Lara looked down at her glass of water, and her cheeks turned the faintest shade of pink. “Ah. Yes. The…energy intake from the spell was…” She shook her head a little, searching for words.
“Filling?” I suggested.
“Vital,”she said. “In the original sense. The sense of being filled withlife. Like food so rich, you feel stuffed for days…” Her voice trailed off and she bit her lip, then covered up the small moment of vulnerability by sipping from her glass of water.
Magic was, in many ways, the raw energy of life, of creation. Wizards had particularly vital life forces as a result of constantly working with such energies. Maybe there was less difference between them than I’d always heard. The White Court fed upon vital life energy. Maybe, given the situation Lara had been in, her Hunger had fed on raw magical power. Or maybe it was about me—the whole starborn thing was still a wild card. Maybe it was my magic, specifically, that the Outsider had been in tune with enough to feed upon.
Lara cleared her throat, inhaled, and composed herself. “Speaking of which, what have you found about helping Thomas?”
I frowned at her for a long moment, then focused my eyes on nothing in particular, thinking. She tilted her head after a moment, and I held up a couple of fingers, asking for time. She folded her hands and focused on me, waiting.
“If what I did for you pacified the Hunger,” I said slowly, “it should do the same for Thomas, shouldn’t it?”
She blinked. “Was that not the plan?”
“It’s trying to kill him,” I said. “The plan was to cut it out of him.”
Her pale blue eyes widened. “That would…He’d…”
“Be just a guy,” I said quietly.
Lara took a slow breath through her mouth. “Never to feel Hunger again,” she said quietly. She shook her head. “How would…I can’t even imagine how much his life would change. Empty night.”
“Change good? Change bad?”
“I suppose that would depend a great deal on one’s attitude,” she said. Her eyes went distant. “Inari and her husband seem happy. She’s had three children.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, finding myself smiling. Man, that case had been a long time ago. “Good for them.”
“But she lives a world away,” Lara said. “Honestly. I’m not sure you could appreciate it.”
“It’s like she left the Mafia,” I said. “I got kicked out of a gang recently myself.”
She blinked at me and gave me a rueful smile. “I suppose you did. You’re perceptive for someone so…”
“Manly?” I suggested. “Tall? Scarred?”
She laughed. “Young,” she said. “From what I’ve seen, it takes a lifetime to learn to see some things.” Her voice went dry. “For some people, more.”
“I’ve had to learn a lot the last few years.” I frowned. “Is it possible to, I don’t know, force-feed his Hunger?”
Lara considered the question grimly. “It wouldn’t be like dealing with mine was. His Hunger is not in the same state of restraint and balance as mine. It is berserk with need and blind to any food but Thomas’slife force.” She frowned. “And his Hunger is larger and stronger than mine. By a considerable margin.”
“How much bigger and stronger are we talking?” I asked.
Lara spread her hands helplessly. “There is no system of weights and measures that applies. If he’d not been with Justine all this time, feeding more or less freely from her, and instead had been forced to develop more discipline and restraint, he’d likely be one of the most powerful of our kind.” She sighed. “But he seemed so happy. I couldn’t bring myself to do what Father would have done.”
“Get rid of Justine,” I said.
“Mmmm.”
“So we’ve got no way to know if I can get his Hunger pacified,” I said. “Iamsure I can cut it out. If I’m not exhausted from trying to feed the thing instead.”
“A difficult question of balance,” Lara said, nodding. She frowned, looking down. “And…there is an additional concern.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“It could be,” she began slowly, “that this kind of…um.” She paused, her expression faintly annoyed. “I’m sorry. I find it’s very awkward to be discussing these kinds of particulars with someone who isn’t in the Court. I haven’t felt this way since I was quite young.”
