Page 95 of Five to Love Him
Conrad cocked his head at Xander. “What’d he teach you?”
“Latin. Didn’t need it, but there was this boy who was in that class.”
“Ah! Catullus wrote of love, Xander, did I not teach you his words? Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requires? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. The man had it right. Why fuck sweetly when you can impassion the act with ire?”
Conrad snapped his fingers in front of my face. “This guy, the human. Can we stash him here for the day or not?”
I opened my mouth but closed it again, taking the hands of two of my hivelings instead. “That’s not just my decision. Hive, what do you think?”
Both of their jaws worked, and it was a long time before they said, “The door to the bathroom behind the kitchen locks. The window is small. We can tape it shut with cardboard so he doesn’t get any light while he’s in there. He will be all alone in the darkness.”
“Just like I taught you, always add garnish,” Coral said. The heat didn’t seem to bother him at all despite the layered clothing that he wore.
“Duct tape,” one of the guest hivelings said to another, or to himself. “Duct tape is always good.” “But no saw?”
“No saw,” Farrow said. “The mound likes something that’s fresh every now and then, and it’s important to keep your IT creature happy.”
On the floor, the human groaned and opened his eyes. “What fucking—”
Xander kicked him so hard I was sure I heard something break. The guy howled.
“Duct tape,” some of the guest hivelings said and headed out the front door.
Farrow groaned. “Dear me, Conrad, if we’d had duct tape on the pilgrim paths, what fun we could have had. Oh, come to think of it, Leopold, did you enjoy those socks and warming soles?”
I chuckled dryly and picked the hiveling to my right to hug.
“I don’t need them anymore, headprincipal. I’m a hiveling’s glowworm.”
“Glowworm?” Xander asked.
I shrugged. “Mate, lover. Husband maybe, though I’m not sure Instructor Arick would approve of that human construct.”
“Arick is an idealist,” Farrow said. “But it would be a blessing if each of us, in the span of the darkness of their lives, might find a one who shines for them, the glowworm of their heart.”
“Farr, you are a shit poet, your laces are undone, and your stupid tie is all crooked.”
“Is that so?” the headprincipal asked, leaving me glad that I had my own office across the hall from his.
forty-three
Xander borrowed a pickup truck from someone and parked it in the drive. Coral went out and came back with extra folding chairs. I stayed in the kitchen with my hive, who’d gone very still and was watching the bathroom door, Bruno cradled in one of their arms. The guest hive had treated them for mild taser burns, but both hives had told me it was nothing to worry over.
When I went upstairs to pee and change my sweaty clothes, I found Conrad painting the walls of the master bedroom while Headprincipal Farrow sat on the floor in the middle of the room.
“Conrad, you’re not holding that brush right,” I overheard Farrow say before hurrying on to the bathroom.
While my hive wouldn’t leave the kitchen, everyone else refused to leave us, and so I brought out my projector, closed the shutters in the living room, and started a monster movie marathon for them.
I couldn’t really sit still for long. Instead, I went outside to pick some early zucchinis and helped the guest hive make popcorn before collecting fresh mint and lemon balm for a big pot of tea I brewed for my hive and whoever else wanted some.
Farrow and Conrad spent several hours in our new bedroom, the door closed.
“The painting of the walls is done,” Farrow announced when they finally came down.
“Just painting shouldn’t have taken that long,” Xander mumbled before Coral hissed at him.
“Shh! Some of us are watching that.”
