vanya is breaking into my mind?”
“To be a vampire is to constantly take inventory of what you control,” Laurentius said. “You control your territory—or ideally you do, barring some ravenous young upstart moving in. You control your hunger, whether you sate it with convenience or with violence. You control your mind, fortify its defenses against the rest of your kind, keep bad actors and curious busybodies from reading your thoughts. To be human is to control nothing. You make choices, here and there. You change your clothes and rearrange your furniture. But you spend most of your lives allowing things to happen.
“But,” he said, biting down on thet. “Even if you’re not a true vampire, perhaps you can still guard your own mind, to a degree. And whatever other skills you lack, what’s easier than locking a door?”
Lucy leaned back against the hard chair, suddenly dizzy. “So if I visualize locking a door, I could lock him out of my head?”
“Couldbeing the key word,” he said. “And if you’d like this to have any chance of working, I’d suggest you be much quicker next time.”
Lucy felt the chair back vanish behind her. She yelped as she fell, braced for impact, but she didn’t hit the ground. She hit something nearly as unforgiving, though. Mila’s extra-long twin mattress.
There was aclick-clickaround the corner. And then the slow sound of scraping metal.
“Fuck!” Lucy jumped out of the bed, the rush of vertigo threatening to toss her off her feet. But she gained her bearings, and by the time she reached the door, she’d built enough speed that she felt real impact when she hit the wood. She could feel the pressure of Laurentius’s push against the door, but this time, she was faster. She clicked the lock, flipped the deadbolt, and slumped forward to hold it shut.
She had a few seconds to catch her breath again. Then Laurentius’s muffled voice called, “That was an improvement.”
She took her sweet time opening the door. “You’re an asshole, by the way.”
“Yes, well.” He stepped through the door once more. “I’d like to see you live thousands of years and remain chipper.”
She settled back into the kitchen chair. Lucy wasn’t exactly sure why this conversation had gotten so under her skin. Except, perhaps, that she’d never really liked people who were certain of everything. Even if those people were as old as the rise and fall of several civilizations. “Hiro doesn’t want to leave, does he? That’s why he’s making you help me.”
Lucy had meant it to antagonize him. But Laurentius looked thoughtful, if irritably so. “Getting involved may benefit me as well,” he said.
“How so?” Lucy said.
“Because maybe he’ll finally understand that it’s hopeless,” he said, “when he sees how this goes for you.”
Lucy suppressed her shudder. It was a reminder not to forget what he was, no matter how relatively harmless she had determined him to be. She had lived a fraction of his life. Whether she died tomorrow or decades from now, it was not going to make a difference to him.
“I’m surprised it’s not him here, then,” she said. “Since he’s the one who reads minds.”
“He’s better at explaining his own foolish plans, too,” Laurentius said. “But he thought I could speak to something that he couldn’t.”
“Which is what?” Lucy said.
His mouth folded into a grim line. Somehow, it was the most human he’d looked thus far. “I spent my mortal life trying to grasp control where there was none,” he said. “A long time ago, of course. But he thought I could—relate.”
