Nita nodded, and Kovit slipped past Diana and out the door. He closed the door softly after himself, and his feet were almost silent on the creaky stairs.
Diana shifted from one foot to another. Her long dark brown hair had mostly come out of its ponytail, tumbling in messy strands around her face.
“Why did you help me?” Nita asked.
Did Diana have some other plan for Nita? She was a ghoul. Maybe she wanted to kill and eat Nita herself? Nita discarded that thought a moment later. She didn’t think Diana was the type—but she’d been wrong about people before.
Diana shrugged. “I didn’t think Adair should throw you out.”
Nita’s eyes narrowed. What was this girl’s game?
“You don’t mind I killed those hunters?” Nita asked, trying to feel her out.
Diana flinched. “I mind.”
“Why? They were trying to kill me and sell my body parts online,” Nita pressed.
“I don’t like to see people get hurt.”
“Strange company you keep, then.”
“You know nothing about Adair,” Diana snapped.
“Do you?” Nita leaned forward.
She was silent for a long moment. “I know enough.”
“Do you trust him?”
She hesitated. “Yeah.”
Nita tilted her head to the side. “Would you swim with him?”
“Hell, no!” Diana’s eyes were huge.
“So you don’t trust him.”
“I trust him to an extent.” Diana’s mouth turned down. “And I trust his instincts. If he says killing dealers won’t help you, I don’t think it will.”
Nita remained silent. As much as she mistrusted Adair, she had a terrible feeling that he was right. That everything she’d done was for absolutely nothing.
She let out a breath, shoulders slumping. She wouldn’t know if it had made a difference immediately. Time would tell.
Diana was staring at Nita with pitying, almost judging eyes, and Nita bristled. Who was Diana to judge Nita’s choices?
“Whether it makes a difference in the long term or not, you’re not going to make me feel bad about the deaths of people who kill innocent unnaturals for money,” Nita snapped, trying to project a confidence she didn’t feel, just to get that look out of Diana’s eye.
Technically, that was what Nita had spent her whole life doing. But Diana didn’t need to know that.
Diana shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t know. People are made of multitudes. I want to believe that even monsters have good sides.”
Nita snorted. “That’s why you get along with Adair.”
She quirked a smile. “Maybe.” She looked up at Nita and raised an eyebrow. “Or maybe he’s not a monster.”
Nita snorted. “Who was just telling me they wouldn’t swim with him?”
Diana laughed, leaning back so her head was brushing the wall and her eyes were on the ceiling. “Fair point.”
They were quiet for a moment before Diana said, “You shouldn’t use that word. Unnatural.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “It’s demeaning. Non-human. Unnatural. They’re all words that make us other. Make us different. Labels assigned to us.”
“So?”
“So, we make our own labels.”
Nita shrugged. She knew there were movements online, people who were trying to change the language, but it never really concerned her. Just because other people said unnatural like a slur didn’t mean Nita had to stop using it. Why should she let other people change the way she referred to herself?
“You should use the word legends instead,” Diana was saying, oblivious to Nita’s meandering thoughts.
Nita groaned. “Is that what they’re using now? Is there a more corny name in existence? It sounds like a video game.”
Diana blushed, but her voice was firm. “I think it’s a good name! Because we’ve always been here, like legends. And many of us are part of legends—”
“But legends aren’t real.”
“Some of them are.”
Nita sighed, rubbing her temple. What about people like Nita, who couldn’t really be connected to any one legend? Or Kovit, who wasn’t actually sure whether or not zannies were connected to the Thai krasue legend? Whoever had picked this name really hadn’t thought it through properly.
“You never answered my question.” Nita shifted the conversation away before she could devote any more brain time to thinking of that awful name. “Why did you help me?”
“I guess I know what it’s like.”
“To get caught murdering black market dealers?”
“To be on the run.” Diana’s voice was cold. Then she sighed again and slumped against the faded lime green wall, her hand running through her hair and clenching in it.
Nita tilted her head. “What are you on the run from? Ghouls aren’t on the Dangerous Unnaturals List.” Though they should be, Nita thought, but didn’t say aloud. “And ghoul body parts do absolutely nothing, so it’s not like the black market has any interest in you.”
Diana hesitated. “Several years ago, there was a news story about a kid who murdered a family of ghouls. Do you remember it?”
Nita did, actually. “The crematorium one? Ghouls stealing bodies from crematoriums, and some kid found out they’d stolen his father’s body. Then he murdered them all with a machine gun?”
“Yeah.” Diana wrapped her arms around her legs. “That one.”
“It was a huge story, in the media for months.” Nita shrugged. “I doubt anyone will forget it anytime soon.”
Diana swallowed. “I know.”
Then it clicked. Nita had been being dense. “You were part of that?”
Diana hesitated, then pulled up her sleeve. A shiny white scar, about the size of a coin, crossed her arm. She pulled up the bottom of her shirt, and there was a longer, wider scar on her stomach.
“That was my family. I was the only one who survived.” Her voice cracked a little. “I was twelve.”
Nita stared at the bullet scars a moment before sitting down beside Diana, sliding down the wall and landing with a creak and a thump on the wooden floor. “I wasn’t aware there were any survivors.”
“INHUP kept it a secret for my own safety. I wasn’t even allowed to testify at the trial. They were scared the media would find out.”
Nita understood. If the media found out Diana was alive, her life would never be her own again. She’d constantly have to worry about paparazzi, hate groups, murderers, the family of the deceased she’d eaten, and who knew who else.
Nita frowned. “I was pretty sure that happened in the States.”
“It did. I’m from Seattle originally.” Her hands shook a little, and she clasped them to her sides. “INHUP put me in protective custody, and I was moved to a foster home in Maryland. But . . .” Her hand rose unconsciously to her mouth guard. “They’d never had a ghoul before. The foster family, INHUP. They were trying to find legal ways to feed me. Sometimes there’d be an organ donor at the local hospital, and I’d get the parts that couldn’t be transplanted into other people. But sometimes there was nothing. And everything was old, and not fresh. I was sick so often.”