Not Quite Human

Chapter 5

The months that followed settled into something resembling routine. Neil had even grown used to Nerezza's peculiarities, and if one looked past those, he had come to find her genuinely interesting company. He wasn't oblivious, though. He knew something was off — especially when it stared him in the face on a daily basis. At first he'd assumed people simply preferred to avoid her, which wouldn't have been surprising. But it wasn't avoidance. People walked straight past her as though she wasn't there at all, and she wore that Cheshire grin every time it happened, as though invisibility were a personal pleasure. There were moments when he genuinely wondered if she was real or some elaborate, malevolent figment of his imagination. But she was real enough. Even he knew his brain wasn't that creative.
Things had not been entirely good of late, however. He'd been getting recurring headaches for several weeks now — not the weeping kind, but the grinding, relentless sort that made you want to pull your hair out. The kind one gets, he imagined, from being forced to watch Twilight in all its glitter-and-impossibly-clumsy-heroine glory. He'd eventually seen a doctor, who prescribed painkillers that did absolutely nothing. Nerezza showed no concern whatsoever. He hadn't expected her to go soft on him, but he had assumed that several months of familiarity might produce at least a token acknowledgement that he was suffering.
Apparently not.
Neil sighed, staring at the open pages of Good Omens without reading a single word. It was one of his favourite books, and the persistent dull ache behind his eyes was keeping him from it entirely. He set it down and stood. What he needed was a walk — the castle gardens were extraordinary, and he hadn't made proper use of them. He also needed some time alone.
Nerezza, unfortunately, did not appear to recognise alone time as a concept.
Neil decided he'd throw a proper tantrum about it once his head felt better. He didn't have the energy for one now.
The castle grounds held what was, by most measures, one of the most beautifully designed gardens in the world. Neil was prepared to appreciate it wholeheartedly — right up until he reached the centre and stopped, mouth open, expression somewhere between baffled and affronted.
At the heart of the garden stood a fountain. A fountain featuring, in place of the usual cherubs, a stone likeness of the late king — Damien's father — in a posture that left very little to the imagination.
"Why in the world would the late king want a statue of himself doing that in the front garden?"
Nerezza laughed at his expression. He looked like a child who'd been made to eat something sour. Lady Legasus, Queen of the Seelie Court, certainly had a talent for putting people in impossible positions. Nerezza wondered if the late king had ever noticed the absence of a three-headed dog in his fountain. Probably not. He'd been far too vain to look past his own reflection. Lady Legasus had almost certainly known that. She didn't play careless games.
"Why hasn't anyone had it removed?" Neil asked.
Nerezza smiled. Nobody had liked the late king enough to bother. If anything, having King Rompe immortalised in such a fashion probably made their day.
They continued at a leisurely pace. If one managed to forget the fountain — and Neil was trying very hard — the garden was something close to paradise. Not the sort of garden where roses appeared precisely where they'd been told to; this one had been let loose, growing wild and untamed, and its beauty was entirely its own. Neil took a slow breath. The smell of damp earth and wet grass hit him all at once. A smile spread across his face when he spotted a tiny squirrel nearby, digging industriously into the ground, its bushy tail twitching, so absorbed in its task that the rest of the world had ceased to exist.
He wanted to be that squirrel. Just for a little while.
"Shouldn't we be heading back, princess."
Nerezza dissolved the moment without a shred of remorse. Neil muttered a few words under his breath and turned back toward the castle. He didn't mind, really. He just envied the squirrel.
They returned to the library in comfortable silence, neither of them feeling the need to fill it. Nerezza drifted back to what Neil had privately termed the Shelf of Horrors and selected another volume with a suitably grim cover. Neil crossed to his usual spot — and stopped.
In his chair sat a small box, deep red velvet, tied with a neat black bow. Resting on top was a card in an elegant hand: The mystery gift — Merry Christmas in advance, Neil — Bloodrocks.
Neil stared at it. Someone was certainly committed to a colour scheme: red box, red bow, red ink. Probably a red crayon inside to complete the set. He picked it up, turned it over, and opened it carefully.
Inside, resting on a small cushion of black satin, was a stone. Deep red, smooth, roughly the size of his fist.
He lifted it out, bringing it closer to examine — and the moment it made contact with his palm, it began to glow. Scarlet light bled through his fingers. The pain that followed was instantaneous and total. He didn't even have time to make a sound before the world went dark.
The stone hissed and spat for a few seconds after he hit the floor. Then it vanished.
Nerezza was pulled from her book by a soft thud. She looked up, frowned, and set the book aside. Neil was on the floor, motionless, his face an unpleasant shade of pale. She crossed to him, taking in the box, the card, the boy — and something clicked into place, though not entirely.
She crouched and pressed two fingers to his neck. There was a pulse. Faint, but present. That was, frankly, surprising. She could count on one hand the number of people who had survived absorbing a bloodstone, and none of them had been mid-change. She couldn't fathom why anyone would waste something so rare — something people had killed for — on a boy who wasn't yet of age. It made no sense. It was a cursed gift, by any measure.
She gathered him up carefully and carried him to the sick ward. There was no immediate danger — with a bloodstone, one either died at the moment of absorption or didn't die at all. But she wasn't in the habit of taking chances, not with this much at stake.