Thyla - Kate Gordon [49]
It didn’t take as long as I thought it would to catch up with Rhiannah.
As I walked towards room 36, I heard raised voices. I crept closer and saw that the door to our bedroom was not properly shut. I crouched down and listened. For a moment the voices were silent, and I worried that I had been caught. But then they spoke again.
It was Rhiannah, and she was with Perrin. I could tell from the scent. I was distracted, briefly, by the memory of his face; the feeling of his hand in mine … but then I heard the tone of Rhiannah’s voice, and it brought my thoughts sharply back into focus. Her voice wasn’t jovial and joking, or kind and friendly. It was harsh and angry and, when I heard what the voice was talking about, it became terrifying. ‘She has the stripes. If what the book says is true – if she is immortal – then that can only mean one thing. She’s a Thyla. She’s a Thyla who has been sleeping in my bedroom for the past week. Do you know how that makes me feel?’
She was talking about me. Rhiannah was talking about me. And she called me Thyla.
‘And I believed her! Seriously, can you even believe how dumb I was? I bought her whole act of being human, of being a friend. I thought she’d lost her memory in the accident. Geez, Perrin, I thought she needed protecting! I thought: here was this new girl, this innocent human, just like Cat was. And, you know, Charlotte didn’t like Cat either. She made her life hell. I couldn’t let that happen again. Can you believe it? I should have killed her in her sleep!’
My breath caught in my throat. Did Rhiannah just say what I thought she said? That she should have killed me? A cold sweat began to prickle on my forehead.
‘Rin, I know you don’t mean that,’ said Perrin. ‘She’s your friend.’
‘She’s a Thyla!’ Rhiannah exclaimed. ‘You know, the race that’s been trying to wipe us out for millennia? Remember them?’
‘If she’d been human, would that have been any better?’ Perrin asked, his voice calm. ‘Humans don’t have the best track record with their treatment of our kind. Humans have sided with the Diemens in the past, and helped them become stronger. And you know, the Diemens are pretty damn strong now, Rhiannah. If what Rha says is to be believed, we may just need the Thylas on our side.’
‘You really believe that?’ asked Rhiannah, laughing bitterly.
‘I believe what Rha says,’ Perrin said, firmly. ‘I believe there is something in this treaty idea.’
‘You always believe what Rha says,’ Rhiannah spat, and I pictured her rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. ‘You worship him. It’s pathetic.’
‘What he says makes sense!’ Perrin exclaimed, his voice getting louder. There was a pause, and when he continued his voice was soft again; measured. ‘You’re just scared. We’re all scared. But we don’t need to be scared of Tessa. Trust me on that, Rin.’
Rhiannah’s voice was soft now, too. ‘I know. I never would have given her the book otherwise. It just kind of threw me for six, you know? I never expected to bump into a Thyla inside Cascade Falls.’
‘And I’m sure she never expected she’d be rooming with a Sarco either.’
Rhiannah sighed. ‘Perrin, she barely knows about Thylas, let alone Sarcos. I think she’s lost her memory. She keeps saying she doesn’t know if she’s done things before or eaten things before or whatever. Plus, she doesn’t have a cuff, so she can’t know who she is. No Sarco or Thyla in their right mind would go around among humans without a cuff, especially approaching a full moon. We may be able to switch in and out of this at will at other times of the month, but at a full moon? No, she really must have lost her memory. Oh, geez! Poor Tessa! I don’t know why I said that before. I was just angry. And hurt. And … and scared.’
‘If she’s lost her memory, then we don’t need to be scared of her. We need to look out for her. It’s not just approaching a full moon, Rhiannah. It’s a full moon tonight.’
‘I know. I don’t know what to do about that.’
‘We do the only thing we can do. We go to the forest. We protect ourselves the best we can. And we wait to see what happens.’
‘But