Jocelyn's story

Part 2

Valentine was someone who always knew what he wanted. And he wanted me. I never knew why. The first time I noticed him watching me across the practice yard, I knew. The look on his face — it wasn’t wistful, or yearning, it was calculating and sure. The look of someone who runs their eyes over a menu and knows exactly what they want to order. His cold desire frightened me. But when he drew Luke to him, and Luke spoke so rapturously of his brilliance and his kindness, I knew I could no longer stand apart. I had to join the Circle, to see what it was that had drawn my friend into it.

In some ways, Valentine — your father — was exactly as Luke had described him. The Circle would meet each night, often in the deserted practice yard or out in the forest, under the trees, and Valentine would hold forth on his pet topics: demons, Downworlders, and what he called the perverting of the laws of the Clave. As far as he was concerned, the Angel had never wanted us to live in peace with Downworlders, but to wipe them off the face of the planet along with demons. The Accords were a travesty; we had never been meant to live in harmony with “half-men.”

His words were fiery, but his demeanor was — kind. He had a way of making you feel as if you were the only person on earth who mattered to him, the only one whose opinion he truly respected. His beliefs were absolute and so was his dedication to the Circle. I’ve come to see it as evil fanaticism since, but at the time his conviction fascinated me. He seemed to be full of passion. I could see what Luke saw in him. Soon enough, I was half in love with him myself.

But so were all the girls in the Circle and probably some of the boys, too. You don’t belong to something like that — a cult of personality — without being a little in love with your leader. Valentine started asking me to stay after the meetings, just to talk with him. He said he valued my practical mind and dispassionate intelligence. I could tell the other girls were jealous. I’m sure they thought — well, you can imagine what they thought. But nothing was happening between us. Valentine really did just want to talk — about the future, about the Law, about the Circle and where it was going. In the end, I was the one who gave up and kissed him first.

“‘I knew it,’ was the first thing he said, and then he said, ‘I’ve always loved you, Jocelyn.’ And you know, he meant it. We stayed out all night in the woods then, talking. He told me how he envisioned we would lead the Circle together, forever. He told me he couldn’t do it without me. He said, ‘I always knew you’d come to love me as well, I had no doubt.’

“I had no idea why it was me that he chose. It seemed to me that there was nothing special about me. But Valentine made his choice clear: from that moment on, we were together, and he never looked at another woman, not that way, not then and not in all the years we were married. The other girls stopped speaking to me, but it seemed a small price to pay. Luke — Luke was happy for me. I was a little surprised at that, I had wondered — but he was happy. I could tell.

He was so devoted that it took me a long time to notice the changes in him. It was as if his father’s death had scraped away some softening layers of humanity from him, and now he was strangely, peculiarly cruel — but only in flashes, so brief that when they were over I could tell myself that they had never happened.

“There was a girl in our class who wanted to join the Circle. Her older brother had been bitten by a vampire, and now was one: he should have killed himself, or let his family kill him, but he hadn’t and it was rumored that they still associated with him. Valentine gave her a sharpened metal spike and told her to go out and stake her brother to death and to bring back his ashes; only then could she be allowed in the Circle. The girl ran off crying. I confronted him later, told him he couldn’t be so cruel or he’d be no better than Downworlders themselves. ‘But he’s a monster,’ he said. I told him that her brother might well be a monster, but she wasn’t. She was Nephilim, and there was no excuse for torturing her. I thought I was being so broad-minded and tolerant — it sickens me to think about it now.

“I thought he would be angry at being reprimanded, but he wasn’t. He subsided. ‘I’m afraid of losing myself in all this sometimes, Jocelyn,’ he said. ‘It’s why I need you. You keep me human.’ It was the truth. I could always turn him away from the most extreme plans, deflect his rage, calm him down. No one else could do that. I knew I had this power over him and it made me feel important, indispensable. I think I mistook that feeling for love . . .