We were both covered in splatters of paint. My scrubs were ruined. Luckily, scrubs were pretty cheap. I looked down at them—they were some of the green kind I’d snuck home in from Y4. It felt like a very long time ago.
Hector made us all leave when it turned five. “Anyone who wants to come back tomorrow can.”
A few people nodded, then he looked at me.
I wanted to sleep in some first, on my first day-shift weekend. “Nine?”
Hector smiled at me. “I’ll meet you at the station.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I hadn’t learned anything new today—not where vampires were concerned. Maybe Maldonado was a daytimer? He had the self-possession of one. It would explain why he didn’t have the tattoos his followers did. Plus, he was an asshole, which fit the mold. Hmmmm.
I got off at my station, walked to my car, and drove to a hardware supply place, where I picked up a cordless drill and some extra chain locks.
I didn’t go to sleep that night. No Ambien for me. Instead I lay in bed and waited. If Jorgen had found me once, he’d find me again, and I bet Dren would be with him this time. If I had to pick the person from my past most likely to break the shun and return to make trouble for me, Dren would win. He was a Husker, a type of vampire that specialized in finding people and, if paid to do so or sheerly for the pleasure of it, husking out their souls. I didn’t understand what he did with them afterward; it was some sort of vampire numbers game.
Minnie hopped up on the bed, and I stroked her soft belly. Dren had tried to husk my soul out once, and it’d cost him one of his hands. I’d like to think that if we went back in time, knowing the consequences of his actions would have stopped him, but I doubted it—Dren wasn’t the kind of vampire who learned. He’d just have tried crueler, harder.
One evening cup of coffee easily kept me awake until three. My body was thrilled to be staying up past ten o’clock, and my night-shift nature came rushing back. But by four, I was crashing again, and by four thirty I was doubting my will to live, wondering why the hell I’d said I’d go back to the clinic tomorrow. Oh, I know—Hector had asked me. I pulled the covers up over my head to hide from myself.
And then I heard it. A solid thump.
I sat up, and all foolishness left me as Minnie skittered off the bed. I picked up the cross I’d set beside myself at sundown and rushed to my front door.
“Who’s there?”
No answer from the other side of the door. I looked through the peephole. My outside light was on, triggered by motion, and Jorgen’s head, malformed by his transformation into a Hound, angled outside, looking back at me with first one black eye and then the other. His head was huge, like a horse’s in size, only it looked like a wolf’s.
“I’m going to open my door,” I announced. “You know you can’t hurt me, right? I’m being shunned,” I added, just in case.
I’d installed five extra chain locks that evening, for all the good it would do now. I unlocked the main bolt and pulled the door open the width of the chains. I knew as a vampire Dren couldn’t come inside, but I wasn’t sure if the rules that applied to vampires also worked for their familiars, or whatever it was that Jorgen technically was now, as Dren’s Hound.
“What do you want? Who’s there?” I could only see Jorgen in four-inch-wide pieces as he moved outside. His fur was gray and scabrous—he walked on all fours, and his skin hung down around him so loosely it looked like he could turn around inside it. He was like a half-leper, half-wolf Shar-Pei.
More pacing. No response.
“Jorgen?”
The beast outside came closer and sat down. In the blink of an eye, it shoved a paw inside the gap of the door.
“Gah!”
I made to slam the door on his fingers, and barely stopped myself in time. They weren’t fingers, and weren’t paws either—it was like he was trapped between the two polar opposites of his transformation, between wolf and man, with all the disgusting qualities of both.
He dug at the door frame, taking away splinters, like a big bad dog.
“Go away!” I wasn’t getting any answers from him. It was possible he’d tracked me down just because he could, to torment me. No matter that it was his fault he’d been trying to steal supernatural blood this past winter —the fight that’d gotten me shunned, and him punished and bound—I knew he’d feel I’d done this to him. I wondered which was worse, knowing he could never again be fully wolf or human, or knowing he was stuck permanently subservient to Dren.
I didn’t want to hurt him, but I didn’t want this—I only wanted to save my mom. I had a wild thought. “Jorgen—where’s Dren?”
The scrabbling stopped, and the paw pulled back. Now it was a nose, dog-wet but pink like a human’s, that shoved at my door. He took two long sniffs of the air inside my room, smelling my things, smelling me, and then retreated to look over his own shoulder. He looked again at me, his eyes human, and then exaggeratedly behind himself.
“Is Dren trapped in a well?” I asked, then shook my head. I didn’t want to know why Jorgen was here—there was no possible reason that was good.
But Dren was a vampire. And my mom still needed blood to heal.
“Is Dren out there?”
Jorgen growled in frustration at me, a frightening low noise.
I highly doubted Jorgen was here with people who could drive. Surely they’d have sent a person who had hands to come and knock on my door; besides, there was no way he could fit himself into a car.
“Make him come up here to talk to me. I’m not going down there.” I wasn’t sure how protective my shun actually was. If there was a vampire in the parking lot, I’d rather meet him from inside the safety of my house, where no-entry rules applied.
Jorgen’s paws reappeared, pushing against my door. He rattled it inside the frame, and the chain locks groaned under the strain. He reared back then slammed forward again, and one of the freshly installed locks popped.
“Jorgen!” I reprimanded him, for all the good it would do. I swooped up the cross and swiped it across his claw-tips. He howled and jumped away from the door.
“What’s going on?” My neighbor opened up his door. He was a family man, with two kids and a wife, living tightly packed inside a one-bedroom like mine. At this, Jorgen ran away, snaking down the stairs and running off into the night. My neighbor looked at me through my jungle of lock chains. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded to prove it.
“What was that about?”
“A bad ex-boyfriend,” I lied.
He grunted, crossing his arms over his gut. “We don’t want any trouble here. If he comes back, you’d best involve the cops.”
“I will.”
He squinted at me, then nodded and retreated into his house. His manly work here was done.
And mine was just beginning.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
