Blood: The Third Course

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"How's it going over there?"

Carson took a seat on a crate, if only so that he might stop pacing for a minute. He was sure that the vibrations of his anxious steps could be heard over the phone, back and forth, back and forth.

"You already asked that," she said, and sure enough, Carson could hear her padding footsteps and the way they echoed. She was in the bathroom or the kitchen. No where else in the small apartment had floors that echoed.

"Did I?"

"Yes. When I first answered. You said 'Hey, how's it going?' and I said, 'it's boring and cold. I stole another sweatshirt.' Remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember. Which sweatshirt?"

He could practically hear the roll of her dark eyes and he could definitely see the way her lips would pout into an attempt to hide a grin.

"You want me to go back. You've been getting grief at the farm."

Carson huffed out a laugh and kicked back at the crate with his heel.

"You can't read me from there, Edie."

There was a pause and a ruffle of material. He still wondered which of his sweatshirts she had decided to steal to stay warm. He hoped it was one of the clean ones. Did he even have any clean ones left?

"How do you know?" she asked. "You got another telepathic friend you make phone calls to?"

"I have them stashed all over the place," he chuckled. "Phone calls, pen pals, emails—"

"It's the Giants one," Edeline replied. "San Francisco."

Carson's eyes narrowed and he stared down at his muddy boots. He'd been sure enough that Edeline wouldn't be able to read him over the phone, it had to be a proximity thing, right? She couldn't read him just from the sound of his voice. And yet, she'd known that he'd been thinking about the sweatshirt.

A bright a bubbly laugh came crackling down the line, giggling so hard that she hiccoughed and had to take a few moments to calm herself down.

"I don't need to read you to know what you're going to say, Carson," she told him breathlessly. "You're lovely and predictable."

"I am?"

"You didn't call me just to ask how I was. You called because someone... well, I don't know, I don't know them well enough."

"One of the vampires was killed," he said. "Spencer's sired. Your father—"

"Another threat, yeah, I remember those."

"Well, the secret's out now. They're pretty angry."

Edeline sighed into the phone.

"I can imagine. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Edie, I just..."

"You want me to go back."

"No," Carson said quickly. He got up from the crate and began pacing again. "No, and you can't read me, so you can't tell me I'm lying this time, and I'm not. I don't want you to go back."

"You don't?"

Carson took a breath as he realised how it had sounded, especially when she couldn't see his face, couldn't read into his body language... and his thoughts.

"Not unless you want to."

"Right."

"Look, I just thought you should know what your father is doing, alright? I'm not going to force you to go back, but I don't want to keep you in the dark, either."