“Just checking to make sure I can wake you when it’s time.”
“What?” He didn’t answer because he slumped to the side, falling into day rest again.
“Never mind.” She patted his shoulder before she dragged him onto the floor.
It was always good to have an earth vampire handy. That was why she’d lured René into her caravan. Not to make Ben jealous but to have another tool in her pocket.
Tenzin sat next to René and waited until the attack came.
33
Ben passed the day in a dreamless sleep. Nothing disturbed him. Nothing nibbled at his brain. He slept peacefully for the first time in months, and he woke with two certainties in his mind:
He still loved Tenzin. He didn’t know if they could be together, but he also didn’t know how not to love her. He’d said horrible things to her the night before, most of which he didn’t mean, but he wanted to be with her if she was still willing.
Vano had the emerald goblet, and he was planning a coup against his brother and sister. The signs were all there. Kezia might be wise to it, but Vano was the ringleader and Radu completely underestimated him.
Which meant that Ben’s only goal in the next week before the festival—other than trying to mend things with Tenzin—was to break into Vano’s trailer and find the emerald goblet to prove to Radu that his brother was the source of the trouble.
He lay in bed, listening to the night birds waking. An owl hooted in the distance, and the strong scent of lilac told him that wherever they’d moved, flowers were blooming nearby.
Ben sat up and stretched, washed his face in the kitchen, and drank from the preserved blood in the fridge. He didn’t love cold blood, but he didn’t hate it either. Sometimes it was oddly, and grossly, refreshing. He’d stopped trying to explain why. He leaned against the small counter in the kitchen and listened to the birds.
Something was off.
Something was… wrong. It was too quiet.
Ben pulled on a pair of pants and walked to the door, swinging it open to reveal nothing but the sloping hills beyond his trailer and nothing else.
No fires. No musicians. No camp.
The Dawn Caravan was gone, and there was only the faint scent of something burning and a hint of kerosene in the air.
Shit.
SHIT!
What happened? Had Radu tipped his hand to Vano? Had he found the thief himself? He’d had an agreement with Radu. He wasn’t supposed to back out without a single word.
Ben walked down the steps and turned in a circle.
When he saw the wreckage, his stomach dropped.
Beyond the oak trees, there was a single caravan smoldering, the body split open to reveal ashes everywhere. There was a mark on the side, a distinctive blue logo he remembered from the first night in her trailer.
It couldn’t be. His mind couldn’t process what he was seeing. It wasn’t hers. It couldn’t be. He raced toward the burned-out carcass, his mind rebelling at the images before him.
They wouldn’t have burned her trailer.
This was an accident.
She hadn’t been inside.
No, no, no, no.
Ben stood in the middle of ashes and yelled, “Tenzin?”
He looked to the swiftly darkening sky. Nothing.
Where was she? Because she couldn’t be in the trailer and she couldn’t be gone because he would feel it, right? He’d taken her blood. She was in him. If she was gone—
“Tenzin!”
Ben flew up and raced over the camp, scouring the air for any hint of her.
She wouldn’t have left him. She wouldn’t have just flown off. He flew back to the wreckage of the trailer and kicked through the ashes where the door would have been. His foot hit something hard and he bent down, lifting up a heavy metal lock burned black by the fire.
No.
He curled his fingers around the warm device. It was linked through the metal door mechanism. It must have been smoldering for hours, just like the ashes around him.
A padlock, basic tumbler. Easy to pick from outside.
Impossible to break from inside. Even for Tenzin.
Ben’s mind shuffled through a hundred possibilities as he walked around the perimeter of the burned-out trailer, the padlock clutched in his hand. He could feel it searing his skin.
She could have broken through the walls.
During the day?
She could have flown away.
In sunlight?
“Tenzin?” He could hear the edge of panic in his voice. “Where are you?”
She couldn’t be gone. It wasn’t possible. A world without Tenzin didn’t make sense. This was Tenzin. She had to have gotten away. She had to have a plan. She always had a plan.
The night sky was clear, star-filled, and silent.
“Tiny!” he screamed. “Where the fuck are you?” He turned in circles. He took to the air again, racing from one end of the camp to another, but other than the occasional scrap of paper, there was nothing. It was as if the Poshani had never existed in this place.
He flew back to his trailer and looked underneath. Had she hidden there?
Nothing.
“Tenzin!”
She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be dead. He needed her.
Ben walked back to the wreck and began to dig through the ashes. He tore through the remains of cabinets and the odd swatch of fabric that had remained unburned, certain that at any moment he’d pull back a piece of rubble and see her impish grin.
Got you, she’d say.
“Tenzin.” He began to speak. “Show me where you are.”
More broken and charred cabinets.
Metal pipes.
Broken glass.
Twisted plastic, curled and cracked.
“What was the plan?” He stood and tossed the remains of the refrigerator across the clearing. “Where did you hide? You always have a plan.”
If she had hidden, why hadn’t she come back yet? He felt something wet on his face. He blinked hard and looked around.
The burned carcass of the trailer was torn apart, scattered across the clearing. The trailer chassis slumped to the side, broken and jutting from the ashes like metal bones.
Vampires don’t leave bones.
“Fuck!” Ben gripped his hair and screamed, “This isn’t funny anymore. Just tell me where you are!”
He
