Moonshifted(42)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The closet doors were still closed when I woke up. I lay in bed for a moment and contemplated my next move. Luckily for me, my underwear lived in my dresser, and I could just wear some things that weren’t that dirty on the floor. I didn’t want to open my closet up. I mean, what if I went in there for a shirt, and somehow the lightproof fabric fell off my window, and she dusted from the daylight, leaving a dust stain right there in my closet. How would I get my deposit back then?
I snorted, rolled upright, and hunted down some clothes.
Gideon was still in the living room, sitting on my couch. The Internet radio had paused out long ago. I glanced at my oven’s clock—it was four. I’d only been asleep for six hours. Not enough to feel rested after the night I’d had. But it was still daylight out. Safer than nighttime, for sure.
“Okay. I’m gonna go get us some food.” I took my laptop back from Gideon and woke it up to check my bank account. My paycheck had autodeposited the evening before—somehow I never believed it was going to until I’d seen that it had. I breathed a little easier. I could make it for another two weeks just fine—rent wasn’t due till the fifteenth. But I couldn’t feed Gideon eggs forever. He’d get scurvy. “Do you like Chinese?” There was a take-out joint nearby I could hit. And it was all cut up into small bites already. He shrugged.
“Is that a no on Chinese?”
He shrugged again.
“We’re going to have to get better on nodding or shaking our heads if we want this thing to work. Wait—egg rolls?” A nod. “Mushroom chicken.” A large shake no. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Lemon chicken?” Another nod.
We played twenty questions till I had our menu figured out, and discovered that Gideon did not like mushrooms, kung pao, or hot-and-sour soup. Which was just as well because he wouldn’t be able to drink it. Which gave me a thought.
I found the old mister I’d used with Minnie back in the day, to dissuade her from clawing up my couch, back when my couch had been worth attempting to save. I cleaned out the spigot, filled the bottle, and returned.
“Open up your mouth. I’m gonna mist you like a houseplant.”
I think more water went on him than in his mouth. But he could almost hold it, and spray himself with it, if he smashed both his hands together, Hulk-style. It would keep him busy for a while. That would be the biggest damage he’d face, as time went on. Not being able to interact with the outside world could make him go insane. I’d seen it before, with long-term patients. They were mostly druggies before they got hurt, so they hadn’t had much of a support structure to fall back on afterward. And Gideon didn’t really either—just Anna, his now-a-vampire girlfriend, and me. I could barely manage owning a cat. Caring for an entire other human being long-term was out of the question.
I looked around my small living room, made smaller by the addition of Gideon. I spotted the boxes that were left here for me to deal with after Christmas morning. There was that ugly belt in one of them, the one Peter’d given me, which I had no chance in hell of ever wearing. I could return that, and maybe at least break even on the Chinese food.
“Okay, Gideon, I’m taking off now,” I said while picking up the boxes to take out to the trash and/or return. Gideon nod-grunted from his spot on my couch.
* * *
Winter’s test strip was still in my purse. I should have put it in a plastic bag, because ew, biohazards, but the blood was dry now, and I doubted my purse was going to become a were-purse come the full moon. I didn’t want to touch it anyhow—I wouldn’t until it came time to hand it over to Dren.
Daylight, such as it was, filtered through the clouds above. The constant gray of living in Port Cavell—at least during winter, and not in summer when all it was was too warm—wore on me. Each winter day, numbingly cold, wet, miserable, just like the last. No wonder vampires liked it here so much. I parked my car in a mostly vacant lot. Now that Christmas was over, all the weather-bleached decorations looked like grim little flags, flapping surrender in the wind.
I hit the Chinese food place first. I stood in line, ordered my takeout, and my phone rang. Jake. Normally I wouldn’t pick up and be that person who talked in public, but with him I’d been trained to feel I was one phone call away from an emergency at all times.
“Hey, Sissy.”
“Hey yourself.” I stepped back and looked sheepish as I handed the Asian woman my credit card. “What are you up to tonight?”
“About five eleven,” he said, and I snorted.
The lady at the counter handed my card back, and I tipped her well, since I knew I was being rude. “What’s going on?” I slid the food off the counter and made my way to the door.