More werewolves?
Jesus Christ. I can’t believe I’m even thinking this. And I saw it and heard it all myself. Cold air poured through the driver’s window; it felt so good against her fevered cheeks and sweating hands. She gulped in the smells of exhaust, vinyl, the close muggy smell of other people who’d sat in this very seat.
Real people. Human people.
“Aw, don’t worry about it. What happened to you, lady? You look awful scared.”
Scared seemed too pale a word. So did relieved. She didn’t twist around in the seat to look behind her only with a massive effort of will. If this guy got the idea she was maybe being followed, he might decide not to help at all.
“My ex-husband,” she said, softly. Lying, Sophie? But you’re getting away from kidnapping werewolves, that’s got to be a karmic pass. And besides, she had the terrified-woman look down pat. “He’s a real… He’s—”
After a few moments, he felt around on the seat next to him and produced, of all things, a battered box of Kleenex, held up with one hand over the seat back. “Wipe you face, honey.” He sounded much kinder now. “You leakin’.”
Fifteen hours later, bone-tired, still barefoot, freezing, and so tired even her hair hurt, she locked her apartment door with shaking, weak fingers. The scab on her left palm crackled with pain. The warm scent of the apple-cinnamon candle Lucy had bought her as a housewarming gift on its small table near the door managed to penetrate her running nose.
Christ, I’m a mess. The thought drowned in a flood of relief so strong her knees actually went weak.
Sophie slumped against the door, wishing she had more than two dead bolts and a chain. A mad mental vision of nailing boards over the doorway like a cartoon character danced through her tired skull. Lucy’s little jeweled purse dangled from her fingers.
Nobody knew she’d planned to go out with Luce. But there were her friend’s car keys, big as life and twice as ugly. She should have dropped them off the train somewhere, except Luce had Sophie’s house keys on her ring, and Sophie had left her own keys at home.
Then throw them away. Just get them out of here.
She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea, or if it was the kind of irrational impulse that might take hold of a woman after she’d been kidnapped by werewolves, seen vampires—and, oh yeah, witnessed the death of her best and only friend.
The pale gray carpeting was full of pearly morning light, the walls still bare of everything but a single print of van Gogh’s Starry Night, another gift from Lucy. One bedroom, one bath, a living room, and a kitchen barely wide enough for two skinny women to stand in. She’d traded a luxurious house out in the Hammerheath suburb for this little slice of paper-thin walls and baseboard heating in what Mark always called “the blue-collar slum.” But it was all hers, and she paid her rent a month ahead of time by living on ramen and frozen peas—and a generous helping of Lucy’s cooking.
These were, after all, the types of places she’d grown up in. Big apartment blocks with tiny corner stores, trash bins overflowing outside the supers’ doorways, kids playing in the streets, and the sounds of other people carrying on with their lives behind every door. She’d thought Mark was the prince, taking her away from the noise and the stink.
But he’d turned out to be something else entirely. Everybody did. For example, she never would have thought flighty Lucy would be the friend to stick by her through that hell.
And now Lucy was gone. Sitting on a train gave you entirely too much time to think, and the inside of her brain felt moth-eaten and acid-dipped all at once.
Oh, God. She almost slid down the door and collapsed right there on the square of linoleum in front of the door. No welcome mat, even, but then, Sophie never felt particularly welcoming. She didn’t want anyone to know where she lived.
Except Lucy.
God. Oh, God.
Her face crumpled, and she pushed herself away from the door. Her fingers cramped; she mechanically slid the keys back in the little jeweled purse and stuffed both on the counter next to her cheap black vinyl bag, placed precisely next to a stack of textbooks so she could take the ones she needed every morning.
“I have a Child Development final this week,” she said, blankly, to her empty apartment. It was midmorning and the entire building was strangely deserted, for a weekend. Maybe everyone was sleeping, or hungover. Another cab had let her off right in front of the building, and nobody—not even the conductor on the train—had said a word about her feet. She was going to starve a bit next month; she’d had barely enough to pay her way home and her savings were nonexistent.
She dragged herself into the bedroom. The blinds weren’t down; she’d forgotten to pull them Friday night. It was Sunday, and she could sleep in her own bed—she had escaped werewolves and God only knew what else.
And Lucy was dead. And there was a little voice inside Sophie’s head trying to tell her she was forgetting something, that she was the responsible one, and that it should have been her gasping and choking in that alleyway instead of beautiful, burning-bright Lucy.
She was scrubbing her hands on the clothes they’d given her, she realized. Scrubbing and scrubbing, like some mad Lady Macbeth.
With a short sob, she tore the flannel shirt off, stripped herself out of the jeans, and pulled off the thermal shirt. She left everything crumpled in a stinking pile right inside her bedroom door, took three steps to the mattress she called her bed, and managed to crawl under the covers.
At least these sheets and blankets didn’t scrape her skin like sandpaper. And they smelled like comfort.
Like home.
She sobbed for a long time, curled around the one lonely pillow that had seen her tears in the battered women’s shelter, and later, during the endless rounds of divorce hearings. When she fell asleep, it was a slumber so dark and dreamless the fluttering around her bedroom window, under the pale gray sky that promised snow, went unnoticed. She woke only once, as the sky shaded into the cold flat darkness of an early winter night, and fumbled for her alarm clock. With it turned on, she had no more responsibility for the rest of the day, and she immediately fled back into welcome unconsciousness.
Chapter 10
Brun whimpered as Julia held his hand, the wet towel in her free fingers clamped to the side of his face.
“Oh, Jesus,” Eric whispered. “Did they take her?”
“They couldn’t have.” Zach’s shoulder ground with pain. One of the goddamn upir had bitten him, and its venom burned as his body neutralized it. Focus, goddammit! “I told her to stay down. She was between the beds—”
“I tripped over her,” Julia said, calmly enough. “She was by the door.”
His pulse was pounding so hard it threatened to push the top of his head off. “The door?” She couldn’t have gotten far on her own. “We’d’ve smelled it if she was brought down. She was triggered, it would have called us.” Any serious blood she shed would have been like a jet taking off—we would have dropped everything and clustered her.
“You’re sure she was triggered?” Eric wasn’t challenging him; it was pure worry, wanting to be told everything would be all right.
“I’m sure.” I should be, I made it happen. And she’d spent enough time with them all in the room, breathing their pheromones, to make her a Carcajou shaman. He was sure about that. Well, mostly sure, anyway.
Well, not as sure as he liked. But he couldn’t tell them that. It would only worry them all, and he didn’t want that. “Maybe she ran.” God, please tell me she’s still alive. She has to be.