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weak radiance of the bars affected by the magic of the defensive spell.
Somewhere far away, a wolf howled. I could always tell a wolf from a stray dog—the lupine howl sent shivers down my spine. I thought of Curran. The scary thing was, I was kind of curious about seeing him tomorrow.
What was wrong with me? It had to be hormones. A purely biological problem. I had an overload of hormones that clouded my normally rational thinking, causing me to have fanciful notions about gray-eyed homicidal maniacs…
“I can sleep on the floor,” Julie offered in a sleep-tangled voice.
I shrugged. “Thanks, but I’m used to it. When I was a kid, my dad made me sleep on the floor. He was afraid I’d have back problems like my mom.” I unzipped the bag and laid it as flat as I could. The wards and bars made my apartment into a little fortress, but you never knew. Somebody could teleport in and fill me full of bolts while I untangled my legs from the sleeping bag.
“Is she nice?”
“Who?”
“Your mom?”
I stopped, an afghan in my hands. Like a little knife, twisted into my chest. “I don’t know. She died when I was very young. My dad loved her so she must’ve been nice.”
“So both your mom and your dad are gone? You have no family left?”
“Yeah.”
“Kind of like me,” she said in a small voice.
Poor kid. I came over and sat on the corner of the bed. “I know my mom’s dead, because my dad saw her die, and I know my dad’s dead because I was there when we buried him on a hill behind my house. I visit his grave all the time. But we don’t really know anything about your mom. I didn’t see her body anywhere. Did you see her body?”
She shook her head and stuck her face into the pillow.
“Well, there you go. No body, no proof she died. Maybe she somehow got teleported to a strange part of the city by that Bran idiot and now she’s walking home. Maybe she’s there right now. We’ll just have to keep looking.”
Julie made a sad kittenlike noise.
What do I do now?
I scooped her up, blanket, pillow, and all, and scooted her close to me. She sniffled. “The People probably turned her into a vampire.”
I petted her hair. “No, Julie. The People don’t just grab women off the street and make them into