Close but no cigar, buddy, Mary-Lynnette thought. Still, there was a certain basic truth to what he was saying. He was strong and fast, and she had the feeling he knew how to fight dirty.
Even if she'd never seen him do it, she thoughtsuddenly. All those times she'd gone after him, shining light in his eyes, kicking him in the shins-and he'd never once tried to retaliate. She didn't think it had even occurred to him.
She looked at him and said, "Okay."
"Now," Mark said. "Look ..."
"We'll be fine," Mary-Lynnette told him. "We won't go far."
Mary-Lynnette drove. She didn't know exactly where she was going, only that she didn't want to go to her hill. Too many weird memories. Despite what she'd told Mark, she found herself taking the car farther and farther. Out to where Hazel Green Creek and Beavercreek almost came together and the land between them was a good imitation of a rain forest.
"Is this the best place to look at - stars?" Ash saiddoubtfully when they got out of the station wagon.
"Well-if you're looking straight up," MaryLynnette said. She faced eastward and tilted her head far back.
"See the brightest star up there? That's Vega, the queen star of summer."
"Yeah. She's been higher in the sky every nightthis summer," Ash said without emphasis.
Mary-Lynnette glanced at him.
He shrugged. "When you're out so much at night,you get to recognize the stars," he said. "Even if you don't know their names."
Mary-Lynnette looked back up at Vega. She swallowed. "Can you--can you see something small and bright below her-something ring-shaped?"
"The thing that looks like a ghost doughnut?"
Mary-Lynnette smiled, but only with her lips."That's the Ring Nebula. I can see that with my telescope."
She could feel him looking at her, and she heardhim take a breath as if he were going to say something.
But then he let the breath out again and looked back up at the stars.
It was the perfect moment for him to mention something about how Vampires See It Better. And if he had, Mary-Lynnette would have turned on him and rejected him with righteous anger.
But since hedidn't,she felt a different kind of anger welling up. A spring of contrariness, as if shewere the Mary in the nursery rhyme. What, so you've decided I'm not good enough to be a vampire or something?
And what did I really bring you out here for, to the most isolated place I could find? Only for starwatching? I don'tthink so.
I don't even know who I am anymore, she remembered with a sort of fatalistic gloom. I have the feeling I'm about to surprise myself.
"Aren't you getting a crick in your neck?" Ashsaid.
Mary-Lynnette rolled her head from side to side slightly to limber the muscles. "Maybe."
"I could rub it for you?" He made the offer from several feet away.
Mary-Lynnette snorted and gave him a look.
The moon, a waning crescent, was rising above thecedars to the east. Mary-Lynnette said, "You want to take a walk?"
"Huh? Sure."
They walked and Mary-Lynnette thought. About how it would be to see the Ring Nebula with herown eyes, or the Veil Nebula without a filter. She could feel a longing for them so strong it was like a cable attached to her chest, pulling her upward.
Of course,that was nothing new. She'd felt it lots of times before, and usually she'd ended up buying another book on astronomy, another lens for her telescope. Anything to bring her closer to what she wanted.
But now I have a whole new temptation. Something bigger and scarier than I ever imagined.
What if I could be-more than I am now? Thesame . person, but with sharper senses? A Mary-Lynnette who couldreally belong to the night?
She'd already discovered she wasn't exactly whoshe'd always thought. She was more violent-she'd kicked Ash, hadn't she? Repeatedly. And she'd admired the purity of Kestrel's fierceness. She'd seenthe logic in the kill-or-be-killed philosophy. She'd dreamed about the joy of hunting.
What else did it take to be a Night Person?
"There's something I've been wanting to say toyou," Ash said.
"Hm."Do I want to encourage him or not?
But what Ash said was "Can we stop fightingnow?"
Mary-Lynnette thought and then said seriously, "Idon't know."
They kept walking. The cedars towered around them like pillars in a giant ruined temple. A dark temple.
And underneath, the stillness was so enormous that Mary-Lynnette felt as if she were walkingon the moon.
She bent and picked a ghostly wildflower that wasgrowing out of the moss. Death camas. Ash bent and picked up a broken-off yew branch lying at the footof a twisted tree. They didn't look at each other.
They walked, with a few feet of space between them.
"You know, somebody told me this would happen," Ash said, as if carrying on some entirely different conversation they'd been having.
"That you'd come to a hick town and chase agoat killer?"
"That someday I'd care for someone - and itwould hurt."
Mary-Lynnette kept onwalking. She didn't slow or speed up. It was only her heart that was suddenly beating hard-in a mixture of dismay and exhilara tion.
Oh, God-whatever was going to happen washappening.
"You're not like anybody I've ever met," Ash said.
"Well, that feeling is mutual."
Ash stripped some of the papery purple bark offhis yew stick. "And, you see, it's difficult becausewhat I've always thought about humans-what I wasalways raised to think ..."
"I know what you've always thought," MaryLynnette said sharply. Thinking,vermin.
"But," Ash continued doggedly, "the thing is andI know this is going to sound strange-that I seem to love you sort of desperately." He pulled more bark off his stick.
Mary-Lynnette didn't look at him. She couldn't speak.
"I've done everything I could to get rid of the feeling, but it just won't go. At first I thought if I left Briar Creek, I'd forget it. But now I know that wasinsane. Wherever I go, it's going with me. I can't kill it off. So I have to think of something else."
Mary-Lynnette suddenly felt extremely contrary. "Sorry," she said coldly. "But I'm afraid it's not very flattering to have somebody tell you that they love you against their will, against their reason, and even-"