But we didn’t need any real idea—there wasn’t any goal in mind, I was so preoccupied with the dizzy glee of having dived in that I didn’t care about getting anywhere. Which was just as well, because he came less than five minutes into the festivities, and then went into a spiral of writhing and apologies until I punched him in the shoulder and said, “Come on, Lake, if that’s the best you’ve got, I’m leaving you and going to lunch,” and he laughed again and kissed me some more and then followed my pointed hints until I’d had an equally good time, and then he moved back up on top of me and we moved together and it was—too many things to name all of them, with the sticky physical pleasure the least of them, far behind the sheer relief of walls tumbling down, giving in to my own hunger, the joy of feeding his, and if that hadn’t been enough, the unbelievable bliss of not thinking, of not worrying, for at least one glorious stretch of mindlessness.
Which worked really effectively until afterwards, when we were lying together sweaty and, at least in my case, incredibly pleased with myself: I felt I’d accomplished something unique and magical, that, unlike all the other actually unique and magical things I can do, wasn’t horrifying or monstrous in the least. I was draped over his chest and he had his arms round me, which would become intolerably uncomfortable at some point that wasn’t now, and then he sucked in a deep gasping breath and said, “El, I know you don’t want to talk about—if we make it out of here, but I can’t—” and his voice was cracking on the edge of tears, not just leaky sentiment but like he was barely holding on to keep from bursting into sobs, so I couldn’t stop him, and because I didn’t, he said, “You’re the only right thing I’ve ever wanted.”
I had my cheek pillowed on him, and you couldn’t have paid me to look him in the face at that moment. I stared hard at the drain instead, from which any number of helpful maleficaria could have burst and didn’t. “If no one’s mentioned this to you before, you’ve got really odd taste,” I said, and wished I didn’t mean it quite as much as I did.
“They have,” he said, so flatly I did have to look at him. He was staring up into the dark recesses of the pavilion ceiling with a muscle jumping along the side of his jaw, a blind look in his face. “Everyone has. Even my mom and dad…They always thought something was wrong with me. Everyone was always nice to me, they were grateful, but—they still thought I was weird. My mom was always trying to get me to be friends with the other kids, telling me I had to control myself. And then when they gave me the power-sharer and I drained the whole enclave…”
Every word out of his mouth was stoking my already substantial desire to show up on his enclave’s doorstep and set the entire place on fire. “They made it feel as though it were all your fault, and that as a result you owed it to all the rest of them to dump the mana you get, all on your own, into their bank, and accept whatever bits they like to dribble back out to you in exchange,” I said through my teeth. “Which, by the way, is the only reason you’re low on mana in the first place. You’d still be aglow—”
“I don’t care about the mana!” He shifted and I got myself out of the way to let him get up; he went and sat on the steps, looking out into the still-falling amphisbaena rain. I grabbed my t-shirt—the New York one he’d given me, which came down to mid-thigh on me—and put it on and went and sat next to him. He had his elbows on his knees and was hunched over as if he couldn’t bear watching my face, whatever he’d see on it when he told me about his horrible evil self who’d swallowed this swill from everyone round him so long that he couldn’t even tell the taste was rotten. “I like the hunting. I like going after the mals, and—” He swallowed. “—and taking them apart and pulling the mana out of them. And I know that’s creepy—”
“Shut your bloody mouth,” I said. “I’ve seen creepy, Lake; I’ve been inside creepy, and you’re nothing like.”
He said softly, “That’s not true. You know it’s not. In the gym, when those kids tried to kill you—”
“Us,” I said pointedly.
“—you wouldn’t have hurt them,” he went on, without a pause. “And I—I wanted to kill them. I wanted to. And it did freak you out. I’m sorry,” he added, low.
I said in measured tones, “Lake, I’m useless at this nonsense, but as my mum’s not here at the moment, I’m just going to feed you her lines. Did you kill them?”