Page 14 of Thrall
Lucy stumbled a little as she made eye contact with the speaker, a beautiful girl with thin, delicate braids down to her waist.PALLAS RADIO,read her placard,FOR THENOCTURNAL AMONG US.
Even now, Lucy was not in the business of saying no to pretty girls. “Sure,” she said. “Though I’m not feeling very nocturnal lately.”
The girl offered a closed-lipped smile as Lucy took the flyer. “Check us out anyway,” she said. “If you fall asleep, we won’t be offended.”
Lucy tucked the flyer into her purse and shuffled into line: For the first time since the party, she felt genuinely hungry, and something in the kitchen smelled amazing. There were sandwich and salad fixings, chicken fingers and greasy french fries, some kind of quiche. But whatever she smelled was deep and rich and meaty, with a hint of sweetness. Almost like Jillian’s multi-hour, labor-of-love Guinness stew, if you drizzled a bit of honey across the top.
She stepped past the brownies, peered under the heat lamps—and there was no oven tray resting on the slats. The smell wasn’t something being served. It was something wafting from the kitchen in the back.
Lucy peered through, and she caught the eye of one of the staff members working over something on the cutting board. He noticed her, winked. “This’ll look a lot prettier by dinner,” he said.
She glanced down, then, to the shape in his gloved hands. A slab of steak, glistening, marbled red, and raw. There was a light, watery sheen of blood against the butcher paper.
And her stomach roiled once again. Not with nausea, or disgust.
With hunger.
Her heart pattered unevenly as she stepped out of line and made her way towards a table by the back. She could eat later. Or maybe never again.
She sank into a chair and rubbed at her temples as she watched the door for Natalie. Though as hard as she massaged the side of her head, she couldn’t quite dislodge the impossible word that was once again surfacing in her mind.
Natalie arrived just a few minutes later, with a girl that Lucy didn’t recognize. She rose to her feet to greet them, welcoming the opportunity to put everything else aside. Natalie crossed the café in about four long strides, gathered Lucy into a tight hug, then drew back to appraise her.
Natalie’s mouth narrowed. “How are you feeling?”
Lucy smiled. That felt like a very kind, concerned way of telling her she looked like shit. “I’ll get back to you.”
Natalie winced. “Here, sit. This is the friend I mentioned—Alicia, this is Lucy.”
Alicia lightly perched on the chair opposite Lucy, like a bird alighting on water. She moved like a dancer. Though any dance instructor would have told her to fix that dour look on her face before going onstage. “I’m friends with your roommate,” Alicia said. Lucy couldn’t tell if the brittleness in her voice was directed at Whitney or at Lucy herself.
Probably me, Lucy reasoned. “Thank you for meeting us,” she said anyway, though Alicia continued to look determinedly unhappy to be there. But that was fine. At least they were on the same page about that.
“Do we really have to sit in here?” Alicia said tightly. “That creepy LARPer is up front.”
Alicia jerked her head. It seemed like she was indicating the tables by the door, where the nice Pallas Radio girl was. But Lucy didn’t have time to ask. Natalie shot her a sharp look and said, “Be nice.”
“You didn’t have to bring your friend all the way here, by the way,” Alicia said to Natalie. “I only talked to the guy for about ten minutes before he went to get a drink. Since he didn’t come back, I figured he found what he was looking for elsewhere.”
Lucy didn’t miss the way Alicia’s eyes flickered to her with a broad, assessing look. She opened her mouth. But Natalie cut her off.
“What the fuck, Alicia?” she said. “What’s with your fucking tone? We think she might have been drugged.”
It was hard to say who flinched harder, Lucy or Alicia. “Oh,” Alicia said. Her face was flushed all the way down to her neck. “Whitney said her roommate came home wasted at like three a.m. I figured—”
“And you figured incorrectly,” Natalie said viciously. “Found what he was looking for elsewhere? Apologize to her right now. Jesus Christ.”
Alicia flinched back, and Natalie shifted her own chair, as if she’d move the entire table to put herself between Alicia and Lucy if she had to. The clenched fist in Lucy’s throat unfurled. She’d liked Natalie the moment she met her, but she couldn’t help but feel that she’d underestimated her a little, too.
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. It was definitely not okay, but she wasn’t that interested in Alicia’s apology, either. “If you could just tell me what you remember about him, that would be a huge help.”
Eventually, Alicia brought herself to look Lucy in the eye again. “Honestly, not much,” she admitted. “I was pretty wasted. Kinda weird, actually, I only had like two beers. Anyway, he was nice—cute, too. Light hair, blue eyes. Quiet, but not in that awkward way. He let me do the talking.”
“Whatdidyou talk about?” Lucy asked.
“Mostly about me.” Alicia grimaced. “But he did introduce himself. Luke, a fourth-year philosophy PhD student. Oh, and he did say this was the wildest party he’d seen since he bartended for a cruise liner. He’d just started to tell me a story when I saw him notice you walk into the kitchen. He said he was just going to get a drink of water, but. Well. When he didn’t come back, it was pretty clear what had happened.” At a particular narrow-eyed glance from Natalie, she added, “That’s what I thought then, anyway.”
Lucy waved away the attempt at an apology. She was far too busy processing what Alicia had just said. “You saidhefollowedme.”
