Sweetblood (9781439108741) (12 page)

He turns up a card.

The card shows a man in a long black cloak standing before a river. Only a small part of his face is visible. His cheek is red. On the other side of the river is a small castle. Upstream, a bridge crosses the water. The sky is cold and gray. On the ground before the cloaked man, three tall golden cups lay on their sides. Two of the cups have spilled a red liquid onto the earth. The other cup has spilled something green. Behind the man are two more cups, upright, possibly empty, possibly full. I stare into the card, feeling almost as if I am there.

I hear a voice, very close. “The Five of Cups,” he says. “Your card. Remarkable.”

I look up. We are both leaning over the table, our faces only about a foot apart. His eyes are espresso and his breath has a sweet organic smell, like old apples.

“Why do you say that?” I ask, sitting back.

“It is a powerful card,” he says. “You are a very special person.”

“I bet you say that to everybody.”

“Oh?” His grin makes him look like a little kid. “You are very astute, Lucinda. But in this case it is true. I surround myself with posers and pretenders. It gives me pleasure to have many friends. But you are different.”

I look to my right, but Dylan is gone. The sounds of the party seem distant. I hear the thumping of a drum and a squeal of laughter.

“I don't have any friends.”

“I very much doubt that, Lucinda. I am your friend, at least.” Our eyes lock for a moment. “You are more powerful than you know. The world that surrounds you is what you make of it.” He is looking into me. I drop my gaze to the table. The cloaked man is standing by the river, cold and alone. Wayne says, “The running water is a barrier he cannot cross. The spilled blood represents life; the green fluid is poison. He rejects the blood because he is ashamed. You see how the shame reddens his face? Yet he also rejects the poison for fear of death.”

“Where did Dylan go?” I ask.

“He is probably enjoying the party. You aren't really a party person, are you?”

“I don't know what kind of person I am.” I'm angry at Dylan for wandering off, but I don't really miss him. I'm not afraid. Wayne is a bit odd, but he seems harmless, and he understands some things. Still, I wonder why he surrounds himself with young goths.

He says, “Dylan has a great deal to learn about life. Things that you already know. He is a child.”

“So am I.”

“No.” Shaking his head. “You are no child. You are very mature. You are more powerful than you know. I open my doors to many young people. I meet all kinds. Some older than me—and I am older than I look—have yet to grow up. Others are like you. You think about things. I can tell. Most people are sheep. They simply react to whatever life throws at them. You're different. Life reacts to
you
. You're a thinker, like the man in your card.”

He taps the tarot card with his forefinger. “You see the castle? That is his home, to which he can never return. The bridge is his dream. The two upright cups represent false hopes.”

Wayne turns up a new card.

A gray-cloaked, white-bearded man standing on a snow-covered mountaintop holding a lantern in one hand and a staff in the other. Inside the lantern, a star shines. “The Hermit,” Wayne says. “My card. Like you, I enjoy the use of my intellect. I am a seeker of truth.”

“Find any?”

He lifts his wineglass.
“In vino veritas,”
he says, and drinks. When he sees that I do not understand, he explains. “That's Latin. ‘In wine lies truth.' Are you sure you wouldn't care for a glass? It's a very nice California pinot noir.”

This time I say, “Okay.”

He talks to me like an equal, an adult, an intelligent person who doesn't have to go to school or be home by eleven or check her blood sugar every three hours. I sip my wine. It puckers my mouth, bitter and sour, with the scent of
berries and old wood, and a slight metallic tang. Not like the sweet, simple wine my parents drink on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm not sure I like it, but it's interesting.

“It's very good,” I say and drink again.

“Yes it is. And may I say it is a pleasure to share a bottle of wine with one so lovely and intelligent.”

“Thank you.”

“You are always welcome here, Lucinda. Anytime. If you ever need a safe place to go, you are welcome. My doors are open. Shall we continue with your reading?”

The wine has pooled beneath my heart; I feel it burning. A butterfly lands on the edge of the table, then flits off. Wayne turns up another card.

A tall, gray tower on the top of a mountain is struck by a lightning bolt. The top of the tower, a golden crown, is blown off. Smoke and fire spill from the windows. A man and a woman are falling, surrounded by licks of flame.

“The tower,” says Wayne.

I feel dizzy, as if I, too, am falling.

“Chaos, upheaval, revelation. A dangerous card, Lucinda.”

I set my wineglass on the table. My arm seems longer than my body.

“Insight, crisis, eruption. You are entering into a period of great change.”

I hug myself. I know that what he is saying is true. His hands grasp my shoulders and I am looking straight into his bottomless eyes.

“Promise me something, Lucinda. Promise me that if you need help, you will come to me.”

I nod. His hands release me. I sit back, tingling where his hands gripped my shoulders. Everything is in sharp focus, as if someone has cranked up the contrast knob of reality. I stand up. I am ten feet tall.

“I have to go.”

“Come back and see me,” he says. “Come back anytime.”

I lurch off, past the milkweed and the orchids, looking down at my feet, seeing flecks of black and orange on the wooden floor. I am scuffing through broken monarchs. The floor is littered with the dead.

I find Dylan talking to Marquissa.

“I have to go,” I say, trying to make my voice hard. It comes out high-pitched and whiny. I don't care. He tries to argue with me, but I won't have it. I don't care about Marquissa and her sleepy, sleazy smirk. I don't care what any of them think. I have to get out. I half drag him to the door and down the stairs.

We get into his car.

“What's the matter with you?” he asks.

“I'm tired.”

“Did something happen?”

“No.” I feel so strange. “Why did you leave me with him?”

“He likes privacy when he does a tarot reading. That's his thing, the tarot cards. Pretty weird, huh?”

“He gave me a glass of wine.”

“He must really like you.”

Dylan's voice sounds far away. We are driving down a tunnel of streetlamps. When I blink, the lights move. Am I having an insulin reaction? Sometimes the symptoms are pretty peculiar. To be on the safe side, I dig into my purse for some candy. All I have is a bag of Gummi Bears. I shove a few in my mouth and force myself to chew and swallow.

“Gummi Bears?” Dylan asks.

“I'm hungry,” I say.

“Oh.”

For a moment I regret not telling him about my diabetes. But it's really none of his business. I get so bored with being Diabetes Girl, it's nice to have friends who don't think of me as a diseased cripple.

“I thought you were going to introduce me to a vampire,” I say. It sounds like I'm talking from the bottom of a well.

Dylan looks over at me and says, “I did.”

I slip in through the back door in my stockings, pad through the dark kitchen and up the stairs, feet whispering on the carpet. I can hear my father's snores and the sound of air passing in and out of my own lungs. I take a deep breath and open the door to my room, half expecting to find my mother sitting on my bed, waiting—but all is as before. No computer, clothes on the floor, rumpled bed waiting. I fall onto it. I should test my blood sugar. In just a few more seconds, I'll get up and prick my finger and squeeze out a drop of blood and make it be a number: 106, 34, 348. No number will surprise me. I feel the Gummi Bears swimming in wine soup, dissolving, sending glucose molecules through the walls of my small intestine. I see monarch wings crumbling.

Do I believe that Wayne Smith is really a butterfly-raising vampire? Not for a moment. Why would Dylan tell me such a thing? To impress me? He is such a child.

I close my eyes and see myself standing beside a river drinking nectar from a tall, golden cup. I see myself falling from a tower of stone.
Chaos, upheaval, revelation.
Wayne's words sounded familiar. Where have I heard them before?

“Chaos, upheaval, revelation,” I say out loud. Who does
it sound like? I try faces: My father, Mark Murphy, Dylan, Fish…. No one I know talks like that. I send my thoughts to books and movies, imagining the words in the mouths of actors and characters, but nothing rings true. I turn my thoughts to cyberspace and it hits me.

Draco. Draco used those words. Is it possible? Could tarot-card-reading Wayne actually be Draco the cybervamp? Did Dylan actually introduce me to a real vampire?

I roll myself up in my comforter enchilada style and tell myself that I am safe.

There are no vampires. Not anymore.

Fuzz

I rise as from death, my head thick with dream-goo, my body stiff with rigor mortis. What? What is it?

Knock knock knock.

I know the sound of my mother's knuckles.

Knock knock knock
.

“Okay! Okay! Okay!” I shout. Or rather, I try to shout. It comes out as a pathetic gurgle.

“It's seven o'clock, Sweetie!” she says.

Seven o'clock. I have to be at school in forty-five minutes. I sit up. I don't feel so good. I still have my clothes on. My guts hurt. I imagine things growing inside me: Tumors, parasites, aliens.

“Sweetie?”

“Okay, I'm up!”

Footsteps recede; I flop back onto my pillow. I could
skip school. Lie in bed all day and read. The thought of staying in bed gives me a warm moment, but I know it's not so easy. My mother would be in and out all day, fretting.
Honey/Sweetie/Sugar? Are you sure you don't want to see Dr. Fisher, Lucy Honey/Sweetie/Sugar?

Better to head for school and sleep through classes, I think.

But I really don't feel so good. My head hurts and my face feels fat and my mouth tastes horrible, all sweet and sour. I stare up at the ceiling, at the Seven Sisters. The tiny dark spots are all fuzzy. So fuzzy that I can't even count them. I blink to get the sleep out of my eyes. No difference. I sit up and rub my eyes. Everything is out of focus. Can nearsightedness really come on that fast? Maybe I need glasses. Maybe I'm going blind.

I remember that I haven't checked my blood sugar since yesterday morning. Could I be having an insulin reaction? I find my meter in my coat pocket. I prick my finger and squeeze out a drop of red, then apply it to the sensor strip. The meter counts down, then beeps.

The display reads 494.

Four. Nine. Four.

For a moment I simply stare, confused. I have never before seen such a reading.

Four hundred ninety-four milligrams of glucose per deciliter of whole blood. Normal is more like 100, or 120. No wonder I feel like crap.

Fish says I should keep my morning blood sugars under 140.

“Is that what you do?” I ask.

“I try,” Fish replies.

I wonder what he would say if he saw
this
number. Probably have me in the hospital in no time. I go into robot
mode and get a fresh syringe and the bottle of fast-acting insulin from my purse. How much will I need to bring myself back to the land of the living? I have no idea, but I figure a lot. I load thirty units into the syringe, pinch up a mound of belly fat, and shove the needle all the way in. I depress the plunger.

There. Now all I have to do is wait for the insulin and the glucose to shake hands.

Still in robot mode, I motor down the hall to the bathroom and undress and climb into the shower.

Four ninety-four. How did it get so high? Did I forget an insulin injection? I try to remember my evening shot. I remember my dad waking me up, yelling at me. Then eating my mom's greasy potatoes… did I take my shot? Can't remember. Then drinking lattes at the Bean. Then the party—a sip of beer, a glass of wine… and on the way home, Gummi Bears. Even if I had remembered to take my shot before dinner, my blood sugar would have skyrocketed. What was I thinking going so long without testing? Especially after the wine and Gummi Bears. Stupid stupid stupid. I turn off the water and towel dry.

Stupid girl. What would Fish say?

“Lucy, you don't get another body. You only live once.”

“I'm a Buddhist,” I say. “We come back.”

Fish shakes his head. “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy…”

Am I suffering from ketoacidosis? I try to remember the symptoms. Nausea, pain, vomiting, labored breathing, long sharp teeth, tremendous thirst, fear of crucifixes, eternal un-life…