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“Help me understand what’s going on here,” John-Henry said. “Why don’t we start there?”
So, Tean called Jem. The breathing on the other end of the call was agitated, and Jem blurted, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok,” Tean said, and that was his first lie of the evening. “Are you ok?”
“Fine. They’re all giving me dirty looks, but nobody tried anything.” He gathered himself like he was getting ready for a jump. “Are you ok?”
“Yes.” And that was the second lie.
“Tean.” The despair in that syllable said Jem, as usual, had heard the truth. “I fucked up. I’m sorry. I can explain it. Do I really have to tell you I didn’t kill Yesenia?”
“What? No, no. Of course not. It was just…Jem, why did you lie?”
Over the call, Jem’s breathing softened, and it felt like a long time before he answered. “Will you come back? This feels silly, talking on the phone like this.”
“John-Henry wants to talk to me. And they want you to go back to our room.”
“Fuck what they want. I want to see you. I want to make sure you’re ok. They can’t make us do anything.”
“I told him I’d talk to him,” Tean said, which was another lie. “Will you please go to our room? I’ll be back in an hour. Less.”
Jem’s breaths rasped in Tean’s ear.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” Tean said again, more firmly. “Please go to our room, and don’t do anything—don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Another of those long moments stretched out. “Tean, I’m sorry.”
“I know.” Tean swallowed. “I’ll see you soon.”
He disconnected. John-Henry was gracious enough to look off into the middle distance, his expression neutral. When Tean cleared his throat, though, he glanced over and asked, “How are you doing?”
“Terrible.”
John-Henry nodded. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”
They left the resort, and for the first hundred paces, as they followed a concrete path along the embankment, Tean didn’t recognize the kindness. But then his body began to remember how to move, and the smell of the lake and the honeysuckle registered, and even the heat, pressing against him like it was determined to wring every drop of sweat out of him, was a kind of relief. The pain pulled back a few inches, and then Tean had to try not to cry. They kept walking, and the stars were bright over the hills, the water was like that stillness inside Tean, that dark, waiting place ready to ripple whenever it was touched. They passed under a line of hickory, and a bird startled overhead—a big bird, its wings flapping, branches creaking and clacking as it cleared a path and flew away from Tean and John-Henry.
John-Henry swore, hand going to his hip. Then he gave a shaky laugh, and the linen jacket fell into place over his gun.
“Owl,” Tean said.
“Yeah,” John-Henry said. “God, that one was huge, right?”
“Probably not as big as you think. They’re big birds, but at night, especially when they surprise you, they seem a lot bigger. And all those feathers, the wings—they don’t help.” Tean smiled, although it felt thin and diluted, like the starlight in the folds of the lake. “They’re part of the genusstrix. One of Linnaeus’s names. It’s the Latin word for these mythical vampire-owl monsters.”
John-Henry gave him a long look. “Which is a kind way of telling me that people have been scared of owls in the dark for a long time.”
Shrugging, Tean thought of that darkness inside him. “We’re all scared of the dark. We’re scared of places we don’t know, and the dark is the fundamentally unknowable place. It makes what we do know unfamiliar. You can spend your whole life somewhere, know it inside and out, and at night, in the dark, it still becomes frightening, part of a world we don’t know. Artificial lighting—in the sense of the kind of lighting we’re accustomed to now—changed the world for humans. It let us reclaim the night as part of our world. Until, of course, the power goes out.” His smile stretched, and he said, “Sorry; sometimes I forget how weird I am.” He heard himself add, as though it were a kind of explanation, “Jem doesn’t mind listening.”
To his surprise, John-Henry grinned. “Someday, you’re going to have to ask Ree about vampire stars.”
“I think I’m having my usual effect on him. I’m not trying to argue, but sometimes I forget not everyone wants to discuss things the way I do.”
“Are you kidding? He lives for that kind of thing. After you corrected him about the animal sanctuaries, I had to listen to all his counterpoints and rebuttals and outlines, everything he wanted to say to you. It went on for an hour, I swear to God. He’s a little intimidated by you, but don’t tell him I said that. It’s the doctorate.” John-Henry’s gaze grew thoughtful. “How good are you at yelling?”
“Not…great?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
