Page 51 of Thrall
He paused, and didn’t quite meet her eye. That rueful human grimace had faded, leaving his face smooth and empty. By the light of the moon, and by the blue glow of the emergency phone outside, his stillness made him look like something carved out of stone, or marble. He didn’t look like something that had ever been living. Let alone something Lucy could relate to.
Then again. He probably looked at her and felt the same.
Laurentius raised his head. And all that smooth blankness in his face suddenly sharpened to a point. His gaze snapped, catlike, to the window. As if following movement.
“You should wake up now,” he said, calmly. “You’re not alone.”
And then Lucy was flat on her back, tied to Mila’s bed.
She blinked. This time, the room was as she had left it. The light was switched on in Mila’s kitchenette, casting a low yellow glow in the room. When she turned her head, Mila herself was back in the corner, her eyes closed and head tilted against the wall. But Lucy could tell by her breathing that she wasn’t fully asleep.
And that watchful feeling, fully absent from the dream, came rushing back. It felt closer than it had been when she’d fallen asleep. So close that it felt as if he was just outside.
She took a breath. Slowly, so as not to alert Mila that anything was wrong. Laurentius must have sensed him from inside the dream. But she’d felt Vanya’s attention long enough that she noticed gradations to it now. It wasn’t like the night before, when she’d felt him outside the window. She didn’t hear theclick-clickof the doorknob, the sound of her mind being opened. He wasn’t trying to call out, or get in. It was as if he just wanted to stand close enough to be known.
Once again, she remembered what Laurentius had said about the taste of a person’s fear. Strong and sharp, tinged with vinegar and acid. Vanya’s favorite. It was difficult, knowing that now, to see any of her small victories against Vanya as victories. If he didn’t try to reach her tonight, it wasn’t because they’d done anything right. It was because she was still being seasoned.
Motherfucker, she thought. She hoped he heard her.I’ll make you choke.
Technically, Lucy had finally gotten some sleep. But it seemed hosting Laurentius of Rome in her mind hadn’t been particularly restful. She was still exhausted. She knew she looked it, too: Mila had offered to watch over her a little longer, sans restraints, if she wanted to sleep in.
As kind as the offer was, Lucy declined it. For one, she wasn’t sure how to explain why she was so tired in the first place, when she had just promised not to go back to the library vampires without Mila. Sure, she hadn’tmeantto break that promise when she went to sleep. But she hadn’t tried very hard to wake up, either.
She would tell them what she found out, of course. She just needed to think hard about how to present that information. Laurentius had been right. It would be all too easy for Lucy to lose Athena and Mila’s trust.
She adjusted her backpack as she swiped into the multi-media center, with Natalie on her heels. Lucy had finally gotten to spend the morning in one of her classes, though her Horror Literature course hadn’t done much to get her mind off things. The only thing she’d written down from the lecture wasUnfinished business is a Western construct. And, more relevantly,Death is inevitable.
She rounded the corner and slipped through the open door of Athena’s studio. But even as Natalie closed the door behind them, Athena and Mila barely looked up. They were standing by the desk, heads bent over a piece of paper.
“What’s that?” Natalie said.
“Oh no.” Lucy’s stomach dropped. “Is someone else missing?”
“Not yet,” Athena said. Which was not the kind of denial that Lucy had been hoping to hear. “Come look at this. It was taped to the front door when Mila got here.”
Lucy sidled alongside them and followed their gazes down to the kind of cheery, inexpertly designed flyer that littered every spare wall of the campus. There was nothing alarming, upon the first read, about the text on its own:
Looking for answers?
Well, we don’t have them, either. (But let’s find them together!)
Join our philosophy department info session and mixer this Wednesday, 3 p.m., Lower Alton Hall #105. Meet our majors and graduate students, have some pizza, and maybe get some answers to your burning questions (but then again, maybe not). See you there!
“I don’t get it,” Lucy said. “What am I looking at?”
“Oh, wait. Remember that fake identity Vanya used at the party, with Alicia?” Natalie said. “He was going by the name of that philosophy PhD student he killed on the cruise line.”
So much had happened since they spoke to Alicia that Lucy had almost forgotten about Demeter Cruise Lines and Luke Thompson’s smiling face on the In Memoriam page. But now that she thought about it, Alicia wasn’t the only person who had mentioned a philosophy PhD student in the past few days. Whitney had, too.
“He could be using this Luke Thompson alias regularly,” Athena said. “The library vampires told you that he’s got protection from someone higher up, right? If that’s true, he could have some kind of excuse to be on campus.”
It sounded disturbingly possible. How much did Vanya need, after all, except for a little plausible deniability? With a student ID card and a good excuse, that would open more than enough doors for him. Maybe Luke Thompson had given Vanya more than a meal back on Demeter Cruise Lines. Maybe he’d given him an identity to assume. And a new hunting ground to call his own.
“I assume Lower Alton has a steam tunnel entrance?” Lucy said.
“Give the lady a prize,” Mila said faintly.
“But the party is at three p.m.,” Natalie said. “And Lower Alton’s a pretty new building. Lots of windows.”
