Reckoning

I was getting older all the time.

I ever catch you usin’ these to buy booze, Dru-girl, I’ll tan your hide.

He sometimes threatened that, but he’d never swatted me even once. Neither had Gran. It was just something they said. And seriously, the threat kept me in line.

I know better than to make waves when someone can just disappear on you.

I’d looked at the little plastic-covered card and felt a funny sensation all over my skin, like I was vanishing.

I rubbed my thumb over the picture before I stuffed it back in the cheap wallet Dad had packed with it. As if it was my mother’s photo in Dad’s billfold—the only picture of her we’d had, and gone now.

Sergej probably had it. And I was so tired I didn’t feel anything at the thought.

I thanked the sleepy clerk kindly and took my room key with a tired flourish. At least I only looked road- grimy, and smelled bad but not bad enough for a normal person to notice.

The lobby was done in the particular type of pink florals that will give you a headache unless you’re an eighty-year-old bleary-eyed grandma who thinks overstuffed couches are cute, but the rooms weren’t bad. Quiet, at least, and the sheets were clean. The water pressure was decent too, and I stood half-asleep in the shower for a long time. The clothes I’d been wearing were useless; I tied them up in a plastic Walmart bag and would dump them in the morning.

It was weird to be alone.

At the Schola I’d had to work to get some time to myself; driving with Graves and Ash meant I was always listening to and anticipating them, and traveling with Christophe meant I was always following him around.

You can hide from them, but not from me.

Was he dead? Possible. Not very likely, Christophe was tough . . . but still. He’d either meet me in Houston or he was on my trail right now. And Graves, his eyes turning darker and darker, tied up or . . .

I tried not to think about it. Failed miserably. How deep was Sergej’s hold on him? Why hadn’t I known?

Dru! Dad’s voice barked, and I jerked, my hand hitting the side of the shower. Quitcher woolgatherin’! You’re asleep on your feet like a mule. Come on, now.

By the time I was in a clean T-shirt and underwear, yawning and scratching and standing in front of the microwave while a Hungry-Man dinner revolved inside, I was well on my way to fretting. Sometimes it gets that way when you’re tired—nothing stays in any sort of proportion.

Of course, I had a bunch of vampires trying to kill me and everyone who hung around me for any length of time got blown up or tortured. Even if I was losing some of my sense of proportion, I figured I had cause.

I had to eat with my fingers. It didn’t bother me much, except it’s hard to do with mashed potatoes. I turned on the television and watched the news while I polished off two more frozen dinners, scooping up the taters and licking them off my fingertips like icing, tearing chunks off the slices of processed turkey. The marionberry crisp was soggy and cold on the first two trays by the time I finished the third, but I ate it all anyway.

I left some of the corn. Never been big on corn.

Nothing on the news about explosions or suckers or sorcerers in Atlanta. That didn’t surprise me much. The air conditioner made a racket, so I turned the TV up a bit. Not a peep about shenanigans in Georgia. Just the regular cavalcade of crime, human interest, and a weather report saying “expect a thunderstorm.” Well, any fool could look out the window and see that.

Rain started in spatters as I brushed my teeth. I spent about a half hour checking the gear from the cache, and when I went to bed I had everything stowed away nice and shipshape.

And I had a loaded baby Glock on my nightstand, carefully pointed away from the bed. I’d cleaned and checked it just like Dad taught me, and everything seemed to be all right. I’d pick up more ammo tomorrow. I was working through soup by then, so tired the urge to yawn just about threatened to crack my jaw. I held off—you shouldn’t yawn while cleaning guns. Then I dragged my sorry carcass up and warded the walls. It took a while. I had to start over two or three times because my concentration kept wavering, the thin fine blue lines slipping through my mental grasp. By the time I finished, I was actively yawning more than I was breathing, the aspect smoothing down over me in soft blurry waves.

I wondered sleepily why warding was blue, and the hexing I’d seen was blue and red. Gran would’ve been interested in that. I felt like I was missing something, but damn if I could think of what. I was just so tired.

The last thing I did was fish the diamond earrings out of my bag and put them on. Just because . . . well, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Nothing could, at this point.

I was ready for anything.

Or so I thought.

The long concrete hall stretched away into infinity. I saw him, walking in his particular way, each boot landing softly as he edged along, and the scream caught in my throat. Because it was my father, and he was heading for that door covered in chipped paint under the glare of the fluorescents, and he was going to die. I knew this and I couldn’t warn him, static fuzzing through the image and my teeth tingling as my jaw changed, crackling—

—and Christophe grabbed my father’s shoulder, dragged him back, away from the slowly opening door. The sound went through me, a hollow boom as the door hit the wall and concrete dust puffed out.

BANG.

CHAPTER TWENTY

By the time the long roll of thunder faded I was on my feet, scooping up the gun. The touch flared inside my head, and in the flickering blue-white glow from the muted television I sensed more than saw the brushed-metal doorknob jiggling.

The touch spilled free of my skull, but told me nothing much. There was something weird—interference. Odd static fuzzed over the TV screen, swallowing the black-and-white movie that had been watching me while I slept. The white noise filled my skull, bouncing around like a pinball.

What the hell? I pulled back, shaking my head.

I ghosted to the wall partitioning bedroom space off from hall-and-bathroom space, gun held low and fingers locked outside the trigger guard. Thunder boomed again, filling the sky, and the thin blue lines of warding in the walls shivered. They were reacting to whoever was outside the door. And not in a good way—whoever-it- was smelled like cloves and sand, and their mental fingers picked at the wards like a kid undoing a sneaker lace.

My mouth tingled, the faint taste of oranges filling my throat and a chill sliding down my spine. I knew that chill.

Brace yourself, Dru. Shit’s about to get weird.

There was the gun. Was I actually going to shoot whoever was coming in?

Fine time to be doubting that, Dru.

The warding sparked, resisting. I almost thought of grabbing hold of it from my side and giving whoever it was a snap, like popping a rubber band hard against their mental fingers. If you hit someone just right like that you can give them a helluva headache. Maybe even knock them out.

But if they could unravel wards like that, they were probably more skilled, and I’d be the one with the headache. My best bet was keeping the touch inside my head and using the damn gun.

Better be ready. Do it like Dad taught you.

The door opened, silently. The wards unraveled, whispering off into nothing like smoke. Soft regular thudding; my ears picked it out. Two of them, and I was hearing their heartbeats.

Well, isn’t that useful. My own heart was in my mouth, warring with the ghost of