LAMIAE

CHAPTER FOUR: CONVERSATION

The boy's response caused her to not even scream when he took off with a squeal of tires, still in too much shock to react. Could he be her grandmother's lover? The boy may have looked young, but after all, he wasn't over twenty, and Genevieve was in her seventies. Troubled by the number of questions in her head, she finally decided to break the silence that followed this unusual confession. Looking in the mirror, she could no longer see anything but the cars speeding past them on the road.

"You... you know..." she didn't want to sound nosy, but because of that she couldn't croak out the right words. "Do you help her at home?" she bubbled evasively.

"In what sense?"

"I don't know," his secretiveness made her uneasy. "Are you a cook, a cleaner, all together? Or rather an old lady's erotic toy?" she knew she had been rude, but she wasn't going to apologize for it. She looked at him defiantly, at which the boy began to laugh.

"Think what you want, though I'd rather call myself a parasite."

"You're her kept man," she whined quite seriously, but he started laughing again.

"You're funny, but you're right. I am her kept man. I don't do anything, and I have a roof over my head and the shelter I need," he fell silent for a moment and sighed, staring at the road ahead. "Your grandmother gives me food every day, and I have someone to talk to. In return, I only give her my company," he finished after a minute's pause.

"Do you go to work?" she stared uncertainly at the car. You don't need a driving license to know you've exceeded the speed limit.

"No, not yet," he replied, glancing sideways for a moment, assessing her expression of discontent. "I graduated high school two years ago and I'm just looking for something. Maybe after the holidays."

"Yeah," she murmured. "And your family? Don't your relatives help you?"

"You want to know too much at once," he said, frowning. She immediately shut her mouth as she was already planning to ask another question. Aware that she didn't know him yet, and that she shouldn't form an opinion prematurely, she dismissed the thought that the dark-haired man who was driving the Mercedes had a secret, and it wasn't about dealing drugs, but something else entirely.

"I don't like silence," she confessed him truthfully. "So if you don't want to ask me anything, don't expect the same from me. Besides, if you kidnapped me, I'm just forming a bond between us, what scientists call the Stockholm Syndrome."

"I didn't kidnap you, and you're about to find out."

"That's great," she snorted, looking over her shoulder to see what Tie was up to. The cat stopped purring and slept as if it was sleeping off the train journey. Ridiculous... After all, Tie appeared only at the station with Casper. "Is it my grandma's cat?" she asked, looking back at the landscape before her. It is true that the terrain was not yet fully mountainous, but here and there she could see something like mounds, which had no right to exist in the capital, except for artificial ones.

"Yes," he admitted, nodding his head. "Apparently he wandered into her house some time ago. You know, if silence bothers you, why don't you tell me what you did in Warsaw?

She knew he only did it to keep her occupied, but she was grateful for it anyway. In fact, maybe he didn't want to question her himself, so as not to bring up sensitive topics, such as her mother's death or the fact that she had never visited her grandmother before. Just thinking about it made her like him even more.

"So... I've been a rather active person all my life," she began, recalling moments from her childhood when she went dancing, horseback riding, and she took extra English and French classes. The fact that she was active in scouting for the last year and had a discount on the swimming pool, although she never learned to swim perfectly. "It wasn't until my mother got sick that everything changed. That's probably why my dad wanted me to move here for a year."

"I thought you came because of his work. I heard he got a job abroad," he said, watching her reaction. His words assured her that he and her grandma had talked about her family before.

"If he wanted to, he could take me with him," she revealed her thoughts. "I can speak English, I could do well in a school abroad. And even if he didn't want to, my mom sent me to school a year early, a break from studing wouldn't hurt me. I guess he wanted for me to try my life elsewhere for a year. Grandma, from what my mother told me, was always an energetic person. I don't remember her very well, but apparently she spreads positive energy. Dad is counting on me to soak up that energy and come back energized.

"Did he tell you about it?"

"No, of course not," she stuttered. "We haven't spoken much since mom died. But I know him. If he hadn't counted on it, he'd have chosen a different place for me to live."

"What's wrong with Kielce? After all, it's not far from Warsaw."

Casper looked intrigued for the first time. He stared at her a little longer than he should have, and she was about to admonish him to return his thoughts to the roadway when he veered rather sharply to the side, entering a dirt track. She jumped up because of the hole in which the car fell, insistently grabbing the seat belt holding her.

"Nothing, but I don't know this town. Mom and grandma had a quarrel right after I was born, so we never came here together," although she wanted to tell him more, she didn't know him well enough to reveal all the family secrets, especially since he didn't seem to know much about it yet. He must have thought she was a talker anyway, which wasn't really true.

The vehicle finally stopped, and she shifted her gaze to her surroundings. She nearly fainted when she finally realized that they were in nothing more or less than a forest.