Where did you go, are you OK?
Wow, I feel like horseshit. Dude, I hope you got lucky tonight because otherwise
I’m going to be so mad you didn’t text me back.
Lenore? Hello? Okay your phone might be dead, I’m calling your mom cuz I’m worrying.
Then one more text.
K, I talked to your mom. Sucks about you needing a new phone! She told me you’re on your way to Joshua Tree. Totally get that this is a fun trip with your parents, so I’ll try not to be pissed that you’re not spending your 21st with me. I know you won’t get this until you get your new phone but just call me back when you get home, we have lots to talk about. And drink. Make sure you howl at that desert moon for me! Ow ow ow!
What the fuck?
What the absolute fuck?
“Do you see now?” Absolon whispers in my ear. “Do you see that no one knows you’re here? And no one is coming to look for you?”
I shake my head, tears welling up, my throat clenching.
All this time I was able to remain calm, only because I had this weird, unflinching belief that someone would save me. That the worst couldn’t happen to me because I would be found. Someone like me couldn’t go missing in a city like this. My parents would turn over every last stone looking for me. I relied on that naïve feeling of being special and exceptional, the kind of person to whom nothing bad can happen. I was above that.
But the truth is, I am below it.
“You’re not below it,” Absolon says to me, lips brushing against my ear. “You have everyone fighting over you, to have the privilege of being the first ones to tear you apart. Because you are exceptional. Too exceptional to exist.”
“You’re reading my thoughts,” I say absently, my voice faint, small, far away.
“Yes,” he practically hisses. “And you offer them up so easily to me when you’re upset. Almost makes me feel bad. But not quite.”
He straightens up, taking the phone away.
“What are you going to do with me?” I manage to ask. The defeat inside me is dragging me inward, like I’m collapsing in on myself, like a dark star. I don’t know how much of what he said is true, but that seed of truth that had glowed inside me, the one that believed him, that my parents truly weren’t my parents, that seed is growing. Not only did they not tell anyone that I went missing, they went a step further and lied to Elle about it. They have an alibi for me.
They don’t even care.
Absolon sighs, running his hand through his thick hair as he walks past the chair. “I don’t know.” He stops and eyes me, hands clasped behind his back. One moment he’s absolutely menacing, the next he’s as refined as royalty. “What I do know is that this feeling sorry for yourself stage won’t last very long.”
I stare at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re changing. I’ve told you as much.”
“Changing into what?” I cry out angrily, sick of these fucking games.
He grins at me, flashing those sharp incisors which seem longer, sharper somehow. The sight makes my blood run ice cold with instinctual fear, the kind you feel when a snake shows its fangs.
I can’t breathe.
“You’re changing into something like me,” he says. “Before I brought you here, I thought it would be straightforward. Now that I’ve tasted you, know you, I don’t know what to expect. What side might take over. Until then, you’re going to be in that chair.”
“And what are you?”
One moment I’m looking at him halfway across the room, the next he’s in front of my face, and I didn’t even see him move. All I see now are his pupils, so black and infinite that I might tumble inside and drown in them.
You know what I am, he says, but he says it inside my head, and his lips aren’t moving. You just don’t want to say it because you think it means you’re going insane. But you’ll know for yourself soon enough.
“I’ll be back later,” he says after a moment. “For your first stage.”
I try to move my tongue. It feels thick and heavy. “First stage?”