Page 7 of Tell Me Why (Tell, The Detective #5)

“I come and go through the front door,” he said. “You’re too young, but in a hundred years… I could see you by my side, going through doors just like that.”

She blinked.

Was that the best he could do?

In a century , she might be welcome through the front door?

With him ?

It was like he had no idea how far down the food chain he was.

Or he thought that she saw him as above Tell.

She served him.

Served all of them.

Stayed invisible, as far as they were concerned.

“These guys,” he said. “They treat you little better than a fountain. If you want them to treat you like an equal, you’ve got to be with someone who demands that kind of thing.”

“Oh,” Tina said, and he nodded, touching her knee again.

“Tell is clever, and he’s old, and he knows a lot , but he’s not doing right by you.

You might think that you’ve picked the wrong vampire, but…

” He shook his head. “Even those of us who are a lot younger and maybe even less powerful, we’ve got a lot more invested in bringing up an acolyte who’s going to be worth having around in twenty-five and fifty and a hundred years.

You’ve got to think on those time-scales, and you’ve got to think about your own interests. ”

Tina frowned and nodded, and he stood, offering her a hand back to her feet. He leaned in to kiss her cheek, a more familiar farewell, but nothing of implied romance, then he nodded.

“I’m leaving. Tonight. Have an answer for me tonight. If you wait any longer than that, it might be too late.”

“I’ll think about it,” Tina answered, and he nodded, then lifted a hand and started back toward the entrance of the warehouse, around the hillside, where a car would be waiting for him.

Probably his car.

He was here as a free man, near as mattered.

Puzzled, Tina went in to find Tell.

“You ready to get out of here?” he asked, and Tina nodded, looking over at the technicians. She didn’t know if they slept here or elsewhere. There was a lot that went on here in the lab that she didn’t know about.

“Good,” Tell said, indicating the door. “So am I.”

“For a minute, I thought he was going to hit on me,” Tina said, eying her coffin as they sat in her room at the apartment.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Tell said. “He thinks you’re too far below him.”

“He swore that they aren’t all like that, when they aren’t at Daryll’s house,” she said. “That they’re just posturing for each other’s benefit. He was implying that he could actually be nice to me, under other circumstances.”

“Possible,” Tell said. “But I doubt it. He’s still too invested in social climbing to let himself get associated with you as anything but an underling.”

“Ginger tried to kill me, and she never treated me this badly,” Tina said, and Tell laughed.

“It’s a funny thing about mountains,” Tell said.

“Some people get to the top and will fight to the death to keep anyone else from making it, and some people get there and wonder why in the world they ever cared.” He looked sideways at her.

“Ginger found that she didn’t like anyone else telling her what she ought to want, and she’s never been under anyone’s control, ever since. ”

There was something very liberating and very true about that, actually.

“He told me not to tell you,” she went on. “And that if I want, he’ll get me away from you.”

“I need to think on it,” Tell said. “Venus, though.”

Tina nodded, and he sighed, looking at the door, just working things through.

“It sorts them,” he said. “Almost completely. I’ve got a few more questions, then I need to work my way back upstream. I need to know who he’s working for and where they are. I’m close. You did well.”

“How much of it was a pure lie?” Tina asked.

“Mmm?” Tell replied, stopping mid-shift as he’d been headed out of her room.

“That you’re not teaching me the things they would, and that I’m missing out on important knowledge that would make me…” She struggled, trying to remember what word he had used, what he had actually promised her. “Better?”

He snorted.

“I’m certainly not teaching you the things that they would,” he said.

“Would you like to learn how to drink tea so that no one considers you out of place and how to walk so that you don’t get in trouble for being uppity and who hates who and who has a secret alliance and how to make a weapon out of yourself for someone else to send off to war? ”

“Well…” Tina said with humor. “When you put it that way.”

Tell sighed, then nodded.

“I didn’t ever intend to get you involved with this side of things,” he said.

“I was brought up very much as an individual. You can see it in Hunter and Ginger as well, though Ginger dances all over any line she’s ever found.

There’s another way of it, very institutional, almost industrial before its time, in making…

a progeny into an army. The only thing that has kept the human world from crumbling before such a thing is how little we like each other, in large groups.

We are ultimately apex predators, and solitary ones at that.

It takes a breaking to force someone into service for you, and an unattainable, very long- term goal.

You will never be suited for that world.

If that would be your goal… perhaps you should go with him. ”

“Don’t insult me,” Tina said, and he grinned, then rose. She put a hand up. “He knows who you are. Asked about Ginger. Says he met you before.”

Tell frowned, then nodded.

“Rest well, as you can,” he said. “I’ll have a game plan for dealing with him by tonight.”

Tina waited for him to close the door behind him, then tipped into her coffin.

It wasn’t ragdoll, the way it might have been another time, but it was still with a sense of near-powerless exhaustion that she shifted into a position that wasn’t going to leave her in pain all night the next night, then she pulled the lid down on top of herself, breathing and waiting for complete immobility.

It felt closed-in, for all of the benefit and the cost of it, and she didn’t like it, but it was much better than anything else she’d done since they’d gotten off the train.

She trusted Tell.

She really and truly did.

He wasn’t manipulating her or working against her or even taking his own interests over hers.

But it didn’t mean that he was incapable of making a mistake.

He could think that ignorance was best for her, and unintentionally keep things from her that she absolutely needed to know.

On the other hand.

Looking at Leonard, looking at the rest of the vampires at Daryll’s home, Tina could appreciate that he had reasons for wanting her to be ignorant that she would have never anticipated.

Things that did make her less useful, but kept her from being a target for men who would use her for her capabilities and consider her expendable for her inexperience.

She’d had no inkling, in London. Hunter’s life there had seemed as uninhibited and chaotic as anywhere else, and that had been all of it.

This was… new. Something she still hadn’t seen coming, even after being imprisoned in a cell where they dismantled vampires to feed a drug habit, even after spending weeks trying to root out the gang-like players in the trade.

How often had she wished that Tell would tell her more about his past, give her better glimpses of his life story? There were so many funny anecdotes that he and Hunter hinted at, it felt like it was a club she couldn’t quite get into.

This might be the why to that.

Whether or not they’d been having fun at the time, maybe the situation of it was just so grim and so complicated that it would never make sense without seeing all of it.

And maybe he’d never intended for her to be here, where she had the beginning of comprehension, because it did her no good, and it made her… doubt that vampirism was something she could live with without becoming a monster.

She still didn’t like her ignorance.

Still fought it.

But she had a queasy instinct that maybe he was right, and maybe she didn’t trust him enough.

Dusk.

Tell was waiting for her in the kitchen, drinking coffee and watching out the window.

“I don’t think that you can hold Leonard off,” he said as she went to get herself a cup of coffee.

“Not for any appreciable period of time. If he thinks that you’re coordinating with me, or even just ignorantly telling me what’s going on, he’s going to see me as a threat and disappear or try to make me disappear.

And I’m too close to what I need for us to take a risk like that.

He wants an answer, and if you act indecisive, he’s going to get suspicious. ”

“I think you’re right,” Tina said, coming to sit with him. He smiled into his mug and nodded.

“I’d worried that you would think it was a condemnation of your skills,” he said, and Tina shrugged.

“Do you see a binder or a post-it note anywhere?” she asked. “This isn’t one of my strengths. Even if it were, though, he wants me to leave with him.”

“I’d considered having you turncoat, but convince him to keep you around with Daryll and Crissy to feed him information about what I’m up to, but the way he spoke to you, I don’t think he’s even beginning to consider giving you that much autonomy or significance.”

“He did everything in his power to avoid calling me special,” Tina said, and Tell snorted.

“Bother you?” he asked, and she shrugged exaggeratedly.

“I like to think that my ego isn’t that fragile,” she said, and he laughed.

“No, I wouldn’t want to try that on you, knowing you,” he said, and Tina smiled, looking away.

“See, that’s the opposite of what he was trying to do,” she said, shaking her head and looking at him again. “You and Hunter, even Ginger, you consistently treat me like I’m special . I can’t figure out if it’s… real?… or if it’s kindness … or if it’s…”