Macy’s not here—probably out with some of the witches doing witch things—so I put the flowers on my desk before flopping down on my bed. A couple of minutes later, I turn on my favorite playlist and grab the book off my nightstand. But it’s the same book I was reading four months ago when I turned into a gargoyle, so I can’t follow the plot.
Three minutes and five pages later and I put the book down. I consider streaming something from Netflix, but nothing sounds good, and eventually I end up wandering around my room, touching everything as I look for something to do.
Turns out, there’s nothing to do—it’s been a long time since I’ve been in my room alone, and it feels so awkward, I almost can’t believe I’m in the right place. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, considering when I got to Katmere Academy, all I wanted was to be on my own, and now I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin.
Finally, I decide to take a shower so I can go to bed, but I’m halfway to the bathroom, pajamas in my hand, when I realize I can’t do that. Last night when I showered, Hudson was asleep. Tonight, he isn’t.
He’s being unnaturally quiet and hasn’t said a word to me since Jaxon’s outburst in the library, but he’s sprawled out on Macy’s bed reading—I stretch a little bit to get a look at the front of his book—Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, and I wonder idly if he relates to Rodion, who ends up killing people for his own selfish needs.
I hesitate. I want to wash my hair, but there’s no way I’m going to strip naked and take a shower with him watching me, whether he seems like he’s reading or not. How could he not see me naked if I can see myself naked? I mean, he’s in my head.
“I wouldn’t do that.” I nearly jump when Hudson finally speaks to me out of the blue. He’s still on Macy’s bed, with his ankles crossed and his arms folded beneath his head, but now his book is lying across his chest.
There are a million other questions I want to ask him—namely what made him so upset that he shut down to begin with—but I settle for asking about his immediate statement first. “What do you mean?”
“I wouldn’t watch you take a shower or get undressed. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Yeah, but how could you not watch? You’re literally in my head, even though it seems like you’re over there on Macy’s bed.” I tap my head. “You’re still right here.”
“I don’t know. The best I can do is close my eyes and go deep inside my own mind so I’m not really active in yours at the time. I guess we’ll see. But take your shower. You don’t have anything gross to fear from me.”
“Is that what you did at the end, in the library? Went deep into your own mind?” I don’t know why it matters, don’t know why I don’t just take the win and be happy he left me alone for as long as he did. But I don’t feel particularly happy, and I want to know what shut Hudson down to begin with.
“No,” he answers after a second. “I’ve been here all along. I just…”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I guess I just wanted to think for a while.”
“I can understand that.”
He smiles, and for the first time tonight, it’s not mocking. But it’s not happy, either. It’s just kind of…sad. “Can you?”
It’s a good question, one I don’t know the answer to. I think I have a lot on my mind—pun maybe, kind of, totally intended—but for the first time, I wonder what it must be like to be Hudson. Trapped in the head of a girl you barely know and who has made no secret of the fact that she doesn’t like you, stuck there until she can figure out how to not only get you out of her head but also to make you human, something you’ve never been in your life.
I know how alienated and strange I feel knowing that a part of me is gargoyle, not human. How much more awful must it feel to be a vampire and know that by the time you’re free, you will have lost the most basic building block of who you are?
It’s a terrible thought, the idea of being responsible for stripping Hudson of his very identity. But at the same time, what’s the alternative? Set him free and hope he doesn’t decide to use his very formidable powers to launch a war on the entire world?
He’s done absolutely nothing to earn the kind of trust that would require.
“You’re right,” he tells me after a second.