The Host(16)

She watched me carefully, reacting with a slight frown when I slumped in my seat.

“Melanie still grieves for Jared,” she stated.

I felt my head nod without willing the action.

“You grieve for him.”

I closed my eyes.

“The dreams continue?”

“Every night,” I mumbled.

“Tell me about them.” Her voice was soft, persuasive.

“I don’t like to think about them.”

“I know. Try. It might help.”

“How? How will it help to tell you that I see his face every time I close my eyes? That I wake up and cry when he’s not there? That the memories are so strong I can’t separate hers from mine anymore?”

I stopped abruptly, clenching my teeth.

Kathy pulled a white handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to me. When I didn’t move, she got up, walked over to me, and dropped it in my lap. She sat on the arm of my chair and waited.

I held on stubbornly for half a minute. Then I snatched the little square of fabric angrily and wiped my eyes.

“I hate this.”

“Everybody cries their first year. These emotions are so impossible. We’re all children for a bit, whether we intended that or not. I used to tear up every time I saw a pretty sunset. The taste of peanut butter would sometimes do that, too.” She patted the top of my head, then trailed her fingers gently through the lock of hair I always kept tucked behind my ear.

“Such pretty, shiny hair,” she noted. “Every time I see you it’s shorter. Why do you keep it that way?”

Already in tears, I didn’t feel like I had much dignity to defend. Why claim that it was easier to care for, as I usually did? After all, I’d come here to confess and get help—I might as well get on with it.

“It bothers her. She likes it long.”

She didn’t gasp, as I half expected she would. Kathy was good at her job. Her response was only a second late and only slightly incoherent.

“You… She… she’s still that… present?”

The appalling truth tumbled from my lips. “When she wants to be. Our history bores her. She’s more dormant while I’m working. But she’s there, all right. Sometimes I feel like she’s as present as I am.” My voice was only a whisper by the time I was done.

“Wanderer!” Kathy exclaimed, horrified. “Why didn’t you tell me it was that bad? How long has it been this way?”

“It’s getting worse. Instead of fading, she seems to be growing stronger. It’s not as bad as the Healer’s case yet—we spoke of Kevin, do you remember? She hasn’t taken control. She won’t. I won’t let that happen!” The pitch of my voice climbed.

“Of course it won’t happen,” she assured me. “Of course not. But if you’re this… unhappy, you should have told me earlier. We need to get you to a Healer.”

It took me a moment, emotionally distracted as I was, to understand.

“A Healer? You want me to skip?”

“No one would think badly of that choice, Wanderer. It’s understood, if a host is defective —”

“Defective? She’s not defective. I am. I’m too weak for this world!” My head fell into my hands as the humiliation washed through me. Fresh tears welled in my eyes.

Kathy’s arm settled around my shoulders. I was struggling so hard to control my wild emotions that I didn’t pull away, though it felt too intimate.

It bothered Melanie, too. She didn’t like being hugged by an alien.

Of course Melanie was very much present in this moment, and unbearably smug as I finally admitted to her power. She was gleeful. It was always harder to control her when I was distracted by emotion like this.

I tried to calm myself so that I would be able to put her in her place.

You are in my place. Her thought was faint but intelligible. How much worse it was getting; she was strong enough to speak to me now whenever she wished. It was as bad as that first minute of consciousness.

Go away. It’s my place now.

Never.

“Wanderer, dear, no. You are not weak, and we both know that.”

“Hmph.”

“Listen to me. You are strong. Surprisingly strong. Our kind are always so much the same, but you exceed the norm. You’re so brave it astonishes me. Your past lives are a testament to that.”

My past lives maybe, but this life? Where was my strength now?

“But humans are more individualized than we are,” Kathy went on. “There’s quite a range, and some of them are much stronger than others. I truly believe that if anyone else had been put into this host, Melanie would have crushed them in days. Maybe it’s an accident, maybe it’s fate, but it appears to me that the strongest of our kind is being hosted by the strongest of theirs.”