Page 46 of By the Pint

“Anyway, where were we? Right, weaknesses,” he said far too loudly for someone sat two feet away from me. “I want you to think of something that you consider a weakness. Something embarrassing that happened long ago in your past, or something you’d be ashamed of if I found out. Don’t think of it yet!” he yelled, as my brain started shuffling through my Rolodex of Humiliation.

“What you need to do first is to create a place to keep your secrets. Imagine a physical barrier. A wall, a dome, a chest, a fortress, anything.”

“What’s yours?” I asked. “What’s your physical barrier?”

Instead of answering my question, he laughed. “I’m not going to tell you that. But next time you try to go inside my mind, perhaps look for an object that is conspicuously inconspicuous.”

Fucking cryptic vampire.

“You got your barrier?” Dima’s smile reappeared.

“Hang on.” I closed my eyes.

What was good at keeping thoughts out? Metal. Metal was good. I couldn’t read minds well while in my car. My car? Would that work? No, I didn’t want to scratch up the paintwork—

“Thoughts can’t scratch an imaginary car,” Dima offered.

“Fine, but I still don’t want to use my car.” It felt wrong. I didn’t know why. “Got it!”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Nice. A sportsing locker.” I rolled my eyes. “Right, now, I want you to pick one embarrassing moment in your life, or something you wish no one would ever find out about you. Tuck it inside the locker and lock the thing tight. I’m not going to listen while you decide which horrendous piece of your history you want to keep hidden from me.” He puthis fingers in his ears and began la-la-la-ing like a four-year-old arguing with a sibling.

It wasn’t difficult to find a mortifying memory. There were hundreds of moments in my life I’d been praying to forget. You know the sort, the ones that surfaced to your thoughts just as your body had decided it was relaxed and comfortable and ready to recharge. There they’d appear, to chase away sleep. Choosing the least cringey one would be the tricky bit, though.

I seized a memory, placed it inside my ‘locker’, slammed the door, and locked it.

“Okay, I’ve got one,” I said. Shouted it again when Dima didn’t hear me the first time and tapped the back of my hand against his bicep.

He glanced at the spot where I’d made contact. “Now, I’m going into your mind to find the mem—You were nine. You threw up all over the sneeze guard in the school canteen. Holy crap, that’s a lot of barf. What had you eaten? Okay, no, focus. New memory—or doesn’t have to be a memory, just something you don’t want me to see. And lock it up tighter this time.” Dima put his fingers in his ears once again.

I found another memory-slash-thought and tried to lock it away ‘tighter’. Which, givenitwas an object in my fucking imagination, was no mean feat. I tapped his arm again.

Dima opened his eyes. “You actually like tofu. Try again.”

I let out my breath, tried another one, added an extra lock.

“You store your favourite dildos in the freezer.” His eyes drifted down my torso, but he stole himself, shaking his head. “Listen, don’t forget that if you use a combination lock, the mind reader can see inside your thoughts. They know when your birthday is. Try something more challenging. It doesn’t have to be a literal imaginary lock. Okay, words I’d never thought would go together. It can be something only you know the answer to, ariddle maybe, and lock the answer to the riddle inside the locker, too.”

My head span. I wasn’t even sure any of it made sense. What were real word combinations, and what was Dima simply vomiting sounds? The only riddle I knew was the one about the towel. What gets wetter as it dries? I tried that.

“When someone hands you a baby, your instinct is to throw it like a wingball.”

“Babies freak me out.” Great, as well as laying out all the shittiest things about myself, I now had to defend them.

“Fair. Babies freak me out too,” he said, eliciting a relieved laugh from me. “They’re so small and defenceless and the effort-in to reward-output is shit. It takes ages for them to be interesting. My flatmates are trying to get pregnant. They haven’t told any of us yet.” Dima gave me a look like he’d just placed his hand in bird shit. “My room is directly beneath theirs.”

“Oh. Oh no, that sucks.” Listening to other people’s sex noises was one thing, listening to their thoughts while they fucked could be downright disgusting.

“I’ve lined my ceiling in sheets of stainless steel, but it doesn’t block everything out. He’s a minotaur-shifter, and she’s a screamer.”

“Gods, I’m so sorry.” I pictured Dima lying in his coffin, hands over his ears, his adorable, frozen-in-time baby face contorted into a scowl, maybe he was weeping — I’d probably be weeping — as a man larger than a life raft hammered down onto a bed and cried out like a werewolf at the full moon. I shook the thought.

“No, that’s exactly what it looks and sounds like. It’s awful. My other flatmates are a nymph—”

“No!”

“With his human fiancée.”

“It gets worse!”

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