Was it her imagination, or did the woman almost smile?
“You shouldn’t be in here.”
“I know,” Miranda said, flushing. “I was looking around my room and found the door. It wasn’t locked. I didn’t realize whose it was.”
She set the pen down where she’d found it and crossed the room, following the guard back into her own chamber, embarrassed to have been caught snooping. As she passed she noticed that up close, the woman was actually a hair shorter than she was, but a hundred times more imposing, weapons or no weapons.
Miranda made it back to her room before her legs got too weak to stand on, and she collapsed into the love seat with a quiet moan. She’d managed to forget the pain in her muscles and ribs for a while, but now it flared up again, and she leaned back to take pressure off her chest, shaky and exhausted.
When she looked up, the woman was staring at her as if seeing her for the first time. There was something like recognition on her face, and she reached into her pocket, retrieving a prescription bottle.
“These are for you,” she said. “Vicodin.”
Miranda regarded the bottle, which had her name in bold print across the label, issued by a doctor she didn’t recognize and picked up from a CVS on the west side of Austin.
“I also instructed Samuel to bring you food,” she went on. “I know you’re probably not feeling hungry, but you have to eat if you’re going to heal.”
Miranda didn’t bother to protest. She knew that this was not the sort of woman to argue with.
“Also, I’m to give you this.” The guard produced one of the wristbands that she and the others wore, and handed it to Miranda. “It’s a voice-activated communication device. If you find yourself needing help, say the code number of the person you want to speak to, and it will connect you if you have sufficient security clearance.”
“How do I know the codes?”
“Samuel is code nineteen. Helen, code twenty-three.”
“What about you?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Star-three.”
“Why a star?”
“The Prime is Star-one, and I am his second in command.”
“Then why aren’t you Star-two?”
“Traditionally the Prime is first in the chain, followed by his Queen, then their second. Our Prime has no Queen, so Star-two is vacant.”
“What exactly is a Prime?”
She got the look of someone trying to find words to explain calculus to a hamster. “The Shadow World is divided loosely into twenty-seven territories,” she began. “Each territory is controlled by a Prime, and ideally by a paired Prime and Queen, who set the law which is enforced by their warriors—us. Everyone living within that territory is required to follow the Prime’s law on pain of death.”
“Okay, back up. Shadow World?”
The woman looked taken aback. “What?”
“I don’t get it. I’ve never heard of any of this, and your Prime guy was talking about your world like it’s this whole separate universe. Are you all nuts? You really think there’s some special kind of law just for you? Who is he? Who are you? And what the fuck is going on in this place?”
She fell back into the cushions, drained by the burst of questions, and stared at the guardswoman, who blinked at her in surprise.
Miranda waited for her to say something, her head starting to pound—normally the guard’s thoughts and feelings would tell her whatever she wanted to know. This business of having to ask questions felt strange after months of knowing too much about everyone she met. She could even look the woman in the eye, if she wanted to, without being confronted with her entire life story, which for a woman wearing a sword was probably a good thing.
“And one last thing,” Miranda said before she could help it, “if you guys are bodyguards, why don’t you have guns? What good is a sword going to do you in the twenty-first century?”
Now the woman definitely smiled. “Bullets are useless against our enemies,” she told Miranda, “but decapitation works for pretty much everyone.”
“So, what, you’re the Highlander?”
She took a deep breath and sat down on the opposite end of the sofa. “I think perhaps this explanation will take a while.”
Miranda shut her eyes a moment. “I figured.” She gestured weakly at the woman, who was sitting with absolutely perfect posture, ready at a moment’s notice to leap into action . . . whatever sort of action went on here in Bizarro World. “Why don’t we start with your name.”
“All right. My name is Faith.”
“Nice to meet you, Faith. Miranda. Now, tell me who you people are.”
She tried not to let the statement come off as a command, but Faith’s eyebrow quirked anyway. “It’s complicated. You may not believe me.”
“Then keep it simple, for now. Ten words or less.”
“I can give it to you in three.”
“Go ahead.”
Faith smiled, and the entire universe, already perilously close to spinning wildly off its axis, ground to a halt as she replied, “We are vampires.”