Ignoring the vampire, Tana headed toward the bathroom for her phone, the pale crow hopping after her. Checking her texts, she saw a new one from Pauline: Jesus. Yr sister not home. She texted yr dad 1 hour ago says goigin to live with u & b on tv. I called her 16x but didt pick up. Phoned all ur friends.
Frantically, her hands shaking, Tana hit the button to call her sister. The phone didn’t even ring; it went straight to voice mail. Closing her eyes, she counted her breaths in and out, trying to find some way to calm herself.
WHERE R U RIGHT NOW????, she texted her sister, but time slid by with no immediate reply. Shoving her phone into her borrowed bra where she could feel the vibration against her skin if something came in, she resisted the urge to pound her fists against the counter.
If Mom had been alive and in Coldtown, I might have come looking for her, too.
“I’m just helping you and the girl, Valentina, understand?” Marisol called. “None of the guards or staff are going to be in their usual places tonight, but that doesn’t mean we can be stupid.”
“We’re freeing every prisoner down there who’s willing to come.” Tana wasn’t sure she recognized her own voice, all iron filings and ice. “Everyone we can find. And we’re doing it fast.”
Fast, fast, so that she could make it out and get to her sister.
“I’m risking a lot for you already,” Marisol said. “You will do exactly what I tell you or else I’ll—”
“You’re not my mother,” Tana interrupted, walking to the bed. Picking up her purse, she dumped everything out onto the blankets. She tucked cash into her bra beside her cell and abandoned the rest. “And you don’t have to help, if this is too much for you. I’ll tell Jameson that you were awesome. He doesn’t need know that you couldn’t be bothered.”
Marisol’s gaze sharpened. “I wasn’t always—I wasn’t a very good mother. So if my son asks me to do something, I do it, no matter how stupid it seems to me. Jameson says to help get out this girl he likes, so I’ll help. Jameson says meet by the gate, so that’s where we’ll meet. If we get separated, he suggests we meet at the Eternal Ball, and that’s fine by me, too. He thinks that we can blend into the crowd and that the cameras will keep Lucien’s people from being too awful.”
Marisol didn’t sound as if she agreed with him, but the words passed through Tana without really mattering. Her thoughts had drifted back to Pearl wandering through the nighttime streets. For a single hopeful moment, she recalled a day in third grade, when her whole class had sat in the grass just beyond the jungle gym and Ms. Lee had whispered “It’ll be time for lunch later” to Rachel, who’d whispered to Lance, who’d whispered to Courtney, who’d whispered to Pauline, who’d whispered to Marcus, who’d whispered to Tana. “It’s time lambs ate hair,” Marcus had said, his breath smelling of spearmint gum, and Tana had been proud, because she was sure she passed it on perfectly. By the time it got to the other end, though, it was even more garbled.
Maybe that was what happened. The message got confused. Marisol had misunderstood. Pearl wasn’t really here.
But in her heart, Tana knew she was.
The white crow cawed, looking over with sinister eyes. Find Pearl, Tana wanted to command, but she knew Gremlin wouldn’t understand and, anyway, he’d only listen to Jameson. No, she was going to have to get away from Lucien first, then figure out what to do from there.
What will you do? she chided herself. Are you going to find her and then, hungry as you’re going to get, what next? Drink her blood quick, before someone else does?
Tana’s eyes burned as she knelt down and reached for the box under Elisabet’s bed. She strapped one of the wooden knives to her thigh, tying it down with two boot laces. Then she tucked the guard’s keys into the fist of one of her hands and picked up a crossbow from the locker underneath Elisabet’s bed—each bolt made of polished rosewood and thorn—for Marisol. “Okay, you point that thing at me, and hopefully everyone will think I’m some prisoner you’re marching through the estate.”
It really said something about what it must be like to live with Lucien Moreau that all Elisabet’s weapons were the sort one used against other vampires. This must be a very different place when all the cameras were off.
And for some reason that thought made her realize, with horrible certainty, that she knew where Pearl would be headed once she crossed the threshold into Coldtown. She’d go right to Lucien. He was Pearl’s favorite celebrity vampire, after all, and she’d said she was going to be on TV. Tana closed her eyes, and for the first time since she’d woken up among corpses in Lance’s farmhouse, for the first time since the scrape of teeth against her leg, she let go of the hope that she was going to make it. Maybe she could find Pearl in time and give her the marker, but there was no way out for Tana.
There was only what she did before she died.