In the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

burned, crying so
hard my eyes got sore. My mind ran in little circles, only adding to
the pain – Kent’s gone, Kent’s gone . . .
    It didn’t
go on forever. I cried and cried and thought maybe I wouldn’t
ever stop, but of course I did. It took maybe an hour. Not exactly
forever.
    Sebastian sat
across from me through all of it, fingers steepled, waiting. I stayed
curled up in the chair, arms wrapped around my knees. We sat like
that, watching each other.
    “So,”
he said. “Tell me what you know.”
    I rubbed my
blood-reddened eyes. Where to start? With what I knew about Kent?
With what had happened tonight? Who I saw?
    A shudder ran
through me. I almost started crying again.
    “Why would
anyone do this?” Even as I said it, I knew I sounded
ridiculous. Only the killer knew that.
    Sebastian
shrugged. “Did he have any enemies that you knew of? Did he
ever talk of living somewhere else, perhaps under another name, or
anything he did before he knew you?”
    My instant
response was “No.” Kent didn’t talk much about his
past. I didn’t say that. Instead I focused on thinking back,
what Kent had told me about himself. I choked on a sudden memory,
gulping at a lump too hard to swallow.
    “ So
what are you doing in Seattle?” Kent asked, leaning forward
over his cup of coffee. He kept his voice low to keep from
interrupting the poet on stage now. His manners impressed me.
    “ Going
to school,” I said, turning my own mug between my hands. “And
getting over a broken heart.” I added it reluctantly. Couldn’t
help but reach up to touch my new and still-tender nose ring. My
declaration to myself that I had become someone else.
    He aimed a
finger at me. “I thought so. Let me guess – high school
sweetheart didn’t know what he had? Took off on you for another
girl, am I right?”
    A bitter
smile touched my lips. “Close. She couldn’t take being
called a dyke and left me for a boy.”
    “ Oh,
girl.” He frowned gently.“Oh, that’s rough. Hey,
I’m sorry for bringing up a sore subject.”
    I waved him
off, tears coming to my eyes. It had been almost a year, I hadn’t
thought I’d cry.
    He laughed a
bitter laugh of his own. “My first boyfriend didn’t
understand why I didn’t want him chasing girls on the side,”
he said, distracting me from my own tears. “I mean, I
understood at first, honeymoon period and all, but there comes a
point where you don’t take their shit anymore, you know?”
He laughed again, his own eyes glistening faintly. “So, did
your ice-princess have a name?”
    That had been
the night I met him, at a poetry reading at Crawl Café. I’d
been in Seattle for a month, and Kent was my first friend here. I’d
told him all about Delana. When I’d asked him about his
boyfriend, he put it off and said it happened a long time ago,
encouraging me to talk instead. At the time, I didn’t know how
long ago he meant.
    “Sometimes,”
I answered Sebastian, wiping my eyes. “He always listened
better than he talked. He mostly talked about funny things, or stuff
I could relate to. I don’t think he could have pissed anyone
off.”
    “How old
are you?”
    “Old?”
The change of subject threw me. “How old are you?”
    He smiled –
a real smile, on his lips this time – and didn’t answer.
    “Twenty-three.”
I shifted to sit on my hands.
    “How long
have you been a vampire?”
    “’Bout
four years,” I said. “Roughly.”
    “And Kent
related his entire life to you in those four years. How old was he?”
    I didn’t
answer. I got the point.
    “He was
sad, sometimes,” I said, mostly to myself. Like that face in my
studio earlier tonight. That happened a lot with him.
    “Why?”
Sebastian asked it as I thought it.
    I didn’t
have an answer for either of us. “He never wanted to talk about
it. Said he’d just seen a lot and sometimes it got to him to be
so old.”
    Humor flashed in
Sebastian’s eyes a moment and was gone.
    “What?”
I asked.
    “I know
how he