Pearl, who was probably coming straight to the place Tana was running from. If Tana went out, scouring the streets, calling Pearl’s name while Pearl went straight to Lucien, if something bad happened, Tana would hate herself forever.
She remembered a late-night episode of one of those shows on the History channel with a bunch of professors talking about monsters. It was one of those memories that came with the feeling of the scratchy afghan over Tana’s legs as she sat on the couch; the smell of microwave popcorn; and Pearl stretched out on the old rug, stacking up LEGOs. The monster is bigger than human, it represents abundance—overabundance, the white-haired man had said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. It has lots of eyes, extra arms, too many teeth. Everything about it is too many and too much.
That was how she felt, right then. As if there was too much of her, as if her skin was tight with muchness. She felt ripe to bursting.
And she remembered what Gavriel had said when she’d woken up handcuffed to a bed. Being infected, being a vampire, it’s always you. Maybe it’s more you than ever before. It’s you as you always were, deep down inside.
Maybe this was who she always was. Always shoving all that muchness down deep inside her where no one had to see.
And once she’d found Pearl, how long before she became the monster her mother was? How long before the infection sank so deep down into her blood that all she could think of was how to get warm again? How long before Pearl was just soft skin and a beating heart? She might be herself still, but she’d be herself hungry, a self she didn’t know yet. Herself with the brake lines cut. A self she didn’t trust to do anything but kill.
“Give me the crossbow,” Tana said as calmly as she could. “I’m going back inside.”
“What?” Valentina spun toward her. “No!”
“I have to.” Tana pulled out her phone, opening her photographs and flipping to one of her little sister a year before, hair in pigtails. “Pearl’s on her way here; this is what she looks like. I need you guys to do me one last favor. Please, find her.”
Marisol started to object, but Jameson just nodded. “Yeah, of course. Your friend Pauline says that Pearl couldn’t have made it inside before today. She might not even be through the gate yet. We’ve got this. Finding strays is my specialty.”
Tana handed him the phone. “Please, please keep her safe.”
He nodded, looking sidelong at his mother. Then he took his own cell from his back pocket, handing it to Tana. “Here, I’ll call as soon as we know something.”
She tucked it into her bra, overwhelmed with gratitude.
Valentina looked back at the house. “Just don’t take any chances in there,” she said. “The ancient, insane vampire doesn’t need your help.”
But what if he did?
Never again, Tana had promised herself. No matter what, she was never going to let anyone get the better of her ever again. No more mistakes.
“I’m through believing things will work out on their own. I’m going to kill Lucien Moreau myself,” Tana said, taking the crossbow with the wooden bolts from Marisol’s hands and setting it down on the ground, so that she could unclasp Gavriel’s garnet necklace from around her throat, the token for leaving Coldtown safely inside. “When you find my sister, give her this for me.”
Valentina took the necklace and promised that she would.
Tana hefted the crossbow, tracing her thumb over the smooth wood and cold metal as she watched them leave, Marisol gliding into the shadows as though made of shadow herself.
I’m going to kill Lucien Moreau myself, Tana repeated and this time she allowed herself to finish the thought. I’m going to kill Lucien Moreau myself or die trying.
CHAPTER 36
Dead men bite not.
—Theodotus
When Pearl got off the bus, she took a cab, and when the taxi let her off—past a checkpoint with an obnoxious guard—the driver took a long look at her.
“How about I drive you back, kid?” the woman asked, leaning out the window. She had big hair, dark and braided in a way that made it appear as if she wore a crown. “No charge. Now that you’ve seen it, you don’t need to stick around a place like that. They’ll eat a little thing like you and still be hungry.”
“No thanks,” Pearl said, and went inside the building. She’d already ignored a bunch of calls from home, so she wasn’t going to let a stranger rattle her.
She didn’t feel nervous until she was sitting on a rough concrete bench, signing forms that had words like waive all rights and national threat. Once she’d said that she was infected, they’d hustled her right through the building as if she were a bomb about to go off. No one tried to convince her this was a bad decision. No one even looked at the marks she’d made on her inner arm in preparation.