Her statements were like a swirl of letters, separated until they coalesced into actual words for Della as she slowly raised her gaze to find Mrs. Jones frowning, as if torn.
But Della knew the reason for that. On the mobile, she had heard Wolfie defending her, even as he mourned Violet’s passing. He had told Mrs. Jones that, perhaps, she would have summoned animals in such a case, too, if she had chosen to take advantage of the talent she—and even he—rarely utilized these days.
All in all, he had made a case for her to show mercy until he could talk with Della himself.
The housematron lowered her voice, her tone like the snap of a whip.
“Wolfie,” she said, “insists that we finally return home. Our new home, where the rest of this will be settled.”
The main Underground?
Joy trembled in Della’s chest, even if she would receive a postponed punishment there. Even if Mrs. Jones was once again employing dread to stretch Della upon a mental rack.
“Thank you, Mrs. Jones,” Della said.
“Your gratefulness is premature.”
A catlike flicker lit her eyes, the pupils clicking to slits, then back again.
Something inexplicable flashed in Della’s mind: two vampires with featureless faces in a cottage in the woods, one healing the other. Somehow she knew they were blood brothers, and they had a blond girl with them, on the floor, her eyes closed....
She remembered all of it, the entire waking dream, and she blinked, raising a hand to her throat. But it was still there, whole.
Mrs. Jones left Della to stand in place, but Della’s mind fuzzed with consequent flashes, mainly of a white ribbon soaked in blood.
Although she blocked her thoughts, both against Mrs. Jones and the assaulting images, the fear rose again to burn like slick black ice in the middle of her chest, causing rationality to slip and slide. But the ice did cool Della as the images faded, then thankfully disappeared altogether.
Behind her, the elder vampire was speaking to all the girls. “Both Wolfie and I feel it’s time to get you to your true home after dusk tonight, mostly so he might have the opportunity to handle Della’s latest issues. Besides, the attackers haven’t shown themselves again, and I’ve started to believe they’re not much more than last night’s nuisance. So it’s full speed ahead, young ladies.”
Noreen asked, “We’re not going to school yet, Mrs. Jones?”
“Not for the time being.”
The idea of the main Underground held such powerful appeal that the two other girls twittered, excited about going back to the main Underground even before promotion, when they would have otherwise been transferred there.
As if she were the lone one who recalled Violet’s death, Della stood rooted to her station. But it was only because she was hoping the images wouldn’t return.
“Ready then?” Mrs. Jones asked Polly and Noreen.
Della could hear her classmates springing to their feet, already gathering their books and rushing to their bags.
They were so busy that they couldn’t have possibly seen Mrs. Jones come back to Della, leaning close to whisper in her ear.
“Ready, my sweet?”
An inner alarm screamed within Della as the housematron backed away, smiling in feline menace.
Then, as Mrs. Jones moved toward the door to wait for her charges, Della’s mind once again flickered on that white ribbon swirling down, down to the ground, where it withered over the hair of a girl who had probably been a lot like her.
SEVEN
THE BLADED TUNNEL
Earlier
BEFORE the sun even rose, Dawn had told the team all about what Violet had shown her via their mind connection. Then, a couple of hours before classes would even be in session at Queenshill, she’d taken a refresher nap for the big day ahead.
Generally, she didn’t need many z’s to operate, but a little slumber would give her that extra bit of energy she might have to rely on during this second trip to the exclusive girls’ school.
Yup, she thought while standing under the pound and steam of a shower, a second of quiet under some hot water and a nap should do it.
Dawn slathered her skin with a neutral soap of Breisi’s invention that would hopefully throw off any vampire’s sense of smell. The soap hadn’t seemed to do the trick last night—not altogether—but she suspected that maybe it didn’t cover the scent of ultradread so well, and she and Kiko had been feeling just that while they’d waited in some woods to be discovered by those vamp girls.
But the dread wouldn’t happen again. Dawn would make sure of it.
Scare me once, she thought, bully for you. Scare me twice, and I’ll already have my blades out.
After Dawn got out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel, Kiko came knocking. Steam wisped the air as she let him in and he held up a red sweater enclosed in a plastic bag.
“From the costume bin,” he said. Back when they’d been preparing headquarters, they’d raided vintage stores for clothing, wigs, shoes, and all manner of disguise, which they could use for interviews and any necessary undercover work. “It still has a whiff of that former-owner smell, plus a different cleaning detergent than we use, so maybe it’ll help with distracting the noses on these vamps.”
She combed the tangles from her hair, which was the opposite of her mom’s: brown, unspectacular, and more functional than glamorous.
“Nothing like a red sweater for undercover work,” Dawn said.
“Don’t be picky.” Kiko tossed it on the bathroom counter and headed for the door. “You can thank me for saving your ass later.”
“My ass is very appreciative now.”
As he left, he gave her a smirk, and she grinned back while firing up a hair dryer that didn’t have half the power of the ones in the States.
Still, not long afterward, she, Kiko, and Frank—who huddled under a protective blanket even with the darkened windows of their modified Kia Sedona—drove to Queenshill. Once there, in the relative privacy of the back, she stuffed her hair under a wig cap and went to work on her cover.
The wig she’d chosen was mousy—the ashy, wavy brown of a bookworm. She secured it over her head, then topped off the schoolgirl look by dressing in a calf-length checkered skirt, a white blouse that buttoned at the wrists, a pair of random, thick glasses she’d found among other handy costume wear, and, of course, the sweater.
After checking her weapons and stowing them, she headed from the sheltered cove where they’d parked toward the unguarded gates of Queenshill, thinking it was interesting that last night’s ruckus hadn’t resulted in more security. Bobbies had been called and everything, but Dawn supposed that they probably hadn’t found much on campus besides the remnants of a wildlife fight from the animals the schoolgirls had summoned.
Even so, she kept her eyes peeled while traveling a gravel path that took her between a chapel and the gothic-tinged administration building. She clutched a pink folder to her stomach, her head down, her wig covering her features. A “book bag” was strapped crossways over her chest, and it was heavy with everything she’d need once she got past the housematron’s door:
Two smaller stakes: One ash, one aspen. One tipped with silver, one plain.
Two UV grenades.
A mini flamethrower.
A mini machete.
Frank and Kiko were off campus with the bigger stuff, like her saw-bow.
Her earpiece came to life with Kiko’s voice.“You there yet?”
“Not yet.”
She barely moved her mouth. Not that anyone was really around right now to hear, but schoolgirls were supposed to be in class and she didn’t want to draw undue attention. Then again, during a previous daytime trip to campus, Dawn had gotten the distinct impression that these students weren’t exactly under lock and key. They were overachievers here at Queenshill and seemingly treated with the respect and freedom they’d earned, so a schoolgirl cruising to the dorm right now wouldn’t be entirely out of place.
>
Yet as Dawn passed by the main buildings with their chimeras spreading their wings and gaping at her, she reconsidered the whole “watching thing.” She definitely felt like there were curious eyes somewhere....
Shaking it off, she headed past the classrooms, their leaded windows thick and fancy among the dark brick. Hell, ghosts of little, silk-clad kids would’ve seemed right at home peering out at this sky, with its gray clouds that looked like stuffing torn out of a clawed mattress.
“I’m just past the football field, so I’m close,” Dawn added for Kiko’s sake. He’d wanted to go into the housematron’s room, too, just to see if he could get readings off of any clothing or objects. But they all knew that his psychometry didn’t work on a vamp’s items unless they were alive when they’d been wearing or handling them.
Besides, was she going to smuggle him in by using her book bag or something? Right.
Her wig fluttered as two Friends traveled by her side. Breisi and Greta, a spirit who’d been on campus this entire time.
Kiko was just now responding. “Can’t wait until you get your camera on so we can see something.”
A shushing sound followed, and Dawn guessed that Frank had already gotten tired of his teammate’s commentary. Her dad had accompanied them here even though he was weaker during sunlight hours than at night. He’d inherited the ability to move around during the day from Eva, who’d turned him into a vamp in the first place, and Dawn had to admit that the Hollywood Underground’s talents often came in handy for the team’s purposes.
Ahead, the dorms loomed: all brick and modern gloom. But first, Dawn had to pass by the copse of trees where they’d encountered the demon dogs sent by the schoolgirls last night.
Good times.
Keeping her heartbeat steady, she blew out a breath, inhaled, then bypassed the trees by using a neat stone path. As she approached the dorm where the vamps lived, she noticed a dictionary propping open the card-key-accessible door.
Of course. Greta had already said that, to ensure Dawn’s entrance, some of the Friends had pushed the book to the slit of the door after another student had exited.
So far, it was all running like clockwork.
“All right,” Dawn whispered, “I’m almost inside. I’ll get the camera on after I’m in the room, ‘kay?”
“Cool,” Kiko said.
Then he went silent, and Dawn imagined how Frank must’ve put his hand over the psychic’s mouth to make the quiet possible. Good thing, too, because with Costin and Natalia also monitoring from headquarters, they needed room for any one of them to talk at a moment’s notice.
With a sly look around, Dawn opened the door, kicked the dictionary to the side—hah, what symbolic pleasure she took from that—then slipped through.
Friends were patrolling the halls to make sure any cleaning personnel or supervisors wouldn’t cross paths with Dawn. They knew that security was light at Queenshill, even after last night, and all there was to worry about, really, were some cameras in the dorms and an elderly security guard who normally wandered the campus after the sun went down.
Breisi’s voice was wind-tunnel thin as she spoke, just ahead of Dawn.
“This way. Let’s go.”
“Hold your horses,” Dawn whispered. “This idiotic skirt is confining.”
“This, from a woman who’s been known to wear a cocktail dress during a brawl?”
Dawn smiled sardonically at the jasmine air while they rounded a corner that led to the stairwell. If the time had been right for some chatter, she would’ve reminded Breisi that, hello, the brawl had been staged for a stunt during one of the movies she’d worked on during her “other life.”
The one that seemed so irrelevant these days.
Dawn took the stairs two at a time, thinking that at least those choreographed fights and the physical training that went with them had allowed her to jump right into vamp fighting. When she thought of what it might’ve been like to try to find her dad, who’d been missing at the time, without all the skills she’d had...
She didn’t think about it.
Near the top of the stairway, Breisi and Greta sped ahead to the door, and when Dawn got to it, too, she put on a pair of tight gloves, slowly applied pressure to it, then stuck her head past, glancing around the fluorescent hallway.
Nada. They were all alone.
But then Greta darted even farther ahead.
Leaving the stairwell behind, Dawn ran to where the Friend was guiding her, to a door marked “Housematron.”
Heartbeat: calm. Breathing: take it down a level.
After putting her pink folder into the book bag, Dawn took out the tension wrench, rake, and short hook the Friends had told her she’d need. Then she went to work on picking the lock.
She only hoped that the vamps weren’t the type to have used any sort of magic aboveground. If so, she’d know pretty soon whether or not there’d be trouble getting inside the room.
Within a minute, she had the lock taken care of and was opening the door, her lungs burning with a held breath.
No magic, she thought. Please, no magic—
But, without incident, she cracked the door open, allowing Breisi and Greta in before her so they could cloud any cameras.
As she stuffed her tools away, she noted that maybe these vamps weren’t so keen on attracting suspicion aboveground after all, in spite of their more careless activities like burying victims’ heads and other body parts at an abandoned construction site on Billiter Street. They’d also been real nonchalant about their master sending off Awareness signals, because that’s how Costin had tracked them down in the first place.
When Breisi called to Dawn, she entered, then shut the door, locked it, and slipped off her bag while scanning the room.
The first thing she saw was a nondescript desk with folders neatly stacked in wire organizers and a computer glancing back with a blank screen. According to the Friends, the blasé setup described the vampire housematron in a lot of ways: Plain. Ordinary. Unsur prising except for what they now knew about her.
But there was something besides the desk that caught Dawn’s eye—a queen-sized bed with an indentation on the duvet, as if Mrs. Jones had been slumbering on top of the covers the last time she’d been here. It was a personal detail that got to Dawn in a way that she didn’t want to acknowledge, so she let it go.
Other than that, there was a bookshelf lined with plastic ferns and stacked with hardbound volumes of classics from the likes of Thackeray, Austen, and Dickens. And then there was the mahogany wardrobe against a wall.
In addition to some drawers for clothing, that was about it ... except for the camera peeking out from behind the fern on top of the bookshelf.
Dawn knew that it would already be clouded, but she jerked her chin toward it anyway.
“Greta’s got it,” Breisi said. “Still, we don’t have long.”
“Gotcha,” Dawn said. “Someone might notice the malfunction nd decide to check it out.”
She took out a hair band from the book bag and wrangled the wig into a ponytail, doffed the sweater and glasses and stuffed them in the bag, rolled up her sleeves, then slid a headlight over her head. “I wonder if clouded cameras were the thing that drew that commando boy”—the dead one in their lab freezer—“to us on Billiter Street.”
“A possibility,” Breisi said. “Now hurry.”
Yeah, yeah. Dawn made it snappy, but she still went on wondering if the commando’s group kept tabs on any of those cameras posted just about everywhere you looked around the city. They might have been monitoring the burial area, which would explain why the kid had been attracted to it.
Had the camera malfunctions made him—whoever he was and whatever his purpose—come running to snoop around?
Sometimes the influence of an Underground reached both high and low into society. How connected was this community here in London?
Good God—and was it only a matter of time before this Underground realized that “
Limpet and Associates” had messed with the cameras near their own headquarters?
Gah. She shouldn’t be dwelling on this right now.
Dawn attached a small camera to her headlight. Breisi and Frank had been developing the surveillance item over the past year, but it’d always shorted out or gone a little fritzy on field tests. Now it was time to give this improved version a go.
Flicking it on, she glanced around the room while Breisi darted about, getting her own good look at every nook and cranny.
Dawn’s earpiece activated. Costin.
“Perfect reception,” he said.
She hadn’t been prepared to hear him, and her flesh seemed to roll with shivers that bled below her skin, too, burrowing down deep, low.
Nice timing.
“Kiko?” Dawn asked, mainly to bring herself out of it, but also genuinely wanting to know if he was getting a picture, too.
“Lovely in Technicolor,” he responded.
Breisi’s thready voice spun around Dawn.
“Here!”
At the urgency of her Friend’s tone, Dawn followed the sound to the wardrobe while ducking under the strap of her book bag, putting it back on.
“Open the wardrobe,” Breisi said.
“Wait a sec.” Dawn extracted her machete from the bag. “Team members are the ones who’re supposed to have the privilege of commanding you guys, not vice versa. Let’s have some respect for decorum here.”
“Cállate, Dawn, I hear something. A breeze?”
Holy creepies. “An opening.”
Pulse chopping, Dawn jerked open the wardrobe door, only to find a space occupied by a few sweaters and skirts that hung in the air like specters.
But when she looked closer, she saw loose threads from two cardigans stirring.
A breeze, all right. Now, if she could just find an opening ...
She’d read ghost stories before, so she pushed the clothes to the side in order to reach the back panel. She pressed on the wood, here, there, one corner, one side, the other—
The Path of Razors Page 7
