The Death Thief

Confession

"Is that why you're here?" I asked with a painful gulp. "To take back your room?"

"Now why would I lament about how Spencer doesn't trust me while I'm doing the very thing he doesn't trust me about?"

"But...you-you did break into my, your, our...this room." My words trembled as the adrenaline began to leave my body and my muscles shivered with the release.

"I only did that because I needed to talk to you right now and Spencer won't let me through the front door without calling Kyra on me." I couldn't see it, but I felt the roll of her eyes in her words. "I used to slip in and out of this room all the time. These old windows are easy to open from the outside."

"Oh, okay." Like that made anything better.

"Anyway," she continued as if we were having a conversation over cake and coffee, "I need to get something straight with you before you do something foolish."

"Like breaking into someone's room?"

I felt her glare as she exhaled through flared nostrils. Then she continued on without addressing my question. "I need to talk to you about Matias. You can't report him."

"I didn't plan to. Bungee didn't want it."

"Fine," she said, rising up from her seat on my bed. "Then that's all." She turned back for the window.

"Wait," I said, sticking a hand out to stop her. "You did all this just to ask me that?"

"One, I thought you would put up more of a fight on the matter and two, this," she gestured to the window, "is not difficult, it wasn't that much effort."

"B-but you broke into my room, doesn't that count for something?"

"You should probably learn to lock up a bit more," she said with a shrug. "It makes it a tad more difficult to get in."

I suppressed a squeak of exasperation as my chest tightened.

"Look," she continued, "Matias was afraid to talk to you in person and he needed someone to set you straight on the matter before you went off and involved Kyra. He was just mad with Bungee because he messed up my hair."

"Because he loves you," I added.

"Bungee?" she asked, though we both knew her flimsy cover up was just that.

"I overheard you at the lounge."

"Fine," she growled, a hand raising up to massage her forehead. "I'm not ashamed." She walked back over and retook her seat. "Yes, I love Matias and he loves me, but I assume you've heard of Bernadette."

She looked over at me and I nodded, though I didn't know how well she would see me in the limited light drifting in through the window.

"So you know why we couldn't be loud and proud about that," she continued. "Still, I think some people knew. One way or another, I'm certain Antonov had his suspicions that I wasn't interested. I think he only kept on me because he knew that my only other options were Bernadette and Kyra. And with my contract running out, I'd eventually have to agree to be with him. He'd enforce the matter if he had to."

"Can he do that?" I asked, wondering if my own game of cat and mouse with the lusty lord would eventually grow tiring for him.

"Sponsorship is sometimes just a step away from slavery. You could technically go with anyone in town. You're never actually bought, you're simply sponsored so that you have money to live. So if I chose a penniless farmhand vamp, I could be with them. However, they barely have money to feed themselves so anyone they take would be dead in a month anyway. So if that doesn't convince a Body enough to stay away from the poorer lot, a vamp can compel their underlings to reject a Body. He can't force me to join him, but he can make me a pariah. He can run me into the ground until there's nothing left of me except my need to survive and that's when he'd scoop me up."

"But, you had Matias?"

"And he had a compulsion to not take me. He can't disobey or hurt his master. It's a blood magic he cannot override."

"I don't know what you were hoping for then."

"To buy time." Her voice was firm and harsh. I knew better than to follow up on that.

"But, now none of that matters," she continued, her tone normalized. "I'm a zombie and nothing they can do can hurt me now. So I don't care who knows. Except..." She groaned and buried her face in her hands. "Except Bernadette," she growled. "She could still retaliate against Matias. Will I never be free of this? I just want our love out of the shadows."

For a minute we both sat there. Her fighting back sobs and me clutching a sheet to my bare chest. I certainly felt a sense of sympathy. My hand twitched for a second as I considered reaching out and patting her on the shoulder, but I was tired both physically and mentally. If she wanted sympathy, I needed room to feel it and at that moment my brain was a bit cluttered.

"What about Gregory?"

"What about him?" she asked, lifting her face from her hands and turning to me.

"Don't you love him too?"

"Ha!" she laughed, only to slam a hand on her mouth and dart her eyes towards the door. When no one came running to check up on me, she turned back to face me. "Why on earth would you think that?"

"Dean and Will say they've seen the two of you sneaking away into his room a lot. What else could that mean?"

"I..." She struggled, the words caught somewhere on her tongue. She straightened her back and opened her mouth in hopes that would let them flow more freely, but still they remained trapped inside her. She shifted her weight and looked at her hands before finally giving me an answer.

"We're just friends." The words came out with a slow drawl, as if they were being formed at that very moment. Just appearing on the tip of her tongue, as if she too was uncertain what might escape her mouth. "Sometimes I just needed to talk. I needed to share these secrets with someone other than Matias. It's hard to make friends around here and well, Gregory joined the town not long after I did. So he seemed like the closest thing I had to a friend. I confided in him. That's what friends do."

"All right," I answered, though I don't think either of us completely trusted that everything was in fact all right.

"It would be a favor to me if you didn't spread that around though," she added. "I don't want to make Matias jealous."

"Okay."

"I-I should go, I've kept you long enough. If you're not going to rat out Matias then there's nothing more that needs to be said."

"Perhaps."

"I'm sorry I disturbed you," she muttered as she reached the window.

"It's okay."

"Good night." The words bolted from her lips as she slipped through the window and slammed it back down. Out in the open where the moon could shine at its fullest, I saw the pale pallor of her skin. Perhaps she looked so ghastly white because she was undead, or perhaps it had to do with the fear that sent her racing away from my window.

Whatever it was, I thought it best to slip on a pair of underwear and a nightshirt from the package Bungee delivered earlier. Then I went and locked the window, hopeful I wouldn't get another unwanted confession before sunrise.