I thought of Sinclair. “My friend,” I sighed, “will be the least of your problems, if you kill me.”
“We are afraid of no one. Not even our queen.”
I shrugged. “Obviously not.”
Happy looked over his stooped shoulders at the other two. They gave no sign, but he seemed to understand them anyway.
“We accept. Your friend can go.”
“No fucking way!”
The four of us stared at Nick.
“Oh no you don't,” he hollered, white-?faced with blood loss. “You don't get to save me, no way, uh-?uh. They kill me, and you feel like shit for, what is it? A thousand years? That's the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to live with failure, not be the hero. Hear that? You're not the hero, Betsy Taylor! So hit the bricks! Get lost! Crawl back into your mansion basement and hide again!”
“He does not want to go,” Happy observed after a short silence.
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Are you sure you wish to take his place?”
“I'm having second thoughts,” I admitted grimly.
“Perhaps he is not the friend to her we thought he was,” Stephanie told the others.
“Damn right we're not friends!” Nick hollered.
“Will you stop screaming? And no,” I sighed. “We used to be, sort of, but no, not anymore. But the offer still stands. Let him go, and I'll stick around, and we'll see what we'll see.”
“I have doubts,” Stephanie told her comrades. Aha! I silently congratulated myself for stopping Sinclair and Tina from killing her.
“What d'you mean?” Jane asked. Happy looked like he was wondering the same thing. Both of them had a little suspicion in their eyes, and I prayed Stephanie would be careful with her next words, so she wouldn't give herself away.
“She is not what we expected.” Stephanie circled me and Nick. “Nothing about her. Not her friends, not those she calls her friends but are not – ” She stopped and sniffed Nick, who made a batting motion at her with his hands, like he was shooing away a fly. “She is not the queen we thought. She is not smart, or powerful, or terrifying. Not like a real queen.”
“More like a commoner,” Happy added.
“Thanks?” I called out.
“She might help us,” Stephanie added.
“How?” Jane asked, shaking tangled hair out of her face. “If she is not like a real queen, what can she give us?”
“We could start with your names,” I suggested, still hoping to avoid hostilities. “I'd like to know them.”
My request confused them, until Stephanie cleared her throat. “My name is Stephanie,” she told me, as if for the first time.
Happy licked his lips. His tongue was weirdly long. “Richard,” he finally said.
“Jane,” the third one said.
Huh, I told myself. Jane's name is actually Jane! What are the chances?
Chapter 42
l took a shallow breath and let it out. Okay. Things were going – if not exactly well, at least it wasn't the disaster on wheels I'd been envisioning five minutes ago. Names were a good start. Now to keep the lines of communication open.
“Stephanie. Richard. Jane. I... well, I can't say it's wonderful to meet all of you, just like I know you weren't exactly thrilled about meeting me. But I can say I'm glad I've learned who you really are. I, uh, felt bad about the silly nicknames.”
“You did?” Jane asked, open skepticism in her voice.
“Well, sure. See, I – ”
“Don't be fooled!” Nick warned them. “She's got this annoying weird charm thing going on. It's hideous. Like head lice. Everything she touches turns to shit.”
“Would that include Jessica?” I snapped.
“Well,” he snarled, “she didn't have cancer before she moved in with you and a bunch of other mutant bloodsucking freaks.”
I didn't even want to respond to that. Emotionally exhausted, I sat on the arm of the couch next to him and waited to see what the Fiends would do.
And for the first time, I noticed Nick was bleeding – from the inside of his elbows, his neck. There were more serious cuts up and down his arms – from the fight at his house, I assumed. Maybe he'd rolled on some of the broken glass on the carpet? Maybe he'd –
Oh, God, his neck. They'd – they'd fed on him while waiting for me. His skin must still be crawling.
I imagine he felt raped and suddenly couldn't look at him.
“We have to deal with this one before we do anything else,” Richard said, hauling Nick out of the chair. “They don't care for each other, so he's officially become useless.”
“Useless?” Nick yelped, outraged.
“Hey, a minute ago you were ready to die just to make me feel like shit for the next thousand years. Now you're all mystified because you might be executed? ”
“We should kill him,” Richard decided.
“What about the queen?” Stephanie asked, looking around nervously as if the queen's guard was going to burst out of the walls at any moment. Ha! If only. I could use a last-?minute rescue. Dammit, why, why wasn't my life more like a movie?
Richard squinted at me, and I got a decidedly distrustful vibe from him. “We should kill her anyway.”
Then I got a stroke of real luck. Nick tried to pull away from Richard and briefly succeeded, separating himself for a bare second from his supernaturally strong grasp. Quick as thought, I stood up, snatched Nick by the back of his neck and the seat of his pants, and tossed him out the bank of windows.
“You biiiiiiiitch,” he yowled all the way down. Then, thank God, I heard him cursing as he thrashed around in the hedges.
“She lies!” Jane shrieked, and came at me.
Chapter 43
God, I was so sick of people just launching themselves at me without warning. Big-?time rude, not to mention hell on my nerves. I backpedaled like mad, physically and verbally.
“I didn't do anything to – ”
Her fist was a blur, and I took a teeth-?rattling punch in the mouth, which wasn't fun at all, and threw an elbow into Richard's throat before he could do the same.
I chastised myself immediately: I was fighting like a human, but Fiends didn't need to breathe. He did cough and grab his throat, which I figured was good enough, so I turned my back on him, seized Jane by the hair, and spun her across the room.
Richard recovered faster than I expected. He delivered a blow to my right kidney, which hurt – oh, man, getting punched in the back was no fun at all – and then delivered a roundhouse kick to my left kidney, which hurt even more.
“You told us you would not try to trick us!” he seethed, hurting me some more with his fists. Kick, kick. Stomp. Best I could tell, Richard was apparently quite the kickboxing champion in his former life. “You
