muffled by my undergarments.
Ti was waiting for me, motioning me down the hall like an air traffic controller with his good hand, scarf still protectively high. I stopped at the sight of him. “You have to show me.”
“Damn it, Edie!” He twisted his face away from me and pointed out the open door. “Go get in the goddamned car!”
“Not until you show me!” I yelled back at him.
“I’m trying to save your life—” he said, his voice sibilant like a stroke victim’s. I stalked over and reached up for the scarf. His golden eyes stared down, but he didn’t move to stop me. I yanked it down.
His skin was his, until just under his nose. And then a lightning bolt of scar began, zigzagging up his cheek and down his chin where whole white flesh seamed against his original black. I took a step back. Lips I’d never seen before, never
“Drown her?” I paused.
“Anna. In some ritual. They’re going to drown her like a witch,” he said.
“Oh, no.” My experience in the shower, and everything Sike had told me—I kept trying to add it up, but I couldn’t quite make it match.
“Edie, we’ve got to go. We don’t have much time,” Ti pleaded.
“I’ll say!” said a cheerful voice from behind Ti, outside. “Is there another vampire tribunal I don’t know about? I’d hate to miss anything.” Dren the Husker leaned forward and rapped on my doorjamb. He spotted me behind Ti and waved. “I don’t suppose you’d care to invite me in, eh?”
I crossed my arms. “Not in the least.”
“Ah. Well.” He folded himself up against the wall behind him, putting his boot heel up so that his bent knee blocked the door. “Say, you weren’t thinking about running, were you?” He unholstered his sickle with nonchalance and reached up to play its tip along the brick face of the wall behind him. The sound of metal on stone echoed through the small alcove.
“Actually, no.” I dropped my bag.
“Edie,” Ti said, his voice low. He was gesturing to me, and I knew what he wanted. He’d tackle Dren, I’d run out the door, and somehow we’d make it out into the night, and leave everything I knew behind.
But I couldn’t. If my time in the shower had been anything like what Anna was going through—I couldn’t let her be abandoned to that awful dark.
“Edie, she’s a monster.”
“I know.” I’d seen what she’d done to Sike, twice over. But she was also one hell of a damaged little girl, with no one else left to look out for her. The Rose Throne wanted to use her, the Zver wanted to kill her, and I—I wanted a clean conscience. I couldn’t just run away. I turned toward Dren.
Ti caught me with his good hand. “Edie, they’re going to kill you. And I’m going to try to stop them, but I don’t know if I can.”
Dren pushed himself off my alcove wall. “You can’t, zombie. But you might as well come along. The Zverskiye have invited everyone. I’m as fond of carnage as the next person. Only, you stop me from doing my job before we get there, and I’ll husk her without a second thought.” He made a gesture with his sickle in midair.
Ti pointed at him. “If you touch her, I’ll pull you in two.”
“Not before I husk out what’s left of your soul, and leave the rest of you to rot.”
He and Ti stood there, at an impasse. I pulled out Grandfather and set him in the hallway. “Watch Minnie, okay? If I’m not back soon, get someone’s attention, so she won’t starve.” He made what I took to be a noise of assent. Then I stood and straightened out my shirt, looking between Dren and Ti. “We’ve got to go.”
Dren twirled his sickle up into a saluting motion, then reholstered it, and waved me forward with his hand. “Of course, my dear. It doesn’t do to make vampires wait.”
Together, we all went outside into the darkest night.
Chapter Fifty-One
“I’d have never told you about Anna if I’d thought it’d inspire this,” Ti muttered, walking beside me in the open night. The Hound shuffled along behind me, waddling its bulk, nostrils flaring, breathing me in.
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
We walked side by side in the cold, and I wanted to hold Ti’s hand. His scarf was pulled high again. My gloved hand reached for his, and too late I remembered I was on his left side, and the hand that I held was most likely not his either.
For most of a mile, silence ruled. Some few people were out on the streets. Whenever they saw Dren, they seemed to veer away, sometimes at right angles to their current path. They never made eye contact with the Hound, as if the Hound were too horrible to exist at all. I could hear it behind us, nails clicking on the sidewalk, preventing any escape.
That entire time I held Ti’s hand I tried not to think about where it’d come from. I felt like I was the star of some cheap horror film, where the call was coming from inside the house—only in my case, it was coming from inside my boyfriend.
At the train station we took the stairs down, and the Hound followed us awkwardly, leaping past us to land on the platform below. We took the next train, even though there were people in it. At Dren’s entrance, all of those sitting stood, and all of them now standing turned to look away, showing us only their backs. The doors closed, and the train rattled along.
It was then that I turned to face Ti. I opened my mouth to ask how. But then I realized the better question was: “Who?” I shook the hand that I held, so he’d know what I was talking about, and wondered how loudly I’d scream if it up and fell off.
“I have a friend who is a cop. I help him take care of problems, sometimes,” Ti said, deliberately slow, his
“You … just killed someone. Today. For me?”
“I didn’t kill him. I just took his face and broke off his arm.”
I blinked. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“He was alive when I left.” Ti shrugged, then continued, “It’ll be hard for him to make meth anymore, missing an arm.”
And he thought Anna was atrocious! He gets to rip off someone’s face, just because they run a meth lab? “You’re the monster.”
Ti’s bearing stiffened at this, and he turned away to look resolutely out a nearby window.
What else was there to say? Nothing. I couldn’t go back in time and undo what he’d done, or change what I’d done to set him in motion before that. I thought about all the things I should have done differently, when I’d had the chance—but I realized that this conversation here, now, had been deliberate. I’d known things were wrong for almost a mile. But I’d waited to have this conversation until we were stuck in the train together, when he couldn’t leave me, even if I wanted him to. Because deep down, I didn’t want him to go.
“Is s-s-someone having a lovers-s-s’ s-spat?” Dren asked. I glared at him, and saw his lips curve into a vicious grin. The lights in the tunnel passing outside glinted off his fangs and his hand stroked the holster of his sickle in a suggestive manner. I could see the Hound out of the corner of my eye, its clawlike hands fluttering together over its bloated torso. I swallowed, and looked back to Ti, who was still staring away from me, chin high.
“I have a thing for monsters, remember?” I said quietly. He turned to look down at me again. I pulled his scarf down and leaned up. I kissed him full on his strange new lips, which parted as he drew me near. His tongue was cool like I remembered, and I tasted metal. I pressed into him before we parted. “You’re my monster, all right?”
He nodded into my hair. “All right.”
