Текст книги "Bite Club"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Claire let out her breath, shook her head, and muttered, “And again, I hate you, Myrnin.”

Dressed, if not exactly stylish, Claire stuck her head out of her bedroom window. As expected, Myrnin was pacing there, hands behind his back, head down. He was wearing some kind of neon-bright shirt that was probably a holdover from the eighties, and was back to his shorts and comfortable sandals. These were leather, at least, and looked kind of like something a guy would wear. If pushed.

Not exactly vampire chic, as pop culture defined it, but Myrnin wasn’t one for fitting in. Ever.

He looked up at her, black hair falling back from his moon-pale face, and said, “Well? Jump!”

It was one thing for a vampire. Quite another for a breakable, not-too-athletic human. Claire shook her head. Myrnin sighed, tugged at his hair with both hands as if wanting to pull out his brain by the roots, and then seemed to have a bright idea. He dashed off into the darkness.

A moment later, he was back, carrying a ladder—and not their ladder. He’d ripped it off from a neighbor, Claire guessed. Well, it was better than jumping.

The climb down was chilly and scary, because Myrnin didn’t think about bracing the ladder, which bounced and shifted uneasily with every step she took. Claire jumped the last couple of rungs, landing flat-footed, and whispered, “Where did this thing come from?”

“Oh, out there,” Myrnin said, and waved vaguely at the darkness. “We don’t have time for niceties. Keep up, please.”

Oh, right. Myrnin didn’t drive, so there was no car; that meant walking. In the dark. In Vampire City. Well, at least she had an escort, although he had longer legs and didn’t bother to slow down for her, so she had to almost jog to stay with him.

“What’s going on?” she asked, by the time they’d reached the corner of Lot Street. The streetlight was out. Most of the streetlights in Morganville stayed off when you needed them most. “What’s the emergency?”

“I found out who killed your friend.”

“Oh.” She sucked in a deep breath as they crossed the street and took a right, heading for Founder’s Square in the center of town. “Who?”

It was a simple question, but she didn’t expect a simple answer. Myrnin was always being vague when she most needed clarity.

So it surprised her when he said, “Do you actually want to know?”

“Of course I do!”

“Think carefully before you answer. Do you want to know, Claire?”

That sounded…ominous. And Myrnin sounded very, very serious and in control, which was odd, to say the least.

“Is there some reason I shouldn’t?” she asked. He glanced over at her, and she was unsettled again by the concern in his expression.

“Yes,” he said. “Several that I can think of.”

“Then why drag me out of bed about it?”

“Not my choice. Amelie’s orders. Trust me, I objected. I was overruled.”

Claire concentrated on walking for a few moments, until the pale glow of the lights from Founder’s Square warmed the night ahead of them. The houses they passed were silent and dark. Apart from a few barking dogs, nobody seemed to notice them.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me before we get there. It’s better if I know what I’m walking into.”

“I knew you’d say that.” She couldn’t decide whether Myrnin approved or sounded resigned about it. “Very well. It’s Eve’s brother. Jason.”

Jason.Well…that didn’t shock her quite as much as it probably should have. Jason had sat with them at their dinner table. He’d even kind of saved her life once. But on the other hand, he’d terrorized her, threatened her, and he’d actually hurtShane. With glee. Jason was not a good person, deep down.

“Eve’s going to be so upset,” Claire said. She couldn’t imagine how bad her friend would feel; Eve had been so excited about Jason’s supposed turnaround, so supportive of his attempts to make himself better. And now this. It would knock her flat.

“You’re not surprised.”

“Not…really. I mean, I’m disappointed more than surprised. I wanted him to be…better.”

“Ah, Claire.” Myrnin shook his head and reached out to give her a quick, fierce, one-armed hug. “You want us all to be better than we are. That’s charming, and alarming. I’ve disappointed you many times.”

“Not like this.”

“Very much like this,” he said. “But perhaps not so bloodily.”

“What’s going to happen to him?”

Myrnin gave her a long, sideways look. She realized that it maybe wasn’t the most perceptive question she’d ever asked. “No,” she said. “ No, Myrnin. He didn’t kill a vampire, no matter how it turns out. Human violence gets judged and punished by humans. That’s the rule.”

“Amelie makes the rules, dear child.”

They were in a relatively deserted part of town now, heading for Founder’s Square. Normally, Claire wouldn’t have liked walking out here in blazing noon sun, not even with an escort, but having a vampire at her side had made her careless.

She never saw it coming, not until Myrnin suddenly stopped and raised his head, face gone still and unnaturally pale in the silvery moonlight. He usually had a kind of awkwardly angled grace that was almost human, but now he took on that weird vampire stillness that made Claire feel so…clumsy. So vulnerable.

Except Myrnin hadn’t abruptly gone all fangy on her; he was focusing on something out in the dark.

“Claire,” he said, in a low, soothing, carefully controlled voice. “I would like you to take out your mobile phone and call the police, please. Do that now. Perhaps that emergency number.”

It was so utterly un-Myrnin that it scared her into fumbling her phone out of her pocket. “Why?” she whispered, as she started punching the three numbers in.

“Because it’s an emergency,” he said, and then something hit him, something faster than Claire could actually see, and she’d only just gotten the 911 entered and hadn’t pressed call, and before Myrnin fell, something had her wrist in a crushing grip. She had a confused impression of a stench like the worst body odor in the world, like poor Stinky Doug times a thousand, and a feverish glitter of eyes, and a face that looked like a skeleton with skin stretched over it…….

With sharp, sharp, sharpfangs that glittered like knives and were heading straight for her throat.

Myrnin hit him—it?—with so much force that the two vampires skidded at least fifty feet, rolling and punching and fighting, and Claire realized that just standing there like a total idiot might not be the best survival strategy. She felt numb and stupid with shock, but she saw the glowing blue screen of her phone in the grass, scrambled for it, and hit the call button. She looked around wildly, trying to get her bearings; it all seemed dark and murky and strange, but she saw the street sign in the faint gleam of the underpowered streetlight at the corner.

She was only two blocks from Founder’s Square.

Claire ran, holding the phone to her ear. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like a sledgehammer hitting her chest. The sidewalk was dark, very dark, but she didn’t worry about cracks or uneven pavement or anything else but running as fast as she possibly could, heading for the somewhat questionable safety of even more vampires, and, God, she couldn’t believe she was running tothe vampires, but that thing, that thing wasn’t—

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

She didn’t have any breath, she realized. Claire gasped out something about where she was and was about to try to explain what the hell had just happened, when she tripped and the phone went flying as she lost her balance and momentum carried her forward into what was going to be a bone-snapping impact with the pavement.

She got her hands in front of her, but it wasn’t the pavement she hit.

It was Myrnin, who caught her, gave her a look she couldn’t read at all, and grabbed her fallen phone when she pointed numbly at it. He had blood on his face and long, animal scratches that were healing slowly. His clothes were ripped and shredded, too.

Without another word, he scooped her up in his arms and ran for Founder’s Square. It didn’t take long—thirty seconds, maybe—but Claire used the time to get her head back together and try to slow down her flailing heartbeat. You’re not going to die. Calm down.

She ran it through her head again. Myrnin’s alarm. The glimpse of that skeletonized face. The smell of death.

That had been a starving, savage vampire, and in Morganville, that shouldn’t be happening. Vampires had ready access to the blood bank, if nothing else. If they were lawbreakers, they had plenty of easy targets. How did one get that skeletal, that savage? And why attack Myrninfirst, before going for her? She’d had the feeling it had come for her only because she was calling for help.

It didn’t make sense.

“Something’s going on,” she said as they turned the corner and she saw Founder’s Square dead ahead. “Put me down.”

“I’m fine,” Myrnin said, and stopped to let her slip down to a standing position. “Thanks for asking, Claire. Considering I subjected myself to unimaginable danger to protect the contents of your veins and your immortal soul, one might imagine you to be able to ask.” He was trying to be the old, casual Myrnin, but he was rattled, badly rattled. Claire found herself clutching her phone like a life preserver as she stepped away from him, and also realized that the police were still on the other end of the line, asking questions.

“Hello?” she said. “Police? You need to send a patrol car to—”

Myrnin took the phone away from her with a casual swipe of his hand and said, “Never mind. Everything’s fine now, no problem at all. Thank you for protecting and serving. Please don’t mind her at all.” And hung up.

“Hey!” Claire lunged for the phone. He held it up out of her reach.

“If you send human police after him, they’ll be handy snacks,” he said. “And they will also die, if they’re lucky. Come on.” He grabbed her wrist and dragged her along at a quick-march pace. He was using a little bit more force than he should have, and Claire tried not to wince. She’d already been grabbed way too much at that particular collection of bones.

“What just happened?” she asked. “And don’t tell me it was just a random vamp attack.”

“It wasn’t,” he said. “And we’ll talk when we’re there. Not before.”

They were coming up on the guard checkpoint now, and the uniformed policeman stepped out to give them a once-over. He nodded and waved them on. Myrnin didn’t even slow down, so neither did Claire.

“Where are we going?”

“To talk to Jason, obviously.”

“What? But—”

“I believe it’s connected. Jason is a pawn on the board, and we need to confirm just whose pawn he is. It’s thought that you might be able to extract that information from him.”

“Wait—you…you want me to interrogatehim?”

“Talk to him. You established a rapport with him before; he may say things to you he would not to vampires. As a fellow human, you’re already advantaged.”

“Advantaged?”

“Let’s just say that he’s developed a deep distrust of vampire kind.”

“What the hell did you do to him?”

Myrnin didn’t look at her. Now they were walking down a wide sidewalk, spacious, framed by tall dark trees on both sides. Pretty in daylight. A prime ambush place in the dark. But there were vampires out strolling in the moonlight, living their lives in an entirely weird and alien sort of way from what she knew. Here, that awful skeletal thing wouldn’t attack. It wouldn’t dare.

She suddenly, badly, wanted to be back home.

“Myrnin? What wasthat?”

He didn’t say another word, all the way to the building where Jason was being held.

FIVE

Being in a vampire stronghold, essentially alone, was horribly unnerving…especially since Claire realized that she’d sneaked out a window, and nobody, not even Shane, knew where she was. That hadn’t been the best plan ever, probably. Note to self: in the future, leave an I-know-who-killed-me message.Morbid, but practical, at least in her social circles.

This wasn’t the clean, sterile confines of the building where Amelie had her offices—although that was funeral-home creepy—but a different building, a windowless structure that didn’t have the chilly elegance of marble and thick carpeting. It was more…functional. Bare walls. Harsh lights. Plain floors.

And it smelled like disinfectant, which was very frightening.

There was a plain wooden desk in the entry hall, and a vampire Claire recognized—one who’d originally had dark skin, but vampire life had lightened it to an unsettling ashen gray. He was blind in one eye, and when he saw her, he smiled, all teeth.

She’d first met him in the library at Texas Prairie University, and he’d tried to kill her. Not a very nice vampire at all, in her experience.

“It’s the apprentice vampire hunter,” he said. “Good. I was getting hungry. Thanks for bringing me lunch.”

“She’s with me, John,” Myrnin said, and waggled his finger. “No snacking. And, besides, you’d have to ask Amelie’s permission first. Which you wouldn’t get, you know. You’re on probation for your last, ah, incident concerning a Morganville resident with a pulse.”

The vampire shrugged and looked disappointed. “Fine. What do you want?”

“None of your business, John. Just do your job and be quiet,” Myrnin said, and pulled her along. “This way.”

They passed through a verythick steel door, one that slammed shut with a finality that made Claire shiver, and then through a series of barred gates that looked thick enough to discourage even vampires. Some were warped. Some even had fingerprints pressed into the metal where vamps had tried to bend it. Unsuccessfully, it looked like.

They all locked behind her, cutting off any possibility of retreat. Yeah, that note she didn’t leave was looking more important all the time. Claire furtively eased her cell phone from her pants pocket and checked the reception.

Zero bars. Of course. She couldn’t even text for help.

Myrnin glanced back at her as they walked down the long, featureless hallway. Well, featurelesswas wrong—it was meant to be featureless, but, in fact, it had all kinds of scratches, gouges, and chunks torn out of it. Probably by people and vampires struggling to get free. Definitely not design features, because one of the gouges held a spark of red that, as Claire looked closer, became a torn-off, red-painted fingernail tip.

“Are you all right?” he asked her. She nodded, determined not to show him how unnerved she felt. “It’s just down here.”

He paused in front of just another doorway, one without a knob. It had a keypad next to it, and Myrnin entered some numbers and pressed his thumb to a glass plate. The door popped open with a hiss of air, as if it had been pressurized inside.

No sound at all, other than that.

Myrnin swung it open and stepped inside first—in case, Claire guessed, Jason was waiting with some blunt object, or, knowing Jason, a sharp one. But he needn’t have bothered, because Jason was sitting braced against the wall, knees up, on the small, narrow prison bed. He was dressed in glaring white hospital scrubs, stenciled with the word prisoner on the front and, she supposed, the back.

He looked up at them, expressionless. Beneath the tangled mop of dark hair, his face was still and set, his eyes as blank as stones.

“Hey, Jason,” Claire said. She sounded nervous. Well, she was. “Is it okay if I sit down?” The only place to sit was on the bed. Jason didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either, so she sank down on the end farthest from him. “Are you okay?”

He shrugged. It was just a very, very small movement of his shoulders, hardly anything at all. His dead-looking eyes moved quickly toward Myrnin, then back to her.

Jason was dangerous; she knew that. She’s seen him hurt Shane; she’d seen him do worse than that, too. If I get up and leave, nobody would blame me,she thought. Not even Eve.

But the thought of Eve, crying and miserable, made Claire find the last, fraying threads of resolve and hang on tight. She looked at Myrnin, who was standing in the corner, near the door. “Would you mind waiting out there?” she asked him.

“Outside of this room.”

“Yes.”

“You’re quite certain.”

She wasn’t, but she nodded, anyway. It’s a sad day when Myrnin is the safe choice,she thought. Apparently, he thought so, too, because he gave her a long, troubled look before pressing his thumb to a glass plate inside the room and opening the door.

After it had closed behind him, Claire looked back at Jason. “Better?”

For a second, she thought she saw a ghost of a bitter little smile, but it was gone before she could be sure. “You think they’re not watching?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure they are. Sorry.”

He shrugged again. “Doesn’t matter. Why are you here?”

“Myrnin brought me.”

“He thought I’d talk to you.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Jason slowly shook his head. “Got nothing to say.”

“Jason—this is serious. This isn’t just something that’s going to land you in jail for a while. This is murder. In Texas.They don’t fool around in this state, never mind in this town.”

This time, she didn’t even get a shrug. Just a blank stare.

“They want to know who put you up to it. Who hired you to steal the blood back from Doug?”

“Who’s Doug?”

“The guy you killed,” she said, staring him straight in the eyes. “My friend.”

That made him flinch, just a little. Barely a shiver, but there. “Sorry,” he said. He didn’t sound particularly sorry, though. “You’ve got the wrong guy. Didn’t do it.”

“They’re pretty sure you did.”

“They’re always sure, but that doesn’t mean they know. You think they care who actually did it? Their idea of justice is to haul in the usual dickheads and throw somebody to the wolves. Doesn’t matter who it is.”

“You’re saying you’re not guilty.”

“I’m the usual dickhead. Claire, you don’t understand. It doesn’t matter.I’m the one who’s going down for it.” He shrugged again. “Whatever.”

“ Whatever?Jason, it’s murder! I know you’re…not perfect—”

He laughed. It was a dry, papery sound, no amusement behind it at all.

“—but I know you’ve never killed anyone.”

“Oh yeah? You know that. You’re sure.”

Well…maybe surewasn’t the right word. “I’m sure you’d tell me if you did it.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not afraid,” she said. “You’re not afraid to freak me out. You’d ratherfreak me out. But you won’t lie about it.”

“Oh, I lie.”

“I know. But you don’t lie to me. Not anymore.” She leaned forward. The smell of the cell—industrial cleaners, sweat, fear—made her throat ache, or maybe that was just her general tension. “Not since you tried to save my life.”

He looked away, and that was a victory, Claire thought. They’d never talked about it, never had the chance, but here, he was a captive audience.

“You knew I was going to die down there in the tunnels. And you went to get the cops, even though you knew it would get you arrested. You tried to save my life when you could have just run.”

“I didn’tsave your life, though. They didn’t believe me. So all I got for it was jail. No good deed goes unpunished, right?”

“It still means something to me that you tried. That’s why you’ll tell me the truth, Jason. You care enough about what I think that you’ll try again.”

He gave her a look, one she couldn’t interpret. “You think a lot of yourself.”

“No,” Claire said softly. “Not really. I think you know that, too.”

Silence. She thought that it was going to go on forever, that she’d have to get up and leave him here to whatever would happen next, but then Jason said, “I didn’t kill him. But I know what happened.”

Progress.“Okay. So, what happened?”

“All I did was get the killer into the dorm and show him where to find the guy. Your friend. Doug.”

“Get whointo the dorm?”

His answer caught her by surprise, but suddenly, the overwhelming vampire response in the middle of the night all made sense, because he said, “I didn’t know who he was at first. I mean, he was filthy and skinny and all kinds of crazy.”

“Who?”

“That old guy, the one who gave Amelie so much trouble. Mr. Bishop.”

Bishop is out.And he was starving. And he was massively pissed off.

And, Claire realized with an icy, horrible, sickening shock, she had just seen him out on the street, going after Myrnin. Thatwas why he’d seemed familiar. The terrifying night stalker out there wasthe boogeyman.

No wonder the vampires were panicking.

Once he started talking, Jason had a lot to say. He’d been approached by a guy he knew, somebody on the not-so-legal side of Morganville society, who paid him cash to find out details about a TPU student…Doug. Jason delivered the info, but then was told that to get the rest of his money, he’d have to escort a visitor to Doug’s dorm room. That sounded simple enough, until Jason arrived at the tunnel where he’d been told to meet his contact, and discovered that it wasn’t just any old vamp waiting for him—it was Bishop. Amelie’s vampire father. And the meanest, coldest vampire Claire had ever met. He made that creepy bald guy from the old movie Nosferatulook sweet—and a little handsome, even. There was something so icy and wrong about Bishop that it made her shiver to remember him…and she’d thought, honestly, that he’d been executed.

Turns out that if he had, thathadn’t gone as planned, either.

“I didn’t know it would happen,” Jason said, looking down. He’d put his arms around his knees and drew them in, and he looked thinner and younger than Claire in that moment. A scared little boy. “I was standing there when Doug opened the door, and Bishop just—waved his hand. Or that’s what it looked like. Next thing I know, Doug is on his back, on the bed, throat cut, and he’s bleeding out. Bishop takes something out of his backpack and he says, Did you think you could threaten me?And I book the hell out of there. I didn’t care who saw me. I just cared about getting away before he decided to get rid of the loose ends. The look on his face—I thought he might kill everybody in the whole dorm.” Jason swallowed. “He was having fun. And he was starving.”

Claire thought about the two students on the floor conducting their stereo wars, not even aware of death passing by. Lucky. So lucky. “What did he take?”

“Search me. Looked like a vial of something, and some papers. But it’s not like I wantedto know. I was mostly just getting the hell out. Believe me, I wished I hadn’t seen anything and didn’t know anything.” Jason rested his forehead against his knees. “I don’t know where Bishop is. I don’t know what he’s doing. And, trust me, I don’t work for him. It was just supposed to be an introduction, a friend-of-a-friend kind of a thing. I figured he was scoring drugs or something. Once I realized who he was, I should have just gotten the hell out, but I was too scared to run. I knew if I didn’t get him where he wanted to go, he’d—”

Claire could only imagine what Bishop would have done if disappointed, and it wasn’t good, that was certain. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You didn’t have a choice.” Jason was lucky to be alive at all.

“And I don’t have a choice now, either,” he said. “Claire, if they think they can torture some info out of me about where Bishop’s new hideout is, they can’t. I’d give it up if I had it, in a heartbeat, because, damn, does that thing scare me. But I just don’t knowanything.”

She believed him. She glanced up, looking for the cameras, and found a tiny glass eye in the far corner of the ceiling. She stared up at it for a few seconds, wondering who was watching this. Amelie, almost certainly. And probably Myrnin, if he wasn’t still lurking on the other side of the door.

“I’m going to try to get you out of here, Jason,” she said. “I don’t know if I can do anything for you with the police, though.”

He shrugged, falling into that silence again. His eyes still looked dead, but now she realized that it wasn’t indifference.

It was fear.

She got up and walked toward the door, waiting. The lock disengaged and the door popped open.

“Claire?” Jason said suddenly. She looked back. “If I don’t see you again, thanks for trying. Nobody ever tried before. Not even Eve. I mean, she’s my sister and I love her, but…I think she always knew I was a lost cause.”

That was the saddest thing she’d ever heard. Claire tried for a smile, but she didn’t think it was authentic. And Jason didn’t smile back.

“You’ll see me again,” she said. “I promise.”

She hoped she wasn’t lying, as the door clicked shut behind her and locked with a thick, chunky sound of metal. The hallway was deserted, both directions, just straight lines and scratches on the walls and a sense of despair as thick as the white paint.

And then the vampire from the front desk—John, the one who’d called her the apprentice vampire hunter—appeared in the corridor. Claire stopped dead in her tracks, tense and ready for anything. He stared at her for a second, then beckoned.

She stayed where she was.

“Suit yourself,” he said. “I was told to get you out. You want to stay, I can make that happen, girl. I got plenty of open cells.”

“I’m waiting for Myrnin.”

“You’ll be waiting a while,” he said. “He’s up with the boss lady. You come with me or get in a cell. Your choice.”

If Amelie was watching the closed-circuit feeds, she’d see Claire in the hallway and witness whatever might happen. Hopefully John knew that, too. That, and only that, made Claire nod and move toward the other vampire.

He didn’t touch her. He opened and closed gates, and finally they were in the last section, barred at one end, thick steel door at the other.

And, Claire realized, there were no cameras right in this particular section.

Oh, God.

John stopped and turned toward her. “I don’t forget what you did,” he said. He tapped the skin below his clouded, blind eye, eerily silver. “This is on you. You hurt me so bad, it’s never going to heal.”

Well, she’d done this to herself, trapped with a vamp who reallydidn’t like her, knowing she was responsible for his current not-so-great looks. “You were trying to kill me when I did that,” she said. “So it’s on you. If it helps, it makes you look way scarier than before.”

He bared fangs, and the look on his face made her feel painfully aware of the blood running under her skin and the terror that seemed to be growing spikes in her stomach. “You want to say that again?” he said. “How it was my fault you threw liquid nitrogen in my face?”

“Maybe it’s shared responsibility,” she said. “But that’s as far as I’m willing to go. Now open the door.”

“Once I’m done,” he said. “Eye for an eye. That’s what the Bible says.”

“I’m thinking you don’t live by the commandments too much.”

“Oh, I do. I pay special attention to the parts I agree with, same as everybody else. Now, if you stand still, it won’t take long.” He grinned evilly. “Not saying it won’t hurt, of course. What’d be the point if it didn’t hurt?”

She took a giant step back. Useless. Close quarters, no place to run, no weapons. Hand to hand with a much bigger, stronger, vampire-type dude, she had zero chance, and she knew it.

But she wasn’t going to beg. Even if the screaming voice in her head wanted her to.

Should have left that I-know-who-killed-me note.

And then the door next to her popped open with a harsh buzzing sound. She didn’t hesitate. As the vampire lunged for her, she shoved the door open and ran out into the lobby, dodging the wooden desk.

The angry vamp came after her and skidded to a fast stop when he saw who was standing there in his path.

Amelie.

She wasn’t a tall woman, but she lookedtall in her carefully tailored silk jacket and skirt and heels, with her pale hair piled on top of her head in a crown. The silk clothes were one shade paler than her skin, giving her a sleek, marble look that was enhanced by the stillness of her body.

“I also believe in an eye for an eye, John,” she said. “Quite strongly, in fact. It’s one of my founding principles. You’d do well to remember that.”

John gave Claire a fast, furious look, and bowed his head. “Yes, ma’am. I will.”

“I believe I employ you for a specific job, John. Guarding a very valuable, and possibly very dangerous, prisoner.”

“You do, ma’am.”

“Then perhaps it might be good for you to return to it and stop indulging your own petty little grudges.”

He silently crossed to the desk and sat down behind it. Claire let out a trembling breath. She would have said thank you, but she didn’t think Amelie wanted to hear that, not now.

“You did me good service, Claire,” Amelie said, turning to face her. “And now I need your word that you will forget what you heard here tonight.”

“You mean about—”

“I mean forget,” the vampire queen of Morganville said, and the force of her personality hit Claire like a wall of cold water. “I can’t compel you, but I canassure you that if you share the information you heard here, I will know. And we’ve already established how I view betrayals, I believe.”

This wasn’t Amelie, the one who’d sometimes unbent enough to smile…no, this was Queen Amelie, the Founder of Morganville, who never smiled. The daughter of Bishop. The one who’d survived ages and every enemy thrown at her through all those dangerous years.

And Claire never doubted for a second that she meant what she said.

“I won’t say anything,” she said. “But I need help getting home.”

“You’ll have it. Myrnin!” Amelie’s voice was sharp, brittle, and impatient. “Out here. Now.”

A section of the wall opened—one that Claire would never have guessed for a door—and Myrnin leaned out, eyebrows raised. “Then we’re finished here?”

“For now,” Amelie said. “Take her home. And—”

“Say nothing—yes, yes, I heard you the first seven hundred times,” Myrnin said, much too sharply. “I’m ancient. I’m not deaf.”

Amelie’s cold expression deepened, and her gray eyes took on an unpleasant reddish glitter. “Do you think I find this a joking matter?”

“Maybe you should,” he said. “And maybe you should have cut off the old man’s head when you had the chance. Absolutely no one would have argued with that choice. Merely walling him up, to increase his suffering and create an example—that was unmerciful, and, worse, it was sloppy. I believe that flapping sound you hear is pigeons, coming home to roost.”

If Amelie had looked any colder, Claire would have expected frost to form on the floor around her. “Really? Because I believe it’s the sound of my patience with your nonsense running out. Old friend.Do remember your limits.”