After all, if Briana and Sharon were Underground, wouldn’t Wolfie have told them?
But Della would not challenge him or Violet.
By this time, Wolfie had left Noreen and was coming toward Della. Her blood thundered with every step he took, and when he flicked his wrist to undo her restraints, she gasped with the shock of the freedom.
Then, as she drew shallow breaths, he healed her with the play of his fingers, which burned into her with his glow.
Warmth rushed to her chest, her belly, a deluge.
“You’ve had a trying weekend, haven’t you?” he said softly, his power fizzing over her skin.
“Yes,” she whispered, looking into his feral eyes and buzzing with the current from the visual connection.
He seemed so mild when he added, “Pity the authorities were able to identify a victim very quickly because her head was buried in the area we’ve used to hide our prey’s remains. Imagine—an entire head.”
Confusion gripped Della, mixing with the pleasant ache of his hands caressing her wrists.
“It’s my fault,” she said, knowing he would know, anyway, even if she had been able to hide what she had done with Kate’s head until now from the girls. Wolfie had access to all of them if he wished. “I was saving some of my meal share for private, but then I realized how repulsive that was and I buried it instead.”
He put his fingers under her chin and raised her head. “And how could you have known that it would turn out this way?”
She started to apologize once more, but he shook his head. “Don’t concern yourself, Della. But this is why you girls are receiving an education—so you might learn from situations such as these and never repeat your mistakes when you move on to the Underground, where you’ll be free to feed Above on your own.”
Looking at the other girls, he allowed his fingers to slide from Della’s chin to her neck, where he rubbed his thumb against her jugular. Her belly strained; her legs quivered.
“I’m afraid we’ve been overly careless recently,” he said. “Freedom is a fine matter, but cleverness goes with it hand in hand.”
Then, as if he’d driven home his message and was content, he moved away from Della, his fingers brushing near her breast.
She bit her lip, wanting to touch where he’d just touched.
But she didn’t, instead watching him go to Polly, where he released the other girl with another flick of his wrist and then healed her with a glowing touch, as well.
Violet shifted in her chains, as if to remind him she was waiting. But Wolfie would draw her out, if only for sheer entertainment.
The brunette tried to get his attention anyway. “Are you saying we won’t be able to nightcrawl anymore? Is that the price we’ll have to pay for Della’s ridiculous buried head?”
Wolfie laughed, but it was only a rumble in his throat. “You do welcome trouble, Violet, don’t you?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he chuckled, concentrating on Polly.
“Not to worry, dears. You’ll be getting back to your favorite pursuit soon. But tonight, you’re scheduled to have another rodent meal to show what’s in store if you should be defiant again.”
None of them groaned out load, but Della could feel their frustration in the very air.
Yet Wolfie would keep his promise. Della couldn’t imagine him remaining hidden, denying himself their nightcrawls. In his assumed “human” identity, he took great joy in parading in the open, especially when it involved spending the fortune he had once wheedled from Thomas Gatenby after the man had donated the land for Queenshill.
And after he had died from such “natural” causes.
Wolfie finished with Polly, tweaking her nose. “We will be more careful in the future, yes?”
“Yes,” they all said.
“Excellent.” He approached Violet. “Man was born wild, and being a vampire has only allowed us to expand on that pleasure. Certainly, there’ll be a time when the rest of the world fully accepts what we are, but we haven’t quite arrived at that point yet. And until we do, we must roam more carefully while easing society into one phase, then another.”
Violet seemed ecstatic to have his attention now, and she leaned her cheek against her raised arm, sending him a provocative look that seemed more fashioned for a twenty-five-year-old than a schoolgirl.
Intrigued, Wolfie made his slow way toward her. “I have lived hundreds of years, and I have seen society accept what they never thought to be acceptable. These days, anything goes and, fairly soon, we will not have to hide during our most joyful experiences. Until then, patience is an asset.”
Listening to him was like hearing a familiar bedtime story: a tale of how, once upon a time, he’d infiltrated society bit by bit, a vampire learning and adapting and traveling in human circles until he could be thought of as nothing else but human.
At least in public.
The moral of that story also remained the same: in keeping to his wildness, Wolfie had found himself.
Della only wondered if she could find the same ending. . . .
He had come to stand before Violet, and she angled closer to him, causing him to lower his brow, as if sizing her up.
Violet glanced up from under her lashes. “Undo me now?”
They locked gazes, so intensely that Della’s pulse took up the thud of Violet’s. All the girls’ heartbeats joined.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump.
With a rakish chuckle, Wolfie motioned toward Violet’s shackles, which opened like jaws releasing prey. She stumbled, catching her balance, but not before he walked off toward Blanche and left Violet to heal herself.
The girl sullenly held a hand over the flesh where the iron had chafed.
The rest of the group tittered, yet Della was still worried about trouble during their next nightcrawl.
As Wolfie released Blanche and glow-kissed the inside of one of her wrists, Della asked, “So we won’t have to worry about the authorities watching for us?”
Blanche leaned back against the wall, as awestruck as ever by Wolfie’s presence while he stroked her wrist and glanced at Della. His expression should have assured her, but . . .
Anxious, she accidentally slipped into Wolfie’s gaze and went so deep that she found herself swirling in his disjointed thoughts.
Depends on where the custode is . . . Perhaps off chasing ghosts around London? . . . And what if another blood brother is . . . ?
She tore herself out of him. Always causing the most trouble—What now?—
When she heard Wolfie laugh, Della realized he was . . . amused?
Yet then his gaze lowered, and the other girls stared at her, shocked. None of them had ever, ever broached Wolfie.
“You forget yourself, my sweet,” he said. “I didn’t bring you in for a listen, now, did I?”
Punishment. It would only be a matter of time.
He began to shed his jacket while wandering to a divan, then tossed the leather at the foot of the furniture and slunk down to the cushions. “I should be ashamed for letting down my guard, really. Girls are curious by nature. I know better, and it certainly won’t happen again.”
That feeling of sweat—the pinching, clammy memory—consumed her in her coolness.
“Della,” he said, commanding her to look at him.
When she did, she saw that he had leaned back, his wicked hair spread over a pillow, his limbs splayed in lazy abandon.
“From the day you were turned,” he said, “haven’t I always said you will be cared for? That you should never fear me?”
“Yes.” Dry throat. Hurt. “If we obeyed.”
“I daresay,” Wolfie continued, “that each of you joined because you wished to be cared for.”
Della nodded, unable to speak altogether now. Maybe it was because shame kept her silent. Shame in knowing he was right, that they had all wanted to stay young girls—the apples of Wolfie’s eye—even when everyone else in the world outside had forgotten them.
And to lo
se that . . . ? She mustn’t think it.
“What heaviness there suddenly is here,” he said.
Then a smile appeared on his mouth, starting slowly, growing, widening until his eyes glinted with the unfettered abandon they loved.
“I think,” he said, “Della must learn what it is to really play.”
Violet had sidled away from her chains, as if unsure of her place with Wolfie now. “Della will never learn.”
“Are you sure of that?”
As if to prove that Della could learn, his eyes flared, and the other girls jumped back, then giggled. Della only smiled a bit, hoping . . . no, knowing she’d been forgiven on his end. Knowing Wolfie was going to make everything better and protect them.
He always did.
While the girls held their collective breaths, he growled again, then sprang off the divan.
Even Della squealed now, especially when he grabbed for Blanche, who laughed and broke away from him, coming to hide behind Della.
“Deny me?” he asked in a dramatic bellow. “Who are you to do that?”
Blanche peeked out from behind Della as Wolfie hunched down to his hands and knees.
He crept toward them. “Who’s . . . denying . . . me?”
“Not me!” Polly said, pulling Blanche out from behind Della and tossing her to Wolfie.
He caught the dark-haired girl and pawed her to the floor, the two of them rolling over the rug until he ended up on top. Blanche could hardly breathe, she was laughing so hard, and Della felt it, too—the rush of cleansing gaiety.
At the liberty of it, all the girls sprang on him, piling as he nuzzled Blanche’s neck and she squealed some more.
Then Wolfie’s back arched, and they all tumbled off, backing away in delighted fear as he began to change into his play shape.
His ears pointing.
His snout lengthening.
His tail emerging.
His skin sprouting hair while he howled at the ceiling.
Gleefully, the girls pounced on each other, still in human form, swiping, laughing, tumbling round.
Forgiven, Della thought. Free and happy, just as Wolfie says we should be—
Noreen sent Della sprawling across the carpet to the tunnel entrance, and she sprang to all fours, ready to jump at Noreen and join in again.
But a sight behind the beads iced her.
A pair of eyes glowing through the clacking orange and red strands, then disappearing.
Della’s chugging blood eased to a stomp, stomp, stomp.
It had been the cat, but it had left them to continue playing, thanks be.
The ever-watching creature was leaving them to Wolfie.
With a relieved hop, Della darted away from the beads, then jumped on Noreen, forgetting the cat eyes in the giggling chaos.
It wasn’t until Blanche failed to show for class the next day that Della even remembered.
FIFTEEN
THE OUiJA INTERViEW
The Next Day
BRIDGET O’Connell, Eleanor’s older cousin, lived in a wealthy area of Harrow in a Victorian house that sat back on the rain-combed grass, reclining behind elm trees and a low brick wall. The inside was just as mellow and well-appointed, with dark, rose-patterned woodwork smelling of oil soap, plus dark-hued, layered window draperies that reminded Dawn of a dress that a fancy woman might’ve worn at a ball.
“The house is all a bit much for me now,” the seventy-some-year-old Mrs. O’Connell had told them after they’d doffed their coats and sat down to tea in one of three reception rooms. A hint of an Irish lilt painted the elderly woman’s tone just as colorfully as the pink tinge on her soft cheeks and the blue of her eyes. “My husband passed on years ago, and now it’s me and far too many rooms.”
Dawn, Kiko, and Natalia smiled back, their tea in front of them on the low cherry wood table. Mrs. O’Connell had already told them all about her husband: how he used to give music lessons here, how she could occasionally hear the memory of a violin or clarinet in an empty room.
Since they were still in the small-talk stage of the interview, they hadn’t asked yet about her much younger cousin Eleanor or found out why Natalia had envisioned her grave at Highgate Cemetery. All they’d really done was offer the story that had gotten them through the door—a cover designed to make their vampire-related questions seem reasonable.
Basically, Dawn had used the old “we’re on a personal mission for a friend” approach, just as Frank had done to make his own appointment with Justin Abberline tonight. But for Mrs. O’Connell, Dawn had invented a fictional missing pal named Sara who was “an acquaintance of Eleanor’s.” According to this cover, they were tracking down this friend since everyone else had given up on finding her and, since they’d “uncovered Eleanor’s name in some of Sara’s sensitive documents,” they were coming to Mrs. O’Connell, hoping she could help them by talking about her cousin and why she might be connected to fictional Sara.
More lies, Dawn thought, glancing at Natalia. But as long as they brought down this Underground, they were damn justified.
“It’s not often I have the pleasure of company these days,” Mrs. O’Connell said from her petal-upholstered armchair across from them. “Not unless you include the odd long-lost third cousin who comes sniffing around for what money I might leave after I’ve gone to the great hereafter. Since Ellie passed on, I do miss a conversation over tea. She was always kind enough to indulge whenever she was in town from one of her business trips. But I’m thinking you’re not here to chat with a dotty old missus and you’ll want to be hearing about Ellie now.”
Sprightly for her age, Mrs. O’Connell pushed herself to her feet, scuttling past the upright piano and its contingent of mounted musical instruments, swerving behind a silken dressing screen where they could hear her riffling through a drawer.
Dawn took a sip of tea and absorbed the room’s antique warmth. Well, it wasn’t warm warm—in fact, she had goose bumps in spite of a fire burning behind a low needlepoint-covered screen—but it wouldn’t be terrible to stay here an hour longer.
Maybe she didn’t mind hanging around because she was tired, Dawn thought as the tea traveled from her throat to her stomach in a cooling stream. Tired of running around. Tired of things always flip-flopping on her, like Jonah taking over Costin last night. At least old places had some consistency to them.
Mrs. O’Connell’s voice was muffled behind the dressing screen. “Just one more moment . . .”
Natalia, who was sitting next to Dawn, had her gaze on the flower-molded ceiling, obviously listening for any voices from the dead. On the other side of her, Kiko was cupping his hands around his teacup, a vague smile on his face.
Wasn’t he chilled out? Last night after Jonah had left, Dawn and Costin hadn’t found anything new to say to each other, so she’d left her bedroom and discovered Kiko in the midst of the sweats. But he sure was composed today. Dawn suspected that he’d used some Friends, who were even now waiting outside, to calm him again.
Mrs. O’Connell emerged from behind the screen, her hands full of snapshots and knickknacks. “I fetched all the photos of Ellie I could find. Keep telling myself I’ll put them in a scrapbook, but I never seem to come round to it. Perhaps you’ll find Sara in a picture with her while we talk of Ellie?”
“Great idea,” Dawn said, positioning herself on the edge of the love seat as the elderly woman spread the photos and random objects over the table. If the items had belonged to Eleanor, Kiko would be able to use them. “We really appreciate your help, Mrs. O’Connell.”
“Not a mention of it.” She stood next to Dawn, smelling like rose oil.
Kiko placed his cup and saucer far away from the photos and went for a small doll decked out in a green shamrock-printed dress, flame-yarned hair, tiny black button eyes, and a red-thread mouth that made it seem like her lips had been sewn shut.
“Did this belong to Eleanor?” he asked.
“Yes, she hand made dolls, and she also knit Aran j
umpers for fairs in what free time she had.” The elderly woman bustled off to another part of the house, saying, “I’ll bring one of those back for you to see. The craftsmanship is so lovely.”
Kiko held the doll, trying to get a reading while Natalia and Dawn scanned the pictures. Most of them featured a freckled, auburn-haired child laughing as she did things like riding a pony or licking an ice cream cone. More recent photos showed a bohemian-looking woman with a wide smile and blue eyes holding up one of those sweaters she must’ve knitted.
Since Dawn was recording their interview for Costin’s sake, she took out her camera phone and snapped away for him, too. The quality of her digital pictures would suck when he saw them, but she wasn’t about to steal any of Mrs. O’Connell’s keepsakes.
Then she whispered to her coworkers. “You get anything?”
“Not with Mrs. O’Connell,” Natalia said. “She sounds and looks human. Yet there is . . . something. . . . A murmuring around us.”
Dawn’s pulse jammed. “So you’re hearing a voice?”
“Not a clear one.” She sat back, concentrating.
Not to be outdone, Kiko jumped in with his own findings while laying the Irish doll on the table.
“I saw a few things,” he said, “but nothing that pops out as being meaningful right now. I just know that Eleanor was at her happiest when she made these dolls.”
A creaking on the stairs told them that their hostess was on her way back. The group zipped their lips as she appeared with a sweater.
Holding the thick, green gray creation up to her slight body, Mrs. O’Connell said, “Lovely, yes?”
She handed it over to Dawn, who fingered the intricate knit. Cozy. Dawn handed it to Natalia, who inspected it with the same diligence.
Mrs. O’Connell added, “I always told Ellie she missed her calling. Yet she said she was doing more with her real job than entertaining folks with dolls and jumpers.”
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