What to do with it now? I held the tiny syringe upright. I could drop it onto my tongue. Or—I could do what this syringe was designed to do. I tore open a new swab, lifted my shirt, made a circle on my stomach near my belly button, and then shoved the needle in before I could talk myself out of it. I’d given a hundred-million subcutaneous injections on other people before, but this was the first one I’d ever done on myself. I pushed down on the plunger, barely feeling it move, pulled the needle out, and waited for some response.
Pain? Heat? Bruising? Swelling? I watched the tiny pinprick, hoping for some reaction, and got nothing instead. I only knew where I’d been injected because I’d been the one to do it—I couldn’t have pointed out the spot to anyone else. What if to make pope water work, you had to believe in the pope? I laughed, and even to my own ears, it sounded a bit hysterical.
I pushed the syringe’s safety cap out to shield the needle, and tossed it into my trash. Littering biohazards was becoming a hobby of mine. I caught sight of myself in my bathroom mirror, across the hall.
Damn, did I need a shower. Of course what I really needed I wouldn’t get—a break.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I stripped, leaving everything on the floor where it landed, before getting into the shower with just my lanyard around my neck.
My water and its heating was the only utility bill I personally was not responsible for. The purpose of this shower would be to ensure that I got my last month rent of money’s worth. I scrubbed myself and my funky lanyard double-clean. Then I stood there, head bowed, and let the water rush over me. It beat against my face and torso, until I was numb to the sensation and inured to the heat. I opened my mouth to inhale and the sheet of water parted for me—and more water instead of air rushed in, bitter and vile. I gagged and opened my eyes and my shower walls were gone. My lungs spasmed, the water I’d inhaled making me want to cough, and if I coughed—I looked up and couldn’t see any light. Endless ocean all around. No boat, no shore, just salt water. The cold buffeted me, moving with the wake of something I knew I did not want to see. My eyes stung, my throat knotted, and I drifted, suspended in the viscous dark.
With no other choice, I took a breath. I could feel the cold grabbing at my cheeks, forcing its way inside me, crawling into my mouth and down my throat. It flowed in me and through me, against my struggles and gagging, until all the water around me flowed inside me and disappeared, like I was inhaling it against my will and couldn’t stop, and I plummeted down, back into my shower, falling into a fetal position curled around the drain.
When I could move, I crawled out of my shower and puked dark salt water onto my bathroom floor.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
My first cogent thought was that I wanted to brush my teeth and I was afraid to turn on the sink.
I clambered up my towel rack, shivering, grabbing a towel to dry myself off. My badge was lying on the ground in my shower, its lanyard halfway down the drain. I retrieved it, and slammed the shower door shut afterward. I threw a second towel down on the mess I made and ran out of the room.
I sat on my bed, knees to my chest, with my hands clutched over my mouth. My trial was forgotten … or maybe this was it somehow, already begun.
German began from the other room and my phone rang. I got it off my nightstand.
I looked at the number. Ti. Last time I’d seen him, he’d been missing half his face—but …
“Ti—you wouldn’t guess what just—”
A different voice cut me off. “Edie? It’s Rita. Madigan’s wife.”
That made more sense. “I remember. How is Ti?”
“About that—look—Edie,” she began. “My family, we pass for normal. We’re good people, Edie. You met us, you know that, right?”
I nodded into the emptiness of my bedroom, wondering what her speech had to do with me. “Of course. Rita, what—”
“And there’s no moon tonight, Edie. That meant that Madigan couldn’t stop him. We’re all normal, all human, tonight. There’s nothing we could have done.”
I crept to the edge of my bed. Grandfather’s German went up another notch in volume. “Rita, what are you talking about?”
My doorbell rang.
“I’ve got to get the door now—” I stood.
“Edie, don’t answer it,” Rita said.
“What?” I pulled on my robe and ran down the hall to look through the peephole. A man with broad shoulders, a hat, and a high scarf was there.
“Madigan didn’t want me to call. But—we’re the same, Edie. I thought you’d want to know. He’s done horrible things and you don’t want any part of what he’s done.”
Outside, the man knocked.
“Edie,” said a slurred voice that I thought I recognized. “Edie, let me in.”
The man outside looked up at me. I recognized his eyes. “Gotta go,” I told Rita and hung up.
CHAPTER FIFTY
“Edie, please. Open up.”
I looked out the peephole at him, looking in. He was talking to me. And one hand was flexing in apparent frustration, while the other—the other that should not be there—sat quietly inside a leather glove.
“How is it that you can talk?” I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to the door. What was it the wolf pretending to be the grandmother had told Little Red Riding Hood about his teeth?
“Edie—” Ti said from outside, his voice still slurred. “Edie, come on.”
“Not until you tell me how it is that you can talk.” I could still taste salt on my tongue.
There was a slam against the far side of the door. It rattled in its hinges and I jumped back. “Edie, they’re going to kill you. We’ve got to leave here, now.”
I reached out for the doorknob and opened the door with the safety chain on, for all the good it’d do me. “What about the trial?”
“It’s a sham, Edie. Go pack some things. We’re leaving now. We’ve got to hurry.”
I stared at what I could see of him, underneath his hat, and above the scarf, the eyes I knew, and wondered what I couldn’t see. Those eyes—I remembered them. Staring down at me as he’d covered me with his body, intense and earnest. “Please, Edie—we’ve got to go.”
I unlocked the door, and ran back into the safety of my bedroom. I pulled on clothing as fast as I could, and hauled out my biggest bag. I threw things into it quickly, stupid things, things you could buy at a drugstore, a fistful of underwear, an old hairbrush, a half-empty bottle of Diet Coke. Grandfather’s voice became commanding. I chunked him into the bag too.
“Hurry!” Ti urged from the hallway.
I upended a bag of cat food in the kitchen, and set the faucet onto low. Grandfather’s commentary was muffled by my undergarments.
Ti was waiting for me, motioning me down the hall like an air traffic controller with his good hand, scarf still protectively high. I stopped at the sight of him. “You have to show me.”
“Damn it, Edie!” He twisted his face away from me and pointed out the open door. “Go get in the goddamned car!”
“Not until you show me!” I yelled back at him.
“I’m trying to save your life—” he said, his voice sibilant like a stroke victim’s. I stalked over and reached up for the scarf. His golden eyes stared down, but he didn’t move to stop me. I yanked it down.
His skin was his, until just under his nose. And then a lightning bolt of scar began, zigzagging up his cheek and down his chin where whole white flesh seamed against his original black. I took a step back. Lips I’d never seen before, never kissed before, spoke again. “It’s still me,” they said. “And we need to go. Now. They’re going to kill you and drown her.”
“Drown her?” I paused.
“Anna. In some ritual. They’re going to drown her like a witch,” he said.
“Oh, no.” My experience in the shower, and everything Sike had told me—I kept trying to add it up, but I couldn’t quite make it match.
“Edie, we’ve got to go. We don’t have much time,” Ti pleaded.
“I’ll say!” said a cheerful voice from behind Ti, outside. “Is there another vampire tribunal I don’t know about? I’d hate to miss anything.” Dren the Husker leaned forward and rapped on my doorjamb. He spotted me behind Ti and waved. “I don’t suppose you’d care to invite me in, eh?”
I crossed my arms. “Not in the least.”
“Ah. Well.” He folded himself up against the wall behind him, putting his boot heel up so that his bent knee blocked the door. “Say, you weren’t thinking about running, were you?” He unholstered his sickle with nonchalance and reached up to play its tip along the brick face of the wall behind him. The sound of metal on stone echoed through the small alcove.
“Actually, no.” I dropped my bag.
“Edie,” Ti said, his voice low. He was gesturing to me, and I knew what he wanted. He’d tackle Dren, I’d run out the door, and somehow we’d make it out into the night, and leave everything I knew behind.
But I couldn’t. If my time in the shower had been anything like what Anna was going through—I couldn’t let her be abandoned to that awful dark.
“Edie, she’s a monster.”
“I know.” I’d seen what she’d done to Sike, twice over. But she was also one hell of a damaged little girl, with no one else left to look out for her. The Rose Throne wanted to use her, the Zver wanted to kill her, and I—I wanted a clean conscience. I couldn’t just run away. I turned toward Dren.
Ti caught me with his good hand. “Edie, they’re going to kill you. And I’m going to try to stop them, but I don’t know if I can.”
Dren pushed himself off my alcove wall. “You can’t, zombie. But you might as well come along. The Zverskiye have invited everyone. I’m as fond of carnage as the next person. Only, you stop me from doing my job before we get there, and I’ll husk her without a second thought.” He made a gesture with his sickle in midair.