It’s a puzzle, and a nasty one. Work on it later. Find her now.
The biggest campus with a night-school social worker program was a community college on the bus lines. The parking lots were huge, but there was no trace of her there or in any of the buildings. The second-largest was vaguely in the same part of town as the mail stop, another hour or two on the bus as the time ticked away, hopping off to find the campus was a good four-block walk away. She wouldn’t be in any condition to go to class, but he’d be able to find a trail and her real address, and—
His head came up and he tested the wind. There it was. Ice, moonlight, brunette spice, and a sharp fresh note of weariness and pain. Strong, very strong.
The smell was a trail as wide as a highway to his sensitive nose, like a deer path in the woods. She’d walked this way less than three hours ago. He could almost taste each individual footprint, and he could track the scent backward, too, working along a flaring, fading drift of more pain and heaviness, and a pungent undertone of fear that prodded and teased at his already-fraying temper.
But the most important thing was the familiarity, and the musk spinning through the scent. She had been with his Family long enough to be theirs. The relief tasted like wine and fresh blood against his palate, a heady mix.
Well, he thought, that’s half the battle won. Now let’s go see if we can find the war.
Chapter 13
The last flight of stairs up to her apartment was endless at about midnight. She was seriously dragging. On the other hand, she could sleep in tomorrow, since Margo had freaked out after the detective’s visit. She had insisted that Sophie take a Paid Day Off, for Health Reasons.
Sophie couldn’t even scrape up any thankfulness for that.
She reached the top of the stairs and stood for a moment, catching her breath. The hall smelled odd, musky, like it had this morning. But then, after the past two days, she was smelling weird things all over, like the dish of mummified M&M’s on Margo’s desk, or the smell of the seats in the classrooms—and classes had been an absolute waste, too. She couldn’t concentrate worth a damn today, had left her books at home, and had swallowed tears when the Psych professor announced a pop quiz. Which she was sure she’d bombed, to top everything off.
She had to spend two and a half minutes jabbing keys at her door, because her eyes kept blurring. Her nose was full, but she could still smell home, and that weird musk was driving her out of her head. She needed to take another long hot shower, and for the first time she wished she kept some alcohol in the house. A nip of something hard would go down really nice right about now.
She flicked the light switches for the hall and living room without thinking about it. The door closed, shutting the world out, and she let out a long sobbing sigh, locking the dead bolts. It absolutely reeked of musk in here, and the smell reminded her of being pressed against the wall, Zach’s face inches from hers, and his heat making it difficult to think straight.
A light breeze touched her hair, and she flinched, almost running straight into the door.
“Nice place,” he said in her ear. “A bit small, but okay. Smells like you.”
She hitched in enough air to scream, but his hand clamped over her mouth.
“None of that,” Zach said softly. His breath was warm, and his other arm came around her waist, pulled her back from the door. Her vinyl purse hit the linoleum with a thump. “I’m not going to hurt you. But we are going to have a talk.”
Oh, holy shit, how did he find me? Every muscle in her body had gone limp with shock. “Going to have a talk” was one of Mark’s favorite phrases. It usually meant I’m going to yell, and eventually you’re going to cry, and if you’re lucky maybe I’ll only slap you a few times. But if you’re not, by God, we’re going to have a talk and before it’s through Sophie is going to bleed.
Her brain utterly failed, vapor-locking between memory and the terrible present. He dragged her into the living room, such as it was, and stood for a moment in the middle of the carpet, as if looking for a place to sit. There wasn’t anything except one old ratty armchair from a downstairs apartment’s moving sale, and he pushed her down in it, peeling his hand away from her mouth with a meaningful glare.
All her breath had dried up. He was unshaven, dark stubble on his cheeks, his eyes hot with anger and his hair still falling stubbornly across his forehead. He was even wearing the same clothes she’d last seen him in, plus a denim jacket spotted with rain, and he still moved with the same lynxlike grace. The jacket made his shoulders look absurdly broad.
He stood in the middle of her almost-empty living room, framed by the white wall, the print Lucy had given her up over his head like a halo. He was so tall, and his anger filled up the room until she couldn’t breathe and started gasping, clutching at the chair arms and staring until her eyes threatened to bug out of her head completely.
“Christ.” He made a swift movement and crouched down, looking up at her. The anger swirled away, like static draining out of empty space.
It was odd, but as soon as he did it he seemed exponentially less scary, and when he reached out to touch her knee and she flinched back he actually stopped cold, his hand hanging in midair. “That answers that question, I guess. Breathe, honey. It goes easier if you take in some oxygen.”
His tone—soft, conciliatory, like Mark’s after a particularly bad beating, when he was in his repentant phase—surprised her. But what surprised her the most was his hand falling back down to his side, and he just cocked his head and regarded her, going completely, inhumanly still.
The gasps faded, little by little, and she stared at him. Air started to fill her lungs again. Panic attack, and a bad one. No wonder. She concentrated on breathing, pushing the air out, taking it in with small sipping sounds.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Quietly, his eyes holding hers. “I am not going to lay a hand on you unless it’s to keep you from doing something silly, and I won’t hurt you. Are we absolutely clear on that?”
Her wrists hurt, and her back, and the side of her head. The scab on her palm burned. He’d already hurt her. Still…Agree with him. Let him think you’re all right with this. She nodded, tentatively. The phone was in the kitchen. If she could get to it somehow—
“As a matter of fact,” he continued, “if your ex-husband—because I can tell from this apartment that he’s ex, you know—or anyone else tries to lay a hand on you, I’ll feed that hand back to them. In little bleeding pieces. Understand?”
Jesus. How long has he been in here? She managed another nod. The armchair creaked a little as she shifted, and she froze again. Her back gave a wrenching flare of pain, and her throat was so dry she doubted she could scream. All she could produce was a sort of croak.
“Now.” He settled farther into his crouch, became motionless again. “Why don’t we take it from the top. Why are there upir watching you?”
What? He means the vampires, right? She decided he had, indeed, said what she thought he’d said. “I don’t—” Her voice was surprisingly steady, even if she did have to stop and clear her throat. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you want with me, either.”
“Okay.” He nodded, once, sharply. “Let’s cover that. We need you. I’m sorry, but there wasn’t…I couldn’t explain before. You’re special, Sophie. You don’t know how special. Were things smelling strange to you today?”