Available Darkness Season 2

didn’t answer. So I reached out and asked her again, putting my hand on her back. She turned on me, eyes wide like some sort of scared animal, screaming at me not to touch her. I knew something was wrong, but she wouldn’t say what. Oh, God,” Katya shook her head, palm at her forehead. “I feel so bad.”
    “It’s OK,” Larry said. “She’ll be alright. Some nights are better than others. But this is why I can’t leave her alone. I know I should’ve told you something before you took the job, but the Radleys said you were so good, and I saw how you were with their kid, and I didn’t want to scare you off.”
    Katya nodded, wiping the falling tears from her eyes.
    Larry felt like an asshole for lying, but it wasn’t like he was more than a mile from the truth. Abigail had been raped by a monster and kept in a closet for years. She had no family. In reality, her situation was worse than the picture he painted, but Larry figured there was enough truth in the brush of his lie, that good intent would outweigh his crooked karma.
    Larry met Katya’s eyes and said, “Thanks for being there for Abi tonight. I’m sure it means the world to her. Right now, she’s probably just embarrassed.”
    “It’s OK,” Katya said. “Wow, I just feel so bad.”
    Larry hemmed and hawed, trying to find the best way to ask his next question, “Did we scare you away?”
    Katya shook her head, sniffling, “Oh, God no, now I want to help her more than before. I feel so awful.”
    “Thanks again,” Larry said, putting an awkward hand to her lower shoulder. “I better get back inside.”
    “OK,” Katya said, opening her car door. “Tell Abigail I said goodnight.”
    “Will do. ‘Night, Katya.”
    “Goodnight,” she said as she climbed into her car and started the engine.
    As Katya drove off, Larry returned to the house, eager to find out what really happened at the restaurant.

    **

    Larry knocked on Abigail’s door, “Abi?”
    After a long moment, she said, “Come in.”
    He opened the door to her pink and purple bedroom. She was laying in bed, in a T-shirt and sweats with a pillow over her face, probably crying.
    “Are you OK?”
    “I don’t know,” Abi said, her voice muffled beneath the pillow.
    “Katya is worried about you.”
    “Yeah, I kinda freaked out on her.”
    “She told me.”
    “And?” Abi asked. “Is she going to quit watching me?”
    “No,” Larry said. “She’ll be back tomorrow. She said you can’t get rid of her that easily.”
    “Really?” Abigail asked, pulling the pillow from her face. Larry was relieved to see her eyes hinting at a smile.
    “Yeah, she likes you a lot, Abi. She did ask if anything had happened to you,” Larry said, unsure how to broach the girl’s abuse. It wasn’t something they’d discussed much, even though they’d gone together to her uncle’s house to repay the man that sold her into slavery.
    “I told her someone had abused you, and that your dad, my brother, killed him and went to jail.”
    “Wow,” Abigail said. “You’re a good liar.”
    “Well, I had to tell her something close to the truth, without telling her, well, you know, the truth.”
    “Yeah,” Abigail said, staring at her bedspread. “What do you think she would do, you know, if you did tell her the truth?”
    “What part? What happened to you, or about you being a vampire?”
    “Vampire,” Abi said.
    “I don’t know,” Larry said, hoping Abi wasn’t getting any ideas of confiding to her new friend. “But we can’t take the chance, you know that, right? Katya’s a great girl, but we don’t know her that well yet, and we have to fly under the radar here.”
    “Yeah,” she nodded. “I know.”
    Abi squeezed her largest, softest pillow, tight into her chest.
    “What?” Larry asked, sensing that Abigail wanted to say more.
    “I think there’s something wrong with me.”
    Larry sat at the end of the bed. “What do you mean?”
    “The people I killed,” Abigail said, pausing with a swallow before she continued. “When I was getting sick at the restaurant tonight, I kept seeing their memories in my head. I was remembering things like they happened to me, but all of the memories were theirs. None of them were mine. It’s like what happens when I feed, but this was the first time it’s happened while I wasn’t feeding.”
    “Whose memories were you seeing? Karen’s?”
    “Hers and others’. A bunch.”
    “How bad was it?” Larry said, suddenly and