“Sorry,” Jessica murmured, but she looked beseechingly at Aaron again.
“Take your time, Aaron,” Lucy told him, touching his shoulder.
“No, it’s okay,” he said, patting his assistant’s hand. “This is important.” He looked at Nathan, his gaze even and solemn. “I know where she is, man.”
“Celia,” Nathan guessed.
Aaron nodded. “She got into my head somehow. I saw what she was seeing. Which means we can go find her, right? We can catch her…?” His words trickled away, and his head fell back. His eyes slid shut, and the water bottle rolled from his slack fingers, striking the floor as he drooped over to one side.
“Aaron!” Lucy cried. But he was already gone, lost in a sea of unconsciousness.
Chapter Fifteen
Everything seemed wrong with Celia. Her limbs were stiff and clumsy, and her brain was muddled. Her senses were nowhere near as sharp as they should be. Her internal clock told her she’d been underground for almost nine years. Nine years! All that time spent in the dark, starving, had taken its toll on her. Because, while it was one thing for a master vampire to choose to sleep for a few decades out of lassitude or boredom, it was another matter entirely to be snatched off the street, have a bag thrown over one’s head, and be forced into hibernation without any prior preparation or consent. A portion of Celia’s subconscious had remained awake all these years, fighting her unwarranted imprisonment and yearning to feed. As a result, she’d arisen feeble and exhausted. It angered Celia to think of how boorishly she’d been disrespected, but it was a dull sort of rage, barely eddying in the pit of her stomach. As though even her emotions remained stunted, and she lacked the capacity to even be appropriately livid.
She needed more food. That was the only thing that would fix her. Drinking the blood of a dozen men and then taking a long nap had certainly helped, but now she was awake and hungry again…
Striding down the street, following the scents of two of her most recent victims, she found herself in a quaint town square that reminded her of the time she’d spent in England during Victoria’s reign. The streets were lined with pavers and the light posts topped with imitation gas lamps. A storefront across the way beckoned to her, and she went to it, stumbling as her toe caught on a sidewalk crack. She quickly righted herself and looked around, but there was no one here to witness her blunder. The courtyard was deserted.
Celia turned and stared at the storefront again. A vampire lurked in the window. No, not a real vampire, she realized now. A cardboard painting of one, standing beneath a full moon with a woman wrapped in his arms. There were words on the painting, too, but Celia’s poor, blood-deprived brain couldn’t unscramble the letters to decipher them. Still, the painting called to her, as did the lingering scent of her victims. Of the ones she had turned.
When she had been awake before—prior to her latest ignominious burial—Celia had harbored no intention of ever making another vampire again. Lesser vampires, those that were not masters, were, as she had learned the difficult way, generally a nuisance. But these two men, those whose aromas she could now sense, had not only been profoundly lovely specimens of humanity, they had also had an innate goodness about them she’d found captivating. She’d felt instantly compelled to corrupt their souls and decimate their lives. It was always more fun, she thought, ruining people if they were good. If they had virtue. And so she had bitten those two, and said the proper words over them.
Now they were out here, somewhere, waiting for her to come and collect them. Or they were somewhere nearby. She couldn’t tell for certain. Everything was so confused.
Celia blinked and looked in the window again, this time considering her own pale reflection in the glass. What she saw there left her well-pleased. Sluggish she might be, but at least she remained stunningly attractive, her face smooth and luminous, flawless as the day she’d first been turned, a nineteen-year-old sacrifice to some monster that had descended from the mountains to ravage her village. Her neighbors had sought to appease the beast by offering her to him. She supposed it had worked. Instead of killing her, he had turned her and kept her as his consort for many long years.
Celia frowned of a sudden, wondering if perhaps her master had seen something good in her all those centuries ago, and had wanted to extinguish it. Had she been virtuous, once upon a time? Was that why he had made her into what she was? It was a disconcerting thought, and thankfully didn’t linger long. She was distracted, once again, by the painting in the window, and by the books arranged in artful stacks around it, strewn with offerings of silk flowers and bags of tissue paper, as though this were some sort of shrine to the cardboard vampire. This place must be friendly to her kind, she mused with a pensive frown, though she couldn’t fathom how such a circumstance would ever come to be. Surely, the living must understand how the vampire race loathed them? How they abhorred human beings as little more than food and slave labor?
Ah, well, it didn’t signify. She would go into the store, she decided. She would rest another while there, and then look for the human animals she’d turned, compelling them to lead her to the others. The despicable sorcerer and vampire who’d joined forces to put her into the ground.
At the thought of those two miscreants, a shock of hatred wracked Celia’s body. And this time she felt the emotion far more intensely, all the way down to her marrow. I’m getting better, she thought, and her lips twisted into a snarl. I’m coming back. Touching her palms to
