Hotblood (42 page)

I sat in my classes and looked out the window at the snow, or studied the pattern of wood on my desk, or counted the hairs on my arm, Entire days passed without my feeling anything. I smiled and chatted with Snowy, relieved that she seemed to find the whole episode over and not worth talking about. Osmond practically disappeared. Every time I thought I saw him, he’d be heading in the opposite direction.

I was actually curious enough about it to ask Snowy one day. “I never see Osmond anymore; how did he get so busy?”

She raised her immaculate eyebrows. “He’s upset about the Halloween thing. He thinks it’s his fault because he… well, that’s all.”

I stared at her, wondering if she was joking for a second, but no, that was her serious as fashion face. I found Osmond in the boys locker room. I hesitated for a minute before going in, well, I actually waited for all the guys in football to leave first, but he stayed behind. It was dark in the room, only lights on here and there, illuminating the beigy tile and wooden benches. I heard a shower on and stopped, seeing a figure emerge from the steam. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that he was wearing a towel. He didn’t see me, but went to his locker instead, not noticing me where I hovered near the door. I spoke quickly before he took off the towel.

“
Osmond, it’s not your fault.” There, I’d said it; I could leave now. Except when he looked up at me, he looked so angry, but not at me, at himself. I knew that feeling, I knew that feeling better than any other feeling in the world.

“
Sure, Dari. No problem.”

I hated to see Osmond like this, the one person in the world who was truly nice, truly good, truly what he seemed to be. I went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder, noticing the wetness, the steam that still came off the skin. His muscles were impressive. He could have been a Hotblood the way he looked right then. I found myself feeling a little bit funny, more awkward than before. “What’s wrong?” I asked looking up at him, trying to see how I could fix this, how I could save somebody.

He took my hand off his shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze before he dropped it and turned away. He grabbed a shirt out of his locker and put it on without bothering to dry off properly first. I could see the water soaking through his shirt in places.

“
Osmond?” I asked again.

“
Look, let’s talk over burgers okay? I’m going to get dressed and you should wait outside.”

I nodded relieved that he was sounding more like himself, more in control and certain.

I waited for long minutes before he came out, looking slightly like an overstuffed marshmallow in the puffy coat he already had on. We took his truck, and I warmed up my fingers on the heater, feeling stupid for only bringing the light jacket. We went through the drive-in and then parked by the woods to eat. I chewed slowly, glad not to be eating anything Jackson cooked. It made me miss Satan.

“
So what exactly made you come into the boy’s locker room today? I think that sort of thing could get you expelled, or at least sent to detention,” he said before cramming another bite in his mouth.

“
I miss you.” He looked skeptical and I sighed. “I feel like you’re avoiding me and Snowy says you feel guilty for Halloween, which is so stupid. I really don’t see how a smart guy like you could fall for something like that, but, I don’t know, is she right?”

“
I enacted that whole scene on the roof. I lost my temper. I’m not allowed to even have a temper, and I lost it. I should have been the person that you called when you needed help. I should be the next thing to a big brother. It should be me with stitches in my head.”

“
Oh.” I sighed and fished a fry out of the bottom of my sack. “Well, avoiding me isn’t really brotherly.”

“
I failed,” He said flatly.

“
Look, the next time I go on a suicidal mission you’re the first person I’ll call. Okay? Osmond, you are too nice to feel bad about something like that. People make mistakes all the time. Devlin, who was, you know, practically perfect, made a huge mistake. If you can forgive me for not trusting you, for running after someone who you knew better than I did, I’d appreciate it.”

He scowled at his hamburger, then slowly his face smoothed and he asked me quietly, “So you’re not grieving for him?”

I felt my chest tighten, like everything inside of me got frozen for a second before I exhaled. “The person who I thought I knew doesn’t exist. How can I mourn an illusion?”

He sighed and patted my shoulder awkwardly. I leaned over and put my head on his arm, and we stayed like that for some time. It was true, I wasn’t mourning. I couldn’t move past the ice to feel anything like grief. It was all right though. I didn’t need to feel, not when I had snow to watch, not when I had Jackson to make dinner with in silence that neither one of us noticed. Not when I had Osmond, Snowy, Smoke, and Ash to sit with at lunch time, laughing at their jokes, watching Snowy and Smoke get closer and closer together.

“
We have to have a sleepover,” Snowy said one day, and I nodded easily. “I mean, we can stay up late doing manicures and pedicures, and the whole thing.”

I nodded again and noticed the look she gave Osmond when she thought I wasn’t looking. “What?” I asked.

She shrugged, “It’s been almost a month Dari. You’re losing weight and wearing tons of black. I thought you were so over that whole color phobia.” Her smile was not entirely kind.

“
Why don’t we go out some time?” Osmond asked.

“
Out?” I stared at him. “I guess you could come to the sleepover…”

“
No, Dari,” Snowy said with a smile that wasn’t entirely happy. “I’m not into that kind of party.”

“
We could go bowling,” Osmond said and gave me a smile that gave nothing away. How had he learned to smile like that?

“
I guess. Bowling would be fine. With other people?” Both he and Snowy shook their heads no. “Like a date then?” Their nods became affirmative and I couldn’t help giggling. “You should see yourselves in a mirror. So you think I need to date someone to help me push past my current state of...”

“
Zombiness,” Snowy said bluntly. “Osmond’s a perfectly appropriate first date for you to have.”

I looked at Osmond, and felt a stir of uneasiness in my stomach. “I might hurt him,” I said. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, and I wanted to take the words back, but they were laughing like I’d said something funny and I let them.

At home I skinned a chicken while Jackson chopped vegetables. “Osmond asked me on a date,” I said, for no reason in particular.

“
How did you turn him down?” he asked and I stared at him.

“
I didn’t exactly. Why should I?”

“
You’re Daughter to the House. That means you get to date suitable men the house approves of, not nice guys from high school.”

“
Excuse me?” I realized I’d changed the way I was holding my knife, and he raised an eyebrow at me, and shifted the grip on his blade as well.

“
You took the uncle’s blood in an ancient, seldom used rite that makes you irrevocably daughter of the House. Why do you think your mother’s been so mad lately?”

I stared at him, my mouth hanging open, and spun around to the door where my mother stood. “Is this true? Do I not get to choose who I date because of some obscure ritual that I knew nothing about?”

“
Yes,” she said coolly. “Unless I choose to take your place, divorce your father, and join the circle.” She closed her eyes and looked very tired, and delicate.

“
Do it then. You’re not living with dad anyway.” She stared at me, and something flickered on her mouth, a smile of some kind.

“
Not quite willing to let someone else control your life? I like that, Dari. I like that very much. Are you going to spend the night at Snowy’s tomorrow?”

I nodded and that was the end of that conversation, but it explained Grim’s behavior at the House. I should have demanded, I should have known, but then, after an hour, the anger cooled and I was left feeling nothing. The swirling colors of the Axel painting kept me company, the rest of the world seeming farther and farther away.

I arrived at Snowy’s and we did the usual stuff, girl talk. Well, Snowy talked about the latest guy Valerie was dating, and how ridiculous it was for Smoke to have ever played the tuba, and about the Christmas social she was planning, until finally she ran out of things to talk about. I lay there on her floor in an old sleeping bag of her brother’s and listened to the sound of cars driving by through the slush, and the sound of the house wrapped in silence as the town fell asleep. I fell asleep, lulled by the sound of Snowy’s heartbeat and steady breathing.

***

A distant white light was all there was at first, a blurry white haze, and then as things came into focus there was the pain. I made a sound, one tiny whimper that did nothing to contain the agony, the ache that permeated every cell of my body. My heartbeat was slower than the sound of icicles dripping on the window ledge. I heard the hum of a machine, the buzz of florescent light bulb above my head and the sound of someone very close breathing. I twitched, a slight movement that took all the energy I had, and I faded out, then back, the room coming into focus for a moment as I concentrated, the wall with photos of a smiling family on it, the old coffee maker on the counter, the small window that was large enough to let in air, but not much else.

“
He’s awake,” a voice warned. Nervousness mixed with fascination as I saw a glowing set of eyes looking down on me set in a strong-jawed face.

“
Not for long,” and I saw Jason’s face, the smile blurring even as I struggled to move, to rip the needle from my vein, I saw my hand reaching for his throat, the white corpselike skin stark against Jason’s tan. The pain increased until I felt a scream rip out of me, and another, on and on.

***

I sat up panting, horror in every part of me. He was alive, Jason had him, he was alive and Jason had him. The mantra continued until Snowy flipped on the switch and looked at me, rumpled and scowling.

“
You all right? A nightmare or what?” she mumbled, her voice sleepy.

I slithered out of the sleeping bag and started pulling my pants on over my pajamas. “I have to save him. He’s being drained, why is it taking Jason this long to drain him?”

Snowy’s face was losing its innocence and she hopped on the bed and cocked her head to the side. “You can actually know that Lewis is alive by a dream? I assume we’re talking about Lewis.” I nodded as I searched the floor for my missing sock. “Dariana, hold on. If he’s lasted this long, fifteen minutes isn’t going to hurt. Do you know where he is?”

“
Ace’s warehouse, in the office up in the top of the building.”

“
All right, that’s specific. So that creep I shot is torturing Lewis, who is a creep that we like, even though he’s way too old for you and never ever should have danced a tango with you. I mean, your birthday wasn’t until last week.”

“
Don’t call him a creep.” I forced my voice to lower to a whisper. “It wasn’t his fault that time, it was Valerie, what she said to me that made me… anyway, I can’t leave him there suffering. If anyone kills him, it’s going to be me.”

She looked at me skeptically. “Right. Well, on that note, we’d better call a meeting then.”

“
A meeting? I’ve got to go home, tell my mother…” I trailed off at the skeptical look on her face.

“
Your mother wants to kill him for what he did to you, the whole, getting you involved with her mob family, and I can’t say I blame her. She’s not there anyway.”

“
Not there?”

“
She’s serving your dad his papers. She’ll be back some time after school tomorrow.”

I felt something then, a blinding flash of cold that left me thinking clearly, the emotion of Lewis wiped clean in an instant. I hadn’t meant it when I told my mother to divorce my dad so I could be free, I’d thought I was calling her bluff. After all, she married my father when she was Daughter of the House of Slide and what could anyone do if I refused to act like a Daughter? I took a deep breath and tried to organize my thoughts. I had to do something about Lewis, but what could I do when all of the allies of Slide had left the city to attack Bliss? That was why Lewis was in Ace’s warehouse, because Ace had gone to help, taking all of his Hotbloods with him. I didn’t know how long I had, but the memory of the white flesh, Lewis’ white flesh, bloodless, left my stomach roiling, the memory of Devlin’s corpse coming to the front of my mind.

“
All right. Let the meeting begin then,” I said, my words sounding much calmer than I felt.

Snowy rolled her eyes. “At the warehouse, Dariana. If you’re serious about doing a rescue mission we will do it the right way. I mean, plan it instead of rushing in without an exit strategy.” She began getting dressed and I followed her lead, unwilling to do anything stupid that would give her more stitches. In fact, the idea of involving her at all seemed worse and worse. If there was some option that would have ended Lewis’ pain without anyone else getting hurt, even if it would kill me, I would have taken it. Unfortunately, I didn’t see how I could do anything except get myself killed.

“
We’re going to have the meeting at the warehouse where Jason has Lewis? How is that a good…”

“
Not that warehouse,” she said sounding exasperated.