Unbitten (21 page)

“Thank God you’re home!” said Jo on
hearing her friend’s voice.

“I’m not home. I’m in the car actually,
on the way to pick up my dry cleaning. You know, leading my
usual glamorous life. So, tell me everything! Is it
fabulous?”

“It’s amazing. A different world. My horse is
one of the best I’ve ever ridden, so nimble and smart
–”

“Jo? I don’t care about the horse.”

“You want to hear about the man.”

“Well duh!”

“It’s….”

Marianne waited. But she heard more or less what she needed
to know in the silence of her friend’s hesitation.
“Yes?” she said, gently.

“David is incredible,” said Jo. “Whenever
I see him, it’s like my body just
responds
.
I feel sort of…like an animal. In a good way!”
she laughed. “I have never, and I mean
never
, had sex like this before. It’s like
falling into an abyss of pleasure. Like hurtling into space
and spinning faster than planets, like –”

Marianne laughed. “OK, got it. And what else? Is he a
good man?”

Jo didn’t answer right away. She didn’t like
the answer that first popped into her head. She picked up
her fork and cut off a corner of the omelet and speared it.
“I don’t know him all that well, actually.
He’s…he’s sort of difficult to get to
know, or maybe I am too, for that matter.
It’s…well, our time together has been more
about touching than about talking, you know what I
mean?”

“Yep,” said Marianne. “Been there, done
that.” She asked about the Château, about the
other people who worked there, about the food, about
Mourency. She waited to see if Jo would ask her advice, but
when she didn’t, Marianne didn’t offer any.
When the conversation came to the end and they had said
their goodbyes, Marianne rested her forehead on the
steering wheel for a moment and took some deep breaths.

“Let him not hurt my friend too badly,”
Marianne thought. She packed that thought in a nice box and
imagined tossing it up into the air where it floated off to
wherever wishes went, and then set off to get her
drycleaning.

He was really screwed now.

Sunrise was coming soon–he did not have much time.
David paced around the cottage trying to settle his mind so
he could think clearly. His body had an almost volcanic
power from the long, long drink he had just had. So long,
so complete, that the college girl from New Hampshire lay
in her bed, utterly drained, and unfortunately, utterly
dead.

Never had this happen before, he thought, feeling a surge
of anger at the girl. She had been so vulnerable, so
flattered at his attentions. He remembered the shy smile
when she first opened the cottage door and saw him there,
and how avid she had been when he started to touch her. In
some ways, he thought, it had been more interesting when
females tried to resist, back in the old days. It was more
of a hunt, and oh, he liked to hunt. But on the other hand,
these modern girls with their enthusiasm, their
willingness, and it must be said, their skill–it
would be hard to go back now, as entertaining as the
hunting used to be.

He looked down at the girl on the bed, her skin as white as
the sheet. He remembered her particular taste when he first
bit, full of minerals, bracing, quite delicious.

Just thinking for a split second about that taste made him
stiffen up again, and that made him
really
angry–David may not have been your average, everyday
kind of guy, but he did not appreciate the combination of
hard-on and dead body. That was not his cup of tea, not at
all.

Got to get rid of her, he thought, still trying to calm the
frantic zig-zaggy feeling in his head.

Well, he thought, picking the girl up and slinging her over
one shoulder as easily as if she were a sack of groceries,
I don’t like it but I can’t see any other way.
He glanced around the cottage to see if he needed to come
back and do any straightening up, whether there was any
indication of his presence.

Got my socks and underwear, he thought. Good thing this
girl hadn’t been a regular thing.

He adjusted her weight and then peeked out the door to make
sure no one was around. Then he flicked off the cottage
light, stepped into the darkness leaving the door slightly
open, and started to run.

David was extremely fast on a normal day, but having just
drunk every drop of the New Hampshire girl’s blood,
he was difficult to see, just a blur, just a streak across
the path in the dark, and then the pasture, and in a matter
of seconds he was swallowed up by the forest and gone.

“What kind of idiot are you?” Dominic shouted.
“Rhetorical question!” he shouted even louder.
Daybreak was only minutes away and he and Maloney needed to
leave for the inn without delay. They had spent the last
few hours going through the files Pierre had stolen, only
to find most of them to be completely
unhelpful–research on herbs, copies of tattered old
tracts in languages they couldn’t identify, much less
understand, and on and on.

“What we need is the
technology
,”
growled Dominic. “We’ve got plenty of botanists
back home. Marketing reports!” he shouted, throwing a
file up in the air so that the pages fluttered down on
their heads. “We don’t need your moronic
marketing reports! Don’t you know that Americans
invented
marketing? That we’re the best in
the world?” He picked up the last handful of files
and threw them across the room without looking at them.

“We can sell you any kind of crap at all and make you
like it!” Dominic yelled. “Marketing is
not
what we are looking for!
”

Pierre was in a corner of the hayloft, outwardly looking
tough, but inwardly cringing like a beaten child. He was
not surprised this was happening. His not being able to
read had caused similar eruptions from time to time over
the decades. Yet to him, not reading was simply part of who
he was, and he never considered trying to figure out a way
to learn. The only thing to do, as he had done many times
before, was to wait out whatever problem it caused and then
continue on.

But the thought of the
labri
slipping out of his
grasp made him want to find some way to salvage the
situation.

“You were totally vague,” Pierre said with a
sneer. “You want something particular, you’ve
got to say that. I can wipe your mind,” he said with
an insinuating smile, “but I can’t read
it.”

Dominic glanced at the sky. “We can’t stay to
talk about this any further,” he said.
“Look!” and pointed at the pinkening horizon as
though that were Pierre’s fault too. “Come on,
Maloney,” he said, and went down the ladder out of
the loft, in something of a hurry not only because of the
impending sun but also to get out of the way in case the
big man slipped.

The two of them hurried down the country road and into the
village, getting to their room just before Madame got up
and began fussing in the kitchen at the instant of sunrise.

“Dammit to hell,” said Dominic, slumped against
the headboard to his bed. “We’re running out of
time, big fella,” he said. “If we don’t
produce….”

They both shuddered. Not producing was simply not an
option. Not if they wanted to ever get home in one piece.

When Jo woke up the next morning, the first instant of
consciousness felt like getting hit with something hard
right in the stomach. That feeling when one knows something
painful has happened but is not awake enough yet to
remember what it is. She brought her attention to the crisp
sheets, the wonderfully comfortable mattress, the perfect
down pillow, trying to keep understanding at bay for as
long as possible.

As a strategy, distraction had worked pretty well in the
past. For most of her life, in fact. But this morning, not
so much.

So he comes in here and has sex with me, and then when
I’m in the middle of making him dinner, he just runs
off? He’s never once even come to the barn, and
disappears every single day, and now at night too?
That’s how it is?

Jo felt a deep, deep sadness. Tears welled up and spilled
down her face, plopping onto the sheet. She drew her knees
up and hugged them, burying her face in her arms.

For some people–the ones with
issues
–a
moment like this is so dramatically and intensely painful
because it is about the present hurt, yes, but also all the
other similar hurts that are piled up behind it, hurts that
were dismissed, rationalized, stuffed down, ignored.

The ironic thing about pain is that it won’t go away
unless you allow yourself to feel it. How many times had
Marianne said that to her?

Well, she was feeling it now, thought Jo. Marianne would be
so relieved to see me crying for once.

Then she thought,
what a jerk
, quickly moving from
hurt to pissed off, unable to stay in that place where she
felt helpless and wounded and shamed. She threw back the
covers and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and
splash some water on her face. Then she whipped on her
riding clothes and went down to the dining room for coffee.

What I need the most, she thought, pouring warm milk into
her cup and watching it swirl into the coffee, is a long,
hard ride with Drogo. I need to get outside, and do the
work I was hired to do.

Angélique came into the breakfast room with a new
couple in tow, and showed them the procedure for getting
their coffee and pastries. She stopped quickly by
Jo’s table to say hello.

“It’s good to see you, Jo–I’m sorry
I’ve been too busy for us to have some time for going
out. Not that Mourency has so much to offer!” she
said with a laugh. “I’ve been meaning to ask
you,” she added. “What is a…Mississippi
Prom Queen?”

“Where did you hear that?” Jo said, laughing.
“I guess you’d say it’s a Southern girl,
popular and pretty? I’m from New Jersey, what do I
know? Not much about Mississippi or prom queens, to be
honest!”

She took a croissant to eat while she walked on the path to
the stable, something she had learned was not a French way
to approach eating, but screw the French way, she thought.
She hoped she would pass some French guests or workers at
the Château so she could glare at them, daring them
to express any disapproval.

The croissant was spectacular, like an explosion of crackly
butter. Salty, with insides that were stretchy and chewy
and warm. Jo stopped walking, and considered going back to
get another one. But was she only hoping to see David? She
wasn’t sure which it was. So the best course of
action was to keep going to the barn, where she had no
chance of seeing him, and do her job.

“
Bonjour, Mademoiselle!
” chirped
Thierry, when he saw her. “Lovely morning to ride,
isn’t it? I thought I would see you early, so Drogo
is saddled up and ready to go.”

“Thanks,” said Jo. She went into the stable and
stood outside Drogo’s box, waiting for him to bring
his beautiful chestnut head over to her.