"I'll let you two get acquainted," he said. "Since you won't be wearing robes, I've left a belt inside. The scabbard fits it. From today on, you wear it. All day, every day. When you sleep, you keep it beside you. Understood?"
Having gotten the same speech about my beeper, and understanding the threat of the still-loose killer, I nodded, waited for him to rise and leave, then looked down at the sword that still lay in front of me. It was an oddly intimate moment - my first time alone with her. This was the thing - this complicated arrangement of steel and silk and ray skin and lacquered wood - that was supposed to keep me safe for the next few hundred years, the thing that would enable me to do my duty, to keep Ethan and the other Cadogan vamps alive.
Nervously, I looked around the yard, a little self-conscious about picking it up, and scratched absently at my eyebrow. I rustled my fingers, cleared my throat, and made myself look at it.
"So," I said, to the sword.
To the sword.
I grinned down at her. "I'm Merit, and we're going to be working together. Hopefully I won't . . . break you. Hopefully you won't get me broken. That's about it, I guess." I reached out my right hand, clenching and unclenching my fingers above the metal, somehow suddenly phobic about taking up arms for the first time, and then dropped my fingertips to the wrap around the handle, and slid them around the length of it.
My arm tingled.
I gripped the handle, lifted the sword in one hand and stood, angling the blade so that it caught the light, which ran down the steel like falling water.
My heart sped, my pupils dilated - and I felt the vampire inside me rise to the surface of my consciousness.
And, for the first time, she rose not in anger or lust or hunger, but in curiosity. She knew what I held in my hand, and she reveled in it.
And, for the first time, instead of fighting her, instead of pushing her back down, I let her stretch and move, let her look through my eyes - just a peek. Just a glimpse, as I had no illusions that if given the chance, she could overpower me, work through me, take me over.
But when I held the sword horizontally, parallel to the ground, and when I sliced it through the air, swung it in an arc around my body, and slid it back into its sheath, I felt her sigh - and felt the warmth of her languid contentment, like a woman well-satisfied.
I kissed the pommel of the sword - of my sword - then let it slip into my left hand, and went back into the house. Jeff, Catcher, Lindsey, and Grandpa were gathered around the dining room table. Mallory stood at the side table, carving up the coconut cake.
"Oh, sweet!" Jeff said, his gaze shifting from the katana in my hand to Catcher. "You gave her the sword?"
Catcher nodded, then looked at me, quirked up an eyebrow. "Let's see if it worked. Is he carrying?"
I blinked, then looked between Jeff and my grandfather. "Is who carrying what?"
"Look at Jeff," Catcher said carefully, "and tell me if he's carrying a weapon."
I arched a brow.
"Just do it," Catcher insisted, frustration in his voice.
I sighed, but looked over at Jeff, brow pinched as I scanned his body, trying to figure out what trick I was supposed to be demonstrating. "What am I trying to - "
"If you can't see it," Catcher interrupted, "then close your eyes and feel him out. Empty your mind, and allow yourself to breathe it in."
I nodded although I had no idea what he was talking about, and while facing Jeff, closed my eyes. I tried to blank my mind of extraneous information and concentrate on what was in front of me - namely, a skinny, shape-shifting computer programmer.
That's when I noticed it.
I could feel it. Just a hint. The different weight of him, feel of him. He kind of - vibrated differently.
"There's . . . There's. . . ." I opened my eyes, stared at Jeff, then turned my head to look at Catcher. "He's carrying. Steel. A knife or something," I guessed, given the weight of it.
"Jeff?"
"I don't even own a weapon," Jeff protested, but he stood up and reached into his first pocket. As we all watched, riveted, he turned it inside out. Empty.
He tried the second, and when he reached in, he pulled out a small, cord-wrapped knife, its blade covered in a black sheath. Obviously shocked, he held the knife in his palm, and looked at each of us. "This isn't mine."
Catcher, who sat next to him, clapped him on the back. "It's mine, James Bond. I slipped it into your pocket when you were ogling Mallory."
A flush rose on Jeff's cheeks as Catcher took back the knife, slipped it into his own pocket. "I wasn't ogling Mallory," he said, then glanced apologetically at Mal, who was walking back to the table, paper plate of cake in her hand. "I wasn't," he insisted, then looked back at Catcher. "Ogling's a harsh word."
Catcher chuckled. "So's 'beat down.' "
"And on that pleasant note," Mallory interrupted with a chuckle, placing the slice of cake on the table in front of me, "let's eat."
We ate until we were stuffed, until I expected my stomach to burst open like a coconut- filled pi?ata. The food was incomparable, deliciously homey, the sweetness of cake the perfect dessert. And when our bellies were full and my grandfather began to yawn, I prepared to take the team home. I belted the sword and grabbed the box of leather.
The car loaded with gifts and cupcakes, I slipped back inside to say a final goodbye, and inadvertently walked in on another Catcher-Mallory moment.
They were in a corner of the living room, their hands on each other's hips. Catcher gazed down at her, eyes full of such respect and adoration that the emotion of it tightened my throat. Mallory looked back, met his gaze, without coquettish eyelash batting or turning away. She met his gaze and shared his look, the expression of partnership.
And I was struck with the worst, most nauseating sense of jealousy I'd ever felt.
What would it be like, I wondered, to have someone look at me that way? To see something in me, inside me, worth that kind of admiration? That kind of attention?
Even when we were younger, Mallory had always been the one around whom men flocked. I was the smart, slightly weirder sidekick. She was the goddess. Men bought her drinks, offered their numbers, offered their bank accounts and time and rides in their BMW convertibles. All the while I sat beside her, smiled politely when they looked my way to size me up, to determine if I was a barrier to the thing they wanted - blond- haired/blue-haired, blue-eyed Mallory.
Now she had Catcher, and she was being adored anew. She'd found a partner, a companion, a protector.