least during winter, and not in summer when all it was was too warm—wore on me. Each winter day, numbingly cold, wet, miserable, just like the last. No wonder vampires liked it here so much. I parked my car in a mostly vacant lot. Now that Christmas was over, all the weather-bleached decorations looked like grim little flags, flapping surrender in the wind.
I hit the Chinese food place first. I stood in line, ordered my takeout, and my phone rang. Jake. Normally I wouldn’t pick up and be that person who talked in public, but with him I’d been trained to feel I was one phone call away from an emergency at all times.
“Hey, Sissy.”
“Hey yourself.” I stepped back and looked sheepish as I handed the Asian woman my credit card. “What are you up to tonight?”
“About five eleven,” he said, and I snorted.
The lady at the counter handed my card back, and I tipped her well, since I knew I was being rude. “What’s going on?” I slid the food off the counter and made my way to the door.
“Just wondering if I could take you out for dinner tomorrow.”
“Really?” I stepped outside, back into the cold.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
I opened my mouth to say all the ways and reasons I could refute that, and then carefully closed it again.
“You don’t have to be so stunned either,” he said, during my pause.
“Sorry, Jakey. Just trying to walk outside and not trip in ice is all.”
“Uh-huh. So? Are you in?”
“I’m in. What time?”
“Six?”
“Sure. Want me to pick you up?”
“Sounds good.”
“Love you, Jake.”
“Love you too.”
I settled my and Gideon’s dinner into the passenger seat of my car, and carefully walked around to the driver side. The mall was two exits down, and I bet they’d be doing a brisk business in other returns today—I couldn’t have been the only one gifted the world’s most hideous belt.
The mall was a U-shaped structure around a curb-to-curb parking lot. I parked near the middle, in a space that the mall’s snowplow had cleared, prepared to walk the rest of the way in. I looked inside the box as soon as I’d gotten out of the car, to make sure the gift receipt was still at the bottom. God bless sensible Peter.
A car parked ahead of me. I closed the box and started walking for the store. The car’s driver got out and started walking quickly toward the wing of the mall behind me—not so strange, considering it was cold outside. She was bundled up against the weather in a fashionable parka with a furry hood, and she held something to her cheek, like she was talking on a phone, but I couldn’t see it.
I watched her, and I noticed she noticed me. Girls have to watch out for that sort of thing. Maybe not all girls, but I’d just checked my trunk for a vampire less than ten hours ago. My paranoia meter was at eleven. I didn’t like how close she was coming, but cell phones made people act stupidly. It was a scientific fact.
We passed another row of cars, then rounded a tiny snowdrift the snowplow had made. That’s when I saw another woman step out of the woman’s car. I stopped, and as the first turned to look at the second, and I saw that she wasn’t holding anything after all.
I turned and ran for my car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I was fumbling for my keys as they clattered behind. Some part of me still hoped I was overacting, but as I unlocked my door and caught the handle to open it, a hand grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back. One of my fingernails bent and broke inside my glove, and I hissed in pain as she shoved me to the ground.
“Fire!” I yelled, like I’d heard you were supposed to. “There’s a fire!” I scrambled to my knees and put my back against my car door. Now, inside my pocket, my badge was glowing day-bright. Hell of a time to warn me.
The two women stood there, heads cocked sideways, as if they were listening to something I couldn’t hear. “What do you want?”
Winter’s blood? Shit. Did they know? I scrabbled for my dropped purse. “Look, I’ll give it back to you—”
The first one, with the parka on, bent down, sniffing. She kept her eyes on me, breathing deeply.
“I’m sorry—my brother—you wouldn’t understand—” I sputtered.
The second one didn’t breathe at all. I saw her make a fist with a gloved hand and swing for me. I screamed and ducked lower—she hit my car instead, and I heard the door panel dent.
I crawled toward the front of my car. One of them grabbed my ankles and hauled me back. Reaching out, I put my hand into Peter’s gift box, tissue paper bleeding pink into the snow. The belt buckle rasped against asphalt as she yanked my deadweight again.
I flipped over, feeling the seams of everything that had just healed in my abdomen twist inside me, and punched out with the belt buckle by my fist. I caught the hoodless one’s jaw, and the skin there burned away. She cupped her hand to the wound, and for the first time her lips opened—to bay.
“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck—” I curled into a ball, to try to protect myself. I was going to die here over a single dot of blood, in a mall parking lot, with Chinese food cooling in my poor dented car behind me.
The baying woman looked up. There was a loud
Dren.
“Sun’s down, girly-girl. Time to play.” He squatted on his boot heels and looked at the two other women. “You’ve started without me. Tsk.” Who would have thought this morning, when I was looking for him like he was Jimmy Hoffa, that I’d be so happy to see him now.
“Dren—they—” I panted.
His eyes narrowed, staring at them over me. “You’re not bitten—or born. I would scent you if you were. Name your pack.”
The women fell back at this, appearing disoriented and confused.
“No—” Dren leapt off my car hood and landed beside me in the muck, his good hand on his sickle.
“Who are you?” one of the women asked. Then she looked to her friend. “What is this place? Where are we?”
I didn’t want to tell them they’d just been planning to kill me. I put my back against my car.
Dren kept himself between me and them, and he waved his sickle as if clearing the air of cobwebs between us. “You can see me. You know what I am. Go.”
The women turned and ran. One fell to her knees in the ice, then scrambled back up to get away.
“I—I thought they were weres?” I said aloud.
“So did I. Stay here,” he commanded, and rushed away as though he’d never been there to begin with.
I hoped he didn’t mean stay precisely here, my ass in the snow. I got up with a groan, collected my purse and my belt, and gingerly sat inside my car. My gloves were ruined, and the back of my new coat was soaked through. I took it off, turned on the heater, and rolled the driver-side window down. I didn’t want Dren sneaking up on me outside. Dren reappeared momentarily.
“Who were they?”
“What good does it do to share my suspicions with you?” He snapped his fingers as if beckoning a dog. “Did you get me what I desire?”
“I did—and it almost got me killed!” I pressed my hand to my stomach where I’d wrenched it wrong. My broken nail was throbbing, along with most of the rest of me.
Dren shook his head. “Which way is the wind blowing, Edie?” He pulled the glove off his good hand with his
