Chapter 75
Katelina's mood wasn't improved the next day. Loren and Jorick left to feed as usual and, even though she knew it was wrong on many levels, she was drawn to the large desk. As she laid her hand on the terrible bottom drawer, Loren's voice came back to her, "All that matters is he's here and you're here. The rest isn't important." The words reverberated like a bad dream sequence, but, despite the annoyingly impeccable logic, she sat down on the floor, jerked the drawer open and unburied the bundle of letters.
They seemed so much lighter than she thought they should; they should weigh as heavily in her hand as they did in her mind. As if to punish them for this betrayal, she shook them roughly. Two items fell out and landed in her lap. One was a lock of black hair tied with a faded silk ribbon, and the other was a cross shaped charm of tarnished silver. She discarded the hair quickly, as though it burned her, but she turned the cross over in her hand and let her thumb trace its aged surface. She wondered if it had come from one of her necklaces, and why Jorick had bothered to save it.
She imagined Velnya and Jorick. The silver cross hung from the blue velvet ribbon. He tied it around her neck and gazed deeply into her eyes, before wrapping his arms around her and kissing her passionately-
That vision made her stomach turn strangely. What was it? Jealousy? Did she have a right to that? It wasn't as if she was in love with him.
Was she?
It was a question she didn't want to contemplate, so she turned the force of her flustered mind to the letters. Forty-five minutes later, she was still seated on the floor, the paper scattered around her like dead butterflies. She'd read them all and, the more she'd read, the weirder she felt, until there was no longer a question about the feeling.
She was jealous.
And why shouldn't she be? Jorick had never said those things to her, and she doubted he ever would. She wasn't the kind of woman to be someone's dark queen, just their fuck buddy. Like Patrick. He'd made it clear he could never commit to her, and though he'd tried to pass it off as the old "it's me, not you", she'd always secretly wondered. It wasn't as if men had been beating down her door for a relationship, or, hell, even a date. No, men always seemed to prefer those tiny wilting flowers with their big, scared eyes and their sad, sad stories. Like Janine Telkes.
It was juvenile and stupid, and Katelina knew it, but she still hated Janine, even years later. They'd gone to school together, from kindergarten on, because that was the way it worked in a small town. Janine was from one of those families. She had what passed for money and she was tiny and beautiful on top of it. As a child she'd looked like a porcelain doll, and she'd been the star of everything; every play, concert, or program, there was Janine, in her ruffled dress and her bright red curls, blinking those giant crystal eyes. High school was no different, and Janine got everything, and everyone, she wanted. Then they graduated and most of the class skipped off to college. Katelina stayed behind, and Sarah had attended community college part time. They'd both gotten jobs at Smith's, and celebrated that they were free of school and out in the real world where you didn't need to be Janine Telkes to be somebody.
But they were wrong. After some horrific event, Janine Telkes came home from college in the middle of the semester and landed at Smith's, too. The minute she showed up she was everyone's princess - after all the poor dear had suffered so - including the guy Katelina had been seeing. There hadn't been a real commitment between her and Russ, after all she didn't want to be chained to someone right out of high school, but she'd thought there was "something" - until she came to work early to find him and Janine Telkes all over each other in the parking lot. His stammered excuse? "Janine's just... she- she needs me!"
And that was when Katelina had learned that she could do all right, so long as all the perfect, needy women were somewhere else. Because as soon as they showed up, the women who were average and not-quite-good-enough might as well cease to exist. The Janine's of the world would always win.
The thoughts made her angry, and she jammed the yellowed papers back into their envelopes. With each letter that she put away she despised Velnya, and every woman like her, more. All the perfect pretty delicate butterflies that needed some big strong man to sweep them into their arms and make things okay and, judging from the letters, that was what Velnya had been. The poetic prose described how much Jorick missed her, how much he loved her, and how beautiful she was, mixed with constant reminders that she should not be afraid, that humans were weak and pathetic, that he was on his last errand for Malick before he'd be freed of his debt. Then he'd return to her and take care of everything.
There were no details about his mission, though, or explanation about what he was actually doing. It was as if he'd been afraid of soiling Velnya with dirty reality. Katelina thought sarcastically what a burden it must have been for him to protect such a dainty delicate creature and keep her safe from all the nasty things in the world. She wondered if he'd had to drink all the blood for her too, or if she'd managed to sully herself that much.
She tied the bundle up sloppily and threw it back in the desk, along with the cross and the lock of hair. Despite the emotions churning inside her, she still wanted to find the other half of the letters. What was Velnya so terrified of in the first place, and how had Jorick ended up with the wrong half of the conversation? What had happened when Jorick got home and killed all the stupid, feeble mortals? Had Velnya raced out the door and flung herself into his waiting arms, sobbing tears of joy at being reunited with her lover? Had she been cold and distant and thrown his letters in his face before she packed her bags and left him? Had he come back only to find another man in her coffin?
Does it even matter?
And did she really even want to know?
***
Katelina took Loren's comment to heart and tidied the dining room and kitchen afterwards, so that her lingering "scent" would make sense. Even so, when Jorick and Loren returned she still couldn't find a way to bring the topic up without admitting she'd been snooping. It wasn't as if she could just ask whether precious perfect Velnya was going to pop up again, like Janine Telkes, and leave her out in the cold.
Instead, she lapsed into a distant silence that Jorick assumed had something to do with cleaning. He cleared his throat half a dozen times, and finally suggested that Loren should pitch in more. Katelina had no response for that, so he took the silence as affirmation and hurried the teen out the door with him to "go look around".
They returned some time later, though Loren didn't stay long.
"I'd better go get ready," he announced. "So, I'll see you guys tomorrow."
Katelina managed to pull herself from a half-hearted attempt at dusting the living room. "Get ready for what?"
Loren was out the door and gone, so she looked to Jorick who commented casually, "You should pack tonight."
"Pack? Why?" A thousand horrors rose in her mind. So, he'd decided she wasn't good enough after all. That shouldn't come as a surprise after perfect little Velnya. Fine, if that's what he wants then-
He cut off her silent thoughts. "We're going on a short trip tomorrow. To Virginia."
Suddenly a darker suspicion loomed in the forefront. "What's in Virginia?"
Jorick cleared his throat loudly and gave a small shrug, then he seemed to relent. "Roses," he said softly. "It's where the roses grow."
"Roses?" She remembered the mysterious letter and knew what that meant. "You said you didn't know anything about it!"
Jorick cocked an impatient eyebrow. "Yes, of course I did. Did you think I'd betray him, Katelina? Do you truly have such a low opinion of me?"
His question threw her off. "What? Well, no, of course not but-" She broke off and shook her head as if to physically clear her thoughts. "But I asked you and you said-"
"I said nothing," he pointed out firmly. "I didn't want to endanger you with the information so long as Beldren and Zuri were around, not that they could pluck it from your thoughts, but even so."
"Not like you?"
He flinched at her accusing tone. "No," he said quietly. "Not like me."
"When did you plan to mention that to me?"
"When it became necessary." He shrugged. "Besides, I assumed you'd figure it out eventually."
"And how much mind reading have you been doing?" A sudden panic rose in her; did he know she'd been snooping?
He waved it away. "None. Recently. I've tried to respect your privacy, but perhaps I should change that?"
She turned away from him to hide the guilt in her eyes. "I suppose you're going to go lock yourself in your little secret room again?"
His jaw tightened. "I have a trip to Virginia to plan. I need to get out the maps and calculate the distance and the time it will take."
"If you were living in the twenty-first century, with the rest of us, you could just look it up online." The comment was half teasing and half angry, and she wasn't sure which one she meant more. "Why in the hell are we going to see Oren? Didn't you say that we were going to stay out of all his crap, blah, blah, blah."
"Yes, and we are. But since I'm unable to connect to his consciousness hundreds of miles away from him and read his thoughts, I need to see what he wants. It may be something important."
"Sure." She turned back to him. "They made a cool invention that allows you to talk to people across great distances. It's called a telephone."
"Is that a hint?" When she didn't reply he rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry, but I don't have time for this. Pack a bag, but pack light. I'll see you later."
She turned to argue with him, but he was already gone. Katelina could only assume that he was locked away inside his secret room, mapping out their trip. She pictured him, a la Christopher Columbus, holding a compass and surrounded by rolls of hand drawn maps. Somehow the image fit him and his denial of technology.
He resurfaced just before dawn and asked her if she was going to bed. In the end she went with him, though their only conversation was his, "Good night, little one," before he kissed her on the forehead and rolled over for sleep.
