This was the answer to my doubts about Innocencio.
"h.e.l.lo." A girl stood before us. She looked young but was, I hoped, over eighteen. Again I got the sense that this place was a throwback in time; her dark hair was arranged in careful waves and held off her face by a clip with a white flower on it. Her dress was dark green velvet, cut into a deep V in front and held at the waist by a black, beaded belt. "I"m Tracy."
Boz looked her up and down and sipped his drink.
"Hi," Katy said shortly, and looked away.
Tracy focused on me. "You"re new here. I haven"t seen you before."
"You are correct, sir," I said, and sipped my drink.
Tracy"s sweet, old-fashioned face gave me a gentle smile. "I"m not immortal."
My eyes flared. "Oh-kaaaay?"
"But you are."
I almost choked on my drink and gave an awkward cough. Good Lord. "Oh my G.o.d, can you see me? I thought I was wearing my invisibility cloak." Yes, I"m suave. I"m mysterious. My name is Crowe-Nastasya Crowe.
Tracy looked at me with affectionate pity. "You feel alive. Regular people feel dead."
Okay, welcome to Creepy Territory. Here"s your map.
"I have new batteries in." I tried to take a drink, but my gla.s.s was empty, and the ice slid down and hit my nose. That happens to us suave people. I wiped it off with the back of my hand.
Tracy reached out and took my hand. "Do you want me?"
My eyes widened again, and I glanced at Boz and Katy. They had gone, deserted me to this girl, this automaton girl.
Tracy"s soft hand was stroking my arm. Her eyes were a beautiful green, like her dress. Her hair was soft and smelled like forget-me-nots. Her lips were soft and pink and smiling at me. She was... so adorable. And just like that, she had offered up her life, her power, for me to take if I wanted it.
She started to lead me to an empty couch. Could she actually be this stupid? Yes, Boz had told me what people did here, but confronted with the reality, I was still shocked. Almost without realizing it, I sank down on a soft peach-colored sofa with thick, rolled arms.
Tracy tucked one knee under her and then she was leaning against me, surrounding me with the scent of flowers. I began to pray that Katy hadn"t put anything in my drink. I could trust Katy, right? Ha ha ha ha.
"What are you doing?" I murmured against Tracy"s hair.
"Take me," she breathed. "Make me yours."
I had to hear her say it. I just couldn"t believe that she would offer her life force to an immortal like this. "What are you talking about?" I sounded a bit more alert, and Tracy sat up and looked at me.
"You... put your hands on me," she said. "And, you know, sort of take me. Take my energy."
I sat up and put my empty gla.s.s on the small table.
"And then you feel lovely." Her coaxing voice was back. "And I do, too." She leaned against me again and put her hand around my waist. "You feel... very alive. So alive. I like the way you feel."
This place was a brothel-a dark brothel where immortals came and fed off regular people. Like vampires, if they existed. And these people, these astonishingly stupid and self-destructive people, were offering themselves up. They knew about us and seemed totally down with the whole immortal gig. But how, or why? And Incy liked to come here. And Incy had learned how.
"How could you possibly feel lovely?" I asked.
Tracy blinked at me. "I just do. It makes you feel dreamy and floaty. And sometimes I need to conk out afterward. One time I slept for three days."
"Tracy-you-" I shook my head. "You know this can kill you, right? Someone could literally channel enough of your life force to actually kill you. Leave you a vegetable, or worse."
"No," she said, looking disbelieving.
"Yes," I a.s.sured her. "That"s how most immortals make magick: They suck it out of something else. And it can kill something, leave it dead. It"s abhorrent, frankly."
"No." Tracy shook her head.
"Yes. Really," I said. Now I could see clearly what was happening. The humans here looked dazed, dissolute. The immortals looked fabulous, bursting with life and energy. And that wasn"t all. Besides all the life-sucking, there was big magick being made here. Dark magick. I felt it in the air, practically smelled it, like ozone before a storm. This was... a really dangerous place. A really dark, evil, dangerous, bad place. And I had to get out of here.
I hadn"t seen Incy since he"d come upstairs. Katy and Boz were leaning against a column, not talking to anyone. I was a bit surprised that they hadn"t leaped into this wholeheartedly. Not that they were awful people, but they were just-unseeing. Unknowing. Not worried about consequences. Like we all were. As Boz had said, he was willing to rob anyone of anything. And had done so. He"d ruined people, broken hearts. Like Incy had.
And the thing that sobered me right up, that pierced me to the core was the knowledge that two months ago, this would have been... very interesting to me. I wouldn"t have known how to do it, but I would have been willing to learn. I don"t think it would have bothered me to rape these people"s energy, take advantage of their stupidity. I would have thought they deserved it, since they were literally asking for it. It wouldn"t have given me a single sleepless night.
It was revolting that I had been like that. Shameful. Disgraceful, in the old-time sense of the word. And what was even worse? That I could now see myself so wretchedly clearly. I had changed, I recognized bitterly. I hated that I could see myself as I was. What a terrible thing to know. I would never be able to not know it, to forget it.
I didn"t see how I could ever forgive River for that.
CHAPTER 22.
Having a good time, love?" Incy leaned over the back of my couch. His eyes were bright, his face flushed and happy. Earlier he"d seemed increasingly agitated, almost jumpy. Now as he sank down next to me, he seemed very, very calm, very centered.
He"d been feeding on someone. Maybe more than one. I found it so... reprehensible. And I"m not even a good person. I"m a loser and a waste, and I found it reprehensible.
"Good is a strong word," I said, wishing I had another drink.
Incy looked taken aback. "I see you"ve met the lovely Tracy."
"Yes."
Tracy looked thrilled to see Incy and immediately abandoned unfun me to wind around him. He smiled at her and stroked her hair, and she almost purred.
"Tracy is a very giving girl," said Incy, and Tracy"s eyes gleamed. He looked at me. "You really should try her. I"m sure they taught you how, at the witch school."
"Witch school?" He"d called it a farm earlier. As if he hadn"t known what it was.
"I"m sure they taught you all kinds of things," he said, and I recognized the seductive tone he used on people. He was now using it on me. I had, after a hundred years, become someone he needed to subvert and seduce. Inside my chest, I felt my hard little heart crack right in two.
"How to gather eggs," I said woodenly.
Incy laughed, stroking the back of Tracy"s neck. "They have more private rooms, in the back. Why don"t the three of us go there? Tracy would probably like to be with both of us."
Tracy"s face lit up as if she"d just found a hundred dollars in the pocket of an old pair of jeans. "Yes! I would."
I swallowed. "I just... this isn"t for me, Incy." I was stunned by the thoughts battering my brain: I didn"t belong here, not anymore. I didn"t belong with Innocencio and the others. I thought I"d been overreacting before, when I"d run away. I thought I"d just had a brain attack, then had continued lying to myself at River"s Edge. Coming back here was supposed to feel like coming home, like I was putting myself back into a world I knew how to navigate, how to do well in.
But I felt like a weed in a hothouse here, too.
I didn"t belong anywhere. With anyone. Oh G.o.ddess.
"Don"t be silly." Incy gave a little laugh. "It will be perfect for you. You"ll love it. And darling, when you see how you feel..." There was so much love in his eyes. "Remember when you introduced me to a Hansen"s s...o...b..iz in New Orleans, and it changed my life? This is like that, only more so. This is what I want to give to you."
I looked at Incy and Tracy, sitting closely on the couch. They were both unnaturally beautiful, seductive, alluring. Incy had talked me into a million different things over the decades-including coming back to Boston-and I hadn"t balked and very rarely regretted anything. I forced myself to consider whether this was another of those times, whether I was being narrow-minded and uncharacteristically knee-jerk moralistic.
But I couldn"t bring myself to do this. It was bad; it was wrong; it was unclean. I recognized that. I felt it. Going against those feelings would be unbearable. Another thing to blame River for.
I gave an uneasy smile. "It"s tempting...." Oh G.o.d, I was such a coward! Such a freaking spineless jellyfish of a coward! I was still trying to placate Incy, to go along. But I was done with lying to everyone. Done with lying to myself. My heart sped up. I swallowed and took a deep breath. "No, Incy. It isn"t tempting. It isn"t. It"s disgusting."
Tracy looked offended. Incy"s face was very still, his eyes on mine.
Might as well jump completely under the bus. "It"s repulsive for Tracy, or any of these others, to offer their energy to us. They"re crazy and suicidal and lying to themselves. For immortals to take them up on their ridiculous, wrong-headed offer is, well, wrong. As much as my moral compa.s.s spins like a game dial, even I can see that this is not the path to skip down. It"s bad. I would feel... like something I would sc.r.a.pe off a shoe."
"Yo!"
We were all startled by Stratton"s sudden appearance. He took a slurp of the foam on his gla.s.s of stout and looked at us. "And what a delectable little treat you have here." Stratton looked at Tracy, who blinked leaf green eyes at him.
"She is delectable," Incy agreed, and Tracy looked pleased. "But Nastasya doesn"t agree. Nastasya thinks Tracy is disgusting and repulsive."
Tracy looked at me reprovingly.
"I said what goes on here is disgusting and repulsive," I clarified. "Not Tracy herself."
"No," said Incy. "Tracy herself you called stupid and crazy and suicidal."
Tracy"s eyes narrowed at me.
Stratton looked thoughtful, as if trying to figure out whether "disgusting and repulsive" could be seen as a good thing. Finally he looked up, his mind clear. "Naahhh." He sipped his beer, completely at ease.
"You"re overreacting, Nas," Incy said, still cajoling. "Those puritans brainwashed you." He laughed. "Trust me-this is what you need. Look, try it once. Like bungee jumping. You"ll advance very quickly."
He meant advance magickally. What had he been getting into? And for how long? Since London? Earlier?
Somehow, two months ago, I"d had the dumb animal instinct to get away from him, to try to get to a place of safety. But it had been too hard. My inadequacy and my darkness had scared me. Now, here, my blooming darkness would be an a.s.set, a strength. But now I knew too much to let it.
I couldn"t believe I was in this position. I don"t think I"ve ever gone against the crowd in my whole life. Never stood up for anything. I always just went with what was going on, what the most powerful people were saying and doing.
My stomach turned at the thought. Sickened, I realized I had to deal with four hundred years of regrets. I would not survive this.
I stood up, feeling like my skin was splitting. My heart had already broken, and it now lay in a heap of tiny, sharp shards like animal teeth in the pit of my stomach. I felt... obliterated. If I"d been a sh.e.l.l when I went to River"s, I was now a grotesque, crumpled piece of florist"s foam, the kind that dissolves when you press on it the slightest bit.
"I"m going to go," I said shakily. I pushed my arms into my cashmere Jil Sander coat. "I"ll see you guys later."
They looked at me as if I"d started talking in ancient Greek, and said nothing as I turned and headed toward the door. I hadn"t seen Cicely since we"d arrived. Maybe she was in one of the private rooms in the back. I met Boz"s and Katy"s eyes as I left the big room behind. Of course I had no ride, no way to get out of this h.e.l.lhole. I pulled out my brand-new cell phone and clumsily tapped in a search for taxi companies as I trudged down the stairs. My soul felt lighter with every step, but I wasn"t fooled; I had no home, no place to go. I had no me, actually.
"Nastasya! Wait! Wait!"
I turned to see Incy hurrying down the stairs.
"I"m going to go, Incy," I said. "This isn"t working."
For one second, fear blazed in his eyes like a bonfire; then it was gone, and I wasn"t even positive I"d seen it.
"Nas." He gripped the collar of my coat and leaned down to put his face close to mine. Alarms went off, but I tried to keep my face blank. This whole thing had been such a mistake. I had totally and completely screwed myself, but good. Incy was uninterested in being helped or saved. That had never been what he wanted from me. "Nas," he said again, gently. "I"m sorry. I truly thought this would be fabulous and that you would love it."
And what did that say about me? Ick.
"But if you don"t, that"s fine," he went on. "We don"t have to stay. Boz and Katy want to leave, too. You three have turned into a bunch of party p.o.o.pers." His voice was slightly bitter, but he forced a laugh. "Stratton and Cicely are going to stay. They understand."
He seemed to catch himself then, realizing that he was digging himself in deeper. He shook his head and smoothed my collar down, tucking my scarf around my neck.
"I understand, Incy," I said. "I just think it"s repugnant. It"s rape. Those idiots in there don"t know what they"re doing, how dangerous it is. You"re taking advantage of them." I looked at him earnestly. "This isn"t you, Incy. It isn"t us."
His lovely face twisted quickly into a cruel sneer that made me step back against the stair railing. Then Boz and Katy started coming down, and he got himself under control.
"Yay," said Katy. "Let"s go somewhere else."
"Bars will all be closed," said Boz, and then caught on that Incy and I were having a moment.
Incy flashed a smile. "Yeah. But that"s okay. We can go do something else. Okay, Nas? Nas is back!" He put his arm around my shoulder and kissed my cheek. "Back forever! It"s you and me, babe! You"ll see. A few more days and you and I will be like bread "n" b.u.t.ter again."
Bleakness settled over me like a quilt.
Outside it was still breathtakingly cold. The four of us walked briskly to Incy"s car, which hadn"t been touched, thanks to his spell. I glanced up at the sky, its stars almost blotted out by the city"s lights and the striated clouds that moved quickly from southwest to northeast. I could just make out enough to guess that it was about two in the morning.
I felt very, very old.
A piercing sense of regret and loss swept over me. With despair I realized that I would give anything to not be here, to wake up tomorrow in my hard little bed at River"s Edge. I wanted to break down in huge, racking sobs. Why had I done this?
Oh, right. That"s right. Because I always, unfailingly, screwed things up. I always knifed myself in the back. I was afraid of being happy because no one can be happy forever, and I couldn"t bear the fear of its inevitable loss.
I climbed into Incy"s frigid car in numb misery. Boz and Katy got into the backseat; doors slammed and Incy started the engine. I gazed out the window, imagining that I could see River"s face right in front of me. Her eyes with their wisdom, their love and forgiveness. Their understanding. That"s all she had ever offered me. I"d thrown it back at her-not once but twice.
And Reyn. I"d pushed him away, even as I"d hypocritically l.u.s.ted after him. Despite his past, he was sincerely trying so hard to be good. And here I was with Incy, bread "n" b.u.t.ter. The thought turned my stomach, the alcohol solidifying into a knot of pain. Incy had a bad past, and clearly had zero interest in being good. How had I not known this? Maybe it had been creeping up so slowly for years that I"d been able to avoid admitting it to myself. Or maybe it had happened all at once, in the last two months. I hoped I could talk to Boz about it, the next time I was really sure that Incy couldn"t overhear us.
I leaned my head against the cold window, knowing that I had to plan a new life for myself. Which was about as bleak a thought as I could possibly have.
"Nasty!" Incy"s voice was insistent.
My head jerked upright. "What?" I glanced around, saw that we were making our way out of Winchley. Incy was staring at me, looking upset.