#non-binary caretaker

Bartholomaeus Bardulf missed the needle and the vials. They had been an interruption of the monotony of his days. Sometimes, with new blood fresh in his mortal veins, the years crawling backward across his face, Nicholas would stay and talk to him. Tolly was polite. He had no power to be otherwise while the charm of Nicholas' voice held him in thrall, while Nicholas wore the old gold ring with the glittering ruby stone. He did not even resent this after the first six hundred days or so.

“Stay in this room,” he always said, when it was time to go. He never said “goodbye, Tolly.” Because they both knew he would be back. At least, Black Tolly had been sure of that. And then, three thousand, six hundred and twenty days ago, Nicholas had departed and never come back. And then Tolly had nothing, no meals of barely warm, half-congealed animal blood brought him in the same glass bottle, no moral debates as he paced the far wall and watched Nicholas grow younger, no pleading for his long eternity to end. Blood of cow and pig was not enough, not what Nicholas had promised him, and he gradually weakened on it, but it was better than nothing. On nothing at all he grew thin and withered and gray, his hair a few white strands clinging to his yellowed scalp, his canines permanently large and prominent with his thirst.

It wasn't a large room. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. Even for a creature like Bartholomaeus Bardulf, Black Tolly, Bardulf the Bastard, an old monster with the patience of the long dead, to keep sane you needed something. You needed anything at all. He made his marks on the wall. He counted his threads. He carved in the opposite wall with his talons, because those did not weaken as he began to dry up. Now there was an elaborate mural of curlicues and arabesques there, leering grotesques peering from the stylized vines and bushes of the forest of his mind. More than one of them had the face of Nicholas, beautiful, beloved, despised, hateful Nicholas.

And then, on the three thousand, six hundred and twenty-first day of his captivity, he heard noises from upstairs. Tolly threw himself at the secret door, screaming, pleading hoarsely, but the stone walls were too thick, and no one heard him. No one heard him scraping at the clean wall, ruining the smooth expanse of the moldering stones where he might have begun another mural in time. No one heard him pounding. His strength had waned with time, but still he paced, intent on every smallest sound.

When he heard the faintest echo of footsteps, detectable only to a creature with such exquisitely tuned hearing as the old monster, he threw himself against the secret door, milk-white eyes unblinking and intent on the smallest crack. He didn't really expect it to open. He was hoping for some scrap of scent, some sound of breath, some tantalizing agony to at least give him something to think about for the next hundred days. It utterly shocked him when it began to open. He darted backward into the far corner beyond the rug, crouched at the foot of his mural, and watched the door swing open.

“Stay in this room,” Nicholas had said. And he could not cross the threshold, could not even reach across it with his long, bony arms. But then the scent of fresh, living blood smote his nostrils, and he hurtled across his cell in a frenzy, desperate for it. And came up short just before the door, hissing in agony as every muscle in his body contorted in absolute refusal to move further.

He backed away until his back hit the far wall, arms reaching out to splay against the stones. Black talons gouged at the wall of his prison as he stared, milk-white eyes unblinking, teeth bared and showing the sharpness of his canines. He knew what he looked like. He could see the stranger breathing harder as they tried to make sense of a world in which this monster could exist.

He took in everything about them with the same fanatical, memorizing glance he had once turned on... who knew? A father, an uncle? Some relation, certainly. There were features in common: the big, dark eyes, the sharp little nose, the exquisite shape of the lips. His discoverer was wearing gray sweat pants and a baggy tee shirt that might have been black at one point. There was something under it that might be a brassiere or an undershirt or both. The checkered pattern on the slip-on shoes was so faded it was barely visible, another fashion rising again that had had time to get worn while Tolly was in this room. In ’04 the pants would have had open ankles. Now they were gathered to an elastic.

Blue flecks of paint dotted every garment and one cheek. The head of thin black hair was tied back in a sloppy tail from which about half had escaped. Sweat plastered their hair to their cheeks and forehead. Their face showed a faint shadow of beard where the makeup was running, and their eyeliner was running, too. Their deodorant was aggressively neutral, but it wasn’t strong enough to cover the smell of recent exertion in a male body even to Tolly’s currently weak nose. Or – at least they had probably been told it was a male body when they were born. That was a delicate matter, and it barely registered on him compared to the much more overt scent of life, life, life -

“You're not wearing the ring,” he rasped. It hurt to speak, dust scraping the inside of his throat and palate where the saliva had dried up long since.

The descendant of Nicholas turned and ran, stumbling back up the basement steps. The sound of the slamming door heralded the dying of the light. Tolly stood there without moving for a while, cursing himself again as he lurked in the dark.

They hadn’t closed the secret door panel. He could see out. He slid around the room, one hand on the wall, until he got back to the opening. He could see all of the basement now, he registered anew. He hadn’t seen anything outside the room for ten years. He knew it was mad to be excited about that, the more so with the acute torment that was the scent of living blood still stinging in his nostrils, but he was excited all the same. He pulled the chair over from the table and turned it around so he could straddle it, arms resting on the back and his withered chin resting on his arms. No need to hurry. The little mortal wouldn’t be back, sealing the upstairs door and forgetting the monster in the basement as quickly as possible, so he would have a lot of time to take in the view. He had never had hope, he told himself. He should not behave as though something had been taken away.

He started all the way to the right and began to look at all of it, bit by bit, taking in every new cobweb, every splinter on the steps. He argued with himself for a while about the definition of the word “splinter” as he looked at the steps, so that he would have it down in his mind before he started counting them. He finally settled on partially separated bits of wood longer than a sixteenth of an inch. In that case, there were three splinters within his view that had not been there the last time Nicholas opened the door to his cell. That made sense. No one had come into the basement during that time, so the stairs hadn’t had much wear. His eyes lingered over every scuffed footprint in the dust that the descendant had left. There were eight steps, and eight prints coming down, right-left, right-left, and they still partly showed where the scuffed scrambling of the return trip hadn’t wiped them out. A thumbprint in blue paint marked the wooden handrail near the top.

It wasn’t a large room, but it felt a little larger.

He spent the rest of that night in his quiet memorization of the basement. The tools on the heavy wood workbenches had not changed at all in position in ten years, but they were dustier now, and the rag pile between them showed signs of having been a mouse nest at some point. That was hopeful. It meant there might be mice again there at some point, who might eventually be lured into his cell. Tolly licked his dry lips with a tongue that felt like a strip of leather in his mouth. Animal blood would not restore his strength, his powers, but it would restore his body a little. That would be something.

If he was patient, and not greedy, he might be able to keep going a lot longer on the occasional mouse. Maybe it would be two hundred years before he fell into the long sleep. He wasn’t sure how long after that a vampire would turn into dust. Accounts varied. He was certain at least one had come back from a handful of burnt ashes, because he had seen it – five mortal lives had been sacrificed to accomplish it - but whether one could be reconstituted from ancient dust was unknown to him. No one would do that for him, of course. No one had come looking for him thus far. It wasn’t that he had a great many enemies. His circle of friendly acquaintances had been large. But the few close enough to wonder where he’d gone were also immortals, and therefore it would be a long time before it occurred to anyone to look for him. He had been alone with Nicholas for a decade before Nicholas went away, and no one had come, then or in the decade after.

His mind was wandering. He reproved himself sternly and returned to concentrating on the important matter at hand. The lighting fixture overhead was relatively recent, placed in the era after the wires had been brought in and the plaster laid down over them – no, more recent than that. Perhaps thirty years. He’d seen Nicholas replace the four bulbs and put back the half-sphere of frosted glass over them, opening the door to tease Tolly with his proximity as he worked. Now he imagined that, even if the bulbs had still worked, there was probably so much dust and so many dead insects inside that it might catch fire if it were turned on.

Chances were better with the flatscreen television mounted to the wall at right-angles to the workbenches, barely visible if he leaned as far forward as he physically could. The casing was sealed enough that it would be harder for creatures to get in. Nicholas had watched movies and television while he was doing projects, sometimes. Whatever the genre, he liked material whose attraction was subtle acting, and lots of attention to faces. He’d watched Nightcrawler a lot of times in the months before he went away. It had been a seeming end to his apparent obsession with Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Tolly had an interesting couple of hours perusing the ceiling to see if there was anything alive up there. A fast-moving wolf spider was so fascinating that he watched the cupboard it had vanished behind for another hour, just in case it came out.

The big oval-shaped industrial rug was gray with accumulated dinge. He had not been here when Nicholas laid down the shiny dark red finish over the concrete floor. It had been much glossier the last time he’d seen it. His patience was again rewarded, however. Just as he was beginning to feel the heaviness in his limbs that mean dawn was breaking, a house centipede crept furtively from under one edge of the rug and ran for the workbenches, its many legs rippling around it with the urgency of its errand. Tolly struggled to stay awake as he followed its progress instead of moving to his rug. His head drooped over his arms. At last, his eyes grew too heavy to resist the pall of sleep, but not before the little beast had found cover.

His dreams were full of blood. He had thought time had freed him of that torment, resigned him to his fate, but Nicholas and his descendant died in his arms a hundred times before night fell. It was not entirely a relief when the giddy intensity of dreaming abruptly gave way to consciousness. Waking was not like waking had been when he was mortal. There was almost no space in between, and there was no confusion at all.

Tolly opened his eyes, looking around quickly. The door was still open. He could still see into the basement. He rose from the chair to go and scratch his day into the stone wall with his right thumb talon. How long until his nails would weaken? That thought sent him back to watch the old mouse nest with narrow-eyed intentness, but there was nothing living there now.

It was not a large room. Still, that night and the next passed more congenially. It would be a long time before the view of the basement lost its charms by comparison to the sealed chamber. Tolly could even read the labels on many of the spray bottles and tools and compare their fonts. He planned to save that for the winter, however, when the creatures would be less active. There was no need to be greedy.

Part 3: Bereft

“It’s important. There’s letters carved around the ruby in Latin or something,” Arden said. “I can’t read them. Can you?”

They thrust their hand under his nose. Tolly caught at their wrist – warm, delectable, pulsing beneath his fingers – and looked at the ring, trying to focus on it. A faint burning on his face and shoulder drew his attention to the window. The room’s curtains were shut, but there was still a pale, painful glow around their edges. Even looking at it stung his eyes. He looked quickly back at the ring.

Around the edge of the ten-carat star ruby, words were incised, tiny and finely carved into the gold.

“Yes, it’s Latin,” Tolly said.

“What’s it say?” Arden said.

“Hold still. Hold still, Arden.” His entire upper body was starting to hurt. The sun could easily get through his cotton shirt. He could see the flesh of his own hand turning red as he read aloud. “Pactum faciam in nomine - ” He cut off abruptly, letting go of Arden as he jerked back under the covers and sheets into merciful darkness.

“Are you okay? I closed the curtains,” Arden said.

“It’s an instruction for forming a – hhh – a pact with a spirit,” Black Tolly said from the safety of shadow, trying to keep the pain out of his voice. Everything in contact with his upper body hurt. “But there’s no name to summon them by. Nicholas would have left a name.”

“Damn. Tolly? You looked - ”

“It doesn’t hurt. I’m already healing.” The pain in his skin was rapidly fading. He could feel his blood being spent on it, but he had fed well. It wasn’t a problem. It probably wouldn’t even grow his hair back out. But it still felt like trying to think through mud, like looking at the world through molasses. The blankets felt like iron weighing on his shoulders.

“We’ll talk of it tonight. The sun is too heavy, Arden.” He slumped, face in the crook of his arm, and not even Arden’s worried voice could keep him from black sleep now.

When he woke again, his mind was clear.  Night had fallen. Something warm lay across his right wrist – familiar pulse – Arden’s hand. He lifted the covers and found Arden asleep, their breathing shallow and regular and extremely close because they were lying across his bed. Tolly regarded them as he lay on his side.

This is good. If they care for me, they will treat me better than he did.

I don’t deserve that. Nicholas understood me better than they do.

What choice do I have?

As he moved, they stirred, blinking in the dark. “Tolly? Are you back?”

“I’m back,” he said.

Arden fumbled for the lamp, giving Tolly enough warning to shield his eyes until they adjusted. “Are you all right? You scared me a little.”

“If I’m not ashed and scattered, I am not truly dead.” He slid out, eellike, as Arden sat up. “Worry about your own health, not your monster’s. Did you eat today?”

“I finished the Soylent and had another bar,” Arden said. “And I went and got a burger at the Lodge restaurant.”

Black Tolly warred with himself about whether to scold Arden for leaving without him or be glad they were at least eating. Finally, he settled on, “Good. Drink another Soylent, please, and we will discuss the ring.” He ran his hands over his head as he straightened away from the bed, standing in front of the treacherous curtains. His hair was still too short to be easily disarranged.

“You said it had a summoning ritual on it, but no name,” Arden said. “You don’t know the name of the spirit that Nicholas got power from?”

“No. He never said. So, he can’t have expected you to learn it from me,” Tolly said. “It must be somewhere else on the ring.” He considered. “He wouldn’t imperil your life by forcing you to remove it.”

The two of them stared closely at the ring for a while. Arden tilted it slowly to and fro in the lamplight.

“There’s something inside,” he said. “Something’s carved on the back of the stone inside the setting. Can you see it? It’s only visible if you tilt the ring just right.”

“Give me your hand again.” Tolly tipped the hand and ring very slowly, eye almost touching it, until the light hit just right in the red depths and he saw…

“Letters,” he said, letting go. “There is more than one language, but one is in Carolingian Miniscule. As few people who now exist understand a script used to write the Vulgate in only the earlier part of the thirteenth century, I have to assume it is meant for me. Of the others, one is in runes I can’t read, one is in a later Latin script, and one is in English. These preceding three are each marked with a small cross.”

“So what’s the final name?” Arden asked.

“Aeolus. Perhaps it is intended to summon the spirit.” He couldn’t keep doubt from his tone. Tolly was well aware of his ignorance in these matters, an ignorance cultivated by long centuries of carefully avoiding people he knew could end him, and Nicholas had very deliberately done nothing to dispel that.

“And it’ll teach me to cast spells? To defend myself?” Arden said.

“I don’t know,” Tolly said. “He must have thought so. Perhaps it is a familiar he has used himself.”

“It can’t hurt to try, right?” Arden said. “Worst case is that nothing happens.”

“I think we have little choice,” Tolly said. “The Silencer team were not able to cast violent spells. I’ve never had to face someone who could.”

“All right.” Arden sat up straighter, wiping at their eyes to get the cobwebs out. “Read me the Latin.”

“Pactum faciam in nominee illius qui hunc anulum non praecipere potest,” Black Tolly said. He paused every few words to let Arden repeat after him. Then, when he had come to the end, he said, “Now the name.”

“Aeolus?” Arden said.

The two of them sat looking at each other for a moment, Arden with one foot off the bed braced on the floor, Tolly standing opposite them.

“So what’s supposed to happen?” Arden asked. Before Tolly could answer, he saw them twitch, grabbing at the cheap headboard behind them. “The – the fuck is happening - ? Who are you?” They were staring at something, as if someone stood to Tolly’s right. When he turned his head, he saw nothing. There was no sound or scent of another person in the room.

“There’s no one else here,” Tolly said.

“He’s gone,” Arden said. “I don’t - ” They jerked violently, as if yanked by invisible strings. Tolly would have sworn they lifted completely from the bed for a second. “No, wait. You can’t - ” Their eyes rolled up into their skull, only white showing. Tolly dove in and grabbed at their arms to stop their head bouncing back against the wall. For a moment he thought they might be seizing.

“Arden? Arden, can you hear me?”

The tremors stopped. After a moment the eyes rolled back down, and Arden blinked up at him slowly.

“I’m not Arden.”

Tolly was violently yanked backwards and slammed into the floor. He was stunned to realize he couldn’t move. All of his great strength couldn’t lift one finger from the carpet. It was like being crushed by a giant fist. If he had needed to breathe, it would have been very difficult to do so. His bones creaked and the floorboards creaked under him.

A face hovered into his view. Now it was smiling, and not in the shy small way he had seen Arden smile. The wide, slightly distorted grin didn’t look right. It didn’t move the eyes, and the eyes didn’t blink.

“Well, that was more effortful than it should’ve been,” said the possessing spirit. The voice was forced into a lower pitch, rougher than Arden’s normal tone. A thin trickle of blood ran from one nostril.

“Let them go. The body isn’t yours, Aeolus,” Tolly said.

“Obviously it is,” said Aeolus, through Arden’s mouth. “It’s still weak, but I’ll soon see to that. Thinking he could fight me for it. Ha. Yes, idiot, I can hear you in there screaming THEY. I don’t care. The body’s mine now, and so are you, until I see fit to throw you Outside.”

Tolly, listening to this monologue, had never ceased straining against his bonds. He knew immediately when they started to weaken.

“Stop struggling,” Aeolus said immediately, head snapping around to look down at him there on the cabin floor. Tolly froze out of pure reflex. “That’s better. You’re a prisoner of Nicholas’ little toy, aren’t you?” He held up the ring to look at it, sniffing back more blood from Arden’s nose. “I watched everything he did, you know. That’s part of the pact. But why be a passenger when you can drive?”

He walked Arden’s body over to stand straddling Tolly, looking down.

“His eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,” said Aeolus. “Nicholas quoted that a great many times, looking at you. I see why.”

It was at this point that Tolly came off the floor so fast that his movement could not be tracked with the naked eye. His hand closed around Arden’s throat as he spun, and then he slammed Aeolus back into the wall by the door. Their feet – his feet – their feet barely touched the ground, scrabbling to keep him from being choked to death as Arden’s hands clawed at Tolly’s wrist.

“Let me go,” hissed Aeolus.

Tolly slapped him.

He was careful. He could’ve taken Arden’s head off. But he had been out of his prison for long enough to have rebalanced himself to his own strength, to the habit of lifetimes. Arden’s head rocked to the side, a red mark rising on their cheekbone.

“I take it you don’t truly hear the words of the invocation. You certainly didn’t stop to read the inscription yourself,” Tolly said. “Pactum faciam in nominee illius qui hunc anulum non praecipere potest. And you, Aeolus, cannot command this ring.”

“Let me GO,” Aeolus demanded again. Black Tolly slapped him back the other way.

“Let me go, or I’ll tear you to pieces!”

“Why don’t you, then?” Tolly asked. Aeolus’ eyes rolled upward again, and Tolly felt a sensation like knives cutting at his flesh, but now when he braced himself the bruising force could not pry his fingers from Arden’s throat. It was an exquisite agony, wounds opened all over his body as if slit by many little knives, but he remained. And blood gushed from Arden’s nose. The eyes came back down, furious, old eyes in a young face.

“Arden’s body isn’t accustomed to your power yet, is it?” Black Tolly said. “You’ve already spent what they can channel. And now you can’t stop me from drinking you dry.”

“He – they say you’ve been ordered not to kill them!”

“And so I have. But, as you’ve pointed out, you’re not Arden,” Black Tolly said. He leaned closer, grinning brightly so that Aeolus could see his fangs slide out of their sheaths in his gums, growing to a length unnatural in a living human being. “And I can do whatever I like to YOU, Aeolus. So, mark me well. You can remain where you are, and I will consume you. I’ve been desperately craving this blood from the instant I first scented it. I can barely contain myself. And now you’ve made me bleed.

“Or you can fall back to where you belong, and teach them and give them power in trade for sharing their senses. That is the pact. As long as Arden is in control, I can do no harm to this body I hold. I suggest you make your mind up very quickly. My thirst grows every second.”

Black Tolly leaned in very deliberately, ignoring the weak attempts to pull his fingers away, and ran his rough tongue over the blood that covered Arden’s lips and chin. Aeolus could see his eyes glaze with the intense pleasure it gave him, his grip starting to tighten as the giddy frisson rolled through every one of his senses. For that instant, he didn’t feel the pain of his wounds at all. For that instant, every single thing he had suffered over the last few seconds had been more than worth it.

“All right, all right! Stop!” Tolly came back to himself to find Aeolus suddenly limp in his grip, features slack, eyes half-open. He let go at once, jerking back in terror. Had he killed Arden after all?

 But no, he could hear a pulse thundering in his ears when he had none. The body crumpled in a heap in front of him was alive.

Now he felt the pain.

Tolly swayed, looking down at himself. Blood soaked his clothes in oblong patches where his skin had been slit. He felt the sting where the open air touched the cuts in his face and hands. He bled slowly, and the narrow wounds were already trying to close, but he could feel the loss of strength where blood had been lost, where blood was being spent to heal. His mouth felt dry. He fought down panic at the memory of his shriveled flesh inside the secret room, at every swallow scraping his throat.

He bent to seize Arden and carry them to the bath, before he should bleed on the cabin’s carpet, and there he slumped into the tub with them lying against his chest. He could see blood running down the drain between his bare feet. Some of it soaked into one of Arden’s white socks with their worn-down heels.

The sensation of a living body draped over his dead one was intoxicating. He could feel every small pulse. And that pleasure would become more painful every instant that his thirst was not sated. His canines refused to draw back on their own.

“Wake up. Please, Arden,” he said, and now he could not keep the exhaustion from his voice. “I can’t – I can’t bear this. I need you here.”

Part 15: Glass of Water

Somebody was in here with them, sulking in the back of their brain. It wasn’t like having nagging thoughts. Arden was very familiar with those. It was like having someone sitting across a dark room from you sighing to show they were disgusted. Arden had a vague mental image of him sitting on the end of one of the cabin’s beds, a dark-haired man whose clothes seemed to stutter and fluctuate between different histories: toga and tunic, scale armor, wool long shirt and some things like tights, big ruffled collar and puffy pants, big muttonchops and a very high-necked shirt, stiff blue suit with a fat tie, and finally settling into what looked like a black tailored suit with the top button of the shirt undone. He had the tiniest pointy chin beard. He was panting, red-faced, shoulders heaving like he’d just had to run and had absolutely hated it.

Aeolus was behaving himself now, but he wasn’t gone. Arden felt slightly better, knowing he was hurting worse than Arden was.

The cold body pillow moved slightly, and Arden realized there were arms around them. They weren’t very warm arms, but they were familiar. They relaxed their gradually stiffening body. “Tolly?” Their voice came out as a hoarse ‘gnehgh’ type noise on the first try and they had to say it twice.

The pillow inhaled. Tolly always had to breathe in before he could speak, but he didn’t breathe much the rest of the time, Arden had noticed.

“Thank God,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer I could stand it.” He sounded so tired. Arden squinted crusty eyes open and found themselves in the bathtub, curtain still open. Tolly shifted slightly to slide them off to one side of him, so that now they lay facing one another. Arden was all the way awake now, grabbing at Tolly’s bloody shirt. The vampire was paler than before, his face thinner and hollower. His fangs were out all the way, big enough to push out his upper lip slightly on each side.

“Oh, no. Aeolus – I – I’m so sorry, Tolly. I would never - ” They were stammering nonsense in their whiny whisper of a voice.

“You didn’t,” Tolly said, one big hand catching at both of Arden’s and holding them to the middle of his chest. There was no comforting reassurance of a heart beating there, but they felt immediately calmer anyway. “And I’ve healed. I’ve told you, I don’t feel pain the way you do.” Arden, considering some noises Tolly had been making recently, was skeptical of this, but the follow-up distracted them. “How do you feel?”

Arden squinted. “Can you get a hangover in your entire body?”

“I think this may be what magic overuse feels like. I’ll get you some warm water.”

Arden opened their mouth to say “wait,” but Tolly was already gone, a puff of cold air left behind. They’d seen movies where vampires moved fast. They’d always assumed it would look silly without speed-ramping or slow motion. They’d never assumed it just wouldn’t be visible at all. Sometimes it was like Tolly just teleported.

There was a muttered oath from somewhere over by the sink, and an ongoing cool breeze suggested Tolly had remembered he was barefoot and covered in blood. Water ran. When Tolly came back, he was wearing black boxer briefs and a clean white tank top that stretched slightly across his shoulders because they hadn’t been muscular when he bought it. He wasn’t even a little self-conscious about it, in his current condition or any condition. He always looked like he belonged wherever he was.

He looked like what the guys Arden had hated in high school thought they looked like. Big heavy forehead, big jaw, big fists –scarred knuckles. It was hard to imagine someone who spoke the way Tolly did punching people for a living, but there were little marks around the deep sockets of his eyes, too. It must’ve been before he was a vampire. He didn’t seem to collect scars from what happened to him now. The cushiony pink lips kind of ruined the picture a little. Not for Arden, obviously, who definitely should stop staring right now. The important thing was that enough of him was showing to prove he WAS healed up. Arden’s blood still ran cold, remembering little wounds opening all over his body as Aeolus tried to kill him.

Tolly held a glass of water up to Arden’s lips, ignoring Arden’s attempt to push his hand away. They were shaky enough to be glad he was there while they were drinking it, so they didn’t tell him to stop. He wouldn’t have a choice but to do it, and that was unfair when he’d just saved Arden from being kicked out of his own body.

“You were scary,” they said, when they’d had a drink.

“That’s what I am, darling,” Tolly said. He didn’t talk like a chad meme. Sometimes that was funny, hearing a big buttery DARLING come out of that face. “I’ve been dead much longer than I was alive.”

“You know, I never ordered you not to lie to me,” Arden said. They held out their hand for the glass and then managed to hang onto it with both hands as they drank. It was good on their throat. It felt puffy from where Tolly’d been holding them up by it to scare Aeolus.

“I’ve noticed that, yes,” Tolly said. Of course he had. “Maybe you should.”

“Not unless I have to. Especially when you could’ve just eaten me, and you didn’t.”

“Maybe I was just bluffing Aeolus,” Tolly said. “You know that orders continue until they’re countermanded, or I wouldn’t have been trapped in that room for ten years after Nicholas left.”

“Nah. I ordered you not to hurt OR kill me, and holding me up by my neck hurt like hell,” Arden said smugly. “You could’ve had me, and you didn’t. You think Nicholas planned on that?” Somewhere in their head, Aeolus was leaning in the bathroom doorway now, staring at Tolly’s back.

Tolly considered that seriously, green eyes narrow. When he was thinking he didn’t really move. No fidgets, no tapping finger, nothing. It was when he looked the least alive except for when he was, for lack of a better word, asleep. Temporarily dead? Arden shelved that one.

“If Aeolus was his familiar, and Aeolus says he was, then Nicholas knew he’d try to possess you. He probably went through the same thing. I have to assume he regained control before Aeolus could successfully expel him from his body. He probably didn’t care if you fought him off yourself or if I threatened him into behaving.”

“But that’s still risking that you’d eat me,” Arden said. “I know you want to. You keep saying so.”

“Of course I do,” Tolly said. His eyes flickered to Arden’s throat and away again. “I think you might need to reevaluate how much your Uncle Nick actually cared about your well-being.”

Arden shrugged, their tee shirt rustling along the porcelain tub. “You think I didn’t know he was kind of an asshole? It got more obvious as I got older.” They drank again. “Part of the reason I wasn’t around when he died is that I’d quit talking to him. Sometimes I feel bad about that.”

“Don’t,” Tolly said, without hesitation. “Either you would’ve died with him, or he would have manipulated you into being trained to do exactly as he wished, so that he could make your powers useful to him.”

“I think he was trying to,” Arden said thoughtfully. “Hey, I’m not ordering you, but - ”

The glass vanished from their fingers and returned full of warm water, still sloshing slightly.

“Thank you. He kept offering me things to do weird shit. Fifty dollars to draw a circle on the floor with chalk, a new jacket to recite Poe backwards.” They waved a hand and almost dropped the glass and had to catch hold of it with both hands, trying not to see Tolly’s hand hovering.

“One time he spent a whole month to teach me to keep talking on the inhale so I could read out loud without stopping for like ten minutes. He got more and more pushy about it and wouldn’t explain why, and my parents kept deadnaming me on purpose, so finally I just gave away most of the things in my apartment and packed up and left town.”

They’d been talking for a long time. Arden had a bigger drink to cover that embarrassment and then choked, and had to sit up and sit there coughing for a second and wishing they were dead. Aeolus sneered from the doorway.

You don’t deserve this body, he said. You don’t have the faintest idea what to do with it, you clumsy idiot.

That whole spiral was interrupted by a cold hand on their back.

“Careful,” Tolly said. “Just breathe. It will be harder until your throat heals.” He said a lot of things in the same neutral-to-bored tone, like they were talking about wiring a stupid amount of money again, which apparently wasn’t a big deal to him. When he was talking directly to Arden, about Arden, it was… different. Like he might actually be worried. Like he might actually be able to be. And he would say or imply it was only to benefit himself, but then he’d go and do things like he’d done with Aeolus.

He was hurting now. Arden was starting to figure out that he was hurting when he couldn’t put the fangs away.

“You’re thirsty,” Arden said.

“Compared to what I have been? Not at all. It’s easier when you’re back in your head and I don’t have to try,” Tolly said. “So put it out of your mind.”

“I could order you to just take a little,” Arden said. That image kept reoccurring to their mind, what that might be like. It came up a lot while they were trying to sleep.

“It would still hurt you,” Tolly said impatiently. “The ring makes you immune to anything I could do to make it otherwise.”

“I don’t mind if it hurts - ”

“You can make me do what you wish, but my answer is no,” Tolly said. The words had a cutting edge.

“You don’t have to put it like that,” Arden said, sitting up straighter as they glared at him. “Have I ever treated you that way?”

“No,” Tolly said grudgingly. He looked away. “Forgive me.”

“Forget it. I’m going to take a shower. Would you mind dragging my bag in here?” They had Tolly’s blood on their clothes where they’d been lying on him, irregular splotches down the back of their shirt and jeans that they could feel sticking. It felt weird as hell thinking about him carrying them in here and laying them on top of himself back to front, like a blanket.

“I’ll get it. Drop your things on the rim and I’ll put them in the cold water with mine. Sometimes it comes out if you hurry,” Tolly said. He didn’t leave until Arden had managed to get all the way standing up without falling over. The curtain closed on the image of his retreating back, muscle white and stringy in his neck and shoulders.

Part 16: The First Lesson

“Arden,” Tolly interrupted, and now his voice at last rewarded his attempt at conveying gentleness of tone. The relief he felt was tremendous. Something of himself had come back. “I am used to the rags I have been wearing for ten years. You didn’t have to do anything at all. Whatever you have brought me, it will be welcome.”

Arden was red to the ears as they used the ruler to nudge the bag over the line. Tolly collected it carefully and looked inside, setting aside the wipes and the trash bag. His fingers touched a polycotton blend as he picked delicately with his talons. It was more or less dry, a little stiff from hanging: a white button-down shirt. There were black dress pants with a plastic belt. There were black socks and tangas, which were new with labels, so the town’s thrift store must be a Goodwill and not a Value Village now. There was a gray blazer that was almost new.

The socks were soft, the first pleasant thing he had felt in years. Before Nicholas had tricked him, he wouldn’t have used them to buff an automobile. Now he rubbed them between his fingers as if they had been the finest silk in the world. All of it had been made for someone wider than Tolly’s normal proportions even before he had shriveled up, but it would cover him, and it would feel wonderful compared to what he had now. “Thank you,” he whispered. In spite of himself, there was a lump in his throat. Get hold of yourself, idiot.

He drank his second glass of blood. It tasted no better than the first. A curious crawling movement on his scalp became hair growing on his head, slowly pushing its way from the follicles, so blond that it was almost white. His flesh began to fill out slowly, wrinkled, hideous in a way that could not be explained by aging, but approaching something human. For a moment he could smell himself again, the hint of old incense gradually becoming less bitter and more appealing.

“I’ll get some dry shampoo tomorrow,” Arden said. Now, as Black Tolly’s senses gradually expanded, their exhalation told him everything they had eaten that day. It wasn’t difficult to parse out, just the morning’s sweetened coffee and long-past sour hints of some kind of bottled protein drink. Their pores breathed out the faint scent of an unfamiliar medication – no, not unfamiliar. It was herbal. Cayenne, salt, St. John’s Wort. Witchbane.

Did Arden know it was witchbane? Tolly had been expecting some sort of antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, or at least an unhealthy amount of caffeine. The descendant of Nicholas Telep does not know their family’s history, did not know I was here, yet still they suppress what they have inherited. I think perhaps someone has been trying to keep them from the truth.

They must not be entirely succeeding, or Arden was not remembering to take the medication. The scent of them hinted of adrenaline, unsurprising in the present moment, but also of stale fatigue, the sort of thing that could not entirely wash off. Trouble sleeping. The Outside calls to them, but they don’t know what it is.

They were looking away from him again. He hadn’t blinked in too long. He was out of practice.

“I got this. That rug can’t be comfortable.” Arden hauled a sleeping bag out of the box, a tight roll of flannel and plastic outer coating, and pushed it over to Tolly. As he reached for it his hand came within inches of theirs, and across the barrier he felt the warmth of their flesh. He would swear he could hear their heart beating now, faint and far away.

Tolly caught himself running his fingers over the flannel lining of the hood, mesmerized by the physical sensation of touching the soft fabric. He set it aside with the shopping bag.

“I’m sorry,” he said, managing to force a small, strange smile onto his withered lips. “It’s just – ”

“It’s been a long time,” Arden said. “I get it. I hate stiff fab – that’s not important. Look.” They turned quickly to reach into the bottom of the tub and pull out a stack of books. Tolly recognized them immediately as he reached out to carefully collect them. They were from the library upstairs: the collected Sherlock Holmes, a travel volume from the eighties about Germany, Marguerite de Valois, an occult studies book that Nicholas had once called quaint, and what looked very much like the collected Chanur saga by C.J. Cherryh. Arden must have grabbed things at random.

“I didn’t know what you would like. If there’s something specific, I can get it for you,” Arden said.

Tolly turned over a few pages of the travel guide with its color photographs, rapt. A single tear plashed onto the dust jacket. He wiped it away before it could leave a stain. He was water again now, wet eyes, wet throat. He must be careful of that.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Forgive me, I - ” he shook his head. How could he explain the constant battle of wills between them, how Nicholas had kept taking away his privileges and his things for trying to trick him, trying to find a way to have him, trying to escape? The threat he presented had been real - 

Just like the threat he presented to Arden.

"I will read all of them," he said. "I will treat them with care. This, this is." His hand caressed the flannel again, then the page, eyes looking down at it in something like awe. "Thank you. I cannot possibly express to you how precious this is to me."

“My uncle locked you in the basement and left you to die down here,” Arden said. “I think it’s probably the least I can do.”

Tolly looked at them from where he now sat, travel guide still clutched in his clawed hand like a lifeline. The hair that had come loose around Arden’s face was limned in dim gold light, almost silver, like the halo of a saint. How had he never seen it before?

He did not want them less. Oh no. Now he was more aware of every detail of them than before, and that made it worse. But now guilt wrung his heart along with the rest. How could he have even thought of surrendering them to his thirst when they were capable of this, unasked, unsought for? He rose to move the books and lantern and sack to the desk, away from the blood. Now he moved without pain, joints working properly for the first time in years and years, but he was more careful not to go too fast.

And more importantly, with his back to them they wouldn’t see him trying not to be unmanned again. There would be time for stupid sentimentality later. For now, he sat back down on the floor and took his third glass of blood. Maybe it would ease the pressure of Arden being so close. He didn’t want them to leave yet.

“I never knew he was like this,” Arden said. “He was nice to me. But this, this is unforgivable.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Tolly said. They looked at him directly now, obviously thinking he was insane. Or maybe they were staring because he was changing again. Years were gently rolling away from his face. The third glass had brought back enough flesh to make his features recognizably human, he could tell as he ran his hand along his own cheek. He still looked like a man who had died elderly of some wasting illness, but at least he looked like a man.

“There were reasons for what he did,” Tolly said.

“What reasons?”

“He knew I wanted him,” Tolly said. “He was irresistible to many, was your uncle. I was not immune.”

“I – oh.” Tolly watched them contemplate this subject and then firmly push it to one side. “My parents didn’t like me talking to him. I used to sneak out and come over here when I was in high school sometimes,” Arden said. “Sometimes we’d talk, or garden, or he’d play the piano.” Their face contorted for a second, eyes pressed tightly shut. “Oh, god. You were down here that whole time, weren’t you?”

“Since you were about eight years old, it would’ve been,” Black Tolly said. “He didn’t want me to know about you. When I asked who he was playing for, he said he was having men over.” He was genuinely amused by that, tilting the glass to and fro in his hand as he rested his wrist on his knee. “I believed him, too. A point to you, Nicholas.” He toasted Arden ironically with the fourth glass of blood before he downed it. That made a half-gallon.

Now his skin grew smooth, deceptively soft-looking. His white hair hung heavy and straight to his shoulders. He looked a younger corpse than before. Perhaps he might have been in his fifties, to look at him. He had a nose now, aquiline and slightly crooked. He had eyelashes. He had lips that covered his teeth and had a real shape. But he was white, white as snow, a color living flesh would never have without makeup, and he was still gaunt and hollow. Even an albino would be pink from the blood under the skin. Every drop Tolly had taken in had been spent like base coin, already burnt away by the process of healing. That was all right. He still had a half-gallon to go, he told himself, stifling the beginning of panic. And he could have Arden bring the rest tomorrow, if he needed it.

“I never even really knew him,” Arden said slowly.

“No more did I, it seems. He tricked me into his ritual very easily,” Tolly said. He shrugged one shoulder. “And he bound me here, so that he could bleed me at his leisure. An undead’s blood has certain properties. Did you never wonder why he always looked so young?”

“I thought it was plastic surgery! He always said it was!”

Tolly considered that for a moment. “Reasonable, I suppose. He was well-to-do. One doesn’t naturally assume there is a monster in the basement.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” Arden offered cautiously. “I’d feed you, too, if you want. It seems fair when he took so much from you.”

“Absolutely not,” Tolly said. He was more in control of his tone now, but the edge was there beneath the careful enunciation. “As I am now, I wouldn’t trust myself outside of this room, not for one second. You saw what happened the first time I saw you.”

“You’d kill me?” Arden said, startled.

“Immediately,” Tolly said. “And without hesitation. You wouldn’t suffer, of course.” His voice caressed the syllables. “I have ways of ensuring this. But I have not tasted human blood in twenty years, and in this moment, I am utterly without the ability to control myself. I am not human. I am not alive. I am not safe.” He leaned forward slightly, as close to the edge as he could physically get. Arden did not lean away, but he could see them breathing harder, nostrils dilated.

“What the Hell am I supposed to do?” Arden asked. “With all of that? What do you want?”

“It’s because I am grateful for all you’ve done for me that I tell you this, Arden. It is vitally important that you understand,” Black Tolly said. “I want you safe from me.” He didn’t want that at all. He wanted to drink every last drop of them, to see their last moments of ecstasy and know they were his, consumed by pleasure, never knowing they were dying. But giving in to that would mean being trapped in here forever, and he was more master of himself every minute.

Arden nodded slowly. One hand reached for the tub. They’re leaving. Make them stay, say something!

“You’re not like other people, you know,” Tolly said. “You’ve always known, haven’t you? Do you hear them outside of the world, the lost ones? Do they call you by strange names and beg you to let them in?”

“Stop,” Arden breathed. They scooted backward away from him, hurriedly grabbing at the plastic handles of the tub.

“It’s not a disease. It’s your birthright,” Tolly said. “Nicholas had a ring that could silence them, protect him from them. It would serve you better than the witchbane you’re taking.”

They didn’t answer, shaking their head, either in disagreement or in general negation of the entire subject. Arden climbed to their feet a little too fast and stood swaying for a second, shaking their head. Then they hurried away, hauling the empty tub and the other gallon of blood.

“Eat something,” Tolly called after them. The basement door slammed.

Part 7: Riddles

What would Nicholas have done with the ring? He would have wanted his heir to have it, but if his death had been an accident, it could be anywhere. It could be in the hands of some morgue attendant somewhere, and Black Tolly would be stuck here forever in spite of any intention of Arden’s. He couldn’t consider that possibility, not at all. He had to hope. If Arden had already sold it, at least there was a chance they could buy it back.

He watched the basement around the lantern, trying to clear his mind by counting the scratches on the concrete again. Then he wept for a little while, his dry and unbreathing sobs just twitches of his chest and shoulders. He still was torn on whether he should grieve for Nicholas, but he grieved all the same. It wasn’t only that he hadn’t ever drunk from him. It was that he was the last person Tolly had known, and for a long time the only person he had seen. They had often talked. They had known as much of each other as some people would know of their spouses, shared confidences in the knowledge that they would never leave this room.

Tolly wasn’t sure how much of that had been true on Nicholas’s side, of course, if he’d really had that many lovers come and go. He’d never been stupid enough to bring one downstairs. But Tolly had told him things that were true even when he was not compelled, by the end. He would have told him anything he wanted, anything at all to keep him a little longer. It had been pathetic, but now he couldn’t say he regretted it. If he had not done all he could to stretch out those moments, he would have less of Nicholas with him forever, less of him imprinted in unfading memory.

I hate you. I love you. You left me.

He couldn’t let himself repeat that. He looked around for some distraction, and decided to commit the extravagance of reading all of the labels he could see.

There were a lot of labels, and some of them were harder to make out than others owing to dust and being partly turned away from him. He managed to stretch this exercise out until nearly dawn. It was a relief to creep back to his rug and compose himself to his rest in the orderly and ordinary way. He knew he would dream.

He dreamed of Nicholas. They were talking, Nicholas sitting in the chair at the table as his face slowly grew younger, Tolly standing against the wall in the corner with his hands in his pockets as if he didn’t care that he was a prisoner here.

“Where’s the ring?” he asked eventually. “You hid it, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did, Bard. Did I never tell you who hunts those who see the Outside? Surely you must, in all your travels, have met with them.”

“I’ve kept as clear of witchcraft as I could, Nicholas,” Black Tolly said. “For fear of exactly what has happened, or worse. Where is it?”

“That’s not for you to know, darling. Only for whoever comes after me. No one of sound mind would trust you with the Eye of Rule.”

“Well, I can’t say you’re wrong,” he said dryly. Nicholas’s answering laughter rang after him into wakefulness for just a moment. He lay on his back, silent, and for a few moments he wept again. But he could not indulge this for long. He stood up and paced back and forth for a moment on the stone outside of his rug, listening. Footsteps moved above him, faint and distant. He was grateful that his heart did not beat, or the noise in his ears would have drowned everything else.

He stiffened as he heard the door open. For a second, he simply couldn’t move, terrified that it would close again and Arden would not come down and he would be alone. Then, after an eternity of slices of a second, footsteps started to descend and the spell was broken. Tolly moved a polite distance back from the door, one heel touching his rug, forcing himself not to cling to the walls or the chair like some crawling animal.

Arden was carrying a plastic bin that looked almost as big as Arden to Tolly’s curious eye. Arden wasn’t tiny. He would guess they were five feet and eight or nine inches in actual height, if they ever stood up all the way straight (something he had not yet seen them do). But in a tee shirt their arms looked thinner than they should, veins standing out in their forearms without much muscle or fat under them. Tonight’s shirt was black with some kind of eye-searing white band logo on it that he didn’t recognize, a skull pierced by a pair of scissors.

They plonked the bin down in front of the cell, exhaling hard. A quick glance found Tolly and looked away again.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Arden said. “You look creepy when you sleep. That’s, I’m sorry, that’s rude.” They looked at him and away again, clearing their throat. “I brought your pig’s blood, and, uh.”

Tolly waited, every fiber of his being concentrated on the container beside them.

“Thank you,” Tolly said. Arden cleared their throat again at Tolly’s intent, unblinking stare. “Right. First things first.” Arden unloaded a plastic lantern that gave forth a bright, diffuse light at a touch, lighting up nearly the entire basement with a warm glow. They pulled an old ruler out of the bin and nudged the lantern across the threshold. “I need this to see, but you can also keep it for. I don’t know. If you get tired of it being dark.” They shot him an embarrassed look. Tully extended a talon and carefully hooked the lantern within reach, almost caressingly running his fingers over the shade. He tore his eyes from the container that held his salvation with some difficulty.

Make it worth their while. Not just the money. The money isn’t what brought them back.

“Thank you,” he said. The emotion in his creaking voice was not feigned, but under other circumstances he might have made more effort to hide it. “I’ve been in the dark a long time.”

“I don’t know what’s normal for you, so I just brought one of the glasses from upstairs.” Tolly looked up as they nudged over a water glass that he had seen many times before, an old Cristal D’Arques leaded crystal thing with long ridges in the sides. Then came the plastic gallon jug of pig’s blood. Tolly snatched at it as if it weighed nothing, dragging it and the glass back to the farthest corner. There was nowhere in the room that he was actually hidden, but he crouched with his back to the door as he poured the cup full with a shaking hand and drained it. The taste of it was awful. It was claggy and congealing on the palate. But he felt precious blood, precious life, flowing back into himself. He felt his tongue and mouth grow moist again, the surfaces of his eyes slicker, and now he could see more clearly than before.

His stomach hurt, twisting inside him as the liquid hit. As much as he wanted to bolt all of the blood, in his present state he could not. He turned back with much more caution, ashamed of his reaction, wary of the other’s, and sat down against the wall far opposite Arden with jug and glass. Not one drop of red remained in the cup. He didn’t remember cleaning it all with his tongue, but he must have. Arden was paler, but they had not run away.

“Thank you, Arden,” he said. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.” He must have moved unnaturally fast. He knew that he still looked like the same shriveled corpse apart from his eyes. But the voice that spoke to them was different now, a liquid, expert tenor, able to travel from baritone to falsetto and back in an easy glissade if he wished. Now Black Tolly had an angel's voice in a devil's face.

Arden blinked rapidly at him. He watched them swallow, searching for words.

“Don’t thank me,” they said. “You paid me a hundred thousand dollars for around thirty-five dollars’ worth of pig’s blood. Do you want me to put that in the fridge for you with this other one?”

“I will finish this one, but I must go slowly. It’s been a long time,” Tolly said. “If you could put the other one away for later, I would appreciate it very much. Every drop brings me nearer to life.”

“I will. I, I’ve brought some other things,” Arden said, color rising to their face.

Not used to direct compliments. Doesn’t know how to deal with direct thanks. Other people have been difficult for our Arden over these twenty-eight years, Tolly thought. He poured himself a second glass and set it carefully on the stone floor beside him, away from his rug.

“I could return there, but then you would have to look at me,” Tolly said gently.

“I don’t mind,” Arden said. They were still looking at the floor.

Part 6: Regeneration

He breathed in the night for as long as he dared, looking up at the stars – nothing important had changed in twenty years. It was one of the only things an immortal could depend on. The stars changed so slowly that they were always there. He could hear spring peepers in the distance from the creek beyond the lawns. A dizzying bouquet of scents burst over him, plant and human and animal and inanimate.

It was almost fearful, this sensation of his world expanding again. He hated the little room, had hated watching himself slowly shrivel and starve, but things inside it were very simple.

His time was limited. There was work to do. Tolly locked up again and went to collect the trash from downstairs and put it just inside the back door, so he could take it to the bin when his shoes arrived. He put the volume on Poe carefully back in its place on the library shelf.

With these preliminary matters accomplished, Tolly went to sit, ankles crossed, on the big stairway so that he could teach himself to use the phone. Moonlight glittered in the stained-glass skylight above the vestibule. It depicted the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, very traditional for someone of Nicholas’ religion.

A current smartphone was a fascinating thing, so unlike the phones he remembered. The internet was mind-bogglingly fast, too. It amazed him. He couldn’t get the wifi password from the phone itself. He’d have to ask Arden later.

Tolly's ebay account still existed, and his bank had a web site now. He was able to register after some finagling with taking pictures of his face and talking on the phone to what turned out to be a machine with recorded human voice segments. At the end of a couple of hours he had linked his account with a few payment services, ordered new cards, and signed up for Amazon. The phone Arden had ordered him was a prepaid – he could see Arden’s Amazon, too – so he let that be for now. It was functionally disposable that way, and he could charge it with minutes and not invest in a plan he might not need. There was no point in spending so much on something that might so easily break, and the parasitic integration of Google accounts did have the advantage of convenience. Every phone could, from now on, be the same phone, as long as it was the same operating system to recover data from the cloud.

His stockbroker had a web site now. He signed up for that, too. His stocks had performed extremely well in his absence, as it turned out. He sent a message to the accounting service he had used for two generations of American identities, claiming he had been ill and undergoing treatment and asking if they would do business via email now. They were supposed to have kept up with his capital gains taxes, but it would be as well to assess the situation and pay any fines or back taxes he might owe.

His current identity was forty years old now. He should start establishing a younger one to “inherit” soon, so that when he got to seventy or eighty it would be ready. Obtaining a social security number fraudulently was probably harder now. Maybe this “dark web” thing would be of use. He should probably figure out what a “VPN” was first.

But that was a less urgent matter. He needed shoes. Hair and nail care kits went into the cart immediately, of course. But he had to mull over the issue of wardrobe. He couldn’t go back to tailored business clothing when Arden’s apparent preference was  casual, and besides, if he looked too  wealthy it would create friction. He wouldn’t be entirely convincing in young people’s clothes, either. At some point he would have human blood again, be strong again – the roots of his canines ached – but even glamour could only do so much.

Very well. Pacific Northwest casual. If they needed to do something more formal, he would need to clothe Arden anyway, so he could shop for himself if it came up then. He’d no idea what their incarnation of gender portended for dress clothing, and for now, it didn’t matter. He ordered straight-leg jeans and corduroys, tee shirts, flannels, a couple of tank tops, and a wool-lined leather overcoat. These were what he would consider inexpensive but durable brands. He would have spent more on footwear, but Arden’s shoes were of the $30-on-sale variety, so he settled for Florsheim’s sneakers and the cheapest available leather wallet for the payment cards he expected to receive by mail shortly. If things weren’t dramatic in appearance, and the brand name wasn’t obtrusive, most people wouldn’t know by sight how much they had cost.

Toiletries. Shaving wasn’t exactly necessary, because Basilia had made him shave himself before she initiated him, but it was important to keep up appearances. No wristwatch, people used phones for that now so it was an accessory of fashion he didn’t immediately need. He ordered a canvas duffel bag, too.

A lot of packages were going to appear in the next day or so. He’d rushed everything that could be rushed. It couldn’t be helped. He didn’t want Arden spending any more of their monetary cache on him. He debated wiring more money. Best not to overwhelm them. Their exhaustion and collapse indicated what Tolly instinctively thought of as a nervous disposition before he remembered that different phrasing was appropriate in a more modern era.

He wondered what version the DSM was on now. He checked. He also checked if Maulian Basal Retinoid Syndrome was still considered a valid disorder. It still was. He smiled for a second to see a Dr. Lauren Phibes, Junior, listed as the predominant expert on the disease. Lauren had gotten “old” enough to need to pass on his practice, finally. When the present crisis was over, Tolly resolved to get in touch again. Lauren was always good for an interesting evening.

He needed more time investigating the popular culture to update his mental vocabulary to his apparent age instead of twenty years “older” (he politely refrained from looking at the bookmark folder labeled “homework” – some habits apparently survived from Arden’s high school or college years) but the phone said it was already 4 a.m. and he had best deal with the matter of dawn approaching.

Tolly hurriedly logged out of everything and logged Arden back into Amazon and Gmail with his password from an app that only asked for the locking code again. He wrote a brief note in the study – the ghost of Nicholas remained in scent even after so long - and soft-footed it back upstairs to leave both note and phone on the nightstand.

Dear Arden:

I took the liberty of borrowing your phone to transact some business. I have attempted to leave it as I found it, but I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused. I also apologize for all of the package deliveries. If you would do me the favor of bringing them inside, I will deal with them tomorrow night. I ask only because your weather app indicates rain is likely.

Your written orders will be obeyed, if you don’t want to wait up tomorrow evening.

I have also ordered another case of non-dairy protein shakes in the chocolate flavor, as it appears you are out. Please drink at least two.

Bartholomaeus

Then he shut the basement door behind him and smugly walked back downstairs, feet protected from even the dead wood of splinters by his thick if increasingly dirty socks. He read Dumas until his eyes began to grow dim and his limbs unwieldy. Then he crawled back into the sleeping bag. He left the socks laid out on the rug, to keep the inside of the bag clean.

“Tolly. Hey, Tolly. Wake up!”

A voice snapped him back to consciousness. Tolly unzipped the bag far enough to emerge, crawling backward on his hands and feet until he was out far enough to kneel. His hair was in worse case now. He could tell as he ran his talons through it. Arden stood outside the small room, pounding on the wall next to it with one fist. They stopped as they saw him emerge.

“Something weird happened today,” they said.

“What is it?” Tolly asked.

“I got a cash offer of five million dollars to buy the house and everything in it,” Arden said. “From some company. TriVenture LLC. Their lawyer called the lawyer who settled Uncle Nick’s estate.”

“What did you say?” Tolly asked, pulling on his socks before he turned to shake the sleeping bag and tightly roll it up.

“I said I needed to think about it. It’s weird, right? The whole property probably isn’t worth a million dollars, not out here in the County. Five is insane.”

“When Nicholas was killed, was a body found?”

“That might be hard to hear,” Arden said. “It was pretty awful.” It might be hard to say, said their tone.

“It may be important,” Tolly said.

“They found tiny bits of blood and hair where he was impaled on the steering column, because the airbag didn’t deploy when he hit a tree, but the car basically exploded. There was nothing left but metal and burning upholstery when somebody found it. And some animal teeth scattered around. That was weird. They investigated for mechanical faults, but there wasn’t enough left to tell.”

“Was the accident in daylight?” Tolly asked, stopping with the bag under his arm.

“Yeah, it was afternoon when they found it and it was still burning,” Arden said. “Why?”

Black Tolly was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “He died twice.”

“What?”

“He injected himself with my blood for years. One who has consumed undead blood does not remain dead. He died in the accident, and then when he changed, he died again in the fire and in the sun.”

“That’s fucking awful,” Arden said.

“I doubt it was an accident,” Tolly said. “Not when someone wants to buy his house and effects at a price so high. He said he was leading them away from the ring, didn’t he?”

Arden squinted unhappily. “So, who killed him, then?”

“I don’t know,” Tolly said. “He didn’t tell me who his enemies were. He vaguely hinted that he had some within his religion, but I was never sure if he meant it.” Arden was starting to look pale and sound thready again. It was time to introduce another topic. “Did my things arrive?”

“I stacked it all in the other guest room. Do you want to keep sleeping down here instead?” Arden asked uncertainly.

“If you are willing that I rest aboveground, the sleeping bag is adequate to protect me from the sun. I would just as soon never see this room again,” Tolly said.

“I don’t blame you,” Arden said. They looked at the ceiling. “Which is why I wonder how come you’re still here and not already in Seattle at the Fairmont Olympic or somewhere?” Tolly wondered if they had phrased it that way on purpose, so that he was not required to answer. It was hard to say.

“May we discuss this later? I would like to shower and cut my hair, with your permission.”

“Sure.”

“And perhaps you might consider going to bed.”

“If I say ‘fuck off’ will you interpret that as an order?”

“Not any more,” Tolly said cheerfully.

“Fuck riiiiight off, Tolly.”

“Adorable.” He ran his fingers through Arden’s hair on the way past. They saw it coming, but they didn’t try to avoid it. With a feeling of self-congratulation, he listened to their heart skip. They were turning red again, and they almost certainly would forget the question.

Black Tolly emerged from the guest bathroom in an hour with short hair and short, smooth nails. Someone looking closely could see they were growing from his fingers in an odd, embedded way, but that couldn’t be helped yet. He wore his new jeans, pre-faded blue tee shirt, jacket, socks, and the brown leather sneakers. His new wallet was in his pocket and the phone was in his hand. Everything else went into the duffel bag or the washer in the laundry downstairs. He absently poured detergent one-handed as he started logging into accounts with the other.

He took the pile of cardboard and trash from the packages outside to find the bins. He stood by them for a moment, listening to the night. It was cloudy, and it had rained, leaving the smell of petrichor still lingering in the air. There was a feeling of heavy possibility that he now knew probably meant a change in air pressure, so it was likely going to storm. Wet grass brushed his new jeans.

He had shoes now, Tolly thought. And he had not been outside in twenty years.

So Tolly ran.

He circled the grounds, peered through the thickets into the wood, listened to the sounds of small creatures. Once he caught a common poorwill hawking. It was a big-headed little-beaked bird with feathers patterned like gray leaf litter, fluttering from its perch to snap at moths and darting back. In the darkness its eyes reflected moonlight like twin mirrors, common in all creatures with real night vision. It ignored him, though it could see his own eyes reflect in turn. He wasn’t close enough to be dangerous. He watched it for several minutes before he resumed his run.

Sights and scents and sounds flowed over him, around him, but now he was sufficiently master of himself to absorb it without being overwhelmed by it. At least, for a while. It was still long before dawn and his lower pant legs were wet with dew when he slipped back in through the back door, weary in mind and attention though not yet in body. The leather sneakers had kept his feet dry. He was not in particular need of a shower otherwise. Sweating was one of several functions that had perished with the original life of his body.

Arden was standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the ceiling. Tolly followed their gaze and found absolutely nothing except the industrial light fixture with the bare bulbs. They were shaking. “Arden?” Black Tolly said. His flickering glance found the Eye of Rule still on their finger.

“Something terrible is about to happen,” they said. @fleur-a-whump, @bitchaknso, @valravnthefrenchie, @thewhumpcaretaker