Cassie Alexander - Nightshifted

I sat on my bed for a long minute, gathering strength and trying to figure out what I ought to do next. Then I took the sheets off my bed, walked them down to the laundry, and came back.

I took a nap once my sheets were done, but made sure to get up before nightfall. Anna emerged from my closet like a fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty, all stretches and yawns, greeting the night instead of dawn. She wore a shirt I didn’t recognize, but scrub pants I was sure were my own.

“Good morning,” I told her, when she was done. She nodded, and sat on the bed beside me.

What was between us now? The tenuous connection of people who’d been through tragic circumstances? I’d felt like this with patients at the hospital before, after emergencies with them, or when I was left with their surviving loved ones. I never knew what to do with myself then, and I certainly didn’t know what to do with myself now.

“Thanks for taking care of my cat,” I said, when I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

Anna nodded. “She’s nice. I’ve never had a cat before.”

“Her name’s Minnie,” I said.

“I read her tag.” Anna sat still, with her hands holding one another between her knees. “You would have healed faster if you’d swallowed my blood.”

“Yeah. And I know you could have made me, but you didn’t,” I said. “So thanks, but no thanks.”

She nodded again, while looking at her hands. I bent my head down to better see her. “What are you doing here, Anna?”

“This was the only place where they couldn’t reach me.”

She could probably take any daytimer. And no other vampire could come in without an invite, as long as I was alive. She had fought so hard to escape her former life, and for what? Just to hide out with me and my cat? It was so sad it made me want to cry.

“Is there a plan?”

“I need you to contact the Rose Throne for me.”

“No. You can stay here. Screw them.”

She gave me a sad look. “I can’t live in your closet forever, human. No matter how much I like your cat.”

“I can’t just turn you over to them, Anna.” I stood up and began pacing my small room. “Doesn’t being a nochnaya come with a palace somewhere?”

“What does being a nochnaya even mean? I do not know what that makes me yet. I was raised by humans. I have not met another like me before and neither has anyone else. The Rose Throne has kept the best records. They might be able to help.”

“But at what price? They’ll have an angle if you go to them.” I had scars now from the angle that they’d had on me.

A rueful smile slid across her face. “I believe almost everyone does. Their interest plan seems easiest, however. Please call them now.”

I wasn’t sure she was making the best move. But what other options were there? Not very damn many, at least not ones that wanted her alive. “All right.”

My dead cell phone was in my belongings bag. I charged it up enough to write Sike’s number down and take it to the landline in my kitchen.

“Hey, it’s Edie. Come over, please,” I told Sike’s voice mail.

I turned around and Anna was in my hallway, looking at my family photos on the wall. She spoke without turning toward me. “That night in your room, when I crawled right up beside you and listened to you breathe. I wondered what it would have been like if my life had been different, if everything had gone according to my parents’ plans. A safe life with Yuri, without all the pain.”

I hung up the phone. “I’m sorry I killed him, Anna.”

“I am too.” She turned back toward me, to look me in the eye. “But I forgive you for it. And that’s what is strange in me.” She put her hand to her chest. “Vampires do not grant forgiveness. I know—I asked enough of them for it. I begged them for forgiveness, for my imagined crimes.”

Minnie ran out of my bedroom and twined around Anna’s ankles. Anna knelt and gently knuckled her head. “Anna—” I began.

“I can forgive you, and know it. Where I could not forgive them.” She ran her hand in long strokes along Minnie’s back. “When I left to find Pascha and feast on him, I was strong enough to defeat them there where they found me.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. I went with them willingly. I fought enough so that they did not know that—but I went with them. I knew of their plot for you—but I was tired of being angry. Anger is exhausting. Maybe that is another thing different between me and other vampires—the things that are human about me can become tired, and that exhaustion makes me weak. I thought, what if I went along with them? What if I did just let them sacrifice you, your soul grant them the power to create their Tyeni, and then they make me forget? I could have been one of them, never knowing any better—and I have so many memories that I do not wish to keep.

“There was a time when I was ready to forget, I think. The betrayal of my kind, the loss of my parents, the hatred of my own brother—these are things one longs to lose, to pretend one never knew. But then you appeared, and I could not let you be killed by them.”

“Because you made a promise not to hurt me or my cat?” I guessed aloud.

“Because the blossom of your outlandish hope that somehow, some way, good would rule the day—I could not take it from you, no matter how often it had been stolen from me.” She stood, and she seemed taller than she had been before. I wondered if it was a trick of the light.

“I fear this is what it is like to be the nochnaya . Not an all-powerful creature, but one limited by emotions. Trapped by things like mercy and hope.”

“I’m glad you did what you did, Anna.”

She nodded to herself. “I think, so far, that I am glad too.”

We were saved from any further thinking by a knock at my door. Sike tried the handle, found it open, and came in.

“Are you ready to go? Get your things.” Sike brought an empty bag with her and gave it to Anna. At her appearance, Grandfather made mumblings from the bedroom. “You should get that appliance of yours checked out,” Sike said, handing me a sealed envelope.

“You knew she was here?”

“All along. But it would have been presumptuous to force her to come with us.”

I opened the envelope, and inside found an itemized bill. “You’re kidding me.”

“Our services do not come free—”

“Or cheap,” I said, looking at the final amount.

“We offer easy installment plans for indigents, such as yourself.”

I folded the paper up and tore it in two. “It seems to me that you lost my case. That negates any contract we once had.”

“There’s the small issue of a retainer—” Sike said.

I pushed the two pieces of paper back toward her, thumping them against her neck, where her injury had been. “I should bill you all for services rendered. Bite me.”

She took the papers from me. “We just might.”

Anna returned with her bag. I peered a little bit, to make sure she wasn’t smuggling out my cat. “There will be no bill, and no biting. She is mine.”

Sike looked from Anna to me, one cool eyebrow raised. “Then it will be as you say.” Sike opened the door and gestured, but Anna hesitated and looked to me.

“Who are those people?”

It took me a second to realize she was asking about my family photos on the wall. “My mother and brother, mostly.”

“Are they alive?”

I nodded.

“Have they ever tried to kill you?”

“Not precisely.”

“Be good to them, then.” She gave me an awkward hug—and it wasn’t till I saw the blood on her cuff that I realized she was wearing one of Yuri’s old shirts.