Butler, Octavia - Fledgling

“Tell me what you remember about them,” I said. “Did you see their faces?”

“Only for a moment,” Eric said. “Young-looking men. Brown hair. Medium brown. Both of them.” “Another pair of brothers?” I asked.

They looked at one another, then back at me. “No, I don’t believe so,” Gerald said. “They were a

Mutt-and-Jeff pair.” I frowned.

“A tall fellow and a short one,” Gerald explained. “And they didn’t look alike at all except for the hair.

Just two guys.”

“How short was the short guy?” Joel asked.

Gerald frowned. “Too short to be a symbiont, really. I think most Ina would worry about taking on a such a small man.”

Mentally, I went through the list of people who had left their scents on Theodora’s body. Of the ones I could identify, three of them were brown-haired men. Only one might be called short by everyone except me. Gerald was right. The man I was thinking of was slender and short, actually too small to be a symbiont. Most Ina worried about hurting smaller humans. In great need, even I might take more blood than a small human could survive losing. “Estimate the height of the shorter man,” I said, just to be sure.

“He was maybe five-three or four,” Eric said.

Joel whistled. “That might mean his Ina was female,” he said.

“Jack Roan,” I said. “His scent was on Theodora. Jack Roan sym Katharine Dahlman. And Katharine

Dahlman and her sister are the shortest adult Ina I’ve ever seen. Did Jack dance with Theodora at all?”

“If he did, it was before we arrived,” Eric said. “We were at another party at Manning’s house. She would have had plenty of time to dance with other people before we arrived.”

But she probably hadn’t. Theodora had not left Celia until Eric and Gerald took an interest. I needed to talk with Jack Roan as soon as possible.

But Jack Roan had gone—had left Punta Nublada. I went to the office complex where the Dahlmans were staying and he wasn’t there.

The complex was also where the Braithwaites were staying, and one of Margaret Braithwaite’s symbionts, a man named Zane Carter, told me he had seen Roan go—had seen him take one of the Dahlman cars and leave that morning. Carter assumed Roan had been sent out on some errand for Katherine or her sister Sophia.

Also, the other brown-haired man from the party turned up—the one who had left the party at the same time as Roan. He turned out to be someone that I knew or, at least, that I was aware of. He was Hiram Majors sym Preston, and his scent had not been on Theodora. I was relieved to know that once I knew he was with the Gordons. He came to me on his own when he heard that I was looking for Roan . . . and heard why I was looking for him.

“I was talking to Jack last night,” he told me when he caught up with me as Joel and I were leaving the office complex. “Turns out he and my sister both went to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh at the same time. He knew her. Saw her in some play—she was a drama major—and then ran into her the next day and invited her to have coffee with him.” Hiram shrugged. “I’m cut off from my family out here. It was good

to talk to someone from home.”

“Did he leave abruptly last night?” I asked.

“Yes,” Hiram admitted. “I think he had been watching your . . . Theodora?” “That was her name.”

“I hadn’t really noticed her until she walked past us and out the door, and Jack looked at her and said he had to go do something for Katharine. Said he’d forgotten until that minute.” Hiram shook his head.

“That’s why I remember him so clearly.”

“God,” Joel said. “What a stupid thing for one symbiont to say to another.” “Why?” I asked, not thinking.

They both stared at me. Joel answered, “You don’t forget something your Ina tells you to do. You can’t. That’s one of the first things you learn as a symbiont. Jack Roan was—I guess—so eager to go after Theodora that he told a really stupid lie.”

twenty-five

I asked Layla Cory, Preston’s first, to let me know when he was awake. Then I went back to the guest house to talk with Wright, Brook, and Celia. “Jill Renner saw Jack talking to Theodora,” Brook said when I told them about Jack Roan. “She recognized him because he’s so short,” Wright said. “She’d noticed him before.”

“Where were they talking?” I asked.

“Outside,” he said. “Near Hayden’s house. It was around two thirty or three this morning. She was on her way home.”

“Jill said she couldn’t hear what they were saying,” Celia said. “But it didn’t look like anything bad was happening. I mean, Jill said he wasn’t touching her or anything.”

As soon as Layla Cory phoned me, I left my symbionts at the guest house, went to Preston, and told him what had happened and what I had learned. We talked in his den, next to his bedroom. The den was a windowless, wood-paneled room with leather-covered chairs, oriental rugs on the floor, and many shelves of old, leather-covered books. It felt, somehow, like a cave—the cave Preston was born from each day.

“Katharine Dahlman,” he said, and he shook his head. “I’ve known Katharine for three centuries. Her family and mine . . . well, I can’t say we’ve been friends, but we’ve usually gotten along. Are you sure?” We sat facing one another in the vast leather chairs. I had slipped off my shoes and curled up in the chair because it was easier than sitting with my legs sticking straight out or sitting forward on the edge with my feet dangling well above the floor. It was a comfortable chair to curl up in.

Under different circumstances, I would have been completely content there.

“I’m sure my Theodora is dead,” I said, “murdered by being hit so hard that part of her skull was broken. I’m sure Jack Roan sym Katharine Dahlman followed her from the party at Philip’s house after lying about why he was leaving the party. Jill Renner went to the same parties as Theodora, and she said early this morning she saw Roan talking to Theodora near Hayden’s house. Sometime after that, Zane Carter saw Roan leaving Punta Nublada. I can’t claim to know more than that, but that should be enough.”

Preston looked at me for a moment, then shook his head.

“I loved Theodora, and she was mine,” I said. “She came to me willingly, eagerly. And now, because she loved me, she’s dead.”

“You don’t know that,” he said.

“I can’t prove it,” I said. “But I know it. So do you.” I took a deep breath. “I promised Martin Harrison I wouldn’t kill anyone before I talked to you or Hayden. And because the Council goes on tonight, I can’t try to track Roan.” I took another breath. “Preston, what can I do? She trusted herself to me. I want a life for her life. I will have a life for her life.”

Preston turned his face away. “Roan’s life?” “Katharine’s life!”

“No.”

I said nothing more. I would have Katharine Dahlman’s life. We would not play the game of killing off one another’s symbionts as though they weren’t even people, as though they were nothing.

I jumped down from the chair, grabbed my shoes, and started to walk away from him.

“Who will protect the rest of your symbionts if you kill Katharine?” Preston demanded. “Her family will come after you. You’ll have stepped outside the law, and they will be free to protect themselves. They’ll kill you, and they’ll kill your symbionts, too, if they try to help you. And of course they will try. Do you want the rest of your people dead?”

“The Dahlmans are the ones who stepped outside the law!”

“I agree with you; they almost certainly have. But that isn’t yet proved.”