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“What’s this?”
“Happy birthday, Secret. ”
I awoke, sucking back words not meant to be spoken out loud. In the dark confines of my room I was able to register that everything still looked the same and I was back in the real world. All was as it had been, with one exception.
Across my chest, a masculine arm was laying and a broad hand was possessively cupping one of my breasts. Even at rest, Desmond was staking claims. He was sleeping on his stomach, his other arm tucked under him and his face angled towards me. A fresh crop of stubble had shown itself during our rest, giving him a darker appearance than usual.
What caught me most off guard, though, was how peaceful he looked. His lips were parted, and he had given himself over to sleep. Shifting while away from the pack, twice in one night, must have taken a toll on him. Otherwise he never would have slept through the whole day with me.
I rolled over and placed my hand on his backside, giving him a playful squeeze. I’d have done something a little more provocative, but the wily man was sleeping downwards, so he wasn’t providing me the necessary access.
He groaned, still half asleep, but a smile played on his lips.
“You can’t want more already. ”
“Rent is due,” I teased.
His eyes opened and his face lit up with a grin. “Is that how this works, then?” Lightning quick, he jerked me against him for a languid, sweetly familiar kiss.
A girl could get used to waking up this way.
I moved to wrap my leg over him, but instead I kicked something hard at the end of the bed. Startled, I broke away from him mid-kiss and reached down to collect the offending object. Funny, the size and weight of it felt precisely like the thing Sig had given me in my dream.
I flicked on the bedside lamp, wanting to see the finer details of it better than I could in the dark. It was a book, old and worn looking, but not smelling of must or decay. I thumbed through the stiff, cream-colored pages while Desmond watched me with passive interest.
When I passed a page in the middle, a sheaf of white paper fell out. I recognized the handwriting, and in fact, the whole book was filled with the familiar scrawl. Every page was written in Holden’s strong, demanding hand. I picked up the note, which appeared to be recently written and was addressed to me.
Secret,
You will be awake soon enough. It did not seem necessary to wake you or the wolf, as time for explanations grows short.
Be sure Sig reads this. I believe you will understand the relevance.
Yours,
Holden
I handed the letter to Desmond so he wouldn’t think I was hiding anything from him, and opened the book to the page where the letter had been.
December 7, 2008
Any hopes I have of advancing beyond the position of warden were dealt a blow this past evening. Ever diligent in her mission to infuriate and exhaust my patience, the young Miss McQueen may now be legitimately planning to be my undoing. In the four years I have been entrusted with her guardianship, I have never seen such reckless abandon used by a ward of the council.
She would think me remiss if I did not begin by stating for the record, yesterday w
as her birthday. For those of us who have long since put to rest our Lives Before, the idea of a birthday, let alone the idea of celebrating one, has died along with the memories of who we once were. It is, admittedly, difficult for me sometimes to recognize that Secret still maintains many human attachments, owing to her unusual heritage. Apparently, by her approximation, the desire to celebrate her twentieth year of living required some sort of festivities.
I scanned the pages, trying to see if Holden would come to a point where he wasn’t bitching about my foolish human traits, and how silly it was for a twenty-year-old girl to want to celebrate her birthday. Having a bicentennial gave him the right to be dismissive of my own life milestones, it seemed. Better yet, I doubted he would even understand why reading this would irritate me.
Skipping ahead, I found the part of the entry that finally hit home.
Upon our exit from the theatre, Secret caught the scent of blood. I don’t know how I missed it, whether it was the crush of smells from the theatre patrons, or my own foolishness, letting my guard down in public, but regardless of the reasons, she smelled it before I did. Enough of it she refused to brush it off as a passing incident. We followed the smell to a vacant storefront, and in the basement discovered…
But I didn’t need to read more to know what we’d discovered. I remembered it perfectly. I remembered Holden agreeing to take me to see The Lion King on Broadway for my birthday, and how he’d actually enjoyed himself no matter how hard he’d tried to fake a grumpy scowl. I remembered smelling the blood and going down the rusted metal ladder into that basement, which was colder than the streets outside, the walls slick with melting ice.
And the cots.
Threadbare mattresses on crumbling old military frames. Six on each side of the room, and each one had a body on it. I remember them as bodies, because even though they were alive it was hard to think of them as people. They were hollowed-out husks of their former selves, with slack mouths, gaunt skin and eyes wide and dry with a frozen look of horror.
