Page 41 of Tell Me Why
She would ask for blood to drink, whole, rather than do this.
Tell taught her a pair of board games that were constructed in a foreign language - French, she thought, or Italian - and he went through the room again. The night went slowly, but he remained unconcerned, sitting with her for a time after she went to lay down, then going to change into the absurd pajamas again.
Tina had actually forgotten about those, and while she’d intended to ask if there were just pajamas forhim, she didn’t actually want any.
Her clothes weren’t made for sleeping in, and it was hard to get them to lay flat and smooth and loose, no matter how carefully she arranged herself, but she wasn’t going to stoop so low as to wear prisoners’ pajamas.
Tell did it ironically, somehow, and it worked, but it would have just been a capitulation, from Tina.
The next night, there was no Isabella, and Tina turned her fountain away, telling them that she had no interest in them.
“Is this a hunger strike?” Tell asked with amusement after he’d fed and let the pair of men go.
“No, it’s just gross,” Tina said. “I don’t like it so I’m not going to do it.”
Tell shrugged.
“You learn to do unpalatable things when you need it to survive, but we aren’t there, right now. You’ll drink cold blood, instead?”
Tina nodded.
“Yes.”
“We’ll ask about it when the yogurt shows up.”
She’d asked questions a couple of times, and he had pointedly declined to answer them, so she’d stopped asking anything. Or saying anything particularly factual or useful at all. If he asked her something, she answered, but the rest of theirconversations were getting thin and rather fluffy, when they happened.
She wanted to know how long they were willing to wait like this.
Whether Tell expected Isabella back today.
What Tell’s relationship was with Daryll and what Tell thought his role in what was going on would be.
What this room had once been used for, and what it meant about what was going on in the world around them.
But she couldn’t and didn’t, and the biting of her tongue was starting to kill her.
The third evening, they brought her blood with the yogurt in a styrofoam ice chest, and Tina had resigned herself to another night of saying nothing of significance when the door opened and a man wearing a giant cowboy hat came in.
“Tell,” he said flatly.
“Daryll,” Tell answered, almost lofty by comparison, but without looking at him.
“You’ve come to make trouble,” Daryll said.
“Otherwise I get bored,” Tell said.
“I don’t want you here, but I can’t let you go, either,” Daryll said. “You’ll just go running back to Keon.”
“Literally, unlikely. Figuratively… it depends on how things go.”
“You’ve never had a thought in your head for anyone but yourself and your freedom,” Daryll said. “And if you think you’re going to fool me or make me forget, you’re wrong.”
“Tina, meet Daryll,” Tell said. Tina turned her head to look more directly at the bulky vampire.
“Are you supposed to wear hats that big indoors?” she asked.
Tell snorted.
