"What's so civil about war, anyway?"
—Guns 'n Roses, 1991
The first thing that Eva said to me when I got into the office the following Monday was, "I'm sorry."
I blinked, caught by surprise. "I think that's my line," I said at last.
It was Eva's turn to look surprised. "What'd you do?"
"You wanted good press for the organization," I said heavily. "That was not exactly what I got us."
"Yeah, and whose fault is that?" Eva's expression was hard, but her voice was more gentle than I'd ever heard it.
"Um, mine?" I guessed.
"No." She was still staring intently at me from across the desk. "They went looking for dirt on Jake as soon as they figured out who you were, and when you didn't give them any they resorted to making stuff up. Honey, you didn't say—or do—a single thing you shouldn't have. You probably could have sneezed in the middle of the interview and they'd be talking right now about how your entire family is dying of E. coli."
This was not even slightly the reaction I'd been expecting from Eva. Hell, I'd have given it even odds this morning about whether she was going to fire me. I swallowed hard, not saying anything.
"So yeah, we're probably going to get some stupid crap from bad press for a little while, but we'll deal with it." Eva shrugged. "We've all survived worse."
"Thanks," I whispered. "And... I am sorry I didn't think through what I was saying more."
"And I'm sorry I threw you to the wolves without meaning to. We live, we learn, we—"
Beedeedeedeedee.
"—answer the phone?" I suggested.
"Exactly." Eva gestured grandly toward my desk.
I leaned over the desk to grab it out of its cradle. "Matter Over Mind, this is..." I hesitated. "This is Eva Alvarez's assistant. How can I help you?"
"Um, well, I'm not sure if I'm calling the right place?" The woman on the other end gave a nervous little laugh. "Do you know anything about how to, like, write a cover letter to get a job? If you don't have any previous jobs? But you didn't because, well, yeerks?"
"Absolutely." I spoke with a little too much enthusiasm, mostly because it wasn't a call about yesterday's news story the way I'd been expecting. "All right, do you have a soft copy of your resume and an email address?"
"Yeah?"
I couldn't tell if her voice just naturally went up at the end of every sentence or if she genuinely phrased everything as a question. "Great," I said. "So, the key to everything I'm about to tell you boils down to one concept: observational experience."
"Observational...? Why?"
That one had actually been Bonnie's idea initially, but it had proven to be wildly useful. As it turned out there were a lot of people who had no jobs because, well, yeerks.
"Well, you're going to want to write down every skill that the yeerk ever picked up or used that you think you could apply now, ma'am." I sat down behind the desk, still cradling the phone, and switched on the computer. "Do you speak any alien languages?"
"A little Galard, yes."
Oh look, an actual statement that wasn't a question. "Perfect," I said. "Write that one down. What about Bug fighter maintenance, communications equipment programming, anything like that?"
"No, I..." She sighed. "This is hopeless. Okdar eleven-fifty-eight just worked in the yeerk pool kitchen, mostly."
"Are you kidding?" I straightened up. "That's perfect. Okay, so, you've got 'observational experience' with food preparation and service right there. What about any planning functions? Ordering? Anything like that?"
"Yes, some? Washing dishes, too, and planning out the new supply routes after the one water ship got destroyed?"
"Teenagers, right?" I said. "They'll blow up anything if you leave them unsupervised for long enough."
"Should I put that down in my resume?"
Be literal, my mental Loren said. Literal.
"So you'll want to write down absolutely everything that Okdar eleven-fifty-eight did that could possibly count as a skill, but you'll want to be honest about it." I didn't bother to dignify her question with a response. "Admit where that experience comes from, admit that it's not like you've done most of that volitionally, but still apply to places that are looking for experienced cooks or servers or planners. You've got more to work with than I think you realize. It's all in how you sell it. Anyway, write all that down, jot out a cover letter based on that idea, and send it all along to—do you have a pen?"
"Yes?"
Did that mean she had a pen or not? "Okay," I said. "It's matterovermind-at-AOL-dot-com. You need me to spell any of that?"
"No?"
"Great. Send that along when you get a chance. I'll take a look and send it back." I was tempted to hang up right there, but... "Is that everything I can help you with today?"
"Yeah?"
"Okay. Have a good day, then." Now I did hang up.
"Not that it's not nice of you to try and help," Eva said loftily from where she was now sorting mail across the room. "But I'm just saying, you're not gonna see me trying to work a sailboat all on my own anytime soon."
"Yes, well, you died in a sailboat, as you just got done telling that telemarketer last Thursday," I pointed out. "So I'd say that's a little different."
"They don't call back if you tell them the person they're asking after died over five years ago." Eva dropped one of her piles of mail into the trash can and tucked the other one under her arm.
"They also end up tearfully apologizing for the misunderstanding half the time." I kicked the CPU a few times with the toe of my sneaker in the hope that would make it boot up faster.
"Yeah, which is how you know for sure they're not going to call back."
I lifted my head up from the computer. "Telemarketers are people too. And I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you're not actually dead. Couldn't you, like, ask them nicely to be taken off the list instead?"
Eva shrugged. "If you're such a bleeding heart, you can talk them out of calling back. Just don't accidentally sign us up for any catalogs or life insurance policies while you're at it."
I saluted her. "You can count on me."
The computer made several beeping and whirring noises in what was clearly an attempt to convince me that it really was trying to boot up, even though I knew it was a lazy piece of crap that didn't deserve my sympathy.
Eventually the pitiful old monitor flickered and hummed to life, and I got to work first reviewing the cover letter I'd been sent, then sorting through the emails we'd received in the past few hours. I shamelessly tied up the phone line for most of the afternoon by calling everyone from the California state senators to the representatives of the local Veterans' Association to leave essentially the same phone message in each place making the case for why they should support for Prisoner of War benefits for ex-hosts. I had moved from the politicians to the local activists on my phone list when an incoming call did manage to slip through.
"Matter Over Mind, this is Eva Alvarez's assistant, how can I help you?"
"You should be ashamed of yourselves. All of you!" The guy on the other end sounded distraught.
"Trust me, sir, we are. Every single day," I said. It was exactly what I had been expecting. The flippancy was a defense mechanism. "Thank you for the advice, though."
"Any organization that harbors voluntary controllers deserves to be shut down by the government as un-American," he spat.
I sighed. "I'm sorry you feel that way. However, we don't—"
"Do you realize how many innocents were murdered in cold blood by the yeerks and their accomplices?" he demanded. "How many people's lives were completely destroyed by the invasion?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact, we do. Which is actually the whole point of this organization—"
"You should all kill yourselves!"
Okay, this was doing no good. "I'm sorry," I said loudly. "For that kind of complaint I'm going to have to transfer you directly to our Communications department."
Eva looked over. "Communications department" was our code for any time we had a particularly difficult caller and needed to transfer the person to one another. Not only did that phrasing make the organization sound much larger and more impressive than it really was, it also gave us the chance to put the person on hold for five minutes to hopefully cool off a little. Plus, it allowed us both to extract ourselves from any conversations that were getting too personal or too belligerent by passing the ball to a teammate.
"What's this one?" Eva asked.
"Thinks people who harbor voluntaries are no better than voluntaries, thinks voluntaries are no better than yeerks, and would very much like us all to kill ourselves if that's not too much trouble," I said dully.
"Hijo de puta." Eva glared at her own phone as if the guy on the other end could actually see it. "Where's he calling from?"
"Area code's five-one-five," I said. "So, uh..." I typed an inquiry into . "That's Des Moines. Definitely long-distance."
"All right then." Eva's smile was downright diabolical. "Let's see how high we can run up his phone bill."
I pushed the button to transfer the call to her.
"Good afternoon, sir," she chirruped. "Did you know that it is a felony to instruct another person to commit suicide?"
She wound him up for quite a while, and twice put him on hold for over fifteen minutes to handle "other callers." There was no point in trying to change his mind; some of the other people might be argued around, but we weren't going to bother with the extremists.
After she finally hung up on him, we both got involved in our own stuff—me emailing various local businesses asking them to please consider hiring ex-hosts, Eva drafting an official statement to the effect that we didn't harbor voluntaries and Visser Mom was Personally Disappointed in anyone who thought otherwise—until the reminder about today's meeting popped up on both our screens.
"You don't have to come if you don't want to," Eva said.
I pointedly pushed my chair back from my desk. "Wouldn't that just be admitting my guilt?"
"No," she said, but left it at that.
We had an actual meeting room now with an actual (temporary) sign on the door in an actual public building that we paid to rent from using actual money. We were moving up in the world. Case in point, we had almost 50 folding chairs, and coffee that was fit for human consumption nearly half the time.
Bonnie was already waiting for us when we got in. She caught me in a hug; I hung on for several seconds, face buried in her hair, breathing in the nebulous floral musk of her shampoo.
"Yeah," she whispered. "Yeah, okay."
I thought sometimes I'd been in love with her since I even knew what it was to be in love with anyone. And when I thought about those two stupid kids who'd never done anything worse than set a textbook on fire, when I thought sometimes about what would have happened if I'd just said something, if I'd just worked up the courage, if she hadn't been so alone that she'd wandered into a Sharing meeting just to have someone to talk to...
"I don't deserve someone as good as you," I mumbled against Bonnie's shoulder.
"Too bad. You're stuck with me." She was holding me upright, in some ways the only thing holding me.
"I hate people," I mumbled. "Not you. Just all the other people."
Aware that by now the room was half-full, I stepped back from her at last.
"Me too," Bonnie said softly. "Join the club. We have t-shirts."
"Where'd we get the budget for t-shirts?" I said.
She smiled faintly. "The t-shirts are a state of mind. They're made of willpower."
"Oh of course, silly me."
"How you doing?" she asked.
I shrugged. "How do you feel about running away with me to become hermits in the mountains?"
She tilted her head, hair flowing to the side and revealing one pale shoulder bisected by a green spaghetti strap. "Depends. How long do you think we'd last before we went all Donner Party?"
"We'd bring lots of Ramen," I promised. I was only mostly joking.
Bonnie barked a laugh. "Just Ramen? Nothing else?"
"I think you'll find that non-Ramen food groups are highly overrated. Also overpriced." I frowned, imitating her mock-thoughtfulness. "I could, however, be talked into including peanut butter as well. If you made a convincing enough case."
Eva called the meeting to order before I got the chance to hear Bonnie's defense of non-Ramen foods.
"You know what some guy in the grocery store said to me the other day?" she said to the room as a whole, standing in the little space we'd cleared for that kind of general testimony. "He commented to me, one of those oops-didn't-recognize you asides..."
There was a collective snort of laughter at this. Everyone in this room of course knew Eva's face thanks to Visser One, and most of the rest of the world did too.
"He said to me," Eva continued, "that he didn't see what anyone should expect, having signed up for an organization like the Sharing that had no officially registered mission statement, a history of illegal funding, and only a vague outline of the purpose to which its donation money would be put. He said he was pretty sure anyone who went to a meeting of an organization like that practically deserved what they got, for not doing their homework in advance."
There was a murmur of anger throughout the room.
Eva took a deep breath. "I didn't punch him. I'd say that's my accomplishment for the week."
Several people laughed.
She folded her hands and stepped back, leaving the space for the next person who felt like talking.
As usual, that got at least one highly opinionated person to go on a philosophical rant, which caused someone else to refute it using a personal anecdote, and it went from there. I kept to myself and Eva kept the conversation away from me, for which I was grateful. Even when we splintered off into the smaller group discussions I ended up listening in silence while some lady named Arimathia told us a surprisingly funny story about the excellent thigh muscles Sub-Visser Two-Eighteen had developed for her.
In fact, I managed to avoid the room's metaphorical elephant entirely until after the meeting had already broken up. People were devolving into small clusters of conversation as if we'd just gotten out of Temple when someone touched me on the arm.
I turned around, but it took me a second to spot the girl: at five-one, she was over a foot shorter than me. It didn't help that her white-blond hair and pale grey sundress practically made her disappear into the background.
"Um, hi," she said softly.
"Hi?" I was pretty sure I'd seen her before, but I wasn't sure where or whether I'd ever actually had a conversation with her or just some yeerk wearing her face. Anyway, if she started yelling about voluntaries then I'd probably just run for it.
"I just wanted to say, what you said yesterday..." She looked up at me through her eyelashes. "I thought it was really brave."
"Oh." I didn't say anything else at first, caught off guard by this response.
She was blushing now, pale cheeks becoming steadily redder as she spoke. "It's just... Well, there's not that many people out there sticking up for voluntaries at all, and I think a lot of people don't want to. Both of my parents were..." Again a glance up at me, and then back to the floor, without actually moving her chin. "I mean, it's complicated. But, anyway, thank you."
"Um, thanks," I said. "I mean, you're welcome? I mean... thanks?"
That made her blush some more. She smiled up at me, one of those narrow little smiles like we had a secret in common. She was toying with the end of her hair. "I just wanted to know that I was really touched. You're a good person."
"Okay, sorry, starting over." I took a deep breath. "Thanks, for calling me brave, and I'm sorry that people are stupid. And you're welcome as well, even though I didn't really mean to start anything. But I didn't set out to... declare a political position, or anything like that."
"I understand that." She licked her lips. "But I still... I really admire what you did. Are you here alone?"
I glanced around us. There were loads of people. "Eva's the one who drove me."
"Yeah, but you work for her, right?"
"Um, yeah." This conversation was becoming weird. Or at least her tone was becoming weird. Ugh, I sucked at people.
"That must be very interesting," the girl said intently.
Was she looking for a job? "I guess."
She giggled nervously. Her cheeks were still very flushed. "Anyway, I was wondering..."
Bonnie suddenly linked her arm through mine, leaning her head on my shoulder. "Hi, Melissa!"
Oh God, Bonnie knew her name? Should I know her name? Did she know my name? Shit, we'd probably gone to high school together, hadn't we. She looked a little bit familiar, but I thought that was just from the meetings. Maybe not. Maybe she thought she knew me.
Worst-case scenario: maybe she only knew Essa 412 and couldn't tell us apart.
Melissa, Bonnie had called her. Melissa. Okay, I could totally act like I knew her name all along.
"Hello," Melissa said. "Anyway, it was nice seeing you, Tom."
Dammit. She did know me.
"You too. Melissa." I smiled at her.
She glanced over her shoulder to give us a little wave as she walked away.
Bonnie shook her head, rolling her eyes. "You seriously don't remember that we had an AP Biology class with her, do you?"
"Nope."
"And you had no clue she was flirting with you, did you?"
"She was... Are you sure?" I looked from Bonnie toward the door Melissa had left through. "She just wanted to thank me for what I said yesterday."
"One of these days I'll teach you the fine art of reading body language," Bonnie said.
Again I looked toward the door, not convinced. "Yeah, okay, I'll take your word for it. Can I just keep you and ignore all other interested parties?"
Bonnie laughed, squeezing my arm. "Yes. You have my permission."
"Good."
Bonnie stood on tiptoe to peck a kiss onto my cheek. "Gotta get out of here and deal with yet another alleged emergency at work—surprise, surprise—but I should have calmed my manager's latest hysteria soon. You still free for tomorrow night?"
"For you? I'm always free."
She laughed. "Okay. You sure you're going to be okay until then?"
"Yeah." I caught her hand in mine. She gave me a reassuring squeeze.
"I'll see you tomorrow, then." She blew me another kiss on her way out the door.
Another host caught me before I could get away, but it was some old guy who was nearly as nice about the whole thing as Melissa. "If you ever need anyone to testify that you're involuntary, son, I can tell them I saw myself when they dragged you into them cages during the feedings. You weren't no voluntary, and I'll say it to the world if I have to," he said.
I thanked him and assured him that I'd think of him if it came to that. Two other people expressed support, and three others asked rude questions. Margaret who I'd seen crying after that one meeting gave me a poisonous look from across the room; so much for our moment of solidarity. I didn't know what to make of the one guy who said "You're not really a voluntary, right?" and then left before I could answer.
By the time I shook off the last of the people who felt the need to express one opinion or another, there were only a few clusters of lurkers left.
Eva lingered back to put a new set of pamphlets by the door. I walked down the hallway toward the stairs, drafting a text to Bonnie, when—
"Visser Seventeen!"
I froze when the sharp voice spoke behind me. Had someone seriously just...?
Very, very slowly, I pivoted on the spot to look at the young woman behind me. She was about my age, with thick blond hair that had been arranged artfully so that it almost entirely hid the burn scars across the right side of her face.
"I'm sorry," I said through my teeth. "Essa four-one-two is not available right now. You'll have to leave a message and I'm sure he'll get back to you when he can."
The young woman's expression hardened into defensive lines. "It's not like I know your name. What was I supposed to call you?"
"'Hey, you,' would work just as well," I said coldly. "Better, in fact."
She shifted her weight, leaning more heavily on the cane she held. "Fine. Whatever."
It took me a minute, but I actually recognized this one. It was Sub-Visser Fifty-One's host. I didn't know her name either, but Essa 412 had worked with her yeerk during the construction of the Sharing's community center.
I stuck out my hand. "Tom Berenson. It's nice to meet you."
There was still a sharp edge to my tone, which was probably why she didn't bother to take the hand I offered. Instead she narrowed her eyes. "It's not like we're meeting for the first time."
I sighed. "Well, unless your parents had a really cruel sense of humor and actually named you 'Irdiss 435,' that's probably not true."
The hand that she placed in mine was a high-quality prosthetic, which, admittedly, might have explained her earlier hesitation. I shook it gently.
"Hi. I'm Taylor." Her tone had more than a little acid in it too.
"What did you want to talk about?" I asked.
She straightened her stance, staring me down. "The blatant discrimination rampant in this entire organization."
Oooooookaaay... "What?"
"I want to talk to you about voluntary controllers," she said tightly. The knuckles of her flesh hand were white against the handle of her cane.
Just great. I was about to get murdered by some cane-wielding pissed-off former host in the middle of this hallway while fifteen other ex-hosts watched in mild interest and totally failed to remember that they had the option to intervene if they so chose.
"It's just disgusting that voluntary hosts are being barred from membership in this organization," Taylor said.
I blinked. That... wasn't the direction I'd been expecting this conversation to take. "Wait, what?" I said.
She took a step closer. "You of all people should realize how ridiculous it is that we are being discriminated against. We're former hosts too, so where are our protests? Why aren't people fighting for us to have benefits?"
I took a step back. "Me, of all people?"
Taylor made a sharply dismissive gesture. "Are you going to answer me, or not?"
"Look," I said slowly. "I think maybe you should be having this conversation with Eva. She's the one in charge of all the major decisions. I'm just here to look pretty and answer the phones."
"I did, months ago." Taylor grimaced. "She told me that I was a human waste of oxygen and that she never wanted to see me again."
"Did you call her 'Visser One' to her face?" I said. "Because that might be your problem right there."
"If you support the voluntaries, why won't you stand up to her?" Taylor demanded.
I crossed my arms. Getting angry wouldn't help. "Who said I supported the voluntaries?"
Taylor gave me a look like she was doubting my intelligence or perhaps my sanity. "You did. Yesterday. When you talked about the murders."
"Okay." I took a deep breath. "No. For the record, I disagree with absolutely everything that the voluntary hosts did, what they stood for, and all of the unbelievably shitty ways they justified their own behavior to themselves."
"Then—"
"This might be a radical concept for you, but there's a hell of a difference between disagreeing with someone and wanting that person dead." I enunciated each word slowly. "If there wasn't, I would have killed the man who cut me off in line yesterday, and the lady who put a dent in my mom's car, that one guy who always has to one-up people's stories in group meetings, and like six hundred other people. Let's be honest, we'reboth lucky that that's the case, because I probably would have killed you too since you just called me—"
"God, get over the whole 'visser' thing." She blew her hair out of her face. "What's your problem with it anyway?"
"Taylor, the very fact that you feel the need to ask that question nicely sums up all of the reasons you're not invited to sit with us at the lunch table." I glanced behind her; there were still at least four or five people openly watching us. Gotta love zombies. "Please, feel free to start your own organization for voluntary hosts. No one is stopping you. But I think everyone here would be more comfortable if some of the people responsible for their trauma were not invited to hang out with them."
"Oh, what, like you guys have the copyright on having difficult lives?" Taylor made an angry gesture to herself. "You think I like looking like a freak? Having no one like me now that I'm ugly?"
If people don't like you, then trust me that it has nothing to do with physical appearances. The thought was too mean, too middle-school petty, for me to speak out loud. It'd just be a dark secret between me and—
Huh. No yeerk. Just me, then.
"Well, like I said, we're not your only option," I said patiently. "Nor are we your best one. And you're not going to change my mind about this, or Eva's. That's just how it is."
Taylor stared me down, narrow-eyed. "Does she pay you to kiss her ass, or are you her slave?"
Then again, maybe this conversation was going to devolve into pettiness no matter how much restraint I exerted. "I prefer to think of it as indentured servitude. In exchange she doesn't fulfill her claim on my immortal soul and drag me down to hell. It works out well for the both of us."
"Bootlicker," Taylor spat. She shoved past me, limping into the open elevators.
"That's rich coming from a Quisling like you," I said, but quietly enough that the whole argument wouldn't start up again.
I got another poisonous glare before the doors snapped shut and blocked her from sight.
"Wow." Eva was leaning in the open doorway of the meeting room.
"Did you seriously just watch all of that?" I asked.
"Nope. Just caught the tail end. I would have rescued you if I thought you needed it."
She was carrying a box of fliers; I took it from her automatically.
"So," she said as we headed down the stairs. "Still think voluntaries are worth saving?"
I shifted to a one-handed grip on the box so I could rub at my eyes, aching with tiredness. "I just don't want any people to get murdered. Ever. For any reason. Is that really so complicated?"
Eva gave me one of those looks I knew meant she thought I was being naive. "Not even in cases of capital punishment?"
I thought about it. "I guess not? I mean, didn't I read somewhere that it's actually cheaper just to keep them locked up for life?"
"And what if someone was pointing a gun at you, or someone you loved? Would you kill that person if you had the chance?"
"Um, yeah," I said, "but doing so would prevent more murders, so that's sort of a moot point."
Eva scoffed. "What if you were able to assassinate one person knowing they'd have a seventy-five percent chance of taking over a foreign country as a dictator and causing the whole place to descend into genocide?"
"Then I'd quit the CIA and go start a peanut farm instead." I shoved open the door at the bottom of the stairs with my hip, holding it for her. "What if tomorrow the sky falls and taxxons take over the planet in its post-apocalyptic state and next thing we know we're all food for a bunch of giant hangry caterpillar overlords?"
She smiled, but I could tell I hadn't exactly convinced her. "Well, what if?"
"I'm just saying, I'll deal with it as it arises." I frowned. "Not that I think that last one is very likely."
"And you don't think there'd ever be room for justifiable homicide," Eva said.
"I just think that there's been enough of humans getting killed for a while. And that it's stupid they keep killing each other, and that I want to stop it. I didn't think it was that radical a concept until everyone got all up in arms yesterday."
Eva watched me settle the box carefully in the trunk of her Honda. "Okay," she said at last. "I hope you're never in a situation where you have to compromise that viewpoint."
"If goddamn aliens would just stop attacking the stupid planet, everything will work out fine," I said.
This time her smile was clearly genuine. "I certainly hope so."
I was banging a basketball against the side of the house that evening (and actually getting it through the hoop about 75% of the time; yay me) when Jake made a soft sound behind me.
Without bothering to say anything I spun around and shot the ball at him.
To the surprise of exactly no one, Jake made an awkward one-handed grab at it and missed completely, failing to stop the ball from bouncing off his shoulder and rolling away into the grass.
"You did that on purpose, you jerk," he said.
"I admit it." I made a show of looking contrite. "I dropped you on your head as a baby, and that's why you've always been such an uncoordinated dork."
Jake flipped me off.
I gasped. "What would all the loyal readers of Seventeen think?"
"How did you even know I'm on the cover of Seventeen unless you're one of those loyal readers?" Jake asked.
I jogged past him to go find the ball he'd failed to catch. "I shop at grocery stores just like normal people!" I called. "Most of them have magazine racks with your ugly mug in them."
I tossed the ball back to him. He missed, again. And to think, this was the kind of star talent the Santa Barbara Middle School team had missed out on recruiting.
"Here." Jake held out his left hand, index finger and thumb pressed together. "I was going to give you this before you started hurling projectiles at my head."
"What's that, the world's smallest violin?" I asked.
Jake rolled his eyes. "It's a flea. If you want a pity party, you're going to have to go elsewhere."
I held out my hand. He dropped the flea into my palm, and I quickly closed my fingers around it before it could hop away.
"They're nearly indestructible, and pretty much impossible to find in a standard-sized room," Jake explained. "Also, as Ax figured out the hard way, just about the only Earth animal the yeerks haven't found a way to contain or destroy."
I focused on the breadcrumb-sized insect, so tiny I could barely feel it against my fingertip even knowing it was there. It stopped struggling, relaxing until I opened my hand and it slid off without resistance.
"You're never going to need it," Jake said. "Or want it, for that matter. Their senses are pretty crappy, and half the time you end up drinking blood whether you want to or not. But..."
But now I had it. Insurance, in case the worst happened. A last-minute way out, one that gave me an escape option other than killing myself.
It was about feeling safe. It was about having another way to make sure that even if they took me, they'd have a hell of a time hanging onto me.
I swallowed hard. "Thanks," I said softly.
"Sure." Jake smiled.
I cleared my throat. "Now go get that ball, you doofus. I'm going to teach your sorry butt how to receive a pass properly if we have to stay out here all night."
