Page 82 of Tell Me Why
Tell was so impressive, making progress at something so difficult so quickly. Was a third man justified?
Were these two just not working out, or was there that much work?
Tell was elusive and playful, not denying anything but not being very direct, either. Tina thought that he was being too vague to really bait Leonard into a mistake, but she got up and wandered out of the room as Leonard was making leaving-type movements, making her way toward the front of the house, where the men were congregated. They would start leaving, trickling away, before very long, headed to their day shelters. Some of them slept downstairs, but those were the lower men. The upper ones, the ones who had better reputations and better connections, these had their own lodgings around the city and they just loitered their days away, here.
So strange.
“Tea?” Tina called as she went past. “Coffee? Think I heard that they were bringing in a few fountains tonight. Might not have drained them all, by now.”
She and Tell had gone to a vampire club downtown earlier that week and she’d fed on a young man who had behaved the way she’d come to expect from fountains back home. The frigid,transactional feedings at Daryll’s house weren’t just because she and Tell had been persona non grata. That was how fountainswere, here, because it would have been presumptive of them to react any other way, as far as Daryll was concerned.
Tina had a woman back home who was on her routine feeding schedule who really was just there to get paid, who seemed completely immune - repulsed - by the vampires she encountered, but she washuman. Her personality was present, and Tina thought that they were actually beginning to get along, at this point, because Tina had proven herself not to be like the bulk of vampires.
This was sterile and… bordering on inanimate, this relationship, and she loathed it.
But the vampires in Daryll’s court appreciated it, and they would snag any leftovers at the end of the night, if the important vampires hadn’t wanted to feed.
There were a half-dozen orders, and Tina turned on her heel, making as though she’d heard Leonard coming down the hallway.
“You want anything?” she asked.
“No,” Leonard said, his mind elsewhere.
Tell had hooked him, no question.
The man was an artist.
“You sure?” she asked. “Oscar likes you. I’d save you one of the fountains, if you wanted it. Might be a few left.”
He jolted funny, hearing it after she’d already said it. She nodded.
Oscar liked him.
She didn’t know if it was her card to play, but she’d done it, and it looked like it might have worked, so she wasn’t going to feel bad about it.
“He…” Leonard started, then nodded. “Yeah. I’ll take one, if they’re there. I’ll be…” He looked around the room, his eyes a bit dodgy. “No. Never mind.”
“You sure?” Tina asked. “Someone else is going to take it, if you don’t. Shame to let it go to waste like that.”
She was teasing.
She wasbadat this, but she was trying to pretend like she was Isabella, that simple familiarity, the way shedeservedit, without having actually done anything to earn it.
He didn’t seem to think she was bad at it.
There was a head jolt like he remembered he needed to put her in her place, but he was torn, looking around the room without looking, thinking about where he had been and where he was going. He wasn’t mentally organized, and this was the point where either Tell or Isabella would pounce.
Tina waited.
“All right,” he said. “All right, yeah. I’ll be…” He was about to lie to her. Only it wasn’t going to work because he actually needed to tell her where to find him, so he had to change his plan and find a new place tobewhere itwasn’twhere he was actually going to be, so that he could send her there and he would actually be there.
“I’ll meet you out front,” he said. “At the fountain?”
“Um,” Tina said, a bit surprised. It was a beautiful fountain, and broadly speaking, the vampires didn’t appreciate it at all. A few times, Tina had gone out to sit on the edge of it, just to feel like herself again, like everything wasn’t a giant game of cloak-and-mouse, so to speak. “Okay?”
“You go out there, sometimes,” Leonard said. “It’s not raining. Going to start getting cold, though. They don’t run it through the winter.”
“Okay,” Tina said, regathering herself. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll bring one out to you.”
