Walk Among Us, page 29
The ewe noses at the corpse, and I let her. It will help her adjust. If the rest of the sheep were lambing, I could give her an orphan to make up for the loss, but she’ll have to bear it alone.
“How did slaughter go?”
“Do you want the short version or the long?” I ask, smiling at her. I can’t help myself.
She seems to glow in response to my attention. “Whichever you’d like to tell.”
So I tell her, leaving out my anger, and it rewrites the whole experience for me. It’s like therapy, being able to revisit those long nights and focus on the craft and pride instead of the hurt and betrayal. I tell her about how cleanly the kills went, how none of the meat had any signs of bloodshot, how the lambs hadn’t bitten their tongues, how it had been as peaceful as an early death can be. I tell her about how satisfying it is, to take a muscle group apart at the seams, and to deliver sustainably raised rib roasts to our customers. I tell her about the backlog of animals we still have, frozen off-cuts waiting to be processed into sausage, rillettes, charcuterie.
While we talk, we bag up the lamb to go to disposal in the morning. There are rules about what sort of biohazardous waste you can have, even—or especially—on a working farm. She handles the corpse with surprising ease.
After, we wash up and go out into the pasture. We find Sylvia, sleeping, and watch her chest rise and fall for a bit. It feels like before, but better, richer.
I don’t have to pretend. There’s nothing to pretend about and knowing that Robin knows what I am takes one last imperceptible weight off my soul. She stays up with me until nearly dawn, and the night is unusually clear and dry. We look at the stars. I tell her a few things about my childhood, no longer needing to hide my age.
She touches my hand, once, and I don’t think about the greenhouse. I don’t feel afraid.
I just lean into her.
Masquerade
Somebody has gone through the livestock files.
Not the sheep files, the human files, which, though they’re kept in code, are sealed in a locked filing drawer in the office. Somebody opened it, went through them, and put everything back in order except they transposed two pages. I don’t know how long it’s been that way because I haven’t looked with any real attention since January, and now my Blood is boiling, seething in my ears.
Because something is officially wrong.
Jolene? This began, as far as I can tell, after I took that blood bag from her. My strange moods, the footsteps in the far pastures, everything growing more and more unstable. But that doesn’t seem right; she isn’t the type to skulk. And she hasn’t been on site (to my knowledge, anyway) since December. Getting into the office isn’t easy during the night, not with me here, and Kasim—
Oh.
Fuck.
Our little revolutionary. Our idealist, whom I put in his place twice last month, who thinks I’ve lost my mind—he holds down the fort when I’m otherwise occupied, and I’ve been otherwise occupied for months now, distracted by the ongoing saga of Robin and the drama of the Camarilla’s demands. He has the keys. He has the righteous anger.
I found those footprints a few weeks after he moved in—
I have to find him.
He’s not hard to locate. I almost run straight into him not five feet from the office door. He looks winded. Scared. He knows.
Wait. How could he know? How could he know that I’d find those files tonight, and make the connections, and—
“Something’s wrong,” he gasps. Gasps, as if he’s been holding a breath he doesn’t need. “Inside, now. Close the door.”
I don’t move. I’m too angry. I’m too confused.
“Seriously, right now,” he says, and he pushes me, hands on my shoulders.
I snarl. He jumps back.
“I’m not kidding, Leigh,” he manages, and that’s at last what makes me move, because he’s no great liar, and he must be terrified if he’s willing to risk violence.
We go into my office. I close the door, stand with my back to it. I don’t let my guard fall even an inch, though, just in case I’m wrong.
He paces. He works his jaw. I search for guilt in the line of his jumping sternocleidomastoid, and think I find it.
Then he says, “It’s Robin,” wincing, ready for an explosive response.
The anger curdles, overlaid by confusion, worry. “What?”
“Robin has been talking to . . . somebody. She’s got a burner phone—Key noticed it a few days ago. It’s an old flip thing.”
Robin loves her iPhone, hasn’t given it up despite the general trend on campus to lock them away. But I’ve never seen this flip phone. Wouldn’t I have noticed?
“Why didn’t either of you tell me?” I ask, brain spinning down paths I’d rather it didn’t. Robin has been off-site. Robin left, angry and betrayed, but had a change of heart and wanted to come back. Robin has been so kind to me, so gentle, so perfectly everything I want . . .
I feel sick.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal, except—except I just heard her talking on it, out in the fields.”
It’s pouring rain tonight, just above freezing, and the wind is gusty and horrible. If she’s out in that, it means she didn’t want to be overheard.
But why not go off campus?
And then there’s the convenience of it. The sheer, perfect timing of it. Kasim comes running the moment I find evidence that he’s betrayed me with the perfect diversion—
But he couldn’t have known. And Robin has worked a few shifts alone since coming home, now that she knows what I am. She had access, same as him.
“Who was she talking to?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t get close. I only heard her side.”
“Which was?”
He relates:
“Yes, I’m settling back in.” (Not incriminating yet.)
“No, she doesn’t know.” (Problem.)
“She’s only told me some of what they’re doing, but I think I can put the rest together.” (Very big problem.)
“No, I don’t think I’m in any danger. She’s half in love with me.” (Fuck.)
“Yes, I can still make that meeting time.” (Fucking shit.)
Everything slots into place: that night in Peninsula Park and how easily I persuaded her, how when I first interviewed her, she was eager to work in the office with me.
What if all her uncertainty, her feints that made me pursue her, was constructed?
She’s not Kindred herself, of course. She worked day shifts with Key, and anyway, I would have known the moment she sat down across from me if not long before, those times I watched her shows and studied her character. (Did she know I was there even then? Was that a calculated lure to draw me in? Seed the perfect application, then put on the show?)
(If she is a liar, then she is a perfect one. An actress beyond measure. I want that to be how she got me, and not my own weakness.)
(It’s all such a mess.)
But she’s not Kindred. And I don’t think she’s enthralled, either, because even though there are ways to control a human from a distance, I know I’d smell them on her. Some taint that is not mortal, some darkness that would cling to her sinews. As far as I can tell, she’s human to the marrow. If I split her open, she would die. If I tied her to a post in the yard, she wouldn’t ignite when the sun came up, and she wouldn’t lose the pull of her master’s voice when there’s no master’s voice to heed.
She’s mortal. She’s human. She’s exactly what I’ve always assumed she was. And she’s still dangerous.
I want to believe Kasim is making this all up. I want to believe it more than I’ve believed anything in my long life. But it makes too much sense, and Kasim would have too much to lose to move against me. But why? Is she secretly a radical animal rights activist who’s here to shut down the sheep aspect of the ecovillage? That’s so ridiculous in the face of what I told her the other week that I want to laugh. And yet the burner phone suggests she’s talking to another human, because very few Kindred would be stupid enough to talk openly even on an unregistered line now that DHS and the NSA are combing every digital footprint and recording for us.
But were they talking openly? Without the other side of the conversation, I can’t tell. It’s just as likely they were talking just around the edge of anything damning, which would point to Anarchs. Or, less likely but still possible, other Camarilla members who want this experiment shut down, perhaps because of the risk to the Masquerade, but there’s no way they’d employ a human to that end.
Kasim’s the more likely plant in that case. And yet.
And yet.
Is the timing a coincidence? A manufactured crisis to keep me off-balance? Some ploy to separate me from Robin that just so happened to come on the heels of finding that something is very wrong?
“Leigh?” Kasim asks, and I move away from the door, running my hand over my scalp, thinking, thinking. I have to keep us safe. I have to stop the wolves at my door, no matter who they are.
Say it’s humans. Why are we still here, then? They don’t care about due process when it comes to torching our hideouts, and even with the heavy human population here, they could still take out Lucille and me without raising too much fuss. Not any more than they’re used to risking, anyway. It could be that it’s humans, but not Second Inquisition gun-toting humans. Investigative reporters? Still a huge, huge risk to the Masquerade. And if it is Anarchs, then that might even be worse. They couldn’t take this place over and hold it, no, but they could raid it (or have it raided while I sleep) and hurt all my charges in the process.
There’s only one answer, and whether Kasim is lying or not doesn’t come into it, because the risk is far too great.
Robin Joy has to go.
All my questions, all my theorizing, aren’t important enough to delay that in hope of answers. I need to shut this down, and now.
And if Kasim is lying?
Well.
I’ll handle him next.
Assignment
I oversee the “delivery” of Ethan’s fractured heart to a customer the next night.
The timing is horrible for me, but wonderful for the recipient. After, Ethan is taken to an inpatient ward for an apparent suicide attempt that he won’t remember, and I have a resounding success to report to Sebastian Vương. Kasim’s plan worked. Between that and the roster of free-range humans we’ve collected useful data on, we have enough to offer the powers that be to win us more funding, less oversight, and, with any luck, a hands-off approach for another two to three years.
But all that success is worthless if Robin Joy lives out another week. It might already be too late; I risk more every minute that passes. I should have killed her before sunup. I didn’t. I should have killed her while the betrayal was still hot in my veins. I didn’t.
Instead, I have spent nights agonizing.
I want to assign Robin to myself. I really do. I’m nearly vibrating out of my skin when I sit down in my office, starting the paperwork because I can’t wait any longer. I matched her with the tag number for Sylvia just after we named her by the way, because of course I did, because I’m weak and sentimental, and I come so, so close to putting my own customer number down next to her.
More than once.
She even asked me to do it. Two nights ago, before I knew she’d betrayed me, unable to know she was bound for the auction block, she said:
“If I ever say yes, I think it would have to be to you.”
“Why?”
“You’d be kind.”
“We’re all kind. We’re not monsters.” Not most of us. Not here. But I knew I was lying, because I was thinking about Sebastian Vương, and about Monsieur Messy Feeder back in November. I was thinking about myself. “And you could always choose not to know. Just donate like it’s Red Cross day, get a cookie, never find out. And no matter what, like you said, it’s up to you. Always.”
Lying. When did I get so good at lying?
No, I’ve always been good at lying. When did I get so good at lying to her?
Wouldn’t it be the humane thing to do, the moral thing, to take her stated wish and translate that to the reality I’m now faced with? She said she would pick me! But the key word there is pick, isn’t it? Consent. Choice. It’s not ethical, to assume that just because she’d pick me means that she’d want me to take her in any other context.
This. This is where humans are different from livestock. They can tell you exactly what they want, and you can extrapolate just how far that goes.
This line of philosophical agonizing should be what stops me, or at least what I pretend stops me, but I’m getting very tired of lying. Honesty means confessing, if only to myself, that I am furious. I am desperate. And that’s why I can’t assign her to myself.
It all comes down to my rules. I am a selfish, lying monster. I wouldn’t be able to feed from her from a plastic bag. I would want, need, to hold her in my arms, make her writhe, whisper sweet nothings to her, and remember what it is to feel the struggle of my prey.
I would make it good for her. I could still bind her to me, to prove she was neutralized, truly safe. She would be like Key is to Lucille. She would be my loyal sheepdog, always watching for my command, responsive to my will. And I want that. I want that so, so badly.
Because I am a monster. I am selfish. I am hungry.
But I can’t do it. And not because of respecting her free will, but because it would complicate everything. This community only exists because I have ironclad control over myself. I am the shepherd. Sometimes my flock needs to be culled, but I cannot be a wolf hunting among them. She can be enthralled to somebody else, or killed, but she cannot remain here unchecked. She cannot lead the foxes through the gate.
I finalize the paperwork and text Vương at dawn, when I can delay no longer. Spring is coming, and sunrise is drawing back toward my working hours once more. The dream of this long winter is over.
On Thursday, she goes to Vương, doing double service by sating my doubtful patron. I want him here sooner, to end my agony, but it was the first opening he had.
Goodbye, Robin. I would have loved you, if you let me.
Romance
The next night, she calls me.
I should let it go to voice mail, but she knows I’m in the office, so if she’s calling instead of stopping by, something might be wrong. I answer in one and a half rings. And then I don’t know what to say, so I just croak out my name in greeting.
“Leigh here.”
“Hey,” Robin says, and, yes, there’s nervousness in her voice.
“What’s up?” I want to ask so many other questions, but not like this. She’s got me trapped, calling instead of stopping by.
“Can you come over? When you get a moment? To the house, I mean.”
“Is something wrong?”
“It’s the plumbing,” she says, apologetically. “The water’s out. Don’t worry, it’s not gushing anywhere, but I thought maybe you could fix it real fast?”
My damsel in distress. And I, her tower minder, am supposed to be on call for exactly this sort of problem. I can’t say no.
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I say, and hang up.
This is a trap. Even if there aren’t Inquisition agents ready to grab me when I come out the door of the office (there aren’t, and I don’t sense anybody new on the campus beyond), I know that if I go there, my chances at self-control drop. But I’m already weak. I’m always weak when it comes to Robin. I made the right decision, signing her over to Vương, because in another night it will all be out of my hands.
There’s only this last night to do more damage in.
I ease open the door without a sound. The kitchen’s finally finished, but the living room and dining room have been all but gutted, their flooring pulled up to be refinished. Work that now seems as if it will never be complete, can never be completed, but it will be. Once she’s gone.
I climb the stairs. The bathroom door is open at the end of the hall, and I make myself go there first, check the shower. Water flows easily, no knocks in the pipe. My skin prickles all over in warning, shouting at me to run, but I don’t. I go to her door. My chest feels tight and painful, feels exactly as it did when Kasim told me what he’d overheard.
Inside, I can hear her typing. Her laptop keys click gently, then pause, then rush forward again. I listen from outside her door, head bowed, muscles taut.
I knock.
For a moment, I hope she doesn’t answer, but then I hear her soft footsteps, the gentle creak of the wood. She opens the door and smiles at me, because she doesn’t know what’s coming for her. She doesn’t know we are at war. She doesn’t know I’ve signed the paperwork and sold off her life, and so she is happy to see me.
Despite the danger, I want to pretend, for half an hour, that things are back as they were in December, when I trusted her.
I am a lovesick fool, hurt and longing. I should not have come.
“I checked on the pipes,” I say. “The water’s working just fine.”
I watch her smile falter, just a little. Guilt? Fear that I’ve discovered her ploy? Then she steps back.
“Yeah, I lied,” she admits, sheepishly. “I . . . I just wanted to see you. And you’ve been so busy that I figured I needed a good reason to get you over here.”
If this is a ploy, it is obvious and desperate. I need to leave. But I can’t sense anybody else in the house with us, and excitement rolls off her skin like perfume. Anticipation. Desire.
“Come in?” she asks.
Following every Victorian penny dreadful, those words work magic in me, unlock my limbs, and I step into her room.
“I’ve missed you,” she says.
Fuck. I look around for a seat; she points to her bed. It’s disheveled, a nest made of pale cream and deep crimson bedding, a riot of patterns and textures, all perfumed with her. I hesitate, then sit. “It’s a busy time of year,” I say, looking not at her but at the rest of the room. At all the art she’s hung up along the walls. I look for clues about her. Not Robin Joy the performer, not Robin Joy the employee, but Robin Joy the betrayer.
