Page 6 of Tell Me Why (Tell, The Detective #5)

She didn’t want Leonard to know that she’d seen him with Venus, so she slipped away from the corner, going back up the stairs and finding the fountain, then going to wait in the main room.

She couldn’t see when they came upstairs, but she hoped that Venus would come back to the main room again, even if Leonard didn’t, and she could ditch the fountain again and go see what he did next.

She was supposed to be out at the fountain out front.

She looked at the young fountain man, standing there with his vacant gaze, and she wondered if he was drugged.

Or if this was a performance, a command performance, and he was a perfectly normal human being, outside of these walls.

She wanted to talk to him.

To try to pry him out of whatever it was that was making him this way, to prove that there was a personality, a soul in there, but that wasn’t the objective.

She let him alone.

Venus went past, but she didn’t stop walking, headed toward the kitchens and the big salon where the bulk of the parties tended to locate themselves.

Tina rose and followed her, making it as far as the front door, but Venus didn’t stop, and Tina didn’t know where Leonard was, so she went out.

He was sitting on the fountain.

He must have gone out through the warehouse and around to here. Tina put on a bright face, glancing back at the fountain.

“I’m late,” she called. “Sorry. Got some of the orders mixed up.”

“No rush,” Leonard answered, watching the moon as it set. It was nearly a full moon; dawn would be here soon enough that Tina was already starting to get uncomfortable.

She pretended like it wasn’t true.

He looked back at her again as she got close, and she motioned to the young man.

“Brought your dinner,” she said, and he smiled wistfully, rising.

“Thank you,” he said. “Come sit. I’ll just be a minute.”

The feed was functional and quick, perhaps ninety seconds or two minutes, in all, then Leonard dismissed the young man and came to sit along the fountain from Tina where he could look her in the face.

“I’ve… been wanting to talk to you,” he said after a moment, and Tina frowned.

Was he going to try to recruit her against Tell?

She hadn’t thought of it until just this moment, but it was intriguing.

She could play the double agent, dig into the organization that Leonard was working with and report it back to Tell.

Or Leonard could be smart enough to tease her along and manage to keep all of the useful information away from her, give her bad information, and sneak away the secrets she accidentally gave him about Tell and what he was doing.

Was Tina clever enough to play a double agent?

She liked to think that she was, but she was also a terrible liar, and… that made the whole thing dubious.

“Okay,” she said, trying to remember Isabella or Tell, and just coming out as Tina. Eager, credulous, interested.

Well.

That was fine.

She didn’t have to remember how to be Tina in the midst of all of the rest of it.

That was an upside.

He frowned.

“Why are you with Oscar?” he asked.

Oh.

He was going to try to recruit her.

“Um,” she said, and he shook his head.

“I don’t…” he went on. “I’ve known a lot of young vampires. Been around them, anyway. They aren’t like you.”

“Well, no,” Tina said. “Oscar isn’t like most other vampires, either.”

Leonard shook his head.

“You haven’t been around a lot of vampires, have you?” he asked. She shrugged.

Hard to know what would actually be important, here, and what she should keep to herself, but at the same time, she wanted him to keep talking to her.

“Not a lot, I guess,” she said. “Oscar doesn’t hang out with a lot of them.”

“Have you met Ginger?” he asked, leaning in slightly.

“What do you know?” Tina asked, and he leaned in just a bit further, confidential.

“I know that he’s playing at being someone he isn’t,” he said. “He doesn’t remember me, but I remember him from a long time ago.”

Problem.

This was a problem.

She wasn’t sure what to do about it, but demonstrating panic was probably the worst of her options.

“He has his reasons,” she said. “And I don’t question them.”

“Oh, I don’t, either,” Leonard said. “Normal to change names from time to time. You know his old name?”

Tina licked her lips.

“I know he went by Tell before he went by Oscar,” she said. “What do you know about him?”

“Not a lot, I suppose,” he said, and Tina saw her opportunity to be engaged and interested without disclosing anything she shouldn’t.

“Are you as old as he is?” she asked, and Leonard shook his head.

“You aren’t supposed to ask that,” he said. “But everyone knows that Tell is one of the oldest. Not as old as some of the really important ones, like Ginger, but… no. I’m not that old.”

“How long have you known him?” Tina asked.

“This is the first time we’ve been introduced,” Leonard said. “But I’ve heard about him.”

“What do they say?” Tina asked, and he shook his head.

“That he’s not really one of us,” he said. “That he left.”

“He’s really not much of a joiner,” Tina said.

“Why are you with him?” Leonard asked. “Have you not had opportunity to leave?”

“I…” Tina started, prepared to give him an honest answer and reconsidering it.

“We could get you away from him safely,” Leonard said. “If Daryll said that you belonged here, now, Tell wouldn’t fight it.”

“I don’t know,” Tina said. “He’s nicer to me than you are.”

Leonard sniffed, then lifted a shoulder and turned his face away again.

“It’s posturing,” he said. “Most of them aren’t actually like that, if you find the outside of here. But even so, some of it has a purpose. Training a vampire is… there are methods to it, ones that we’ve used for a long time, and…” He shrugged. “I don’t think you’re getting the benefit of them.”

Her first reaction was defensiveness.

Of course Tell was training the way he was supposed to.

Her second was doubt.

Did he even want to train her? What was she missing out on? Would someone else have taught her how to kill vampires? What could kill one? How they got stronger? Would she be able to withstand the sun better, if someone else was teaching her?

Her third reaction was back to defensive.

If Tell didn’t think those things were worth teaching, she trusted him more than this entire lot combined.

And then, as she sat looking at her knees and trying to work through all of it, she saw the genius of his side of the move.

He was planting doubt.

First he verified that she was isolated, then he suggested that that isolation was keeping her away from key truths that she would have access to, if she left it.

Oh, it was brilliant, actually.

“I don’t know,” she said just tempting him to keep going. She wanted to know if he was doing it on purpose, and how far he was willing to push it.

If he was good at it, he would take her from one isolation to another.

But that was only if she was actually worth it.

And she was only worth it insofar as Tell was.

Having removed it from the immediacy of her own needs and her own insecurities, she felt like she was on much better footing, much calmer, though she tried not to let that show.

“With the right person guiding you…” He shrugged. “I’m not saying that you’re ever going to be special , but it gives you a lot better chance at surviving, at least.”

“Oscar has survived pretty well,” Tina said, the argument too obvious to not use it.

“But how many of his acolytes have?” Leonard asked. “You’re by yourself. You ever ask how well the vampires who came before you have done?”

Oh, that was… beautiful. To suggest that there were people she didn’t even know about who were dead because Tell was too inconsiderate to take care of her? It would put a rift between her and Tell, if she let that take seed and started asking questions, drive her to Leonard.

“I don’t know,” Tina said again, and Leonard nodded.

“It’s a big decision,” he said. “And you shouldn’t make it carelessly. You’d be leaving everything you know. But you may not have a lot of time. He could decide to send you away and then we couldn’t get you out, if you changed your mind.”

A time limit and a penalty for missing out.

If there was a textbook for this kind of thing, Leonard was using it.

“Why do you care?” Tina finally asked. “You don’t like me.”

He shook his head, reaching across to touch her knee.

“It’s all posturing,” he said. “It’s not like this, other places. Not completely. And I just… I think it’s wrong for you to keep falling further behind where you could be. You could be so much more.”

Oh, the backhand in the same statement as the promise.

She wasn’t special. It was right there , unsaid. But she could be more .

It gave her a sense of distance, almost an emotionlessness, pulling apart what he was saying to her, and yet there was still a small part of her listening, asking whether or not it might be true, whether she might just be so ignorant that she didn’t know better.

Even knowing that he was trying to use her, it was effective.

“You don’t care about me,” Tina said. “You just want to know about Oscar.”

Make him earn it.

He snorted.

“You’re hanging out with damaged goods,” he said.

“You’re smart. I think. Maybe smart enough.

He hears that you’re even thinking about leaving him, he’s going to wrap you up tight and send you off where you came from in hopes that you can’t do it on your own.

Whether or not you actually intend to consider it, I wouldn’t tell him.

He’s possessive. You’ve seen how he is with ideas .

What do you think he’s going to do when it comes to you , trying to make sure no one else ends up with you? ”

She nodded.

“I know.”

Hope. She had to give him hope . But he still needed to earn it. If he wanted her to leave Tell, betray him, he had to give her a good reason.

He lifted his chin.

“When you got here,” he said. “They kept you downstairs. Oscar let them do that.”

“He didn’t have any choice,” Tina said.