I bit my lip. “Does that mean I could end up like her?”
“Most people who have LLI do end up going crazy, Sofia… unless they have a high enough IQ to handle it. You’re one of those lucky few. Most people who are able to handle LLI have high levels of empathy and are often very perceptive of others. They’re creative geniuses.”
At that, I scoffed. I doubted that I was much of a creative genius. Yet, a lot of what Corrine said about LLI made sense to me. It was perhaps the reason why I was so attuned to all my senses. I’d just assumed that it was normal for everyone to be that way. Maybe I was wrong.
After sessions with Corrine, I spent the rest of the day with Ashley, Paige, and Rosa. We were often guarded by several alternating guards assigned to us, but we decided that we liked Sam and Kyle best. Those afternoons we mostly spent with them helping me finish my project in that extra room Derek provided me at the penthouse. We still talked about escaping, but we had no clue how to pull it off, it almost always ended up being a complete downer, so we tried to avoid talking about it unless ideas of how to pull it off came up. They asked me a lot about that night and what happened. I tried to avoid answering them as best I could. I didn’t want to scare them.
I managed to convince Derek to allow us to hold a memorial service in honor of Gwen and he eventually allowed it. It was the Blood Shade’s first ever memorial service held in honor of a human.
I spent most dinnertimes alone with Derek. Sometimes, he talked to me about what happened throughout his day after he left me with Corrine. Most of the time, he just listened. He kept me up to date on investigations regarding my attack and Gwen’s murder. I honestly think that he suspected Lucas; he just couldn’t admit it to himself. It only served to strengthen my resolve not to test his loyalties by telling him.
Over the course of several days, I was also finally able to teach him how to use his cell phone. He gave me one of my own and the first thing I tried to do with it was call Ben. Apparently, whatever was keeping the Blood Shade secret also blocked any calls and messages from leaving the island. Whoever Cora was, I both admired her and loathed her for making the Blood Shade so secure.
If not for Lucas, I could honestly say that I was beginning to like living at the Shade. It was harder for him to get to me, with all the security measures Derek had built up around me at night, but there were still moments when he caught me alone and off guard. Lucas never failed to remind me that a time would come when I’d be his. I never did have an encounter with him that didn’t leave me feeling shaken and violated. I hated Lucas with every fiber of my being. It seemed he knew that and the knowledge only made the whole thing more amusing to him.
Ultimately, it was Derek that made life at the Blood Shade worth living. I began to treasure nights spent with him. We spent most of it with me trying to introduce a new piece of technology to him, one at a time. Introducing him to the camera was pretty fun. We spent the night snapping pictures of each other and mostly just goofing around. It was the first time I could remember hearing him laugh.
Life at the Shade almost took on a lethargic pace and the life I lived before being taken there felt like it belonged to a completely different lifetime. I was mostly worried about the girls and how they were coping but they seemed to have accepted that this was their life for now. Occasions where we got to leave the penthouse and see other parts of the Shade were ones that allowed us to see how other vampires treated their human slaves. It was evident that it was to our advantage that we got to be under Derek’s care.
There were still nights when Derek would come back home after feeding on another gift from Vivienne or from some other vampire paying him homage. I tried not to talk about it. I figured the less I knew, the better – for both him and me.
The time came when we finally finished what I liked to call the Sun Room. It took longer than I thought to finish, but I was more than excited to show it to Derek.
I could never forget the look on his face when I pulled him into the room and flicked the lights open.
“You told me that you haven’t seen sunlight in five hundred years,” I explained. “I could swear from the look on your eyes that you missed it.”
“So you did this?” He looked around the room, a mural of a beautiful sandy beach painted on one wall, large mirrors on the other walls to make the room brighter and reflect the light projected by the recessed LED lights on the ceiling and the walls. At the center of the ceiling was a sun roof, mostly composed of LED lights over a glass window, creating the illusion of sunlight streaming through the room.
We chose outdoor furniture that would create the feel of being outdoors.