Chapter 9
Text message transcript: Joni Chaudhari and Tess Rosenbloom
Joni [7:23 AM]: TESS TESS OH MY GOD TESS
Joni [7:24 AM]: Okay so I understand that you’re probably not getting these because you’re on an island in another dimension and whatnot But JUST IN CASE here is the deal:
Joni [7:26 AM]: I went to your hotel last night to try to talk to you and INSTEAD I met OCTAVIA FREAKING YOO and we HUNG OUT and she told me EVERYTHING well maybe not like everything everything, she was reallll glib and did not care for my questions, but I feel like I have a pretty basic understanding of what’s going on.
Joni [7:28 AM]: ps she’s ridiculously hot??? Idk what I expected but truly wow
Joni [7:29 AM]: Anyway, I’m just leaving the hotel now, I’m gonna go home and crash and then meet back up with Octavia tonight. I want to take her to Central Park to check out the spot where she crossed over, see if anything weird happens!! Maybe we’ll be able to communicate with you somehow??
Joni [7:31 AM]: (And for the record, she’s worried you might be dead. Well, not worried, exactly, but she lists it as a thing that could possibly be true. But I don’t. Because I can’t. Please don’t be dead, okay? I need you to come home so I can yell at you about my birthday.)
“What in the name of god is all of this?” Octavia guffawed.
She wasn’t surprised to see Joni wearing sweatpants, a plain tee, and rubber Birkenstocks—in Octavia’s experience, most humans lacked even a modicum of shame. But the girl was carrying a huge backpack plus a couple of shopping bags, and Octavia couldn’t begin to fathom why.
“I had an idea about how to find the portal that got you off the Isle!” Joni said brightly.
“You understand I spent years researching that very topic to no avail?” Octavia sniffed. “I’ve delved further into interdimensional portal theory than you could possibly grasp. Magical history, physics, geography—”
“Totally—it says so in Blood Feud.” Joni nodded. “But you were kind of flying blind, right? I mean, all that research was theoretical, you didn’t have any hard data points to work with. But now we do—we know where you crossed over. So I was thinking maybe we could spend the night at Bethesda Fountain? See if the portal that brought you here is some kind of nightly recurring thing?”
Octavia peered at Joni—she hadn’t imagined the girl was capable of this much rational thought.
“Fine,” Octavia conceded. “I suppose that’s not a terrible idea.”
“Yeah? Okay great! And I brought provisions!” Joni nodded toward her shopping bags. “I have snacks, games, an iPad loaded with vampire movies—sorry, is that too on the nose?”
“And the backpack?” Octavia asked, already weary.
“Pillows and sleeping bags! I know you’re nocturnal, but I’m not, and anyway it’s always nice to be cozy.”
“You think I’m getting into a sleeping bag in a public park,” Octavia deadpanned. “This dress is MINJUKIM.”
“Your body, your choice.” Joni shrugged. “Should we head to the subway?”
“Subway?” Octavia’s shoulders sank. “Surely you have one of those apps to order a black car?”
“Are you serious? An Uber Black to Manhattan would be a hundred bucks at least. The subway costs three dollars and will probably be faster.”
“But…you attend an Ivy League school. I assumed you’d have…”
“Money?” Joni snorted. “Dude, I’m a grad student. I bet your dress costs more than I make in a month. Come on, we’re burning moonlight. Let’s go!”
Octavia sighed heavily. Would the indignities of her current situation never cease?
They took the L to the C to the Upper West Side, and the whole way Joni prattled about portals and Blood Feud and how cool it would be to find a secret route to the Isle.
“Of course, there’s always a chance the portal correlates with the cycle of the moon or the placement of Cassiopeia in the sky or whatever. I bet we can figure out if there were any big planetary movements the night you crossed over on the Chani app.”
“The what?”
“Omg, Chani is my favorite astrologer!” Joni exclaimed. “Hey, when’s your birthday?”
“June fifth,” Octavia answered dryly.
“Shut the fuck up, twins born in Gemini?” Joni squealed. “No wonder you love fashion. And gossip. And Callum’s personality turns on a dime, this all makes so much sense.”
“I beg you to stop talking,” Octavia muttered, but she knew there was very little chance of Joni’s compliance.
It was fully dark by the time they walked out of the subway at 72nd and Central Park West, across from the Dakota and Strawberry Fields. Octavia hadn’t been to this neighborhood since she’d come back from the Isle, and she felt a distinct unease as soon as she and Joni stepped into the warm night air. This was the area where she’d spent most of her time on the Isle, west of the forest where she and Callum and the rest of Nantale’s clan protected the territory. Being here in Manhattan, the grid of the streets the same but the contents completely different, the endless mundanity of the buildings and cabs and pedestrians, filled Octavia with the strangest sense of déjà vu. It was the same, but it wasn’t. The Isle was real, but it wasn’t.
“Did you spend a lot of time in the forest?” Joni asked. “On the Isle, I mean.”
“Not really. Callum did—he was always spoiling for a fight. But I tried to avoid the violence as best I could. I didn’t want to die in that place.”
“The books made it seem like you hated it there.”
“That’s an understatement,” Octavia said bitterly. “Years feeling like a rat trapped in a cage, researching any possible way to get out of there, but nothing worked. I got so desperate, it started to feel…”
She trailed off.
“Feel like what?” Joni prompted.
“It doesn’t matter,” Octavia clipped. “Let’s just get to the fountain.”
It was a beautiful night, warm but not too humid, with a bit of a breeze; it only took about ten minutes to get to Bethesda Fountain. Octavia felt tense as the hulking angel statue came into view. She was flooded with the memory of arriving here, the confusion, gasping for air, not understanding what had happened, the realization she’d lost her powers, that she was totally alone—
“Hey, are you okay?” Joni asked. Octavia hadn’t even realized she’d stopped walking. Joni was so earnest, eyes brimming with concern, so overloaded with her stupid backpack and grocery bags. It was all a little touching, really. Octavia didn’t care for it.
“I’m fine,” Octavia said smoothly. “Where did you want to sit?”
“Oh, over on one of these benches?” Joni led Octavia to an L-shaped seating area carved into a corner of stone. She took the sleeping bags out of her backpack and started to lay them out on the two benches—
“I told you, I am not getting inside one of those,” Octavia insisted.
“It’s just for a little cushion! But if you’d rather be uncomfortable, suit yourself.”
“Oh, I see.” Octavia walked over to the bench and gave the sleeping bag a little pat, like she was testing a mattress in a store. “That’s very thoughtful.”
She sat, grateful not just for the softness, but also to have something between her lovely new clothes and whatever grime existed on that bench. Joni pulled a thermos out of one of her grocery bags, along with a couple of plastic cups.
“Do you want some wine?” she asked.
“I don’t know. How much did it cost?”
“Man, you really are a snob.” Joni smiled good-naturedly. “Not much, but it’s really good—it’s a fizzy red from Languedoc, kinda fresh, kinda messy? Try it.”
Joni handed Octavia her wine; they clinked cups and took a sip. The wine was lovely—juicy and tart on Octavia’s palate, bright and herbaceous with an undercurrent of something darker. It tasted like being in France, moody and alive.
“Good, right?” Joni was grinning at Octavia’s obviously positive reaction.
“It is.” Octavia rewarded the girl with the barest hint of a smile. “I like it quite a bit.”
“I love a sparkling red, how they get all frothy in the glass, kinda makes me feel like I’m a vampire.” Joni laughed. “Not that it’s the same as blood, obviously—oh shit, are you hungry? Should I have like gone to a blood bank or a butcher or something? I’m not really familiar with vampire etiquette.”
“I’m perfectly capable of securing my own meals, thanks.” Octavia gave Joni a pointed look and took another sip of wine.
“Oh. Does that mean, like—are you expecting that we, I mean—”
Octavia looked at the poor bumbling girl and repressed a smile. She considered toying with her a bit, letting Joni think Octavia really did plan on drinking her blood. And come to think of it, she was so young, so eager, she’d probably let Octavia feed, and it would probably be delicious…
“No.” Octavia cleared her throat. “You’re helping me, and I don’t feed on people I plan to see again.”
“Really?” Joni looked surprised. “I thought that feeding was like…intimate?”
“It can be.” Octavia shrugged. “Some vampires choose to have close relationships with humans, and feeding can factor in to that. But I’ve never seen the point. I never stay in one place long, humans age and I don’t, they have needs I can’t meet and vice versa.”
“Couldn’t you make a human into a vampire though? Like not even for romantic reasons, just if you liked them and cared about them and wanted them to stick around?”
“No,” Octavia said flatly. “Callum and I don’t sire new vampires.”
“I’m sorry.” Joni sat back against the bench. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t.” Octavia forced her tone into something lighter. “It’s just that we didn’t have a choice in becoming vampires, and our sire was…”
“Konstantin.” Joni finished the sentence.
“Those damn books,” Octavia muttered. “You probably know more about my life than I do.”
“No, come on,” Joni demurred. “First of all, the books only cover six years on the Isle, and you’ve been alive for more than a century. And second, they’re just one author’s opinion about you, not the totality of who you are.”
“One author whose work you’ve read over, and over, and over—”
“They’re really good books!” Joni gave an exasperated little sigh, and Octavia felt a twist of pleasure at having riled her.
“Who’s your favorite character?” Octavia asked with genuine curiosity. “Don’t say me, I’ll know you’re lying.”
Joni flushed red. “Ugh, it is you.”
“No, it’s not,” Octavia needled.
“It is!” Joni protested. “I even wrote a damn paper about you. It helped form the foundation of my dissertation about feminine qualities in hero archetypes.”
“Really?” Octavia raised an eyebrow. “What did you write about me?”
Joni looked excited, but also a little embarrassed. “How you have these very feminine markers, namely the focus on fashion. But how that doesn’t deter from your strength at all? Like just because you wanted to wear an ostrich feather minidress didn’t mean you wouldn’t kick the shit out of some guy while wearing it, you know?”
Octavia smiled—she remembered the dress in question. She’d glamoured it for herself on the Isle, inspired by a Saint Laurent mini with a feathered bust and a scalloped hem that she’d once bought in Milan. She’d been stuck wearing it when Callum got them into a drunken brawl with a few of Felix’s henchmen—as she recalled, she’d kicked her stiletto heel directly through one of their eyes.
Octavia looked at Joni with interest. “What else did you write?”
“I thought it was interesting that the books frame you as a villain.” Joni looked a little uncomfortable. “And I wrote about how often that happens with strong feminine characters, dating back to Medusa, and even farther than that. The idea that you would take such pleasure in your femininity, and that even the way you dress is for you, and not to please men—”
“Obviously not, who cares what men think?” Octavia interjected.
“Exactly!” Joni grinned. “The whole idea of a ‘hero’ is so complicated, because heroes put other people before themselves, which is actually a very feminine quality. But heroes are usually men who wouldn’t be able to pull off their heroic feats if it weren’t for the support and sacrifices of women. And when a woman prioritizes herself in that way, she tends to be portrayed as a villain. So if you’re a woman reader who’s interested in strong female characters…”
“You tend to get stuck rooting for the villain,” Octavia completed the thought.
“Not just rooting for.” Joni leaned in. “But like, identifying with. If you don’t want to organize your whole life around ending up with some man, rooting for the villain is the only way you can aspire to have that much power, that kind of independence.”
Octavia swallowed a long drink of wine, letting the fine bubbles prickle on her tongue and down her throat. “Then you must find the real me terribly disappointing.”
“What?!” Joni almost spilled her wine. “Why?”
“Because here I am, utterly powerless without my brother.” She drained her wine and set down the empty cup. “Ironic, no?”
“You’re not powerless.” Joni’s voice was low, but her tone was firm. “You showed up in the middle of New York City with no money, no friends, no ability to be outside during daylight, and within two weeks you’re living in a posh hotel suite with a wardrobe Carrie Bradshaw would kill for? You’re a fucking force of nature.”
Octavia gazed at Joni. She was so passionate, so sweetly intense, with her wide eyes and thick dark hair. It would be stupid to kiss her. As much as Octavia hated to admit it, she needed Joni’s help, and there was nothing more self-destructive than getting romantically involved with someone you actually needed. Still, Octavia was tempted by the idea of pulling her close, kissing just the right spot between her jaw and her ear that would make her writhe in Octavia’s arms, taking her back to the hotel—
“Oh shit,” Joni muttered. She was looking at an email on her phone.
Octavia cleared her throat. “Did something happen?”
“No, our department chair just called a meeting for tomorrow morning. I would skip it, except I’m applying for this job, and everyone on the hiring committee will be there. I don’t want to look irresponsible, you know? My interview is next week.”
A job interview. Octavia smiled. How totally pedestrian. How utterly human.
“And you’re worried that if you stay out here with me all night, you’ll be exhausted and they’ll notice?”
“Oh.” Joni flushed. “Yeah, kinda?”
Octavia waved her hand. “You should absolutely go home and get some sleep. I’m sure a police officer or two will come through after the park closes, they’ll be easier to handle if you’re not here.”
“I’m so stupid, I didn’t even think of that.” Joni looked worried. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. I’ll just hide if I feel like it, or have a little snack if I don’t.” She grinned. “I’m a force of nature, remember?”
“Okay, but I’m leaving you one of the sleeping bags. And the wine. Ooh, and the iPad! You can watch Buffy!”
“I don’t want to watch Buffy—” Octavia started, but Joni was having none of it.
“You absolutely do. Oh my god, start with ‘The Wish,’ you’re going to love Vampire Willow. And Cordelia! And Anya! And obviously if you see the portal, don’t worry about the stuff, and I’ll come to the hotel tomorrow to hear what happened?? Okay, have fun, bye!!”
Octavia watched as Joni scurried off. She poured herself some more wine and opened the iPad—if she was going to sit here alone all night staring at a fountain, she supposed she might as well have some entertainment to pass the time. As the hard-rock theme song of Buffy the Vampire Slayer emanated from the device’s tinny speakers, Octavia made a promise to herself that she would go out and find a woman to fuck tomorrow night. It had been too long—she must be terribly hard up if she was fantasizing about Joni.