28. Niamh

The other fae would never acknowledge me. They didn't have to. Didn't need to. I respected their silence and never held it against them. At least consciously… I never held it against them.

Colleen, however, dwells in the mortal realm and she speaks to me. Whenever I answer back, she doesn't cringe away in disgust. Spew rules and decorum. Remind me to be proper.

She responds. Happily, excitedly, and giddy, her mind full of topics and things so foreign to me. She speaks not of the ceremony but "classes."

"I'm in general anatomy now," she explains, her body curled on the floor, chin perched on her raised knees. "It's a bore, the lecture part, I mean. But we get to dissect cadavers so I can't complain."

"Cadavers," I echo. The word is strange and unfamiliar.

"Bodies," she elaborates, her eyes alight with a mixture of disgust and curiosity. "Gross work, but one can't understand how the body works without seeing it up close in gory detail. It's what my professor says, anyway."

A professor. Like a master, only, she doesn't refer to them in the same awed reverence that I do the Lord Master. Not with fear.

Excitement. This professor feeds her new information, and they have her full respect.

"I can't wait until cell biology next term. In that one, we get to use microscopes. That's what I want to do by the end of it. Be a microbiologist. Study bacteria and viruses. I'd like to get a job at the CDC like my dad… Oh, look at me, talking you to death." She giggles and shrugs. Her supposed indiscretion doesn't make her shrink with shame. She laughs it off. It's a topic she likes to speak about and so she will, her subject's opinions unheeded.

"I don't mind," I say. My body is hunched toward her, my fingers trembling as they press against the mattress on either side of me. I love hearing her talk.

I wish I could make Caspian talk. I'd make him tell me about all the things he knows that I don't. Dark things. Dangerous things.

But I can't forget; he is one of a collective. His mind isn't his own. His thoughts aren't his own. Even when he touches me… The will isn't his own.

"What about you?" Colleen asks me, her head cocked to the side, gaze wistful. "I don't even know if your kind have a university or the like over there. Do you study for degrees, or do you just conjure them up?" She laughs again. The idea thrills her.

I feel my lips curl into a frown. Because I don't know. She's given me so much, but I can't repay her. My topics are small and little. In terms of knowledge, I don't have much.

"I'm not sure," I admit.

Her eyes widen. "Ah. I take it you aren't like that vamp. Are you a fae? I've never seen one of you in person before."

Her wide gaze drinks me in even as I try to speak. No, I should say. Not fae. Something else. Some dirty, broken, in-between creature.

But I can't speak.

And she has already flitted to another topic that interests her. "What's the deal with that vampire?"

"Vamryre?" I say, confused by her phrasing.

She laughs and shakes her head. "We just call them plain ol' vamps out here. No matter the name, they're dangerous creatures all the same. Did he hurt you?" Her tone turns cutting at the thought.

Did he hurt me? Yes and no. He has, but it's a price I would pay over and over again in exchange for him existing near me. Staying near me.

Pretending to be mine.

"He is Caspian," I say.

"Caspian?" She sneers at the name. "I've heard of him, a right prick! I'm surprised old Mo even let him back in here after the mess he made the last time."

My interest is piqued. "Mess?"

Colleen grits her teeth, her lips pursed in anger. "He went fucking mad last year and drained no less than ten people dry downstairs. Right in view of everyone! It was a right fucking mess, it was. Mo nearly went bankrupt bribing the uppers to keep quiet, and I had to—" She breaks off, arms crossed, chest heaving. "It doesn't matter. But you let me know if he's threatened you or hurting you…" Her voice turns soft, her pale hands curled into fists. "I'll make him pay. Has he? You can tell me."

Tell her. Tell her the truth.

"He hasn't hurt me," I say. "He saved me?—"

The door flies open and Caspian himself appears. He crosses to the bed and snatches up my bag of things. Slings it over his shoulder. Turns to face me once more. "Come," he says to me, ignoring Colleen completely. There is another parcel in his hands. He holds it awkwardly as if it is a dirty thing. I want to reach for it. Carry it for him, whatever it is.

Then I hear Colleen's voice in my head warning, "He went fucking mad. Drained no less than ten people dry."

I know enough to read between the lines and decipher her true meaning. Caspian killed ten people. One right after the other.

"I should head back before my dad gets up," Colleen says, lurching to her feet. She grabs her leather case and slings it over her shoulder. Then she sizes up Caspian in a glance, and marches past him. "Make sure you square up with Mo, vamp," she snarls over her shoulder. "If I'm not squared up for my payment there will be hell to pay. For you. Not her. See ya around, Niamh. I love your name, by the way." She speaks on her way down the stairs, right up until she opens the main door and steps out into a bright, brimming daylight.

We've followed her, Caspian and I, side-by-side, hand-in-hand. I think I reached for him first. Maybe I didn't. His touch is possessive, radiating ownership.

My touch is greedy, radiating ownership. I don't care about the reason for his nearness. I'll take it.

I'll take it.

"Come," he hisses, pulling me along down the stairs and to the door. He reaches for a battered metal handle and then hesitates. I watch bright, yellow sunlight lick at his fingers and paint them red.

"You forgot your limitations or something?" A woman calls out.

I turn to her and gape. She is wide and round with jiggling brown curls and sad brown eyes. Her pink dress is too tight, fighting to conform her shape to a smaller size. But her body is too big and round. Beautiful. It strains at the material disobediently, but she doesn't care. Conformity doesn't matter to her one bit. She glowers at Caspian, her face handsome, her eyes furtive and shrouded with secrets. She reaches for something behind her counter and throws it at him. "One of your kind left this here. You bring it back along with my payment."

Caspian says nothing, draping the material around him. A black coat with a hood long enough to shroud his face and wide sleeves to protect his hands. At his hip is my new black bag, inside of which he stows his parcel.

He reaches for the door again, but I touch it first. The daylight doesn't harm me. As long as he's beneath his hood, it doesn't harm him either.

The door slams behind us with a clinking sound—the tolling of a tiny bell attached to the top of it, sounding a hello and goodbye with every opening and closing.

Goodbye,it tells us now.

Hello,it trills.

For we are in the mortal realm.

I've fulfilled part of my only wish at last.

At last…

So why do I still feel so greedy?