Bride

Being gone is a relief. And sheer agony.

All in all, it’s not the most auspicious of starts.

In the week following my arrival, I spend an unhealthy amount of time mentally slapping myself over the way I handled the kerfuffle with Max. I don’t care whether the Weres think I’m a deranged monster, but I do mind that whatever crumb of freedom they might have been inclined to give me has been swiftly vacuumed up.

I’m escorted everywhere: as I take a stroll by the lake; to grab a blood bag from the fridge; when I sit in the garden at dusk, just to experience something that’s not my en suite. I am but a cornucopia of regret. Because we’re all bad bitches—till a scowling Were stands outside the bathroom door while we’re washing our hair.

Till we lose our chance to snoop around.

So much time on my hands, and so little to spend it on. It’s the Collateral life I’m familiar with, just with significantly fewer Serenas to keep me busy. I should be bored to death, but the truth is, this is not too different from my routine in the Human world. I have no friends, no hobbies, and no real purpose aside from earning enough money to pay rent in order to . . . exist, I guess.

It’s like you’re—I don’t know, suspended. Untethered from everything around you. I just need to see you go toward something, Misery.

There might be something stunted about me. After the Collateral term was over, Serena and I were free to venture into the outside world, to be with people who weren’t our tutors or our caregivers, to fall in love and make friends. Serena jumped right into that, but I could never bring myself to. Partly because the closer I’d let someone get to me, the harder it’d be to hide who I was. Or maybe spending the first eighteen years of my life becoming acquainted with the cruelty of all species didn’t quite set me up for a bright future.

Who knows.

So I sleep during the day, and spend my nights napping. I take long baths, first for Lowe’s sake, then because I grow to truly enjoy them. I watch old Human movies. I walk around my room, marveling at how pretty it is, wondering who the hell thought of this beamed ceiling, sophisticated and cozy and stunning at once.

I do miss the internet. There is a concern that I might want to moonlight as a spy, and to prevent me from transferring classified and confidential information I could come across while in Were territory, I don’t really have access to technology—with the exception of my weekly check-in call with Vania, which is heavily monitored and lasts just long enough for her to sneer at me as she ascertains that I’m still alive. Of course, this is not my first rodeo, and I did try to smuggle in a cell phone, plus a laptop and a bunch of pen testing gadgets.

Your honor, I got caught. Whoever went through my stuff had the gall to confiscate half of it—and to pluck out all the antenna points and Wi-Fi cards from the rest. When I realized it, I lay on the floor for two hours, like a thwarted jellyfish beached in the sun.

Lowe is rarely around, and never within sight, although sometimes I’ll feel his low voice vibrate through the walls. Firm orders. Long hushed conversations. Once, memorably, right as I slid into my closet for my midday rest, a deep laugh followed by Ana’s delighted screams. I drifted asleep moments later, second-guessing what I heard.

On the fifth evening, someone knocks on my door.

“Hi, Misery.” It’s Mick—the older Were who was talking with Lowe at the ceremony. I like him a lot. Mostly because, unlike my other guards, he doesn’t seem to want me to go stand outside and get struck by lightning. I love to think that we bonded when he took his first night shift: I noticed him slumping against the wall, pushed my rolling chair into the hallway, and bam—instantly BFFs. Our three-minute conversation about water pressure was the apogee of my week.

“What’s up, friendly neighborhood warden?”

“The politically correct name is ‘protective detail.’ ” There is something off about his heartbeat—something dull, a slight drag that’s almost despondent. I wonder if it’s related to the big scar on his throat, but I might be imagining it altogether, because he smiles at me in a way that turns his eyes into a web of crow’s feet. Why can’t everyone be this nice? “And there’s a video call for you, from your brother. Come with me.”

Any hope I have that Mick will take me to Lowe’s office and leave me alone to snoop around dies when we head for the sunroom.

“Ready to come back?” Owen says before “Hi.”

“I don’t think that’s an option, if we want to avoid . . .”

“Pissing off Father?”

“I was thinking full-on war.”

Owen waves his hand. “Ah, yes. That, too. How’s marital life?”

I’m very aware of Mick sitting across from me, intently monitoring everything I say. “Boring.”

“You got hitched to a guy who could kill you any second of any day. How are you bored?”

“Technically, anybody could kill anybody, anytime. Your obnoxious friends could pull out a garrote on you tonight. I could have poured triazolopyrimidines in your blood bags a million times over in the past twenty years.” I tap my chin. “As a matter of fact, why did I not?”

Something flickers in his eyes. “And to think that we used to like each other,” he murmurs darkly. He’s not wrong. Before I left for Human territory, every Vampyre child who chose to be a dick about my soon-to-be Collateralship tended to encounter curiously karmic events. Mysterious bruises, spiders crawling in backpacks, mortifying secrets bared to the community. I’d always suspected it was Owen’s doing. Then again, maybe I was wrong. When I returned home at eighteen, he seemed less than happy to see me, and he certainly didn’t want to associate with me in public.

“Can you please just be terrified to be living among the Weres?” he asks.

“So far, Humans are worse. They do shit like burning the Amazon rainforest or leaving the toilet seat up at night. Anyway, anything you need from me?”

He shakes his head. “Just making sure you’re still alive.”

“Oh.” I wet my lips. I doubt he gives a fuck about whether I continue to exist on this metaphysical plane, but this is a good opportunity. “I’m so glad you called, because . . . I miss you so much, Owen.”

A stutter of incredulity flashes on his grainy face. Then understanding dawns on him. “Yeah? I miss you, too, honey.” He leans back in his chair, intrigued. “Tell me what ails you.”

Every Vampyre in the Southwest knows that we are twins, if only because our arrival was originally celebrated as a dazzling source of hope (“Two babies at once! In the prestigious Lark family! When conception has been so difficult, and so few of our young come by! All hail!”) and later briskly swept under a thick rug of truculent stories (“They murdered their own mother during a two-night labor. The boy weakened her, and the girl dealt the final blow—Misery, they named her. More blood flowed on that bed than during the Aster.”). Serena had known, too, when I first introduced her to him after she pestered me to meet “The guy who could have been my roomie for years, if you’d played your cards better, Misery.” They’d surprisingly hit it off, bonding over their love for roasting my appearance, my clothes, my taste in music. My general vibe.

And yet, even Serena wasn’t able to shut up about how unbelievable it was that Owen, with his dark complexion and already receding hairline, was even related to me. It’s because where I take after Father, he . . . well, I suppose he looks like Mother. Hard to say, since no pictures seem to have survived her.

But whatever the differences between Owen and me, those months sharing a womb must have left some mark on us. Because despite growing up with fewer interactions than a pair of pen pals, we do seem to understand each other.

“Remember when we were children?” I ask. “And Father would take us to the forest to watch the sun set and feel the night begin?”

“Of course.” Neither Father nor the army of nannies who looked after us ever did anything like it. “I think of it often.”

“I’ve been reminiscing about the things Father would say. Like: That thing I lost. Do you have any news about it?” I shift smoothly between English and the Tongue, making sure not to change intonation. Mick’s eyes glance up from his phone, more curious than suspicious.

“Ah, yes. You used to laugh for minutes and say, I have not. She hasn’t returned to her apartment—I’ll be alerted if she does.”

“But then you’d get mad because Father and I weren’t paying attention to you, and wander off on your own, grumbling about the oddest things. Let me know if that changes. Have you been talking with the Were Collateral? Has she mentioned anything about Loyals?”

He nods and sighs happily. “I know you’ll never believe it, but I always say: I have no contact with her. But I’ll see what I can do. Father always loved you best, darling.”

“Oh, darling. I think he loves us equally.”

Back in my room, I pull out my computer, wondering if I could pilfer a Wi-Fi chip off someone’s phone. I fuck around a bit, writing a flexible script to scour Were servers that I might never be able to use. Like always while coding, I lose track of time. When I look up from my keyboard, the moon is high, my room is dark, and a small, creepy creature stands in front of me. It’s wearing owl leggings with a chiffon tutu, and stares at me like the ghost of Christmas past.

I yelp.

“Hi.”

Oh my God. “Ana?”

“Hello.”

I clutch my chest. “What the fuck?”

“Are you playing?”

“I . . .” I glance down at my laptop. I’m building a fuzzy logic circuit seems like the wrong kind of answer. “Sure. How did you get in here?”

“You always ask the same questions.”

“And you always get in here. How?”

She points at the window. I stride there with a frown, bracing myself against the sill to look out. I’ve explored it before, in my desperate quest for some unsupervised espionage. The bedrooms are on the second floor, and I’ve checked multiple times whether I could climb down (no, unless I got bit by a radioactive spider and developed suction cups on my fingers) or jump out (not without breaking my neck). It never occurred to me to look . . . up.

“Through the roof?” I ask.

“Yes. They took away my key.”

“Does your brother know you’ve been climbing like a spider monkey?”

She shrugs. I shrug, too, and go back to my bed. It’s not like I’m gonna tattle her out. “Which one is it?” she asks.

“What?”

“A spider monkey. Is it a spider that looks like a monkey, or a monkey that looks like a spider?”

“Hmm, not sure. Let me google and—” I pull my computer onto my lap, then remember the Wi-Fi situation. “Fuck.”

“That’s a bad word,” Ana says, giggling in a delighted, tickled way that has me feeling like an improv genius. She’s flattering company. “What’s your name?”

“Misery.”

“Miresy.”

“Misery.”

“Yes. Miresy.”

“That’s not . . . whatever.”

“Can I play with you?” She eyes my laptop eagerly.

“No.”

Her pretty mouth curves into a pout. “Why?”

“Because.” What are we even going to do? Long division?

“Alex lets me play.”

“Alex? The blond guy?” I haven’t seen him since the Max incident. I’m assuming it was filed as “under his watch,” and got him plucked out of jailer rotation.

“Yes. We steal cars and talk with the beautiful ladies. But Alex says that Juno isn’t supposed to know.”

“You play Grand Theft Auto with Alex?”

She shrugs.

“Is that appropriate for a . . . three-year-old?”

“I’m seven,” she declares haughtily. Holding up six fingers.

I let that slide. “Not gonna lie, pretty proud that it was within my range of estimation.”

Another shrug, which seems like her default response. Relatable, honestly. She settles on the bed next to me and I’m briefly worried that she might pee on it. Does she have a diaper? Is she housebroken? Should I burp her? “I want to play,” she repeats.

I’m not a soft person. After living the first eighteen years of my life in function of a long list of very nebulous others, I perfected assertiveness. I have no issue with producing a firm, final no and never revisiting a request again. So I must be suffering a major cerebral event when I sigh, and pull up my editor, and quickly use JavaScript to whip up a Snake-like game.

“Is this edu . . . Edu . . . ?” she asks, after I’m done explaining how it works. “Edutacional?”

“Educational.”

“Juno says it’s important that the games are edu . . .”

“I don’t know if it is, but at least no major felonies are involved.”

There is something disarming about the way she leans against me, soft and trusting, as though our people haven’t been hunting each other for sport in the last couple of centuries. Her tongue sticks out between her teeth as she tries to snatch apples, and when a dark curl slips in front of her right eye, I catch myself with my fingers hovering right there, tempted to fold it behind her ear.

“Shit,” I mutter, pulling back my hand.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I trap my arms between my back and the wall, horrified.

It feels like the middle of the night when Ana yawns and decides it’s time to go back to her room. “My cat is waiting for me, anyway.”

Wait. “Your cat?”

She nods.

“Does your cat happen to be gray? Long hair? Smushed face?”

“Yes. Her name is Sparkles.”

Oh, fuck. “First of all, he’s a boy.”

She blinks at me. “His name is Sparkles, then.”

“No, his name is Serena’s damn fucking cat.”

Ana’s expression is pitying.

“And he’s actually my cat.” Serena’s. Whatever.

“I don’t think so.”

“You do realize that he arrived when I did.”

“But he sleeps with me.”

Ah. So that’s where he disappears to all the time. “That’s just because he hates me.”

“Then maybe he’s not your cat,” she says, with the delicate somberness of a therapist who’s letting me know that I don’t have a diagnosable disorder, I’m just a bitch.

“You know what? I don’t care. It’s between you and Serena.”

“Who’s Serena?”

“My friend.”

“Your best friend?”

“I only have the one, so . . . yeah?”

“My best friend is Misha. She has red hair, and she’s the daughter of my brother’s best friend, Cal. And Juno is her aunt. And she has a little brother, his name is Jackson, and a little sister, and her name—”

“This is not The Brothers Karamazov,” I interrupt. “I don’t need the family tree.”

“—is Jolene,” she continues, undeterred. “Where is Serena?”

“She . . . I’m trying to find her.”

“Maybe my brother can help you? He’s real good at helping people.”

I swallow. I just can’t with children. “Maybe.”

She studies me for several seconds. “Are you like Lowe?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, but no.”

“He doesn’t sleep, either.”

“I do sleep. Just during the day.”

“Ah. Lowe doesn’t sleep. At all.”

“Never? Is it a Were thing? An Alpha thing?”

She shakes her head. “He has pneumonia.”

Seriously? When did he get it? He seemed healthy to me. Maybe for Weres, pneumonia is not a big— “Wait!” I call when I see Ana heading for the window. “How about you go through the door?”

She doesn’t even stop to say no.

“It would be more fun. You could stop by Lowe’s room on your way,” I offer. Because if this child dies, it’s on me. “Say hi. Hang out.”

“He’s not here. He’s gone to deal with the lollipops.”

I trail after her. “With the lollipops.”

“Yes.”

“There’s no way he is dealing with— Do you mean the Loyals?”

“Yes. The lollipops.” She’s already climbing upward, and spider monkey doesn’t even begin to describe how agile she is. But still.

“Don’t. Come back! I . . . forbid you from continuing.”

She keeps scaling. “You’re a Vampyre. I don’t think you can tell me what to do.” She sounds more matter-of-fact than bratty, and all I can think of replying is:

“Shit.”

I follow her progress, terrified, wondering if this is motherhood: anxiously picturing your child with her skull cracked open. But Ana knows exactly what she’s doing, and when she has hoisted herself on top of the roof and disappeared from my view, I’m left alone with two separate pieces of knowledge:

I’m befuddlingly invested in the survival of this tiny pest of a Were.

And Lowe, my husband, my roomie, is gone for the night.

I slip inside the bathroom, find one of my hairpins, and do what I have to do.