Tana made her way dizzily down the hallway, her heartbeat loud in her ears, the scent of her own blood in her nose, a metallic taste in her mouth. Sounds came from rooms below as the household woke, crawling from their chambers, ravenous, the night stretching out in front of them with its glittering carpet of stars.
Tana didn’t want to be creeping down the hall alone, didn’t want to be sneaking out of Lucien’s terrifying manor without saying one last good-bye to Gavriel, but there was no safe way to say anything without being overheard. Better to leave him with the memory of his teeth against her throat and her teeth on his wrist. Better to leave him with the memory of their being a pair of monsters, wrapped in each other’s arms.
And after tonight—after tonight, she’d have to chain herself up behind a sturdy door and hope for the best. Self-quarantine was dangerous, and, even without the borrowed trouble of an excess of vampire blood chilling her veins, there was a good chance she wouldn’t survive.
You’re not even really human anymore, some part of her sneered, sounding a lot like Winter’s voice. Give it up. Just die already. It’ll be just like the dream you had—blood and forests and snow, girls with raven’s wing hair and rose red lips and sharp teeth as white as milk.
It worried her that it had gotten harder and harder to remember what it felt like to live her old life, even though she’d been living it mere days ago. Every memory had drowned in a sea of red.
She opened the door to Elisabet’s bedroom, intent on grabbing her phone and cash, then stopped abruptly when she saw Marisol waiting for her. The vampire was sitting on the high bed, one dagger-heeled boot against the brass footboard, twisting her silver tooth ring in her fingers, clearly bored.
“You took your time getting back,” Marisol said. Tana looked beyond her, to see the curtains in one corner of the room fluttering. The window was open and the white crow perched on the sill, looking in at her, its wicked curved beak opening to cry once. Something was attached to its leg—a little metal fastener where a piece of paper might fit if it was rolled up tight.
“What does Lucien want now?” Tana asked, forcing her gaze to Marisol. The vampire must have noticed the bird. Why was she acting so nonchalant about it?
“You don’t have to worry.” Marisol slid off the bed with a sigh. “Lucien’s not the one that sent me.”
The taste of Gavriel’s blood was still in Tana’s mouth, and she didn’t feel entirely sober. “Jameson,” she realized, speaking his name out loud. “You’re his—”
“Mother.” Marisol smiled, a cat with a canary it was resisting batting around. “He asked me to help you save some girl, so here I am, helping.”
“Oh,” Tana said, thinking abruptly of what he hadn’t said when he’d talked about growing up in Coldtown—nothing about his mother, nothing about his parents at all. And then she couldn’t help thinking of her own mother, of how her mother could have been very like this. “Oh.”
Valentina was going to be so happy. Maybe happy enough to eventually forget the way Tana had ripped open a vampire’s throat with a screwdriver and blunt teeth right in front of her.
“Go ahead,” Marisol said. “The message on the bird’s leg is for you.”
Tana walked over to Gremlin. The bird was still, not pecking her fingers, letting her pull the thin piece of paper from the steel casing attached to its leg.
Trust her, it said. Trust me.
Tana sighed.
“There’s one other thing.” Marisol hopped off the bed, moving with unnatural grace. Her scarlet eyes gazed past Tana, taking in the room, as though looking for cameras. “Your friend wanted Jameson to pass on a message. Some girl from your hometown is here in Coldtown. Pearl. Does that mean anything to you?”
The world wavered in place. Blackness flooded the edges of Tana’s vision. She felt as if she were falling, as if she were falling and falling and would never stop falling.
No, it couldn’t be. No.
“I think her name was Pearl. Or Jewel? Some other friend of yours is trying to find her.” Marisol made a vague gesture of exasperation. “I don’t know. I don’t know why any of you come here.”
“That’s my little sister,” Tana said, some of her fury—at the universe, at herself, at Pearl—leaking into her voice. “She’s twelve. She came here because—”
She came here because of me. Because of that stupid message I sent her.
She came here because Lucien convinced her he was harmless and excitingly dangerous at the same time.
She came here because she wanted to be a part of the show.
Marisol looked momentarily taken aback at the mention of Pearl’s age and then resentful, as though Tana had forced her to feel something she didn’t want to feel.