Now You See Me

Twenty-Six: Greensleeves

At breakfast the next morning, I had three sets of eyes trained on me as I ate. One was Marilyn's. I could tell she was furious that I'd never followed up on her offer, but she didn't dare show it while Lucien was present, and she made a very convincing statue up at her end of the table, wedged between her Maker and the fireplace.

The second was Leia's. Even though she carried much the same poker face as Marilyn did, I couldn't begin to guess what she was thinking about as she watched me. Her emerald eyes were like mirrors; I saw nothing of what went on behind them, yet when I met them all I knew in my mind's eye was the terror she'd evoked in me. I knew she knew I was scared. I was willing to bet that she knew a lot of that fear was her fault. But whatever she felt about that, she didn't see fit to let me know.

The third pair of eyes was the only one I dared to meet and hold, and they were Courtney's. After the events of yesterday my stomach had become a veritable thunderstorm, but whenever I even thought about leaving the table, Courtney would push my plate at me and give me a meaningful look that made me feel terrible.

"I'm not hungry," I finally told her, when she pushed it at me a third time.

"Are you sick?"

"No."

"Then please try and eat something," she begged, "Damien, you look awful. And your mum will flay us all alive if she finds out you haven't eaten."

"Nightmares make your tummy jippy," Marilyn said from nowhere. She looked at none of us as she spoke, dangling a drop of blood from the end of her straw. "Breakfast's always hell after a nightmare."

"Nightmare?" Courtney repeated. "What are you talking about?"

"You didn't hear him?" Marilyn slowly looked up to meet her eyes, and then mine. I began to regret not answering her before this point, as I couldn't shake the feeling that the vampire was about to embarrass me at the table. "I could hear him from the frickin' cellar. Crying and shit. It woke mummy up."

I dropped my gaze to the table, not wanting to meet Leia's or Courtney's eyes. I had no idea how Marilyn knew I'd been having nightmares – there was no way she could have known, could she? Not even vampire hearing could be that good.

Then again, I'd said that a lot about Marilyn in the past, and it had never taken me anywhere.

"Marilyne," Lucien said sharply. As I looked up at his sudden interruption, I saw him grab the back of her neck between two fingers and pinch until she grimaced and slumped in her chair. She shot him a deadly glare when he let go, but remained silent.

I got up and left.

"Damien!" Courtney followed me out and caught up with me on the stairs. "You said you weren't having nightmares!"

"I lied," I said shortly. As her face fell, I quickly added, "No, I didn't. When I said that, it was true. Last night was my first time since that messed-up memory I had."

Courtney fell silent for a few moments, thinking, as she tailed me up to my room. To my surprise, I didn't actually mind that she was following me, and in an odd way I wanted to make up for snapping at her.

"What did you see?" she said eventually, sitting on my bed. "At the mortuary?"

Bile rose in my throat and I banished the rising images from my mind.

"He looked just like me," I managed to say, "The body, I mean. He..." I choked on the next words and looked away. I felt her arm move around my shoulder and rub at it, and relaxed into it. "Leia didn't say who did it...and I wouldn't have wanted to know anyway...but they were definitely murdered because of me."