“So what’s the answer?”
I laughed again, getting back to my stake, picking up the carving stroke where I’d stopped. My hands were a little shaky after all those true confessions. “You’re relentless. I don’t even remember the question after all that.”
Her smile was prim, and it made her look all of fourteen years old. “Is this all about the vampire you like?”
Discussing Carden seemed like child’s play after my very own character assassination, and I caved. Anything to change the subject. “Okay. You win. It’s about Carden, the vampire I like.” I caught her eye. “Is that what you were after?”
I could only hope she’d noticed my thing with Carden because we were roommates and roommates noticed things and not because my attachment to him was so obvious.
“What’s the deal with you two?” Mei-Ling’s question was probing, but her gaze was glued to the star and stake in my hands.
Her averted eyes somehow made it easier to reply. “The deal…” I wouldn’t tell her about the bond, but if she was going to risk her life to help me, I owed her a partial truth. “The deal is, I really like him.”
She made a face. “But why? He’s a vampire.”
“Why? He’s just different,” I said, without thinking.
Her brows scrunched even more. “How?”
“How…” I wondered just that. There was the bond. Obviously. But I couldn’t tell her that. I trusted her, but that seemed like information that could get her killed, and I was exposing her to enough risk already.
So what else was there? Why did I feel strongly enough about Carden that I’d risk my life—risk my friend’s life—to save him?
“He treats me like a real person,” I began, trying to put exact words to my feelings. I swept the blade down the wood, sharpening it, putting all my emotion behind it. I opened my mind, opened my heart, probing just what it was that I felt. “Like I’m my own unique individual. Not some kid, or someone who’s been slapped around, or someone who’s good at school. Maybe it was because we met on the other island, away from here, without a context. But when I met Carden, he met me as me.”
I considered my feelings in light of what Mei had just said about me. Carden didn’t fear me—the thought was laughable. And he definitely didn’t need my help. He needed me, because of the bond—but I imagined he could bond with any pretty young thing.
No, he liked me. And I liked him. He made me laugh. He was light where I was dark, seeing the humor in things that’d felt so grimly serious to me. Carden gave me hope.
I couldn’t lose that hope.
“I think I need him.” It went beyond the physical need of our bond. To lose Carden now would make me feel lost. It would steal my purpose, my hope. “I can’t lose him,” I told her, and it felt like a confession, dredged from the darkest depths of my soul.
“Then count me in.” She’d completed a stake, and she put it on the bed with confidence. It was crude, marbled red and brown and black where she’d scraped the paint from the wood, but it looked sharp. It looked like something that could pierce a heart. “So, you think the Draug keeper knows something.”
“I didn’t see him up close, but the guy looks like he’s seen some serious stuff. For all I know, he could be the killer.”
“Check,” she said with a nod. “We’re going to find the Draug keeper. And then what?”
What would we do next? Good question. “Sit down for a nice chitchat?”
“Yeah, right.” Mei selected a new strip of wood and began to carve. “We could capture him. Interrogate him. Like a citizen’s arrest.”
“You’ve been watching too much Law & Order.” I considered it. I knew I—we—needed to take action.
Seeing my star wielded so carefully in her hands somehow cemented our friendship. It made me feel like we could figure this out. As I watched her painstaking strokes, a plan formed in my head. “I could act as bait. Have a Draug attack me. If the keeper is good, he’ll help me. If he’s bad…”
“He’ll sic the whole herd on you?” Mei looked aghast. “That doesn’t sound like a great plan.”
“No, listen, you’ll be there with your flute.” The more I thought about it, the more perfect it seemed. “When you play, everyone will get all calm and tractable. If he’s the killer, we’ll tie him up and Carden goes free. If not, we’ll ask him questions, maybe get proof enough to show that Carden’s not the murderer.”
“Carden, huh?” She raised a brow.
I sat tall, placing my last stake on our small but respectable pile. “Yes. Carden.” It felt good to be honest, if only partly so.
But then Mei frowned. “What if you’re hurt?”
“I’ll be fine,” I assured her, trying to believe my own words. The truth was, I expected to get an injury or two. It didn’t thrill me, but one or two more scratches taken for the cause wouldn’t kill me.
She put her last stake down and we admired our handiwork. Six wooden stakes. They weren’t nearly as pretty as my antique box had been, but they promised extra protection, and that was all the pretty I needed.
“Nice work,” I said.
Our eyes met. Mei-Ling asked gravely, “Will we leave tonight?”
“God, no,” I exclaimed with a laugh. “Do you know what’s crawling around out there at night? Eeesh.” I shuddered. “No. We’ll go tomorrow, when the sun is at its highest.” Alcántara had once told me himself—vampires can roam about in the sunlight, they just don’t relish it. “Daylight won’t protect us from everything, but it might offer a little cover.”
I’d gathered from Ronan that we had a little time before the trial—though I wasn’t ready to confess Ronan’s sympathies just yet. There’d been enough revelations for one evening. Instead, I added simply, “No need to go off stupidly half-cocked.”
“Right,” she said with a smile. “We’ll go off stupidly all-the-way-cocked.”
We smiled grim smiles, and though I was nervous, it felt good to share this resolve. To be taking action.
I crawled into bed, praying we woke to an unusually bright morning. Honesty had cleared my conscience, and sleep came fast and hard.
Fantasies of Carden were waiting for me there.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I awoke feeling heat. Vague images of Carden shimmered on the edges of my mind, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t grasp them. I couldn’t remember my dream.
It angered me. Focused me. Intensified my urgency.
I wouldn’t lose him. I would have that heat. I would make it real, experience it live and in person, and not just as a stolen moment in a pitch-black dungeon, either.
The thought shot my eyes open. “Rise and shine,” I croaked to Mei, still asleep in her bed.
I hopped up to peek out the blinds. Warmth still pulsed through my body, enough that part of me could almost believe we’d woken to a warm day.
Mei rolled to her side, watching as I pulled aside the blinds. “Well?”
I scowled. “It’s as gray and bleak as ever.”
“Of course it is,” she said, throwing off her blankets.
I fumbled into my uniform as quickly as I could, the brisk morning air a shock. “You ready to play that flute later?”
“Always,” she said, sounding slightly shivery as she pulled on her own clothes. “But are you ready to be attacked by the weird Draug guy? Wait”—she stopped and held up a hand—“don’t tell me. You were born ready, right?”
It elicited a much-needed smile from me. “Right.”
The day took forever. We had only three hours between the time her Phenomena class ended and my Medieval Musicianship class began. It’d have to be enough for us to sneak away and find the Draug keeper.
“We need to go as fast as we can,” I told her, breaking into a jog. “You up for it?”
She nodded, falling into my rhythm. “What should we do if we’re spotted?”
“If anyone sees us, we’ll tell them we’re just out for a run.”
“All the way out here?” She shot me
a look. “This is way off the path.”
“The vamps don’t tend to roam around this time of day,” I said, hoping I was right. “Nobody will see us.” But I upped my pace all the same.
I knew to keep to the hilltops, and as we neared the spot, I got onto my belly to scoot to the edge, gesturing for Mei-Ling to do the same. We studied the valley below. When I’d last spied the keeper, it had been nighttime, but the sun was up now, and the place didn’t exactly sparkle in the light of day.
“Creepy,” Mei whispered.
“Totally creepy,” I agreed in what was the understatement of the year.
“It’s like a horror movie down there,” Mei said.
I’d seen the cages glimmering in the dark, and I saw them clearly now, a row of steel pens, holding Draug in various states of decay and derangement. Some rattled cage bars, some snapped and snarled at each other, and every one of them looked feral and very rabidly hungry.
“Is that where he lives, you think?” Mei pointed to a small, one-story building set off from the pens. Thick, sloppy coats of graying whitewash couldn’t conceal its crumbling stone walls. At my shrug, she said, “Maybe he is the killer.”
“Sure seems like a decent candidate.” Creaking caught my attention. The body of a goat hung from a nearby tree, spinning and swaying slightly in the breeze, blood dripping from its slashed throat into a bucket underneath. “Looks like he’s familiar with the concept of exsanguination.”
Mei put a hand to her mouth, looking ill. “I’ll bet he drains his victims to feed to the Draug.”
“We’ll see soon enough,” I said, trying to keep a level head. “You stay here.”
Mei put a hand on my arm. “Are you sure about this?” She looked pale, and I imagined I probably did, too.
“I’m sure. You stay on higher ground. Just keep that flute handy.”
“The stakes, too?”
“All of it.” I scanned until I found him—the Draug keeper. He was in a corral on the far side of the valley, bustling his way through a mob of goats who were bumping and nipping at him. “Looks like it’s feeding time.” Other goats ignored him, instead skittering and hopping around, looking wild-eyed. I wondered if they’d caught the Draugs’ scent and recognized a predator.
“It’s go time,” I said. “I’m going to sneak down while Farmer John is dealing with his herd. I’ll wait till most of the Draug are back in their pens; then I’ll show up and see what attacks.”
Mei held up her flute. “I’ll be waiting.”
Our eyes met and held, and we shared a grave nod. Mei-Ling was just a kid from Long Island, and here she was, ready to play her weird little instrument, risking her life to save mine. And I’d thought I didn’t have friends.
Giving her a small smile, I said, “I know you will be.”
I eased over the back side of the hill, cursing the pitter of displaced gravel as I skidded down. I just had to hope the groans of hungry Draug would drown out the sound.
I edged around the base of the hill and sprinted to a rocky outcropping. It’d provide cover enough for me to spy on the scene before acting—I needed to make sure every last one of those Draug were penned before I opened myself to attack. I figured Mei and I could easily handle one sociopathic Draug keeper—he was probably only human, right?—but I wasn’t so sure what would happen if we added some undead to the mix.
Panting, I leaned against the rock to catch my breath. Time for a weapons check. I wriggled my arms, feeling the reassuring poke of my stakes where I’d hidden them at my forearms. My stars, though, those I needed to see for myself. I pulled all four from my boots and held them at the ready.
I heard the goats now, mehhing and baahhing, their voices comically low and unconcerned. The smell came to me clearly now, too, the stench of rotting Draug masking any livestock stink there might’ve been in the air.
Inch by inch, I edged around to peek from behind the rock. I’d heard the goats, and now I saw them, jostling each other, eating.
And the Draug keeper was…
Gone.
My heart kicked up a notch. I pressed my body against the rock, trying to see as much as I could without actually revealing myself. Did Mei-Ling still see him from her perch? Because I’d lost sight of the guy completely.
“Who they sending now?” a man’s voice asked.
“Oh crap,” I exclaimed, stumbling backward, startling like a child.
It was the Draug keeper, up close. I braced for him to eviscerate me for my language, but he only laughed. His face was weathered, but he wasn’t ancient, not by a long shot. Rather, he looked like someone’s very vital, somewhat eccentric, and fairly soiled grandpa.
He studied me, taking in my uniform and the stars in my hand. “You work for the vampires. Well, you tell them things you’re not the best spy, eh?”
“I’m not a spy.” Was this his way of toying with me? Because he sure wasn’t acting like he was going to kill me.
His eyes narrowed to slits. “Who sent you?”
I pulled my shoulders back. I stood tall, but I felt cornered. The rock was a cold wall cutting into my back. “Nobody sent me.”
“Mm-hm,” he grunted, continuing to give me a critical eye.
I gave him a critical eye right back. He carried a shepherd’s crook and a thin, yellow stick that I assumed was some sort of cattle prod. I wouldn’t let him get close enough for me to find out.
He twitched his head. “Well, girl? You don’t get up off that cold rock, you’ll catch your death.”
Catch my death. His ominous words galvanized me. I readied for his attack, and let the star I held in my right hand slide between my fingertips.
He curled his lip. “You come to kill me?”
“What?” I inched sideways and felt the tug of my uniform as it snagged on rock. “No.”
He pointed at the stars I gripped in my left hand. “Then why you got those? You gonna kill me, just get it over with. Or don’t. It’s time for tea.”
It was the weirdest, most normal thing I could imagine hearing. But then his eyes widened, and suddenly he looked like a crazy man.
Here it came. His attack. I braced.
“Stop there,” I warned.
But he didn’t listen. He leapt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
My arm shot up. Pebbles rained down on me. Mei-Ling, getting into position on the hillside above. She wouldn’t let me down.
“Back!” he shouted, bounding forward again.
“You get back, old man.” I took aim, my eyes zeroing in on his throat.
But then I realized he wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t attacking me. Instead, he lurched past, shoving me aside. He waved that yellow stick, shouting again. “Get back.”
I spun. “Oh God,” I yelped. A Draug. Close. “What the…? Crap!” I skittered back, scraping my arm along the rock. “Where’d that—”
“Fool thing.” He clouted the Draug on its head, then jabbed it with his prod. “Get back.” There was an electrical zzt sound followed by the stink of burnt flesh.
The Draug hunched and held its head, and the keeper prodded it all the way back into its pen.
I could only gape at the man as he returned. “Aren’t you afraid?”
He gave me a funny look. “Of that thing?”
“Yes, of that thing.” I’d almost been killed by such a thing twice now. Had known several girls who had been killed.
He shoved his cattle prod between his belt and waistband. “It don’t scare me.”
My eyes shot to the pen. “But they could kill you.” They writhed madly now, riled up, sensing aberrations—a new human, unusual activity, singed flesh.
“So could you.”
I looked at him, dumbfounded. I guessed I could kill him. Probably pretty easily, especially if I could get that cattle prod out of the equation.
He sucked at his teeth and spat. “It’s just a dumb beast,” he told me, and it sounded like he meant his matter-of-fact tone to be reassuring. “Think of ’e
m like livestock. My father did this job, and his father before him. Probably easier than working livestock.”
He headed toward his stone hovel, and I hopped into step, catching up and following close. “How come they don’t kill you?”
“You got a lot of questions for a girl who’s nobody’s spy.”
I tried my best innocent smile. “It’s because…I’ve got a curious mind?”
He stopped at the front door and gave me a frank look. “Maybe that’s it.”
I repeated my question, rephrasing it. “So how come you’re safe with them, but they’d kill me?”
“How come this, how come that.” He went inside and pulled a chain, lighting the room’s single hanging bulb. There was a small fireplace along the back wall, a cot in one corner, and a sink, ancient stove, and old-fashioned fridge in the other. Long cords dangled from a lone wall socket in what looked like a major electrical hazard. The place was dim and smelled musty and damp.
I did a quick scan, looking for a cleaver, or machete, or ax that he might bust out and use to slaughter me, but didn’t see any.
“Well? You gonna sit?” He filled a banged-up kettle with water and put it on the stove. “Or did those things in the castle whoop your bottom too hard?” He cackled at his own joke.
I ventured all the way in, pulling a three-legged stool from what I guessed was his dining table. “No, I can sit.”
“You’re not scared, are you?”
“Should I be?” It took no time for my eyes to adjust to the gloomy lighting, and I stared openly now.
He cackled again. “It’s why you’re alive. The Draug, they feed on fear.”
“And blood.” I made a little chuff of a laugh, as if to say duh.
But the old man didn’t like that much. His face hardened. “You’re not listening, girl.”
I hadn’t realized he was telling. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize. So…you’ll tell me why they don’t kill you?”
“They don’t kill me because I’m not afraid.”
“I don’t get it.”
He stopped what he was doing at the stove to turn and face me. “Draug drink blood, sure. They need it to live, like you need water. But what they crave is fear. Crave, like you crave meat or sugar or love. They’re creatures of fear. Fear makes them feel alive. They’ll cut you for your blood, but they kill you for your fear.”
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