Wayward Son - Rainbow Rowell Page 0,74

your mouth.”

I close my mouth tight.

“Think about it.…” he says. “Think of that control.”

I nod.

“Now take control, Baz. You know how they feel when they break through your gums.”

I nod again. I’m getting tearful.

“Imagine pulling them back. Feel them pulling back.”

I close my eyes and let my head drop forward. It’s hard to imagine my fangs retracting when they’re filling up my whole mouth. I’ve never once kept them from popping. Have I ever once tried? My usual strategy is subterfuge and avoidance: Don’t let anyone watch me eat. Ever.

Lamb lays his cool hand over mine on the table. “Pull them back. Tuck them in. You can do this.”

I try then, I really try. I inhale. I pull my tongue into my throat. I suck in my stomach and hollow my cheeks. I pull my fingers into fists.

And then—my fangs jerk.

I try again, and they hitch back into my gums. (I don’t know where they go; I’ll bet Lamb could tell me.) I look up at him. My eyes must be wild.

He smiles at me, showing his perfectly normal—if a little too white—teeth.

He pulls his hand away then, and resumes dishing up a plate for me. There are now three steaming platters on the table. “You can do this,” he says calmly, looking at the food instead of me.

He sets the full plate in front of me. I take a deep breath, thinking, Stay, stay, stay. My fangs start to slide down, and I pull them back in.

I keep doing it. I manage the whole meal. Chewing like I haven’t since I was a child, with nothing extra in my way. Nothing accidentally cutting the inside of my cheeks. My jaw is trembling from the effort.

Neither of us talk. It doesn’t seem like Lamb is even paying attention to me. But then the waiter takes my empty plate, and I meet Lamb’s eyes again. I think I might be beaming. He’s smiling, but his eyes are sad.

“Baz,” he says, “how old are you?”

I don’t have a lie ready. “Twenty.”

“Right. And I’m thirty-four. How old are you really?”

I look up at the lights, at the acoustic tile ceiling. “Twenty.”

I hear him exhale.

“Right,” he says. “Let’s talk about the Next Blood.”

* * *

The restaurant is nearly empty. The waiter has brought us coffee with cardamom and evaporated milk. Lamb has shifted again, into a brand-new persona. He’s not the charming Las Vegas enthusiast I met at the party. And not the terrifying vampire I met in the shadows. He’s quieter now and so serious, he seems almost gentle.

“Power down your phone,” he says. “And set it on the table.”

I reach into my pocket—praying that Simon isn’t presently going ballistic. I push the power button and set my mobile on the table. Lamb barely glances at it. I don’t know if he suspects something or if he’s just taking precautions. He sets his own phone next to mine.

“The Next Blood,” he says, “are physically like us, but they’re culturally something very different. They’re a group of wealthy men and women, mostly men, who discovered our way of life.… Well”—he can’t help but roll his eyes—“they act like they discovered it. And then decided to acquire it. They sought out our brethren, demanding to be Turned.

“It’s not our way to Turn someone on request.” He looks in my eyes. “As you know. But someone of our kind must have been blackmailed or seduced. They Turned one of the infidels, and that one Turned the others. And on and on…”

Lamb looks disgusted. “The Next Blood treats being one of us like being in a social club. Like the Rotary. They even have a board of directors that reviews new members.” He waves his hand, like he can’t believe any of this. His voice gets a bit higher. “It’s like getting approved by the condo board. They see our lifestyle as an extension of their success—as if they have earned the undying, and earned the right to share it. They’ve doubled our numbers in San Francisco, just in the last year.”

I’m horrified. Which Lamb approves of.

“Not a one of them pays any attention to social mores or tradition. They don’t wonder why we’ve spent millennia building a different path. No, they’re the next wave, the Next Blood. They don’t care about history—they’re too busy curing cancer and reinventing the Internet.”

He takes his sunglasses off his head and sets them on the table.

“They threaten our safety and our freedom, Baz. What happens when the Bleeders realize that