The Chosen by L.J. Smith

Author:L.J. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

CHAPTER 10

Or not to meet them so much as graze past them, before concentrating on his chin. She didn’t dare stare directly into them for long.

“Maybe she is from another planet,” Quinn was saying to the girl. “Maybe she’s not human. Maybe I’m not, either.”

That’s right, Rashel thought. Make fun of them by telling them a truth they won’t believe.

But, she noticed, Quinn looked more as if he didn’t care what they found out than as if he were mocking them. “Maybe she’s from another world. Did you ever think of that?”

Rashel was confused again. Quinn seemed to be trying to get himself killed. He appeared to be verging on telling these girls about the Night World, and under the laws of the Night World, that was punishable by death.

You’re really slipping, Rashel thought. First the slave trade, now this. I thought you were supposed to be such a stickler for the law.

“There are darker dimensions,” Quinn was confiding to the group, “than you have ever imagined. But, you see, it’s all part of life’s grand design, so it’s all right. Did you know”—he put his arm around a girl’s shoulders, gesturing outward as if inviting her to look at some horizon—“that there’s a certain kind of wasp that lays its eggs in the body of a caterpillar? A live caterpillar. And it stays alive, you see, while the eggs hatch and the little waspettes eat it from the inside out. Now, who do you think invented that?”

Rashel wondered if vampires could get drunk.

“That would probably be the most horrible way to die,” Daphne chimed in, her musical voice ghoulish. “Being eaten by insects. Or maybe being burned.”

“It would probably depend on how fast you burned,” Quinn said meditatively. “A flash of fire—high enough temperature—you burn the nerves out in the first few seconds. Slow baking would be different.”

“I’m writing a poem about fire,” Rashel said. She was surprised to find that she was annoyed because Quinn didn’t really seem to have noticed her. On second thought, she should be annoyed; her plan depended on him not only noticing but choosing her.

She was going to have to capture his attention.

“Do you have it with you?” Daphne was asking helpfully.

“No, but I can tell you the beginning,” Rashel said. She braced herself to look at Quinn as she recited:

“There’s warmth in ice; there’s cooling peace in fire,

And midnight light to show us all the way.

The dancing flame becomes a funeral pyre;

The Dark was more enticing than the Day.”

Quinn blinked. Then he smiled, and he looked Rashel over, clearly taking notice of the velvet jumpsuit and ending with her face. He looked everywhere . . . except into her eyes.

“That’s right; you’ve got it,” he said with that same brittle exhilaration. “And there’s plenty of dark out there for everyone.”

Rashel’s worry that he might look too deep if he met her gaze was groundless. Quinn didn’t seem to be really seeing anybody here.

“There is plenty of darkness,” Rashel said. She moved toward him, feeling strangely brave.

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