Sunshine

Then the real dream began. I seemed to be back on the cottage porch with my grandmother, that first time, when we changed the flower, only this time we didn’t sit in the shade but in strong sunlight. The flower was in my hands, and her hands were over mine, but I was the adult I was now, and neither of us spoke. I closed my hands, and opened them, and the flower was now a feather. I closed my hands, and opened them, and the feather was three matchsticks. I closed my hands and opened them, and the matchsticks were a leaf. I closed and opened them again, and now I was holding her plain gold ring with the red stone. The red stone flared in a sudden bright ray of the sun before I closed my hands again. Close, open, and there was the baroque monstrosity twinkling with green. Close open. My jackknife lay between my palms: the little jackknife that usually lived in the pocket of my jeans, that now lay hidden in my bra. Close open. A key. A key…

I woke up. It was still daylight, but the sky was reddening with sunset. I was painfully stiff from sleeping on the floor. It was all still true: I was chained by the ankle, trapped in an empty house with a vampire. What I had dreamed was only a dream, and the sun was setting. I was also still horribly, murderously tired; I couldn’t have had more than about four hours’ sleep. If I’d had one of those hollow teeth that spies used to have in cheap thrillers, I’d have bitten down on it then. I didn’t see how I could face another night. Bo’s gang would be back, of course. To see how we were getting on. And my vampire—what a grotesque thought, my vampire—would have to decide all over again whether…however the question presented itself to him. Whether he was going to let Bo win or not.

I rolled over with a groan. He was sitting cross-legged in the precise center of the wall. Watching me. I pulled myself into a sitting position. My mouth tasted beyond foul. I’d left the water bottle within his reach, but he hadn’t had any more. I made myself stand up—all my bones hurt—rather than crawl, and went toward him and picked it up. I was getting used to approaching him. It was true, what you’ve read, about how you can’t maintain a pitch of terror for very long: your body just can’t do it. I was sick with dread, I at least half wanted to die to get it over with, but I walked to within arm’s length of a hungry vampire and picked up my bottle of water and drank out of it with no more hesitation than if he’d been Mel. “Do you want any more?”

He took it out of my hand, and disposed of half of what was left. Again I didn’t see him drink. When he handed it back to me I stood there staring at it. I wanted to finish it—I was assuming Bo’s gang would bring more, in the interests of keeping me “attractive”—but I felt curiously reluctant to wipe the top off under his eye.

He said, “You will contract no infection by sharing water with me.”

There was a curious new quality in his hitherto expressionless voice. I thought about it for a while. To do with the tone. Something.

He sounded amused.

I forgot not to look in his eyes. “What if you’ve been—like, drinking bad blood?”

“What happens when you pour water into—alcohol? It mixes, it is no longer water, it is alcohol, and…clean of live things.”

Clean of live things. I liked that. “It is diluted alcohol.”

“This alcohol is still strong enough. And, as you might say…self-regenerating.”

His eyes were not so murky as they had been last night. Presumably it was the water. Diluting something…else. “Please do not look in my eyes. It is coming night again, and…I still do not want Bo to win.”

I jerked my gaze away. Bad sign that he’d had to tell me. Good sign that he still wanted Bo to lose. Good sign for what? Bo still had us. It’s not as though this was some kind of trial, challenge, that when we got to the end if we’d survived they’d let us go free. This was it. It was only a question of really soon or slightly less soon. I wondered what Mom and Charlie and Mel and the rest were thinking; if Aimil knew yet. I hadn’t not showed up on time to make cinnamon rolls in seven years. I’d never missed a morning till today. I never got around to taking holidays, and I was never ill. (Charlie, who never got sick either, used to say, “Clean living,” which infuriated Mom, who had flu every winter.) Would they have told the police I was missing? Probably. But the police would have said that I was free and over twenty-one and to tell them again in a few days if I still hadn’t turned up. Pat or Jesse might be able to make them look harder once they were looking at all, but I wasn’t going to be alive in a few days. And our local cops were nice guys but not exactly rocket scientists. Not that rocket science would help me either.