Page 85 of Tell Me Why
“Oh, I don’t, either,” Leonard said. “Normal to change names from time to time. You know his old name?”
Tina licked her lips.
“I know he went by Tell before he went by Oscar,” she said. “What do you know about him?”
“Not a lot, I suppose,” he said, and Tina saw her opportunity to be engaged and interested without disclosing anything she shouldn’t.
“Are you as old as he is?” she asked, and Leonard shook his head.
“You aren’t supposed to ask that,” he said. “But everyone knows that Tell is one of the oldest. Not as old as some of the really important ones, like Ginger, but… no. I’m not that old.”
“How long have you known him?” Tina asked.
“This is the first time we’ve been introduced,” Leonard said. “But I’ve heard about him.”
“What do they say?” Tina asked, and he shook his head.
“That he’s not really one of us,” he said. “That he left.”
“He’s really not much of a joiner,” Tina said.
“Why are you with him?” Leonard asked. “Have you not had opportunity to leave?”
“I…” Tina started, prepared to give him an honest answer and reconsidering it.
“We could get you away from him safely,” Leonard said. “If Daryll said that you belonged here, now, Tell wouldn’t fight it.”
“I don’t know,” Tina said. “He’s nicer to me than you are.”
Leonard sniffed, then lifted a shoulder and turned his face away again.
“It’s posturing,” he said. “Most of them aren’t actually like that, if you find the outside of here. But even so, some of it has a purpose. Training a vampire is… there aremethodsto it, ones that we’ve used for a long time, and…” He shrugged. “I don’t think you’re getting the benefit of them.”
Her first reaction was defensiveness.
OfcourseTell was training the way he was supposed to.
Her second was doubt.
Did he evenwantto train her? What was she missing out on? Would someone else have taught her how to kill vampires? Whatcouldkill one? How they got stronger? Would she be able to withstand the sun better, if someone else was teaching her?
Her third reaction was back to defensive.
If Tell didn’t think those things were worth teaching, she trusted him more than this entire lot combined.
And then, as she sat looking at her knees and trying to work through all of it, she saw the genius ofhisside of the move.
He was planting doubt.
First he verified that she was isolated, then he suggested that that isolation was keeping her away from key truths that she would have access to, if she left it.
Oh, it was brilliant, actually.
“I don’t know,” she said just tempting him to keep going. She wanted to know if he was doing it on purpose, and how far he was willing to push it.
If he wasgoodat it, he would take her from one isolation to another.
But that was only if she was actually worth it.
