Page 49 of Craving Poison Ice

“Eleven days.”

“ Eleven. “ She said it as though I had confessed to a murder. “Maksim, you are a seven-day man. You are a reliable, boring, every-Sunday man. I have set my watch by you for nine years. Eleven days is a cry for help.”

“It was not a cry for help. It was a difficulty.”

“It was a hunger strike over a boy. “ She pulled up the other chair and sat down knee to knee with me. “Tell me.”

So I told her about the rink and the kiss and what it had done to me. I told her how he had touched my teeth with one finger, as though I were something worth wondering about. I told her about the corridor, and my confession, and his offer, which I could not think of even now without a feeling like stairs collapsing under me.

She listened without interrupting, which is her greatest and most terrifying talent.

“And then he told me to come here,” I said. “To eat. He said he would be weird about it, but that he would not let me starve because he was weird. And he kissed me. And he told me to go.” I looked at my empty glass. “I do not understand him.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Why he would say it.”

“Because he’s a person, you idiot.”

“I have been alive for a very long time, Tamsin. I know what people are.”

“You know what people were to you. “ She leaned forward. “Listen. For eleven hundred years you’ve been the thing in the room everyone was afraid of. You’ve been the danger, the secret, the don’t look at him too long. You’ve never once been the one someone was worried about.” Her voice softened. “That boy looked at you in a hallway and thought, he’s starving. He didn’t think he’s a monster. He thought he’s hurting. And then he offered you what he had, and when you refused, he told you to go and get it somewhere safe. Do you know how rare that is?”

“I know it is a great deal.”

“It’s the whole thing. That’s it. That’s what people mean when they say they’ve found a person.” She sat back and let out a breath. “Now roll up your sleeve, because you look like a corpse and I have a headache.”

I hesitated.

“What?”

“He said—” I stopped. Started again. “He said that he did not mind. That I should eat. But I do not think he would enjoy the thought of the neck.”

Tamsin stared at me.

“And the kissing,” I added, miserably. “First. As we do.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “He’s got you housetrained. “

“That is not—”

“Maksim. He has you asking permission to take a snack. I have never been so proud.” She was laughing now, silently, with her whole body, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. Then she held out her wrist, palm up, veins pale and blue beneath the skin. “Here. Boring, professional, no kissing. I’ll pretend it’s a blood drive.”

I took her arm as carefully as I have ever taken anything. She was warm. She had a pulse like a small clock. I had known that pulse for nine years and had never once been afraid of it.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“Shut up and eat.”

I did.

It is difficult to describe what it is like, to a human. I have tried, over the centuries, and always failed. The nearest I can come is this: imagine the first meal after an illness. Imagine warmth returning to your hands. Imagine a room slowly filling with lamplight. It was not pleasure. It was relief, deep and total, like a wire in my chest being loosened one turn at a time.

And with it, drifting up out of the dark, came one clear, absurd thought: he would be a better meal.

I did not think it with hunger. That was the strange part. I thought it with a sort of astonishment. That there was a taste in the world I was meant for, and that, if he ever said yes, and only if, it would not be hunger at all.

I drew back. I closed the wound. Tamsin was smiling at nothing, a little pale, a little dazed, the way she always is, and I held her wrist in both my hands for a long moment.