Sunshine

That had been another of those really nasty pauses. I stared at him. So, I thought, the wards do work, but a vampire can handle them so long as the vampire and, or possibly or, the wards are properly insulated? I wonder what the insulation is? No, I’m sure I don’t want to know. There’s a blow for all the wardcrafters if word gets out though. But then again maybe it would improve their business if it was known for certain that the wards worked at all. What a lot I am learning. Perhaps that was why Bo’s gang had used gloves to touch me—in case of hidden ward signs. Now that I knew their attitude toward their guest a little better I thought perhaps they were hoping I was wearing a good one. And since I was chained up, making a run for it while he blew on his burned fingers or whatever wasn’t an option for me.

Or maybe they just hadn’t wanted to leave fingerprints on me. Perhaps it’s not polite to handle another person’s food even when you’re a vampire.

There was a sputter and crackle behind me. I turned sharply around: one of the candles in the chandelier was guttering. They were all burning low, casting less light than they had. But the room seemed no darker; if anything the contrary. I looked out the nearest window. Grayness.

“Dawn,” I said. I looked back at him. He was sitting as he had been sitting since I had come into that room, cross-legged, leaning—no, not quite leaning, straight-backed, only his head a little bowed—against the wall, arms on knees. The one time he had moved was when I’d wept. I looked at the windows in the big room. They were big too, and curtainless, and on three sides. I wondered about the weal on his arm.

Daylight increased. The sun was coming up over the lake, on my left. So we were on the north side of the lake; my family’s old cabin was on the southeast, and the city on the south. Even in the desolation where I sat it was impossible for my heart not to lift at the coming of daylight. Dawn was usually my favorite time of day: end of darkness, beginning of light. I was kind of a light freak. I sighed. It occurred to me again that I was very hungry, and even thirstier than that. And so tired that if he didn’t eat me soon I might die anyway. Joke. I didn’t feel like laughing. I glanced at him. He looked even worse than he had by candlelight. How long has it been? Bo’s lieutenant had said. So presumably he’d lived—if lived was the word—through some days here already. Ugh.

As the light grew stronger I could see the room more clearly. Near the corner to my left there was a heap of something I hadn’t seen before. Too small to be another vampire. No comfort. It was something lumpy, in a cloth sack. For something to do I stood shakily up—watching him over my shoulder the whole time—and edged over toward it. I could just reach it, at the fullest extent of my chain, almost lying along the floor to do it. The vampire was tethered in the center of the wall of the room, while my staple was a little more toward this end. If our chains were the same length, then I could reach this corner, and he could not. More vampire humor? If it was me he wanted, of course, he could just pull on the chain. I stood up again. I opened the sack. A loaf of bread—two loaves of bread—a bottle of water, and a blanket. Without thinking I broke off an end of one of the loaves: standard store bread, fluffy, without real substance, spongy texture, dry crumb, almost no aroma. Not as good as what I made. It was Carthaginian pig swill compared to what I made. But it was bread. Food. I raised the end I had broken off, and sniffed it more carefully. Why would they leave me food? Was it poisoned? Was it drugged, would it sedate me, so I wouldn’t see him coming? Maybe I should want to be sedated.

I was so hungry that standing there with bread in my hands made my legs tremble, and I had to keep swallowing.

“It is food for you,” he said. “There is nothing wrong with it. It is just food.”

“Why?” I said again. My continuing total-immersion course in vampire mores.

Something like a grimace moved momentarily across his too-still face. “Bo knows me well.”

“Knows…” I said thoughtfully. “Knows that you wouldn’t…right away. The bale of hay to keep the goat happy while the hunters in the trees wait for the tiger.”

“Not quite,” he said. “Humans can survive several days, perhaps a week, without food, I believe. But you won’t remain…attractive for that long.”