Page 88 of Tell Me Why
“Mmm?” Tell replied, stopping mid-shift as he’d been headed out of her room.
“That you’re not teaching me the things they would, and that I’m missing out on important knowledge that would make me…” She struggled, trying to remember what word he had used, what he had actuallypromisedher. “Better?”
He snorted.
“I’m certainly not teaching you the things that they would,” he said. “Would you like to learn how to drink tea so that no one considers you out of place and how to walk so that you don’t get in trouble for being uppity and who hates who and who has a secret alliance and how to make a weapon out of yourself for someone else to send off to war?”
“Well…” Tina said with humor. “When you put it that way.”
Tell sighed, then nodded.
“I didn’t ever intend to get you involved with this side of things,” he said. “I was brought up very much as an individual. You can see it in Hunter and Ginger as well, though Ginger dances all over any line she’s ever found. There’s another way of it, very institutional, almost industrial before its time, in making… a progeny into an army. The only thing that has kept the human world from crumbling before such a thing is how little we like each other, in large groups. We areultimatelyapex predators, and solitary ones at that. It takes abreakingto force someone into service for you, and an unattainable, very long-term goal. You will never be suited for that world. If that would be your goal… perhaps you should go with him.”
“Don’t insult me,” Tina said, and he grinned, then rose. She put a hand up. “He knows who you are. Asked about Ginger. Says he met you before.”
Tell frowned, then nodded.
“Rest well, as you can,” he said. “I’ll have a game plan for dealing with him by tonight.”
Tina waited for him to close the door behind him, then tipped into her coffin. It wasn’t ragdoll, the way it might have been another time, but it was still with a sense of near-powerless exhaustion that she shifted into a position that wasn’t going to leave her in pain all night the next night, then she pulled the lid down on top of herself, breathing and waiting for complete immobility.
Itfeltclosed-in, for all of the benefit and the cost of it, and she didn’t like it, but it was much better than anything else she’d done since they’d gotten off the train.
She trusted Tell.
She really and truly did.
He wasn’t manipulating her or working against her or even taking his own interests over hers.
But it didn’t mean that he was incapable of making a mistake.
He could think that ignorance was best for her, and unintentionally keep things from her that she absolutely needed to know.
On the other hand.
Looking at Leonard, looking at the rest of the vampires at Daryll’s home, Tina could appreciate that he hadreasonsfor wanting her to be ignorant that she would have never anticipated. Things that did make her less useful, but kept her from being a target for men who would use her for her capabilities and consider her expendable for her inexperience.
She’d had no inkling, in London. Hunter’s life there had seemed as uninhibited and chaotic as anywhere else, and that had been all of it.
This was… new. Something shestillhadn’t seen coming, even after being imprisoned in a cell where they dismantled vampires to feed a drug habit, even after spending weeks trying to root out the gang-like players in the trade.
How often had she wished that Tell would tell her more about his past, give her better glimpses of his life story? There were so manyfunnyanecdotes that he and Hunter hinted at, it felt like it was a club she couldn’t quite get into.
This might be the why to that.
Whether or not they’d been having fun at the time, maybe the situation of it was just so grim and so complicated that it would never make sense without seeing all of it.
And maybe he’d never intended for her to be here, where she had thebeginningof comprehension, because it did her no good, and it made her… doubt that vampirism was something she could live with without becoming a monster.
She still didn’t like her ignorance.
Still fought it.
But she had a queasy instinct that maybe he was right, and maybe she didn’t trust him enough.
Dusk.
Tell was waiting for her in the kitchen, drinking coffee and watching out the window.
