Sunshine

I thought of Pat turning blue and smiled a little. But only a little. She was right about their attitude toward vampires. She was right about the universal human attitude toward vampires.

“I had not planned to say anything to you. I had at first assumed that whatever happened four months ago was over. But the vampire taint on you remained: that wound in your breast was some vampire’s handiwork, wasn’t it?”

So much for the camouflage provided by high-necked shirts. I nodded.

“And then your friend came, and now there is no wound. The two events are related, are they not?”

I nodded again.

“That is as good a definition of friendship as I need. But…I will no longer call it a taint…the fleck, the fingerprint of the vampire is still upon you. I am afraid the metaphor that occurs to me is of the eater of arsenic. If you eat a very, very little of it, over time you can develop a limited immunity to it. I do not know why you should choose to…immunize yourself like this. Or why he should…My dear, forgive me if I have been a hopeless busybody. But your inevitable and wholly justified dismay, confusion, and preoccupation of four months ago has changed, certainly, but it has not decreased. It has increased—alarmingly so.”

She paused, as if she hoped for an answer, but I could say nothing.

“My dear, there is something else my wards have told me: that your nickname is more than an affectionate joke. I can believe no evil of someone who draws her strength from the light of day. If I can help you, I will.”

The sense of a burden unexpectedly lifted was so profound it made me dizzy, not least that by its lifting I realized how heavy it was. I had assumed—I had known—that there was no one I would be able to tell about my unlikely friend—there was certainly no one I would have risked telling. And now Yolande had told me. There were two of us who knew.

Maybe that meant the task was not impossible after all. Whatever the task was.

Well, wiping Bo out would be a service to all humankind, certainly, whether Con and I survived or not. But offhand I couldn’t see how even having a wardskeeper on our side was going to be useful. Besides, I had a selfish desire to stay alive myself. Bag the future of humanity.

And Con was failing to show up to help me make plans. He was the one who had told me that time was short. The new dry guys in Old Town bore something of the same message.

But there was now another human who knew about Con and me—and hadn’t freaked out. I felt better even if I shouldn’t‘ve.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” said Yolande. “I haven’t done anything yet, except pry into your private affairs. I would not have done so if I had felt I could risk not enquiring into them.”

Well, thank the gods and the angels for nosy landladies. This nosy landlady.

“Is there such a thing as a—an—antiward? Something that attracts?” I said.

Yolande raised her eyebrows.

“My—unlikely friend. He should have come back, and he hasn’t. And I don’t know how to find him.” “And the binding between you?”

I shook my head. “It isn’t strong enough, or—or it’s like it crosses worlds. And I can’t enter the vampire world.” Or I can, I thought, but I don’t know what to do when I get there. Like how to find anything. Like how to get out again.

“Then perhaps he has not called you.”

Interesting that she should know he had to. “I think he is in trouble. I think he may be in enough trouble that he can’t call me. Or he doesn’t know how. Vampires don’t call humans, do they?”

One eyebrow stayed up as she thought about this. “I see the difficulty.” She sat silent for several minutes and I sat in that silence, half-remembering a thing called peace. I’d forgotten peace in the last four months. It said something about my state of mind that merely sharing the fact of Con’s existence with someone else with a heartbeat made me remember it…in spite of the hard, dreadful knowledge of the existence of Bo.

She stood up and went inside. I gave myself another cup of tea and looked at the roses. Feeling at peace, however fragilely, made it easy to slip into the visionary end of the dark-sight. The rose shadows said that they loved the sun, but that they also loved the dark, where their roots grew through the lightless mystery of the earth. The roses said: You do not have to choose.

My tree said yessssss.

My doe stood at the edge of the forest shadows, looking into the sunlight, her back sun-dappled. You do not have to choose.

I didn’t believe it. Hey, how many hamburger eaters on the planet are haunted by cows?

When Yolande reappeared, her hands were full. “I can make something more connected for you, more like a—a loop in a rope; but here is something you can try straightaway.” Two candles, and a little twist of strong-smelling herbs. “Put the candles on either side of you, and the herbs before and behind you. Light them as well—do you have smudge bowls? Wait a few minutes till the smoke from all mingles. Then seek your friend.”