Page 45 of A Malicious Menagerie
“But I don’t feel anything now.”
Now, his lips twitch in a quick smile. “That’s good. I can only foretell unfortunate events. If you don’t feel any foreboding, it’s because nothing bad is due to you.”
“For how long?” I ask, brightening at his words. But then he shrugs, and I’m a little less excited. “How did you get in here, anyway?” Which probably should have been my first question, but oh well.
“Through the door,” he replies, and I’d think he was being sarcastic if not for the innocent way he blinks his piebald eyelashes.
“I’ll rephrase: how did you get out of your enclosure and past the cameras?”
At this, he only smirks, and really, did I think he was going to tell me? “Don’t worry, I’ll take myself back,” he says as he moves to the trash can to throw out the now-empty yogurt container.
“Why don’t you run?” I ask, curious. “If you’re able to get out of your cage whenever you want.”
“Run where?” he asks mildly, now walking to the sink and turning on the tap to wash his borrowed spoon. His movements are lithe and graceful, almost as if he’s dancing. “To the guards, to the outside world I know nothing about and have no map of, or to West Virginia, where I was captured and humans would continue to hunt me like Frankenstein’s monster?”
Well, when he puts it like that… Saddened, I ask, “Don’t you want to be free?”
He freezes with his winged back to me, his tall, lean frame still bent over the sink. “More than anything,” he murmurs, his voice so quiet that I have to lean in to hear him over the gentle burble of the sink.
Then, suddenly, the moment passes, and he’s in full motion again. His deft fingers rinse the spoon and tuck it aside in the drying rack beside the sink. “But where would I go?” he continues conversationally. “No, it’s better that I’m here for now. Because of my reputation and my powers, I’m mostly left alone, which is better than I can say for the poor vampire.”
As he turns and moves toward the door, I step aside to let him pass but pause when something occurs to me. “You know my name,” I point out. “How, I don’t know, but you do. I’d like to know yours.”
He grins, revealing very human-looking teeth. “Rory.”
“Rory?” I repeat, wrinkling my nose. Of all the names I could possibly imagine that the Mothman might have, ‘Rory’ would be close to the bottom of the list.
He shrugs. “It’s what she named me.”
Assuming he must mean his mother, I return his smile. “Rory, then. It’s nice to meet you officially.”
“And you, Anna.” And with a wave of a long-fingered hand, he slips back out the door, leaving the breakroom a far duller place in his absence.
23
The Kiss
Over the next couple of weeks, I fall into an easy pattern.
First, I go to visit Chase and bring him dinner. He insists that I don’t have to keep feeding him and that his previous bland diet of frozen cow is satisfactory. But he’s also quick to snatch my offerings out of my hand and wolf them down… pun very much intended.
After waving goodbye to Chase, I go to see Delia and give her a pint of blood. I make a couple of trips to the hospital for more, and so far, no one seems to have missed the expired bags. After Delia eats, we chat. I learn that she’s from Florida and that she misses the sunshine. True to traditional vampire lore, the sun burns her if she goes out during the daytime, so she hasn’t felt the sun on her skin since before she became a vampire. She was studying to be a nurse but had to drop out when she was bitten. She lived in Savannah for a few years after that, drifting aimlessly and working night shifts at a 24/7 diner. She was out hunting one night when two men ambushed her with silver shackles and brought her here.
“It’s ridiculous,” Delia tells me one night as she licks a drop of spilled blood from her thumb, “but the silver thing is true. It does weaken me. Don’t ask me why, it makes no physiologic sense, but then again, does vampirism?”
While John continues to complain about his stolen yogurt, I don’t see Rory in the breakroom again, though he does make a point to come wave hello most nights when I enter his cage. Knowing what’sactuallyhappening toJohn’s stupid yogurt, I no longer get upset when John blames me for taking it. Instead, I only smirk and let him think what he will. The truth, as usual, is so much stranger than fiction.
* * *
“Are you sure about this?” I ask Chase nervously, sifting my fingers through his unruly dark hair. “I’ve never cut a man’s hair before.”
“Can’t be worse than it is now,” he reasons. He’s sitting cross-legged in front of me in a pair of baggy, gray men’s sweatpants that I picked up at Walmart. He was amused the first time I thrust them into his arms, and he pointed out that werewolves don’t have the same hang-ups over nudity that humans do. I primly told him that I would feel more comfortable if he wore clothes, and that was the end of that argument. True to his word, if it comes to my comfort or safety, Chase lets me call the shots, which certainly doesn’t help me with this unhealthy crush I’ve been nursing.
“You say that,” I grumble, my sweaty grip making it difficult to hold the scissors I dug out of the junk drawer in the breakroom, “but it can certainly be worse. Uneven. Half bald. A mullet.”
He snorts. “I think you’d actually have to try to give me a mullet.”
“Don’t give me so much credit.”
