I looked around for someplace safe to set my underwear to dry, and thought for a dark moment about using the bars on Celine’s bed like a clothesline. Staring at her bed, imagining her horror if she did come in to see my muted blue-floral cotton panties strung up by handcuffs, I crossed the room.
Her bed, the wood it was made out of, plus the chrome playset, had to weigh several hundred pounds. I listened carefully to determine whether I could hear anyone in the hall, and then bent down. I knew about body mechanics from moving patients at the hospital. I squatted, braced my back, set my shoulders into their sockets, put my hands underneath the bed frame, and—
“What are you doing?”
I let go and whirled. I’d been concentrating too hard—and I’d just gotten a lesson in how quiet another daytimer could be.
Celine was standing in the doorway, lips pulled into a frown, her dragon-red lipstick the only bright color on her.
“I—I was just looking around.”
“Don’t ever touch my things.” She stalked over to the vanity to survey her belongings, in case I’d stolen some. Where would I have hidden them in this awful stupid outfit? I imagined her looking for her favorite bottle of perfume in my vagina. When she was done with her circuit she looked back at me critically. “You’d better lose that weight soon. If you’re not careful, you’ll get stuck with a muffin top for eternity.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I said drily. She didn’t know I was pregnant, at least. Maybe if I ate a lot while I was here I could pretend to just be gaining weight, like those people on TV who didn’t find out they were pregnant till they were hovering over a toilet.
Despite my shirt’s high collar, the necklace Asher’d given me popped out, its amethyst stone like the first volley from a Roman candle. Her eyes leapt on it like a cat. “Pretty.”
I quickly tucked it back inside. “Thanks.”
I stared at her, and she stared at me. I wasn’t physically tired—or sore, or hungry, or thirsty, or any of the other thousand feelings I should have a right to be—but I was emotionally exhausted. So far, being a daytimer was like walking on knives. If couldn’t be alone, then at least I’d like to close my eyes and keep to myself and pretend, even if that meant sleeping on a grungy cot without a pillow.
She kept staring. Daytimers must always win at the staring game—unless they were playing against vampires.
“I think this is the part where if we were in a Western the harmonica would start playing really fast,” I said.
Her frown lessened by point zero zero zero one degree, and she snorted. “I’m going to get ready for bed now. Stay on your cot. I’ll know if you get up, so don’t, not even to pee. And if you snore I’ll smother you in your sleep.”
I nodded and, always keeping one eye on me, Celine walked to a black lacquer panel ornamented with carved fans and stepped behind it. Once she was hidden, she started taking her own clothing off.
I crawled into my bed, such as it was, my stupid skirt hitching up around my waist. I didn’t want to keep watching for her, because I felt like some kind of voyeur, but not watching her felt dangerous, like turning your back on a dog known to bite. She must have felt the same way because she kept watching me, her eyes peeking over the panels until she took off her heels and bobbed down four inches, emerging immediately afterward in a simple black slip.
She crawled into her bed-palace, drew all of its curtains, and with a remote turned off the lights. I could tell she was still awake by the sound of her breathing—had vampire blood made my ears better too, taken them back to the pre-bass time of my youth? Or had it changed my brain somehow? How did it work? Now that I was a daytimer—and because the only daytimers we’d ever treated in Y4 had been ones who weren’t getting enough vampire blood on their own, the sick ones on their way out who hadn’t been chosen to change—I realized how much I didn’t know about vampire physiology.
Her breathing was still distracted, and I heard the sound of her skin rubbing on her silk sheets as she turned, waiting for me to sleep first.
Maybe you can sleep for the both of us, baby, because I don’t know how I’m going to.
It was going to be a really long eight months. I didn’t have to enjoy it or make any friends—it would be like biding my time at any other shitty job, and it wouldn’t be the first one I’d had. But I could do it. For the baby, and for Asher.
I concentrated on the thought of seeing him, trying to conjure him up out of the darkness in my mind. I thought about the house we shared and how my things seemed to fit just right after I moved in, and how much happier Minnie was with all the windowsills and sun.
If I thought hard enough on it I could imagine walking up to the door knowing Asher was already home, the fireplace roaring, see him sitting on the couch, reading a book, looking up as I walked in—
CHAPTER THREE
“Edie?”
He put the book down and stood up like he always did when I came home. I stopped in the doorway and covered my mouth with one hand.
Was this a dream? Or had everything that happened before just been a nightmare?
“Is it you?” I whispered, scared I’d break the bubble of this fragile reality.
A familiar smile creased his lips. “Who else would it be?”
I ran across the room to hug him, almost tackling him in the process.
“Hey now—” he began, defending himself while hugging me back.
I knew it couldn’t be all the way real. But it was real enough. I could feel the muscles of his back, the heat of his body, smell the scent of his skin.
My hands ran up into his hair, pulling his face down so I could see him more clearly. He beamed down at me. If I wished and hoped and clicked my heels three times—I leaned up to kiss him and closed my eyes and—
Maybe if I hadn’t had Raven’s blood I wouldn’t have noticed it. But the moment before our lips touched, after my eyes shut, when I was already replaying what was about to happen in my own mind to milk its full sweetness, because knowing what’s about to come is almost as good as when it actually happens—I realized his eyes weren’t right.
I pulled my head back, still holding his in place with my hands. He was beaming down at me, and the fireplace was reflected in his eyes, but there wasn’t any of Asher’s own light.
I shoved him away, and the thing that looked like Asher but wasn’t released me. “Who are you?”
He tilted his head to the side. The gesture was still Asher’s, but the longer I looked into the eyes the more wrong they became.
“How did you know?” he asked, taking a step toward me.
“Stop that.” I gestured wildly at him, and around the room we were in. “Stop all of this. If it isn’t real—or at least really from me—stop pretending.”
“I thought you would appreciate the familiar surroundings.”
I did. Oh, God, I did. “This place is mine. You have no right to be here. Stop it.”
Asher’s living room shimmered and blurred, as if I were looking at it from a great height. “What would you like to see instead?” he asked.
I shook my head strongly. “Nothing. No more games. Who are you? And why did you try to trick me?”
“I thought it would be easier to talk to you if I appeared like this.” He gestured to himself, Asher’s form that he wore like a suit.
My eyes narrowed, even in my dream. “What are you?”
“A vampire.”
“How are you awake during the day?”
“I’m not awake. When I sleep, I can walk from dream to dream.”
“Which one of them are you?”
“No one that you’ve met yet.” He took a step toward me. “I am a prisoner here, just like you.”
“Why?” I demanded.
He grinned just like Asher did, a little rogue. “Why were you imprisoned here? Bad luck, cruel whimsy? It doesn’t matter why—only that we both long to be free.” He reached a hand out. “If you can find me, I can free us both.”
I
crossed my arms. Whatever he was, he was dangerous. I already had a plan; all I had to do was stay alive.
“Do you really think it will be that simple?” he asked, which was when I realized he was in my head. It made sense, all the familiarity and the dreams, but it made his intrusion more violating. I took another step away from him, nearer the blurry glow of the fireplace. “I can only read surface thoughts—only what you’re thinking now.”
“I’m thinking I don’t need your help—”
“But you do. And I need you—to find me and free me,” he said, with Asher’s face, even as his voice was changing to someone else’s. “I’m the only one who can get you out of here alive.”
I shook my head, refusing him—whatever he was—when his face became stern and frightening. A shock of cold fear raced through me as he lunged in and I screamed, diving backward into the fireplace’s imaginary flames.
I went rolling across the cold rugless ground in Celine’s room. Only we weren’t alone anymore and there was a sharp metallic sound as something hard hit the cot I’d been sleeping on. I heard the metal of the cot’s frame bend and break, and even in the dark I had no doubt if I’d still been in it, I would have died.
CHAPTER FOUR
Celine had to know she’d missed. I crouched down, trying to make myself a smaller target, reacting on instinct. Everything in my body narrowed, condensing, focused—maybe the blackness helped—and I calmed down until I couldn’t even hear myself breathe.
I heard Celine take a step and there was no time for thought. If I waited, I might lose her in the darkness. I took a hunched leap to where I’d heard her and then swept up to standing, hopefully inside the range of any weapon she had. I grabbed her bodily and took her to the floor, and heard her weapon clatter away, part of my mind registering where it landed for later—when I realized I wasn’t fighting a she; there were huge muscles underneath the cotton in my hands. The man I was wrestling with took advantage of my half second of surprise and grabbed me, whirling me down, and I knew he was trying to hold me against the stone while reaching out for the weapon he’d dropped.
I punched him with my free hand, in the chest exposed below his reaching arm, and was horrified to feel ribs break. The man groaned but didn’t stop reaching. I knew I couldn’t take the chance of him grabbing it, whatever it was—I punched again, and the same ribs that I’d just broken cracked fresh under my fist.
I wasn’t the only one who was at least a little invulnerable. I punched again, and again in the same spot, remembering when I’d watched Lucas’s hand pierce a werewolf’s chest with his own supernatural strength. With each blow I could feel the man shudder over me as if he’d been shot, but he didn’t let go of me or guard himself; he just kept straining out. It made me even more afraid of him reaching the weapon—whatever it was had to be bad.
Our stalemate couldn’t last forever—and I’d rather it ended on my terms than his. I used the force of one more punch and the leveraging of a leg to get him up and hurl him away from me, and from the thing he was reaching for, and then I went for it. I grabbed a handle, snatched it up, and fell into another soundless crouch. My feet were on top of the zebra skin now. I instantly knew where in the room I was, and from the feel of the handle and the weight of one end, the thing I was holding was a hammer.
My eyes widened in the dark. A hammer wasn’t a joke. Whoever I was fighting had meant to kill me. And if I died, so would my baby. My first instinct was to scream, and I bit my lips to keep it back. I was supposed to have eight months and then get home safe, not be murdered on my first day here. It wasn’t fair—but nothing had been fair for a while now, had it? My baby and I still weren’t safe.
Something cold and angry flowed through my veins. I felt as though a tap had been turned on inside myself; it had that feeling you get after certain shots or drugs, where your body knows that what is entering isn’t right. It felt like liquid death—like I imagined embalming fluid would feel if someone held me down and plugged it into my carotids. I forced myself to breathe in and out silently and listened with ears that were eerily good for my attacker. I was standing between him and the door, and he had to know that I had the hammer—he was probably trying to figure out if I was willing to use it.
Half of me was. I could see myself cracking his skull like an eggshell, and while the thought of his brains spilling out made part of me recoil in disgust, this new dark part of me was completely fine with him getting what he deserved. I shivered in the darkness, trying not to listen to it.
A true daytimer wouldn’t think twice about mayhem, and neither did this new part of me. I could feel muscles bunching up without thought, as half of me readied like a hunting cat.
But I wasn’t one of them yet, and I didn’t even want to be one. I hadn’t gotten a choice in being changed—and I didn’t want anyone’s brains on my hands. Maybe I’d feel differently later, or I’d invest in gloves, but not today.
I took the hammer in both hands and snapped the head of it off at the top of the handle before I could do anything else.
The man ran past me at the sound, rushing for the door. I swung the shaft of the hammer up like a club, catching him in his chest and taking him down to the ground on instinct, and then, holding the head of the hammer in my hand like a roll of quarters, I knelt down and punched his stomach, hard. I felt the infirmity of flesh as he gasped, all the air knocked out of him.
Just because I didn’t want to kill him didn’t mean I wanted him to escape.
I knew whatever advantage I had could be temporary, so I didn’t stop. I was scared to set him free until I found out who he was and why he’d attacked me. He tried to leverage his legs up, and I swung the shaft out to the side, punching at this new target as hard as I could without thought, catching him simultaneously hearing and feeling his nearest femur snap. Oh, God—
He exhaled in a rush of pain, and then gasped, “Mercy!”
A ploy to gain time to heal? I didn’t want to hit him a second time—but would he fight me again if I didn’t keep breaking things? He’d tried to kill me—and my baby. I let the darkness do what it wanted to in me and swatted the hammer’s handle down again, smashing the same spot on his leg between the hard wood and the stone floor, hearing a fresh crack.
“Mercy!” he grunted.
The obvious pain in his voice brought me back from the brink. This wasn’t me. I couldn’t torture someone who’d already surrendered. Taking in a shuddering breath, I lowered the handle to the ground. “Jackson!” I howled—hoping that the person I was using as a punching bag wasn’t him.
The light came on in the room, momentarily blinding me. My opponent was blinded too, lying in front of me, leg mangled but healing. It was Lars. Celine—present for the whole fight, ensconced on her bed—finally intervened.
“Why did you attack me?” I shouted down at him. I could see his loose leg pulling into place, the bone resetting. “Why?” I shouted at the top of my lungs. Soon he’d be better and I’d have to make a horrible choice—
“Edie!” came a new voice. I whirled, and Jackson was in the doorway. “Calm down. You’re safe.”
“No I’m not! He attacked me!” I clutched the fist with the hammerhead in it to my chest.
“You’re winning. You’ve won.” Jackson patted the air between us to calm me as if I were a wild horse.
“But he tried to kill me! Why?”
Jackson spared Lars a dark look. “He fought you because he thought he had to. Because he’s a fool.”
Time slowed back down as I did, and I realized my entire fight with Lars had taken thirty seconds. A minute, tops. I looked down at Lars, his leg slowly becoming whole, and looked at Jackson to watch his face when he answered me.
“Will he attack me again?”
“Probably not tonight.” He frowned, but I didn’t get the sense he was lying.
And now that I could see I was kicking and breaking someone already down on the floor—I shook my head and quickly stood up.
&nbs
p; “Mercy, mercy,” Celine taunted Lars, from the safety of her bed. Now that he wasn’t in mortal peril, Lars scrabbled backward. It seemed like it was taking him longer to heal each time. Maybe injuries were cumulative? I already knew from Y4 that the healing properties of vampire blood were finite, one of many reasons why daytimers stayed close to their Masters.
“You and Lars and Natasha share the same Master. There’s not always enough blood to go around—and blood is power,” Jackson explained, as Lars transformed from someone who looked like he’d lost a fight back to the man I’d seen earlier this morning, minus his torn clothes.
“I was here before you,” Lars growled. “Never forget that.” He brushed by me on purpose on his way out of the room. I stood my ground as his shoulder hit mine.
“So he thought he’d get the drop on me? By attacking me my first night out?”
“He was hoping the blood hadn’t taken yet. Apparently, it has.” Jackson shrugged. “Plus, he’s not much for long-term planning. He’s not the lull-you-into-a-sense-of-comfortable-security type.”
I stared at him, trying to keep my thoughts off my face.
“Like me,” he added, with a wolfish grin. My fist tightened around the added weight of the hammerhead. “Oh, come on, you knew we were both thinking it,” he went on.
Despite my horror, it was hard not to crack a smile. I tossed the hammer handle up and down in my left hand. It was old wood, solid. “The only thing I know for sure now is the next person who tries to wake me is going to get hurt.”
Jackson, still grinning, gave me a short bow. “Then I believe I’ll leave you two ladies to sort things out.”
* * *
I watched him head out the door—and realized what the bell I’d seen earlier was for. Daytimers might not be allowed to lock their doors, but they could make sure guests wouldn’t arrived unannounced. Celine had come in last, and she hadn’t set the bell. She’d known Lars would come for me tonight.
Which meant she was conniving, or she didn’t like to dirty her own hands—or she knew she was too weak to fight me herself. I turned toward her, where she sat on her black bed in her black slip—given the whiteness of her limbs, she looked like a porcelain doll—and I kept my eyes on her as I stalked across the floor and set the bell’s hinge out, so we wouldn’t get any other unannounced company. Her lips tightened at this. She knew she’d been caught. Then I walked over to the destroyed cot.
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