On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (4 page)

Britney was just probably glad that she wasn't going to have
to explain about dress codes on the first day.

Since
most
of the time Alede learned to fight while
nude or wearing street clothes, or even high heels and lingerie. Those being
the conditions that they found themselves in most often when they had to fight.
Looking like she did, she
could
potentially be just out of school and
really not know any better yet. While she could decide to take it as an insult
the idea that she didn't know better than to show up naked in public on a
college campus, she didn't. Because Britney really seemed to be trying to make
her feel comfortable, and was just giving her a heads up, trying to protect her
new friend. It was sweet really, so Kate winked at her again. The big kind that
showed she understood, rather than being the flirtatious one.

When Don and Blaine left, Britney asked if she could walk
Kate back to her room. Since this would probably be the way in which the real
negotiations were confirmed, she said yes instantly. It would be nice to simply
ask questions and get answers, instead of messing around with codes that the
twins didn't seem to have a really good handle on yet. They crossed the campus,
passed the commons and finally reached her building, one of the three freshman
dorms. Monterey.

It was a giant brick building, sitting in the middle of a
grassy expanse, with no bushes under the windows. A safety precaution she'd
been told when she first saw it on the tour she'd had a month prior. It was, in
its own way, a very ugly building. It looked more than a little worn, having
stood for over a hundred years. The bricks actually rounded slightly by time in
the walls, and the front columns looking tiny and out of proportion to the
building. They took the stairs to her third floor room because the building had
never been retrofitted with an elevator. Inside the halls were bare cement
walls, painted white, with really damaged wooden runner boards and trim. It had
probably looked like a church basement at one time, but now looked a lot more
like a flop house from a television show to Kate.

At her room Britney waited to be asked in, instead of just
following her as she'd expected. The girl froze after closing the door with a
solid click, looking around the room wide eyed for a bit before speaking.

“This is a double room? But there's only one bed... And the
decorations... I was going to offer you one of my Hartley posters, but this is
incredible
.
A poster wouldn't fit at all in here!” Wide eyed she walked around for a moment
checking the place out. She stared at the walls, which had hangings on them,
hiding most of the white expanse that would have otherwise been there. Soft
tapestries with complex weaving, and along the left side a soft golden silk
piece that hung along the entire side of the room. The bed was a single, but
had a rich shiny bed spread on it in a combination of red and copper with
matching pillows and a few extra throws for good measure. There were chairs in
the room. Two of them. Nice wooden ones with seats that had about three inches
of padding, done in black so it wouldn't clash with anything else.

“How rich are you to be able to afford this, and how did you
get your own room?” The girl asked finally, the decor giving things away Kate
realized.

"Have a seat. Can I get you something to eat? Real food,
I mean? Or drink? Both?"

They'd both eaten like real college girls at dinner, meaning
not nearly enough to keep them going. She accepted a deli style sandwich from
the mini-fridge, one of the ones that Merri had sent with Zack the last time
he'd come to pass energy to her, the day before. Merri made the bread herself,
along with the mayo and mustard, she'd also put a tangy dressing on this one with
cabbage instead of lettuce, shredded almost into oblivion to make it work right
and keep for a couple of days. The cheese on it was store bought, which the
tiny woman had apologized for profusely, although she swore that it was a good
handmade cheese that actually met her personal standards. Kate gave the other
girl a bottle of fruit juice to go with the sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper,
but held in an air tight container that had six of them left. The bottle was
unmarked, having also been made at home by the tiny Alfric woman just for her,
an apple/pear juice that hit just about the whole surface of her. Not just her
tongue, her entire being. It was delicious. So much so she could feel it in her
bones
when she took a sip.

As they ate, Kate tried to explain things to Britney without
just giving everything away. It took more work than she liked, but had to be
done, at least for now. Everything at home seemed to have calmed down, but it
was just possible that someone would attack her if they learned she was there
and unprotected. Her only real choice at the moment was to hide, which had been
the point of sending her here in the first place. Not that the beings that were
after them cared about her. She was pretty much just a girl, after all.

The only thing hurting or killing her might do is disrupt the
others. The important ones. Like Zack.

“Well, the room came courtesy of a friend of mine that has
some connections. She actually got me in here, because I didn't have the grades
for it, or the paper trail. Bribes, I believe, did most of the work. She's a
Vampire, but a really cool one. Not all demanding and bitey like most of them
are. The decorations and furniture came from a couple of other people. I know,
it looks pretty expensive, but really, I don't
own
any of this stuff.
It's just being lent to me while I'm here.” She shrugged then, as if that
explained everything.

Britney seemed to think it did. After all, people often gave Alede
presents and gifts, trying to win their favor. That Kate had better friends
than she did right now, well, that could just be happenstance, or even hard
work on the other girl's part. Kate could almost see the gears clicking in the
other girl's pretty blonde head.

“Wow! So you like, actually know a real Vampire? I've never
even met one. My older brother has, but he doesn't think much of them. They kind
of tied him up and forced him to service a bunch of people for a while I guess.
Which is
stupid
, because, you know, hello, Alede! Since when do we need
to be forced to have sex?” The idea troubled the girl, which she showed on her
face so clearly that it shocked Kate for a second. Alede usually learned not to
show anything that wouldn't lead to sex most of the time.

Brit left it as a topic and moved back to the topic of Kate's
room.

"This is really nice though. I want one of these. Maybe
next year? Not that my roommate is too bad. Thankfully she's a bit slutty for a
Human. She not only doesn't mind if I have sex in the room, but does it enough
herself without me that I can harvest energy from it on the sly."

They talked about various things for a while, Hartley posters
being one. Which didn't have his picture on them, the blonde told her, because
no one knew what Hartley looked like except his clients, because the man kept
to himself, almost like a hermit or something. She went on in this vein for a
while, painting a fascinating, though mainly incorrect, picture of Zack.

Then they covered the situation on campus as far as feeding
went.

“Both of us, Blaine and I, we try to spread things out,
rather than keeping a full time stable. It takes more work and gives us both a
bad rep, but this way we just look slutty, you know? Instead of people getting
worked up about us
cheating
on them. I mean if the campus slut sucks off
the football team, no one really cares? But if their
girlfriend
did it,
things could go wrong pretty fast, right? In the real world we could keep
things insulated, but here, too many people know each other.” She moved in on
Kate and touched her shoulder in a way normal for her kind, but that would have
seemed like an invitation to have sex to a regular Human.

“So, uh, about Don...” Swallowing, Brit waited for a few
seconds before continuing. “I... kind of promised Blaine that I wouldn't have
sex with him, since he's a friend and his roommate, you know how that is right?
I mean, if I had sex with him and then we had to break up for any reason, or I
slept with other guys or something and he dumped me, then Blaine would be
stuck, still living with him for the rest of the year. It's not a normal
situation, I mean how many Alede twins do you know, right? But that's why I
haven't been taking care of him like I should.”

The other girl seemed really sad about the whole thing again,
looking down at her shoes for a while before going on. She chewed on her lip,
just the top one, which looked cute on her, but probably showed real distress,
rather than just game playing to try and work Kate into doing something. She
reached to her and touched her back gently, stroking her upper arm, running her
fingers on the soft cotton of her short shirt sleeve, then letting them linger
on the soft flesh below.

“So, could you, you know, sleep with him or something? I
mean, if you two have a falling out, Blaine won't be stuck nearly as badly...
Yeah, you're our
cousin
, but it's not like we've talked about you or
anything, so maybe it's far enough away?”

This made sense to Kate, "I'll look into it. I'm not
promising anything yet though. Still, he is decently cute, and nice seeming on
top of that. It looks good, so far."

Don really did seem cute and funny, but also a little
depressed. If a bit of attention and sex would snap him out of that, which she
thought it might, she'd be more than willing to provide it. If, on the other
hand this turned out to go deeper than that, she didn't want to end up
responsible for a suicidal boy, angry at
her
for not making him totally
happy with life.

Britney hugged her on the way out, then gave her a lingering
kiss, squeezing her behind a little before letting go of her. So fairly
ordinary as far as traditional greetings and partings with strangers went for
their kind. She kissed the girl back and did a little groping of her own, just
to let her know that she felt comfortable with her already.

“Hey, don't forget sparring tomorrow night! Blaine will get
all weepy on me if he thinks I scared you off.” She laughed at this, but seemed
to mean it at the same time. As she left she looked back at Kate, smiling and
looking at her seductively, long blonde hair half hiding her face.

She went through her classes the next day happily enough. It
surprised her that her hardest class wasn't, as she'd thought it would be,
math, but
art history
. The professor, a balding forty something named
Eilis gave them a paper on the first day. Five pages on the topic of trade
routes into and around the orient. Thankfully she'd done enough of the reading
to see the trap in this for her, since the Orient
he
referred to meant
the area around Persia, Mesopotamia, Asia minor and Egypt,
not
Asia or
China at all, which is what her first guess would have been. Since they hadn't
had the topic in class yet, she could tell that a lot of people would probably
get it wrong. She still would have had it wrong, she knew, if she hadn't read
the next several chapters in her textbook, using the dry text as a focusing
exercise, to help keep her mind in shape.

Just to be sure, she checked it out with the professor after
class. She approached him boldly, standing nearer to him than most people would
with a virtual stranger. Taking in his scent, aftershave, mint from his breath
and something rich, like pipe tobacco, though he didn't have stained teeth or
anything that would indicate being a smoker.

“Hi... Um, my education has kind of been lacking in a lot of
areas, so, please give me a clue if I'm wrong here...” She started, since it
that was the truth. Kate hadn't had any education about art and
history
had mainly included the history of sex, sexual trends and U.S. history. She'd
gone to an exclusive private school were everyone majored in sex and not
starving to death, and hadn't even finished that, nearly losing control of her
powers and being killed by her government instead.

The man's eyes lit up as she spoke, nodding finally as she
listed off the correct part of the world.

“You actually opened the text book? Amazing. You're right of
course. Put what you just said in your paper and you'll get an automatic A. Of
course
now
I expect you to actually find some information about trade
routes too. Focus on the kinds of materials that would have been shipped, since
that influenced the art and passage of art from one part of the world to
another.” He grinned at her and waved her away then, not winking or showing in
any way that he even noticed her looks.

Almost like he actually cares about the subject or
something
, Kate thought, throwing him a flirtatious look over her shoulder
as she walked away. The man wasn't even looking at her behind. Amazing. Even
gay men tended to check her out, she knew that from long experience. Women
always
did, straight or gay, but that wasn't special, they always checked out
other women. Even the less attractive ones.

Since she had hours before dinner, she worked on her paper,
even though it wouldn't be due for a week, Using her laptop to find out what
she could about the flow of materials in ancient Mesopotamia. The information
turned out to be hard to find. A few mentions that told her information might
be books that she should be able to find in the school's research library, but
that was all. Instead of knowledge, she ended up with a list of places to look
in order to
possibly
find information later.
Handy
, she thought,
a bit sarcastically. Still, she'd come to learn and if she couldn't do that,
she could always try to sleep her way into a decent grade, so at least she had
a fallback position in case the work proved too hard.