Page 59 of Tell Me Why
“I certainly don’t,” Tell said. “But cold blood makes me sad.”
Tina snorted.
“I don’t need it, either,” she said. “But I’m going to drink it because it’s there and otherwise it’s going to go to waste.”
“This is true,” Tell said. “At least there’s yogurt.”
“At least there’s yogurt,” Tina agreed.
And so itwent for the next four days.
Mostly silent, they waited for something to happen, and Daryll and his minions fed them as they felt like it.
Tina wasn’t suffering. The room was reasonably well insulated from the power of the sun, and she didn’t need to feed even once a week at this level of activity.
Well.
She wasn’t suffering for the food.
The silence and the boredom wereimmense.
Almost unbearable, by the second day, and enough to make her irrational by the fourth.
She was making plans to tear out the external wall and take Tell up on his offer of escape, or kill Tell, or see if vampires couldeventuallydrown in the tub. Or bleach her hair.
Something drastic.
Finally, though, as Tina could feel dawn approaching, Isabella opened the door, standing there by herself.
“Please behave,” she said. “I need you to come down to speak with Daryll.”
Tell rose from the table. He’d finished his book on the second night and that had apparently been the only book in the room, so he’d just been sitting at the little table there in the corner by the bed for the last two days, waiting.
How he could do that, Tina would never know. Or, at least, she hoped she would never know.
Tell motioned with his head that Tina ought to follow, and she went out into the broad hallway after them. Isabella left the door open.
That, itself, was different.
The vampire woman kept shooting Tell warning glances, like she couldforcehim to behave by being emphatic about how much she wanted him to do it.
Tina wondered what the word ‘behave’ meant, specifically.
It was awfully broad and vague, meant nothing really. Just… do what I would want you to do, maybe.
As if Tell could even know, should he find himself willing to do it.
They went back down to the same office as from the night of the party, and they found Daryll there with a young man, human, who was taking notes.
“That’s all,” Daryll said as Isabella let them in. The young man looked up from Tell to Tina, then put his notepad away into a messenger bag and quickly left, heading toward the front door from the sound of his footsteps.
Daryll sighed up at Tell, then indicated the chair that the young man had been sitting in.
A subordinate chair. Even Tina could see the power play there.
“Isabella says that you stay,” Daryll said.
Tell cleared his throat with a semblance of politeness and waited. Daryll sighed, slouching even lower in his chair. He was soput uponto even have this conversation.
