“Relax.” I smiled at the slave who walked beside me—a very sweet woman named Farrah. She had blue paint all over the shoulder of her black jacket, and she kept pulling her goggles away from her face and then setting them back in place. As she did, she’d shake the sleeve of her jacket down so I could see her blue wristband.
She was the third slave I’d captured. I’d lucked out and nabbed two friends about half an hour ago, and taken them both to camp at the same time. I’d been on my way back into the woods when I’d seen Farrah and managed a lucky shot when she ran. I could only hope that Miles was successfully avoiding capture. I hadn’t seen him on the posts.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, not for the first time.
She’d been laying on the damsel-in-distress routine pretty thick.
“Well,” I said politely. “I’m going to take you back to camp, and chain you up to a whipping post.”
“And then what?” She had this eager sort of preschool-teacher voice, like she was prompting me for the next line in a familiar story.
“And then I’m going to pin your cards up.” I was trying to keep our dialogue as nonsexual as possible.
“And then what?”
“And then . . . people will be able to have their way with you.”
She picked her way over a cluster of small white flowers. “I wish you would have your way with me.”
I smiled again. “My boyfriend and I are pretty exclusive.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “So you don’t want to ravish me or anything?”
“I’ll bet you’ll find plenty of people at the posts who’ll ravish you.”
She glanced sideways at me. “I like your teeth.”
“Thank you. I’m a vampyre.”
“I figured.” We walked in silence for a moment. Her footsteps were slightly uneven, like she was favoring one leg. Her whistle lanyard dangled from her pocket. Finally she said, “Do you live with your boyfriend?”
I jolted. “Most of the time. Why?”
“That’s cool.” Another moment of silence. We squeezed through a narrow gap between two trees. “Who’s your boyfriend? Is he here?”
“You know Miles?”
“Heard of him.”
“That’s my boyfriend.”
“Yeah.” She stepped daintily over a fallen branch. “There’s a hunter who really wants to catch him.”
Her right leg. She favored her right leg.
I forced myself to stop watching her and actually absorb what she’d said. “Who?”
“Dorian.”
It took me a second. “You mean Bowser?” I remembered Miles telling me that Bowser’s scene name was DorianGreat—“Bowser” was a nickname that had caught on once someone pointed out his laugh sounded just like the Mario villain’s.
“Maybe?”
“Big? Basically a Viking?”
“Yeah.”
Part of me wanted to let her go and then find Miles. Assure myself nobody had captured him. Stay by his side so nobody else could claim him. I wasn’t normally possessive, but I was feeling ungenerous today.
We reached the edge of the woods and stepped out into the meadow. A weak sun was out, and the scene before me was a very adult variation on some of my favorite childhood memories: showing up for T-ball practice in the field behind the YMCA. My family’s neighbors, who’d had acres of property my friends and I could play on.
There was no looming deposition, no uncertainty about my future with Miles, no concern about Bowser. There was just this moment, where I gave thanks to the world for its beauty and its strangeness.
I led Farrah to the posts and cuffed her. Spent a few minutes using a leather-and-fur paddle on her while she danced and begged, and then told her I had to get back to hunting. I handed off the paddle to a man who was waiting in line, and when I left, Farrah and the man were laughing together and negotiating, so I didn’t feel bad about leaving. I scanned the posts one more time. Still no sign of Miles.
I returned to the woods and cut a brisk course straight ahead. Dodged some nettles and climbed over a fallen tree until I was in a relatively clear section where a muddy trough had formed in the earth. Several different shoe prints here. If I were a slave, I might hide around the outskirts of this clearing—I’d be able to see hunters coming, and it would be easier to stay oriented than it would if you hid deep in the woods.
I walked along the trough, following a trail of prints into a cluster of oaks bulging with fungus. It was only a few minutes before I heard someone nearby. I readied my gun, but the man who walked among the shadows was familiar, and definitely not prey.
D.
He spotted me and nodded silently.
“Hello,” I said.
He glanced around, then approached, moving so soundlessly he might have been an apparition. “Hello.” He had what looked like charcoal on his fingers, and a small notebook was sticking out of his pod belt.
“Caught anyone yet?”
“I am seeking David and only David. So far I have not found him.”
I hoisted my rifle. “So it’s personal?”
He wiped his charcoal-stained fingers on his jeans. “David took issue with my belief that he is not cut out for this sort of event. I then decided to train him in woodland survival so that I could compete against my own protégé.”
“Interesting. I’ve been hoping to see Miles. Just so I can check in with him. I won’t capture him. More gift cards if we both win.”
D grunted. “He was captured.”
What? “By who? I was just at the post, and I didn’t see—”
“The sturdy lumberjack.”
Bowser.
All at once, I didn’t want to thank the world for its beauty and strangeness. I just wanted to see my boyfriend. Hear his voice. Talk with him—the way we used to talk, before parenthood and new jobs and money worries had forced us to spend more time listening to our fears and doubts than to each other. “Figures,” I muttered. “It just figures.”
D looked me over with impassive blue eyes behind thick goggles. “I have never seen you agitated. If the woods are in danger of claiming your sanity, you may wish to return to camp.”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. Well. Miles and I are . . . fine.”
“Has someone suggested otherwise?”
“No. I’m just . . .” Why had I even brought this up? With D of all people?
He was still watching me.
“I’m being stupid.”
“In what way?”
I tightened my ponytail. “I feel like things with Miles have stalled a little. I mean, we’re both busy, and he’s a father, and of course I shouldn’t ask for any more of his life force than he’s willing to share with me.”
D’s forehead furrowed very slightly. “Of course.”
“I just . . . I guess I’d like an indication he sees us as permanent.”
D coughed into his elbow without taking his eyes off me. “You doubt his commitment?”
“Not really. But it’s been two years. And I still don’t live with them. And I’d like to.”
He was silent a long time. Then he said, “When I met David, something changed inside me. When he was not there, I wished he would come back. One night, I played a sad song.”
“Because you missed him?”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Perhaps, like me, Miles has trouble describing this feeling.” His eyes flashed open again. “And that is why he has not yet brought up living together.”
“Miles is very articulate.”
D shrugged. “Then perhaps he does not wish to make this particular commitment.”
“Thanks. That’s comforting.”
He stared into the middle distance. “I am led to believe that David wishes I would declare my love more frequently.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because the sentiment is more important than the words. I do not wish to cheapen it with a banality.”
“I doubt Dave would see ‘I love you’ as a banality.”
His hand flexed, and his eyes shifted behind the goggles. A short gold hair glinted on the shoulder of his sweater—too light to be his own. “I should go back to the hunt.”
“Hold on.”
He faced me again.
“You should tell him.”
Two long strides, and he was right in front of me. I sensed the spike in his energy—the way it pushed against mine, just for a second, as though he were afraid or angry. “I try. You think I don’t try?”
“What do you mean, tr—”
“He could have anyone.” It was the fastest I’d ever heard D speak. “Someone far more attractive. Kinder, funnier. Younger. He could have anyone.”
For a second I could only stand there, tongue pressed to the tip of one of my filed teeth. D worried about Dave leaving him? “You think you’re not good enough for him?”
He stepped back, like he was snapping out of a trance. Shook his head. “Most of the time, no.” His mustache twitched as he gave a quick sniff. “But I open my mouth to tell him, and I suddenly imagine that he sees a fool.”
Perhaps I was giving myself too much credit, but I really did think I was the only person to ever hear D say this. “I’m sure he doesn’t.”
He adjusted his goggles. “I dislike words.”
I laughed. “Yeah? Well, you dislike salad. But I’ve seen you eat it sometimes, for Dave.”
He nodded slowly. “And what about you? When will you tell Miles what he needs to hear?”
“Uhhh. I’m waiting for him to tell me what I need to hear.”
“‘I have acted fearlessly and independent, and I never will regret my course.’”
“What?”
“Davy Crockett. Be proactive. From what I understand about Miles, he sometimes responds quite well to directness.”
It was true, and easy to forget. Miles was so intelligent, so organized, so . . . outwardly certain, that confrontation never seemed like the tack to take with him. But the few times I had told him This is what I need; this is how I think things should be had been highly successful. “You might have a point.”
“If you leave now, you might reach camp before his time on the post is done.” D tipped an imaginary hat to me. “Think about it.”
He continued on.