// Catherine //

Over the next few days they agree on their cover story. People might ask why they spend so much time together, why Catherine is moving into Hannah’s one-bedroom apartment, why Hannah looks at Catherine with so much devotion. The obvious explanation is that the two of them are lovers. Catherine wonders, and does not ask aloud, whether or not they actually are. Hannah’s entire heart belongs to her. So does the blood that pumps through it. Catherine holds Hannah in her arms after she feeds, and whispers how much she adores her. Their relationship is deeper and more intimate than a human friendship, and more real than the ties between most thralls and their vampires. Catherine knows that if she asked, Hannah would gladly give her body in any way she desired, but the problem with unquestioning obedience is that it makes it impossible to know what Hannah wants for herself. For now, Catherine doesn’t push her to be any more than a friend who trades blood for cuddles.

They’re lying next to each other on Hannah’s bed — after a feeding session in the bathtub, where they’ve learned blood is much easier to clean up — when Hannah looks into Catherine’s eyes and asks her, “so, tell me about where you’re really from.”

“The White Coven. It’s a vampire village in the Gilic Northern Isles.”

“I knew you couldn’t actually be from Malete. I’ve met native Maletese speakers and you don’t sound like them — you don’t have any trouble telling your ‘p’s from your ‘b’s, and you pay attention to the difference between calling something a village and calling it a city, which Maletese speakers usually don’t since they’re the same word in toki-pi-ma-lete. What you sound like is a Gilic person from a few hundreds years ago. Are you?”

“I really am nineteen years old. I was turned less than a year ago.”

“How does that happen?”

“The process? It’s a lot like what I did to you, except with enough venom to stop my heart first. If you mean why I was turned, I was raised for it. Thralls aren’t allowed to have children in our culture, so I and the other candidates in my generation were taken from the human world when we were very young.” Being able to talk openly about her past is a relief. “New candidates are only brought in rarely. My adoptive parents and aunts and uncles were the last generation before mine, and they were turned a little over two hundred years ago. That’s one half of why newly-turned vampires are sent out here, to bring back knowledge from the outside world.”

“And the other half is... to take thralls, so you have a food source, right?”

“Yes, but I’m not going to bring you back to the coven. I couldn’t do that to you. You would be surrounded by monsters, and even with me to protect you, it would never be the life you deserve.”

“But I want to be with you. If you’re going back home someday, I’ll go with you.”

“I know you would, but you shouldn’t.” Catherine frowns. “When I first turned you, I told myself I’d order you to stay here and live your life while I returned to the coven, but that wouldn’t be right either.”

“You don’t seem like you even want to go back. You didn’t get along with your family there, did you?”

“You’re right, I didn’t. They’re terrible, to humans and to each other. So I’ll stay here in your world, even though I don’t have a plan for my life anymore, because the one they gave me isn’t what I want.”

Hannah takes her hand. “It’s okay not to have a plan. We’ll figure it out together.”