“Evenworse. We’re lustful, and we’re always late.”
I let out a hiccup of laughter. “Can I be honest with you?”
Orfeo lifts his chin, arching a brow. “Have you been lying up until now?”
“No, I just…I overheard some kids in the library the other day. They said bodies have been found on the shores of the Delaware River here. I thought maybe it was you.”
“And now you don’t think that?” he asks.
Embarrassed, I drop my eyes to my notebook.
“I’m grateful you’ve changed your mind, but I won’t lie to you: those bodies could be Alfo’s victims. Demons will sometimes attack with their teeth, the same way a dog mighteat an entire sock. They certainly love murder. But if I had to guess…” Orfeo drops his voice to a whisper. “Yes, it could have been vampires. Other vampires who have been alive for far too long, who have lost all of their humanity and given over entirely to their new form.”
“Humans kill too,” I reply.
Orfeo eyes track over my face, and I know he’s searching me. Probably wondering where all of this empathy and open-mindedness is coming from. Frankly, I don’t really know myself. “They do, don’t they,” he says eventually.
I chew my bottom lip for a moment, then pull my eyes away, back toward my paper. “So, you’re not very old then.”
“No. And I’m not immortal either. I age about two years for every decade I’m…still here. I have no idea how long I will continue to exist. I was changed fifty years ago, when I was a boy. I was eighteen. An unparented menace to society. Horrible, unkind, but still, a child.”
“You’re what’s known as anon-traditional student.”
“Very funny.” And then, in spite of himself, he laughs. He leans over and taps the top of my page. “‘Diantha Moro’…You have Italian origins?”
I shrug. “Probably. That’s my mom’s last name. I never knew my father at all. And my mom wasn’t well. She was extremely magically talented, and that wasn’t always compatible with a normal, all-American life. It didn’t feel like we belonged to any place or culture other than each other.”
“You saidwas,” he says quietly. “Has she gone to the beyond?”
I swallow roughly.Perfect segue. “Actually, no. And I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
The Echidna talk started when I was a little girl. Every reading my mother did for me went the same way.I see a town on a river with rolling hills and a university. I see a sign with a Greek or Latin name. You have to go there. Then, one day, she knew.Echidna! My brilliant daughter was born to study at the University of Echidna.Except I wasn’t brilliant and I didn’t want to rack up thousands of dollars in student loans. Not to mention my mother was most incapable of surviving without me.
So, I went to CUNY and got a bachelor’s degree in Library Science.
A waste.That’s what she’d called it. She’d click her tongue and shake her head.You were destined for more, child.But by the time I’d graduated, Mom was the sickest and weakest I’d ever seen her. I worked on my final project in her hospital room, using the end of her bed as my desk.
In the dead of night, I applied to Echidna’s master’s program. I wrote an essay about my mother’s dying wish and the legendary curse on us both, the demons and haunted shadows we were constantly running from. Of course, Ipersonallyfelt cursed. My mother had some B-cluster personality disorder and a bad habit of falling asleep with a lit cigarette.
The day her soul departed, I received my acceptance letter. Then, the dreams started. It took me six months to finally admit that the woman coming to me in my sleep was actually my mother’s soul—that she wasactuallytrapped between the realms and I wasn’t just slowly losing my mind to grief.
Our time together in the Dream Place is so brief that over the last two years I’ve only been able to collect crumbs ofinformation: the catacombs hold ancient artifacts connected to my people (whoare my people?); my ability to decouple my soul from my body is paramount to my success (fair enough); and freeing my mother, getting into the catacombs—this is mydestiny(bit dramatic, but okay).
As I tell Orfeo about my mother, I find myself reclining onto the floor, then lying on my back. When the fire becomes too warm against my skin, I slip off my cardigan and put it under my head in a ball. Orfeo shifts to lie beside me, resting his head in his hand, eyes trained on the ceiling as I talk. There’s no other sound in the room but my voice and the crackling of the fire.
“I wasn’t meant to come here to study because of my brilliance. What she saw was a future where I inevitablyhadto come here to undo whatever curse has her tangled up in spirit realm bureaucratic red tape.”
Orfeo narrows his eyes at the ceiling, consumed for a moment in thought. Finally, he says: “Your mother was a witch.”
I scoff. “You can saythatagain.”
“No, I mean, she had to be a powerful witch. That’s what it sounds like—she was a clairvoyant seer and you can ‘decouple,’ as you call it. These are the powers of witches.” Orfeo pushes himself up to a sitting position suddenly. “Diantha, you can never reveal these details about your mother to anyone.Ever. I’m happy you told me. We can protect this information together.”
I roll up onto my side. “Why would anyone care? My mom’s dead and I’m…”
What am I?Stuck? Trapped? Busy?
Orfeo doesn’t give me any time to finish my thought. “Demons only haveonenatural predator. Witches.”
