“Besides,” he said, his voice softer and kinder, “there weren’t all that many vampires there yet.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“I don’t. Not long-term.”
“Every time I try to think about it, all I can see is—” My voice hiccupped and I started to sob.
“I do have a short-term one, though. My plan for tonight is simple. Find someplace safe and rest. We can begin again in the morning.” With that, he led me down another darkened street.
Not far from the Night Market, Sorin drew up beside a plain wooden door set in the wall of one of the buildings lining the street. By then, we had been walking across the city for hours—and possibly around, through, and alongside the edge of it, too, as far as I could tell. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally worn out. When someone opened the spy hole and looked out through the door, Sorin spoke to him in a low voice about needing a room.
After a short exchange, the door opened, and the lynx-shifter who was determined to help me save the Hollow ushered me up three flights of stairs to a single room. The man who’d opened the door, a small, dark human with a smiling round face, followed us up to the chamber after Sorin gave him several coins.
I was too tired to care much about where we were.
“There’s a washbasin in the corner.” Sorin gestured at the wooden stand with a bowl and pitcher. “When you’re done, simply knock on the door to let me know. I’m going to go take care of some things. When I get back, I’ll shift. That way you can have the bed.”
I stared at him blankly for a moment then looked back at the single bed filling the chamber. “Oh. That hadn’t occurred to me.” I shook my head. “You can have the bed if you want it. Or we can share it. I’ll be fine.”
“Get some rest. I’ll be back.”
As he shut the door, the innkeeper muttered something to him quietly.
“No,” Sorin replied to whatever he’d been asked. “I took her on something of a forced march through the city—she should be tired enough to rest now, possibly even get some real sleep.” Their voices faded as they moved down the hall and back down the stairs.
Tricky lynx.
I found I wasn’t angry with him, however—something about his actions made me want to smile.
Instead, I rinsed off my face in the basin and poured a drink from the pitcher on the bedside table. Then I crawled into bed and hugged one of the pillows to my midsection. Sorin was right—I was tired. But I was also grieving, and tears ran down my face until I cried myself to sleep.
At some point in the night, or maybe in the early hours of the morning, the door opened quietly. I sat straight up, my heart pounding, until Sorin’s voice came out of the darkness. “It’s just me. Go back to sleep.”
In the shadows of the darkened room, I could see the outline of his broad shoulders as he moved around the room. He was as light on his feet in his human form as in his feline form. If not for the door creaking, I didn’t know that I would have heard him come in at all.
Without saying anything, he, too, rinsed his face in the washbasin. Then he stripped down, first taking his shirt off. In my half-asleep stupor, I watched as he folded it over the back of the single wooden chair in the corner. The muscles of his back rippled under his skin. He wasn’t bulky like either the mercenary he’d fought or Bratu’s man, but he was muscular and well-defined.
I was still staring when he turned around and met my gaze—at least, that was what I assumed from the way his eyes glinted in the dark. I couldn’t see his face in the shadows, but I blushed when I realized he’d moved to drop his pants to the floor, as well. I closed my eyes quickly.
I wasn’t a prude and not entirely inexperienced, but I still didn’t know him very well. Or at least, I hadn’t known him very long. I supposed there was no better way to get to know someone that inhabiting their mind for a time. Still, it seemed rude to watch him strip.
A few minutes later, I felt something land lightly on the bed and my eyes flew open again. In his lynx form, Sorin had jumped onto the bed and was circling at the foot of it. Then he settled down, winding himself into a ball, his back tucked against my ankle.
With the warm, comforting feel of him against me, I drifted off to sleep again.
Chapter 12
The next morning, I woke up with a heated pressure against my leg. When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t entirely certain where I was. The beamed ceiling overhead was unfamiliar, and it took me a long moment to bring myself to remember the events of the day before. When I did, grief hit me like a kick to my chest, pushing me down into the mattress, heavy and breathless.
After a long moment, the pressure eased a little, and I became aware of the rumblings of the lynx-shifter vibrating up my leg, sending comfort sweeping through me. I wondered if Sorin was trying to soothe me now just as he had tired me out on purpose last night before bringing me to the inn.
Feeling a little distracted from my grief, I sat up. Unlike Sorin, I hadn’t taken off the clothes I’d worn the day before when I’d gotten ready for bed.
Once I moved, he slid down from the bed, stretching as he went. Then he padded over to the chair where he’d left his clothes and looked back over his shoulder at me in a way that seemed both perfectly Sorin and completely feline.
“Okay, okay give me a minute. I’m going to turn around.” I kept my eyes averted until I heard his clothes rustling, the sound of him dressing after he’d shifted.
“You can turn back around now.” His voice was scratchy with disuse and sounded disconcertingly like his cat-purr.
“What are we going to do today?” I asked, standing to wash my face again. “Not in general—I mean about the Sleeping Daughter.”
“First, we’re going to have breakfast. Then we will discuss how we can possibly overcome the most overwhelming magical force in the entire world.”
“It’s not the entire world. There are other Hollows out there.”
“There were other Hollows. We don’t know if they’re still there. And even if they are, there’s nothing we can do to get their help, anyway.”
I frowned, thinking hard—a more difficult prospect than I would have imagined. My grief was making me stupid. I had to box it up and hide it away until I could deal with it effectively. Until after we had defeated the Sleeping Daughter.
“What if the other Hollows were not entirely useless to us?” I spoke slowly, feeling my way around the idea as much as thinking it out. “What if we could somehow…I don’t know, maybe use the magic from those other Hollows?”
“Use it how?” Sorin’s frown matched my own.
“I don’t know how we could possibly reach it, but the magic that the Fae Queen worked with to split the world into the Hollows—nothing in our history says that it’s not still there, right?”
“I’m not really much of a reader,” Sorin said. “I’ll have to trust your word on that.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t had any formal training in this—not like the people in some of the other enclosures.”
“Like maybe some of the people in the enclosure with Councilman Petri?” Sorin raised both eyebrows and I nodded.
“Exactly. But everything I’ve read—what there is of it—says that in magical theory, magic doesn’t disappear. Like in old Earth physics, there was some scientist who said that energy and matter were the same thing. That you couldn’t get rid of one without converting it to the other. Something like that, anyway.”
“I don’t see how that helps us.”
I shook my head and rubbed my temples, squeezing my eyes shut. “I don’t either. Not yet. And I might have just been making shit up.”
With that, Sorin laughed. “No one can think clearly on an empty stomach. And I’ve shifted twice now without food. Andrei has the best sausages in this part of the city, and they’re included as part of the room cost.”
“You’ve stayed here before, I take it?”
“On occasion.”
“Without your Chain l
eader knowing?”
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Without anyone but Andrei knowing. Until now.”
A frisson of heat shot through me at his expression. I quelled it. I didn’t have time for anything romantic right now. I had too much to do. First, I would stop the Sleeping Daughter’s rise. Then I would serve Bratu and his thug with the same treatment they’d given my grandmother.
Maybe I’ll let Andrei make them into sausage afterward and feed them to the pigs in the Central City Market.
An evil smile crossed my face at the thought.
“Whatever you’re considering,” Sorin said as he opened the door from our chamber out into the hall, “I hope it’s not about me.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “On second thought, I hope it’s nothing you’re planning to do without me.”
My laugh wasn’t particularly hearty—it was more of an amused snort—but it seemed to please Sorin.
“Maybe,” I said, continuing our earlier conversation as we made our way down the stairs to Andrei’s common room, “we could find a way to channel magic from those other Hollows, just siphon off a tiny amount. Multiplied by all thirteen Hollows, and it might end up being a lot of magic.”
“Maybe.” Doubt threaded through Sorin’s reply. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “But then what? Attack the Daughter with it?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Could we even come up with enough magic to hurt her?” Sorin continued. “She’s been soaking up everything the vampires have been feeding her for who knows how long. And if that magic is helping her grow stronger, then I think it’s entirely possible that other magics will work the same way. What if all the magic we do here in her Hollow sinks back into her and makes her stronger?”
“Or what if magic has to be completely, specifically dedicated to her for it to give her power?” I countered. “What if we could gather together a hundred magic users and drain all of her power from her at once?”
Sorin shook his head. “I don’t believe it. You saw what the vampires did. There were at least a hundred of them involved in that ritual, and who knows how many more would join them if we attacked openly? Plus shifters and humans and maybe even some of the Fae.”
My shoulders slumped as we walked into the central area on the ground floor. “You’re right. We don’t have enough knowledge to go on.”
The common room was quiet and almost empty, except for a few sole patrons hunched over their breakfast. I wasn’t entirely certain how the innkeeper could support himself in a place like Gypsy Hollow. There were occasional travelers, sure, moving from one far reach of the Hollow to another. But they were rare, and the few establishments that existed to accommodate them tended to include other businesses, as well.
“What is this place besides an inn?” I whispered to Sorin.
He flashed a grin over his shoulder. “Worried about your reputation?”
I blinked in confusion for a few seconds before understanding dawned. “You mean this is a brothel?” My cheeks flamed at the realization that I sounded naïve.
Sorin laughed. “Not exactly. Andrei doesn’t house any prostitutes. But his rooms are for rent to anyone.”
“Is that why you’ve been here a lot?” I hissed.
“And what would you say if it were?”
I stuttered, trying to find an answer—or even a reason for the way my stomach twisted at the thought. “Nothing,” I finally said.
“As it turns out, no. That’s not why I’ve been here. Andrei is a source of information—because so many people pass through, he tends to hear things. He won’t ever divulge his sources—but he sometimes shares important tidbits.”
Made sense, I supposed, though it still didn’t explain why the shifter had ties here, in this neighborhood, so far from other shifters.
“Anyway, let’s just go with our plan for today.” Sorin moved to a sideboard laden with different kinds of meat, along with cabbage rolls, pastries, and other traditional Romanian foods. He picked up a plate and began loading it with food.
“What plan?”
“Today’s the day we gather information.”
I eyed the platters of food. A deep sadness still gnawed at the pit of my stomach, but I could hear Maicǎ’s voice admonishing me to eat to keep my strength up. It was what she would’ve said. And she would have been right.
“Can’t plot revenge on an empty stomach,” I muttered to myself, picking up a plate and following Sorin.
The lynx-shifter ate about three times as much as any human I had ever seen. I was surprised that Andrei let him take that much. But he had been here before, so the innkeeper knew him. I guessed that made a difference.
I didn’t know anyone. Not really. Last night had been the first night I had ever spent outside of my family’s enclosure. When I let myself think about it, terror gripped my insides, twisting them like a washerwoman wringing out a wet towel. That was how I felt, too. Like a limp, damp rag—exhausted, but perhaps still useful?
I shook myself out of my fanciful thinking. No time for that.
“I have a question,” Sorin said quietly, leaning across the table he led me to in one corner. “Can you do any magic other than divination?”
I blinked at him. He was right, of course. I had never even considered attempting any kind of battle magic. And yet here I was, suggesting that we attempt to manipulate interdimensional magic to destroy a member of the Fae who had likely grown so powerful as to be virtually indistinguishable from a god.
I was a complete idiot. I dropped my head into my hands. “No.”
Sorin shoved an entire cabbage roll in his mouth at once and attempted to speak around it. “Me neither. Shifting, that’s it for me.” He shrugged, swallowed, and took a swig of the water Andrei had dropped off the table for us.
As he set it back down, the innkeeper scurried back up to the table and whispered something in Sorin’s ear. My companion nodded, wiped his mouth on a napkin, and set it down next to his plate.
“Time to go,” he said. “I’m going to wrap some of this up to take for later. You ready to go?”
I blinked several times, waiting for the meaning of what he just said to really sink in. “What happened? What’s going on?” I snagged a couple of sausages and dropped them in my own napkin.
“Apparently, the Council has put out a wanted notice for us. There are posters going up all over the city.”
“Wanted posters?” I couldn’t believe it. Justice in Gypsy Hollow was generally swift and brutal, and came at the hands of an angry mob—rarely did the Council try to impose its own form of justice on the people. Not openly, anyway. “This means more of them are dishonest than we had any idea of, doesn’t it?”
Sorin’s nod was sharp, his face serious. “We’ll need to do something to disguise ourselves.”
“I have an idea.” I had tied my small purse around my waist again this morning, and I had tucked it just inside the waistband of my skirt. It made an unsightly bulge, but a less attractive target for pickpockets. With a few, deft moves, I moved it outside the waistband and tied my skirt back up at the waist. Then I unwound the scarf from around my family’s tarot cards, put them away again, and hid my purse. Tying the scarf around my hair, I quickly wove the whole thing into a complicated bun. The result hid my long black hair and my forehead.
“It’s not perfect, but at least anyone looking for me will have to look a little more carefully.”
“It’s a start.” Sorin gathered a few coins out of some inner pocket, and stood. Quietly, he moved across the room to Andrei. He pressed the coins into the smaller man’s hand, clapped him on the back, and headed toward the door.
I followed, worried about what we’d find once we left the haven of the inn.
Chapter 13
“We need to get to the market first,” Sorin announced as he headed out the door.
I scurried to keep up with him. “It’s open? I thought you said it was a Night Market.”
“Well, now it
’s the Day Market.”
It didn’t take us long to get there—Sorin really had led me around in a circuitous route last night. As we walked through the market, I ducked my head down, avoiding eye contact. It probably made me look guiltier than I might otherwise, but it was the only thing I knew to hide my features.
Although many of the permanent stalls were the same, the overall character of the Day Market was entirely different from the Night Market. Piles of silk remained, as did a couple of the booths housing metal for sale, but gone were the blood whores and the antiques—both designed to appeal to vampires who needed sustenance and missed the old days—and in their place were more food stalls for humans and shifters, along with at least two stalls with nothing but spices.
It was one of the spice stalls that Sorin stopped. If I remembered correctly, it had held antiques the night before—things made by machine rather than hand back in a time before magic destroyed most of the world and the Fae Queen had split us into Hollows.
Something about the antiques niggled at the back of my unconscious mind. Something about the vampires, too. I was distracted from trying to figure out what it was that was trying to get through to my conscious thoughts by the sight of Sorin leaning over to plant a kiss on the cheek of the young woman running the stall. A flash of hot, red jealousy ran through my abdomen at the sight, flaring up into my chest. I blinked, surprised by the sudden intensity of it.
He’s not mine, I reminded myself. I barely know him, and we have no romantic entanglement.
I couldn’t afford that kind of emotional connection right now.
I realized that I’d gone almost fifteen minutes without the crushing thought of Maicǎ’s death overwhelming me. Tears welled up in my eyes, now, though.
No grief until after.
“I saw one of the posters,” the young woman was saying to Sorin. “It’s a good likeness, but it won’t take long to make a few changes.”
Swiftly, she wrapped up several packets of spices and, pulling a sheet of rough, homemade paper out from a box beneath the stall table, she wrote out instructions with the tiny nub of a pencil. “Go here, and tell Esmeralda that I sent you. She can help.” She glanced at the sack he carried, the one holding his purchases from the night before. “And take this.” She handed him a backpack.
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