Page 38 of Will It Hurt?

“I hope it’s to your liking,” the handmaid said, expecting a compliment.

The tasteless muck slid into my throat like watered-down regret.

“It’s nice.”

Nice. What a miserable little word.

But it seemed to satisfy the handmaid who walked away to attend to others in the nest.

Willa studied me curiously.

“It isn’t good news, then, whatever brought you up north?”

“No,” I said with a sigh.

Willa slid a bookmark between two pages and let the thick leatherbound tome fall shut.

“I’m happy to listen, Jinn, if you’d like to share.”

Perhaps it was the familiarity of her voice, or the way she gazed at me, but something unfurled in my chest.

The first few words out of my mouth were stiff, broken like an engine trying to turn over for the first time in years.

I wasn’t good at this. Talking. I didn’t make a habit of it.

But Willa’s eyes were kind, and I could imagine myself as the sixteen-year-old who watched her take patrons upstairs with curiosity.

A hundred and fifty years stood between now and that memory, yet, in a strange, twisted way, it felt like nothing at all.

She didn’t say anything—that was what made it worse. The silence. She didn’t push, didn’t fill the air with useless words to make it easier on me. She simply sat in her chair, looking at me like we had all the time in the world—which, I supposed, we did.

“It’s about Belle.” The words sounded harsh, grating. “She chose to be neutralized.”

To her benefit, Willa didn’t seem as surprised as I thought she would be.

“I see,” she said, her voice somber. “Tell me what happened.”

And I did. From the incident with the boy to Belle’s disappearance from the nest, I told her every single detail. She listened quietly without interrupting me, although I could see her taking mental notes as I spoke.

“You believe she made a mistake?” she asked, crossing her legs and arranging her black skirts.

“I think she overreacted, yes.”

“That must be hard for you to deal with. When you turn someone, you feel responsible for them. You want them to thrive.” She paused, her brows furrowing. “And Belle is the only person you ever turned. Right?”

Something tightened in my throat. “Right.”

“You and I have something in common there,” she muttered under her breath. “So then why did you turn her? I know how you feel about it. We used to spend enough time together as fledglings for you to make that abundantly clear.”

“It’s about consent.” I tried to ease the tension in my neck and failed. “Many of us who are turned cannot provide consent to what becomes an endlessly painful existence.”

Willa had heard my opinion before. “While that’s true, there are also people who voluntarily choose this life.”

“Belle didn’t.” My eye sockets began to hurt. “She was near death when I turned her. Maybe just a minute more and she would have died. ”

“And why did you turn her? Did you know her before?”

“Only in passing,” I admitted, fixing my gaze on the crumbling cathedral below.

A notch of old stone had fallen off the awning above the main doors.

“It was happenstance. In a twisted way, I’d always considered coming across Belle’s nearly lifeless body a blessing.

I’d been flailing, you see, trying to understand why I was put in this world. ”

My fingers rose to the necklace that dangled between my breasts. The edges of the cross were familiar under the pad of my thumb.

“Immortality isn’t for everyone, and for a long time, I thought, perhaps, it wasn’t for me. When I was newly turned, I was overjoyed. I traveled, I explored, and I did everything I couldn’t afford to do on a meager human wage. But all the allure fades quickly. When did it fade for you?”

Willa’s smile held anything but joy. “About fifty years after I was reborn.”

“When the last of your living family passed?”

She nodded once. It was a common enough phenomenon among the undead.

“I didn’t have anyone to mourn,” I said with a shrug. “My parents passed years before I was turned, and I’d distanced myself from any friends I’d made. A century flew by before I felt the loneliness creep in.”

Willa gestured for me to continue.

“I first met Belle when she was five. Her mother ran a BnB two streets over and she’d often take Belle out to the playground at odd hours whenever she could get a break.

I thought it was strange to see a child playing on the monkey bars past sundown with no other children for company, but I didn’t dwell on it.

I remembered thinking her mother should tie up her hair so it didn’t get caught in the swings, but far be it for me to parent a parent. ”

Willa nodded.

“The park was my refuge—especially when I needed to get away from the nest with its politics and games. I often brought a book to a bench past sundown and read into the night. And somehow, over several years, I’d watched Belle grow from a girl who squealed as she flew on the swings to one that cursed like a sailor as she sucked on cigarettes with grotty looking friends on the merry-go-round. And then…”

“And then what?” Willa asked.

“She fell into drugs. It was common back then in the early 80s. I’d watch her red ponytail bob along the park as she went in search of her dealer.

Her face grew more and more gaunt by the day.

I was never an active participant in her life, merely an onlooker, but it’s strange how fragments of someone’s life can come together to form a large puzzle.

Like one of those movie trailers. If anyone saw a trailer of Belle’s life before she was turned, they would easily predict how it ended. ”

“She overdosed,” Willa concluded.

“Right there on the playground.” I let my necklace drop back to its assigned place. “She was with a friend at first, but when he couldn’t wake her up, he just left her there with her legs dangling off the slide.”

I shrugged. “I remembered thinking what a waste it would be if she’d died.

She didn’t deserve that end, even if she had done it to herself.

Humans have potential, and this one had gone down the wrong path.

Death would be a permanent punishment. And then I thought about the little girl, the one who would squeal on the swings, and I just…

Couldn’t. I couldn’t leave her there, even though it was close to sunrise. ”

“When I first approached her, I could barely hear her heartbeat. It was so faint, so weak that I was certain she had already slipped away. But when I knelt close and pressed my ear to her chest, I could just about detect the slightest beat. So I did the thing I vowed I would never do: I turned her. Without her consent. Without her knowledge.”

“But you also saved her,” Willa said, placing her hand on my knee again. “You made sure her life didn’t end on that playground.”

“Yes. Belle said the same. She was grateful.”

“But?”

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to find the right words.

“She was never able to control herself.”

“It takes time to understand your new powers and instincts,” Willa argued.

“That’s what I told her. I swore I’d teach her how to manage her hunger.”

“I sense another but coming…”

“I never could, Willa. I tried everything. It’s been over forty years since I turned her, and she struggles— struggled— to fight every urge. The mere scent of blood made her feral.”

“It’s harder for some people.”

“I know.” I sighed. “I never gave up on her. Never. ”

“Of course,” Willa agreed. “But do you mind if I asked you something that may sound too personal?”

“Considering the topic of our conversation, go right ahead.”

“Did you turn Belle to save her or yourself?”

Startled, I sat a little straighter in the armchair.

“What do you mean?”

“You said yourself that loneliness was your burden. I’m wondering if, perhaps, you used Belle to crawl back from it. Maybe you formed an attachment that’s far deeper and far more personal than one a mother has with her child. A kind of co-dependency.”

Even though her words were direct, Willa kept her tone gentle .

But her last question slid deep like a serrated edge of a knife.

“So, did you turn Belle to save her or yourself?”