Their beloved classmates. Their friends.
Their trust in the elder who had been tasked with protecting them when they had been told over and over that, in the Underground, they would be cared for by Wolfie, always.
This was no rubbish.
It was somehow all too true, wasn’t it?
Della forced herself to continue. That was the reason Mrs. Jones would never reveal who was in her select Queenshill vampire classes before us. She was hoping we wouldn’t discover a pattern of disappearances.
Noreen’s hands had only tightened over her mouth. More horror. More tears.
Della looked away, trying hard not to picture each of her friends hanging above a bathtub, their blood slipping from a gash in their throats. Unlike humans, vampires like Blanche, Briana, and Sharon would not have fully perished with only a cut to the throat, for if they were dead, their bodies would have fully disappeared, just as Mrs. Jones had always warned.
They would have still been as alive as a vampire could be.
Torture, Della thought. They would have needed to be tortured and somehow restrained mentally as well as physically for Mrs. Jones to procure the blood that was still young and fairly pure from the class of new vampires.
Her very own handpicked harvest.
What should we do? Noreen asked.
Shaken, Della looked into her schoolmate’s saucered gaze. Act as if you don’t know anything, and don’t ever go anywhere alone with Mrs. Jones.
But should we tell Wolfie?
The question rocked Della, even if somewhere in the black of her mind, she had been wondering the same.
No, she answered. Let’s not.
Was it because she feared breaking his heart if he knew what Mrs. Jones had been doing?
Or was it because she was scared witless that he did know?
Della could tell Noreen was stashing the Wolfie questions away, too, as her classmate reached up to grasp a cell bar just above one of Della’s fists.
Then what happens now? Noreen asked.
Della already knew. In a way, she had known ever since Wolfie had put her in this cage with no assurances of ever getting out.
She hadn’t realized until now that he had refrained from promising anything to her, even though Wolfie always tried to make things better for his charges.
Do you know what’s in store for you, little girl?
The reminder mauled her, and she found herself giving impromptu instructions to Noreen, unable to hold back.
Perhaps a short, anonymous note for the others to find, Della mind-thought. Disguise your writing. Mention something very cryptic about the patterns of Queenshill students’ disappearances. Leave it in a Queenshill girls’ room and be there when they find it, then destroy the note before anyone else can see. It will be as if it never existed, yet if the previous Queenshill girls feel as strongly as we do—if they haven’t forgotten their pain in all the excess down here, as Mrs. Jones probably hoped they would-they’ll talk and spread the subject, hoping for answers they might have never found about their friends. Perhaps they will even discover courage to find those answers now. And no one will know who left the note unless you let down your shields, Noreen.
The other girl seemed confused, but then understanding gradually dawned.
Della moved her hand up the bar, covering her friend’s.
There’s power in numbers and in the hurt of losing friends. If any of the surviving members of previous Queenshill classes had suspicions, we’ll know soon enough. If it doesn’t work, we’ll both keep up shields as to what we know. By then, we’ll realize there’s no hope for discovering anything.
Noreen shook her head. What are you saying?
Della backed away from the bars and absently ran her fingers over the slim red tie that all the girls in her class had chosen to wear because it reflected their oneness.
I’m saying we need to get to the truth before it gets to us, Della answered as she thought of the vampiress in the tub again.
But then, just under the pulse of that image, she saw the vampire in the bed, tearing and gnawing at the girl he had once held on his lap.
EIGHTEEN
THE DRUNK PATROL
DAWN had basically guilt-tripped Breisi, who’d already been put through the remorse wringer by Frank, into escorting her to the wine bar where Eva was hanging out. They needed to get her mom back while avoiding any more encounters with that shadow girl. Breisi had already said that the only reason she’d blazed over from headquarters was because Natalia had reported that Dawn’s earpiece had gone out, and that news hadn’t sat well with the Friend.
What a pal, huh? But Dawn knew her Friend would defend her and probably even Eva, like a ghosty wildcat if it came right down to it. Breisi was too upright to ever really turn her back on someone.
That was the hope, anyway.
They were moving at a rapid clip along Borough High Street on their way to Tooley Street, where the bar was supposed to be located. At the same time, Dawn kept up a conversation with Breisi. It didn’t matter that people were staring—for all they knew, she had a Bluetooth device on.
“Believe me,” she said while keeping one hand in her jacket pocket, her fingers touching the reassuring heft of the mini flamethrower. “I do know where you’re coming from, Breez. I’d have been a jealous wreck in the same situation, too. I don’t fault you for that.”
“Listen to you—the voice of experience,” Breisi said next to her.
Dawn thought about Matt Lonigan, who’d almost had her convinced back in L.A. that she might be able to do the boyfriend thing for once.
Breisi seemed to realize her verbal blunder. “That didn’t come out the May—”
“Sure it did.” Dawn cupped a near-frozen hand over her nose as they maintained their tempo. It felt like half of her face was about to fall off from the chill. Jolly old England didn’t have anything on the jollier Southern California weather.
Breisi took advantage of the awkward pause to fly up to scan the rooftops, then dip back down by Dawn’s side again, and when she continued the discussion, Dawn sighed, occupying herself by scanning for any sign of Shadow Girl.
“Really, Dawn, I’ve tried to have patience.”
“Yup, you sure have.”
This girlfriend talk was harder than it sounded, but Dawn hung in there, mostly because Breisi seemed in need of some hard-core counseling.
“I knew Frank had a history with Eva and that it wouldn’t disappear anytime soon. But I was ready to weather that.”
“And you did for a long time. I know—I got it. You just hit a wall tonight.” Dawn thought of Eva walking into Frank’s room, her palm bleeding. “A big, fat, bloody wall.”
“I’m glad you understand, Dawn. It’s only that . . .” She faded off.
It didn’t take a PhD to realize that Breisi’s shut-out of Eva tonight was bothering her, so Dawn spared her Friend the agony of continuing. Or maybe she was sparing herself from hearing it.
“Breez, no matter who you are—a spirit, a person, whatever—there’s a time when everybody has to draw a line. There’s only so much you can handle, and sometimes, when you get to that point, a person who’s generally a little nicer than others regrets taking the stand they need to take because it isn’t ‘nice’ at all.”
Dawn paused as she played chicken with a drunk guy in a green and red scarf who wouldn’t move to his side of the pavement. She won as he swerved to her right, where he should’ve been in the first place. Hell, even though she was a foreigner, she knew how traffic worked in London.
“Sometimes,” she finished, “you can’t be nice. I just wish it hadn’t come down to you finding that line with Eva.”
They turned onto a crowded Duke Street, and on impulse, Dawn slowed her speed walking, lifting her hand to feel Breisi skim the tips of her fingers. The airy contact was just as reassuring as the slick-ness of her flamethrower.
Then she began walking full throttle again, and Breisi’s essence lingered
behind, like she’d been taken aback by Dawn’s almost-affectionate gesture.
That made Dawn speed up even more, hunching into her jacket, mostly in embarrassed reaction to what she’d just done. To forget it, she combed her gaze over her surroundings for any red eyes in the night. Any shadows bounding over the rooftops to track and maybe even attack for another round of attempted questioning.
A buzz traveled her skin, maybe at the idea of being watched and hunted. But she was up to the challenge of smacking Shadow Girl around if they came face-to-face.
The phrase lingered like the light fog clouding the streetlights.
Face-to-face.
She ran the back of a hand over her mouth, wiping, remembering how the girl had brushed her lips there.
Discomfort got to her, so she called Breisi’s name, just for the company.
A couple of people gave Dawn and the space around her disconcerted glances, but she just stared them down as she muttered to her Friend, putting closure to the conversation they’d been having.
“Let’s just make sure that nobody associated with us—and I mean nobody—is ever left in the lurch like Eva was tonight, no matter what dumb thing they do. Then we’ll never have to get all touchy-feely, Oprah-couch-conversation again. Okay?”
A whisk of jasmine traveled over Dawn’s head. “In the future, I’ll find another way to remind Eva where she stands with Frank. And when this hunt is over, we’ll find a better blood source for him, no matter how much hers does for his taste buds.”
A skip of panic interrupted Dawn’s pulse. Was Breisi talking about cutting Eva loose?
Dawn tried to figure out why that bothered her. Maybe having her mom supply Frank with sustenance meant a lot to Dawn, too, in some surreal way. Maybe the blood tie between her parents was another way of keeping her family knotted together and she didn’t want to undo it.
Resting her hand against the pocketed mini flamethrower, she led Breisi past pub goers in their cheery scarves and coats, past The London Dungeon, a tourist attraction marked by a hovering sign that stated, “Enter at your peril.”
Kiko had taken Eva here once. He’d loved the whole torture-as-grand-entertainment vibe, with its Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd flamboyance, yet Eva had avoided all Dawn’s questions about her visit there. Dawn had just assumed that maybe her mom hadn’t loved it quite as much.
But had her lack of response meant something else?
Had Eva gotten flashbacks of her own time in a blood-steeped world?
Had she ... liked it?
In light of what had happened with Frank tonight, Dawn had cause to wonder, so she walked even faster until they came to the wine bar—a bright, full-windowed establishment with a burst of foliage out front. A black cab was just pulling up to the curb, and Dawn ran to it, confirming that he was here to pick them up since she’d called for a ride earlier.
After the elderly gent, who was decked out in a newsboy cap, responded that he’d be at her service, she asked him to wait while she fetched Eva. Then she subtly addressed Breisi as she walked toward the bar.
“Wait here?”
“I’d prefer to stay as far away as possible,” the Friend said.
Boy, Dawn thought while she pulled open the glass door and entered. Nothing like a good catfight between dysfunctional creatures to liven things up.
She came to a fancy bar framed by bottles, the scent of wine, cheese, and fresh bread seeming utterly out of place in her world right now. Going to a corner of the counter, she waited for the bartender to notice her.
He had reddish hair that stuck up a bit near the back, accompanied by freckles, all of which made him seem nerdy and sporty, like he rowed in one of those boats she sometimes saw on the Thames. The type of decent guy who usually took one glance at Dawn and quietly tried to avoid looking at her ever again.
But he did look, probably because Dawn was a car wreck in her tomboy jacket that covered her ripped and bloodied shirt, her skirt, and postfight hair.
“Hey,” she said as he braced his hands on the bar, towel in hand. “I’m looking for a blond woman, fortyish—”
“With bare feet and a duchess’s bearing?” He gestured toward the back of the bar, where faux candlelight burned from sconces near a line of high wooden booths. “She ventured back that way.”
Dawn caught a nick of something like tightness in the guy’s tone. “You the one who loaned her his mobile phone?”
“I’d be the one, yes.”
“Then thank you. I appreciate you looking out for her.”
“Was glad to be of aid. She ...”
Dawn waited for him to finish, but he only began wiping down the bar.
“Go ahead,” she said.
He stopped, then laughed. But it wasn’t a ha-ha laugh. Like his words, it had some tension to it.
“She makes the rounds, your mum,” he said. “Doesn’t she?”
As Dawn tried to figure out what he meant by that, he stepped over to some customers who wanted to order.
And she kept watching him, even as she went to the rear of the bar, where there were murmurs from the patrons nursing their reds and whites over plates with food that wouldn’t keep a sparrow happy.
Dawn looked around. Looked again.
But she didn’t find Eva.
All right. Maybe Dawn had misunderstood the bartender and her mom was in another spot. There was a stairway leading downstairs. Maybe Eva had gone there?
Or had she left altogether?
Dawn’s fingers curled into her palms in a flash of worry.
Or had something taken Eva ... ?
Turning around, she darted toward the front, powered by the chill running through her veins.
Yet when she saw what had to be Eva’s long, slim, barefoot leg sliding into a booth, as if she had just returned from someplace else and was sitting down again, Dawn halted.
Then she gingerly stepped toward the booth.
With each thud of Dawn’s pulse, Eva became more visible.
Her mom’s hair was loose and finger-tangled, draped on her shoulders and clouded near her face like she was partially hiding behind the flow of it. And she had this look in her brown eyes ... a dreaminess. Same as the languid smile she was wearing.
Drunk, Dawn thought.
So much for Eva taking what she’d done with Frank seriously. As Dawn started getting angry again, her mom leaned back in the booth, then slowly raised her gaze to Dawn as if she felt her watching.
After blinking, like she’d caught sight of reality in the form of her daughter, Eva gradually straightened in her seat, caught.
But caught doing what?
“Mom?” Dawn asked. Like, duh, maybe it wasn’t Eva and she had to make sure.
Her mother made a show of glancing at her slim golden watch while straightening her décolletage or whatever the more fashionable people called it. Her hand was bandaged—evidence of what she’d done to Frank.
Dawn spoke before her mother could. “I know—I took longer than I thought I would. There were some ... complications. Are you . . .?”
“I’m fine,” Eva said, slurring a bit. Smiling like the cat who’d eaten the canary ... and the parakeet ... and even the dog. “Time to go?”
“Yeah, time to go. You mind telling me how much you had?”
Eva waved her hand in airy dismissal. “Not much. I didn’t have my wallet so the barman spotted me a glass or two.”
Here, she made a dizzy-drunk gesture with her fingers, parceling out just how little her intake might’ve been. After she inspected the measurement, her fingers indicated more. Then, with a small laugh, even more.
“This is so uncool,” Dawn said, extending her hand to help Eva stand.
“I think the barman liked me. But then . . .”
Eva’s comment was taken over by a secretive smile.
“God, what?” Dawn asked.
Her mom hesitated. Then she got that goofball smile again.
“I came back to this section to wait for
you,” she said, almost coyly.
She headed for the exit, leaving a trail of interested gazes from the customers along the way, their necks craned at the barefoot lady lording it past them.
Always the queen, Dawn thought, the old envy creeping back on her. Always the superstar, even when nobody knew who the hell she was these days.
As they passed the bartender, he watched Eva, a frown on his face.
From behind the fluff of her hair, she sweetly thanked him, and Dawn pulled her by the sleeve toward the door. She wasn’t about to play porno nanny.
“Drunk moms aren’t cute,” Dawn said as she guided Eva outside and toward the cab.
“I’m hardly drunk. Just ... tipsy.”
She said it like she was a teenager who’d been experimenting with booze for the first time, and Dawn wanted to wring her neck, especially after everything she’d put the team through tonight. As it was, she, Breisi, and the rest of the Friends guarding headquarters would have to hope that nothing would end up watching Eva and Dawn slip in through one of the back entrances.
If there was any karma in this world, Dawn thought, Eva would get a killer hangover.
She put her mom in the cab. “We’ve got a long talk ahead of us.”
“Mmmm,” Eva said as she curled into a corner of the backseat.
Breisi whooshed by just as Dawn was climbing in, too, and Dawn gave the spirit a don’t-you-say-anything glance.
To Breisi’s credit, she stayed mum.
After settling in, Dawn turned to Eva to say something else, but she only found her mom with her eyes closed, a sedate smile brushing her lips as if she were finally having nice dreams.
Anger easing—but not by much—Dawn left her alone for the time being, thinking that maybe they all could use a sweet dream or two.
NINETEEN
THE TEST
THE next day, in an oak-laden alcove that hid their modified Sedona just outside Queenshill School, Dawn glanced away from her window’s view of green fields and toward her thick, black wrist-watch.
A little after four o‘clock, and the sun was already setting here across the Atlantic pond.
The Path of Razors Page 18
