“It’s my fault that you’re going to be stuck here forever,” Pearl said her in a hushed voice. “I messed up everything.”
Tana took a deep breath and then shook her head. “I might not make it out of here, but that’s because I might not beat being Cold. And if that happens, then I got to say good-bye to you in person. And if I get better, then I’ll figure something out, okay?”
Pearl looked very skeptical, but she nodded. “Okay.”
“And you’re going to say good-bye to Pauline for me. Give her a big hug and make her believe that I’m doing fine.”
“She’s going to see clips from the feed,” Pearl said, in the tone of someone who felt honor-bound to point out the obvious.
“Well, then,” Tana said, realizing that her sister was right. “It’s going to be even more important that you convince her that I’m fine. Don’t I seem fine?”
“I guess,” Pearl said.
Tana shoved her shoulder, making her grin.
They walked awhile in silence. Then, as they passed the hand-drawn sign for A Shot of Depresso, Pearl looked up at Tana and blinked. “There was a vampire boy at the Eternal Ball who said he knew you.”
“What boy?” Tana asked.
Pearl shook her head, touching the garnet necklace. “He said, ‘It’s an honor and a delight to meet you and a tragedy you’re here’—he had a weird way of talking, but he seemed nice. He started giving me a message for you, but he changed his mind.”
Tana tried to convince herself that Gavriel’s deciding not to pass along a message didn’t mean anything, but since he hadn’t spoken to her himself, that was hard to believe.
Aidan raised his eyebrows at Tana, but he kept his mouth shut.
Then it was time to lean down and hug Pearl again, to tell her that she loved her, to drink in the warmth of her skin and listen to the thunder of her heart, before letting her go at last.
Watching Pearl walk into one of the swinging iron cages alone was the hardest thing Tana had ever done. But she did. And she made herself a promise.
She was the girl who went back to try to do the impossible thing. Outside Lance’s farmhouse when all she wanted to do was run, she’d forced herself to go back through that broken window. When she’d managed to escape from the room with the skylight, she’d still gone back for Aidan. She’d even gone back and killed Lucien Moreau. And if she could go and do all those crazy, impossible things, then maybe she could be crazy enough to save herself, too.
The next morning, Jameson locked her in the root cellar of an abandoned Victorian house, along with plastic milk jugs full of boiled water, some cans of food, a can opener, aspirin, a bunch of blankets, and whatever was left of the stuff she’d bought inside the walls. She’d attached a handcuff to one of her wrists and run the other through a chain she’d bolted to a pipe. When she handed over the key to the cuffs to Jameson, she was on the verge of telling him to forget the whole thing, to let her out, except that she was sure he’d break his promises and do it.
Eighty-eight days. Three locks on the door. Fifty-three links in the chain. One bare bulb swinging from the ceiling.
She slept for a while, fitfully, in her nest of blankets. Then she ate cold beans with a plastic spoon. Finally, she decided it was time she set up the camera before she wasn’t able to. Her hands were already shaking as she shoved the first of the battery packs into the back of Midnight’s old video camera. By the time she set it up on the tripod and plugged in the Livebox she’d bought off some kid Jameson knew, she needed to cut the heel of her hand with the jagged edge of a can and suck a little of her blood to steady herself for what came next. Then she turned on the camera and sat down, cross-legged, on the ground.
Looking up into the shining black lens, she started. “Hi, I’m Tana Bach. I’m seventeen, and a few days ago there was a party and—no, never mind that, if you’re watching this then you’ve probably already heard about what happened there. Look, I just want to thank everybody for all the nice e-mails and wall posts and stuff. Thanks, too, mysterious and maybe even legit production company that wants to film me killing vampires, but this is what I’m going to be doing for twelve and a half weeks, so if you want to broadcast something, broadcast this.
“And, Dad, if you’re watching, don’t be too mad at Pearl, okay? It’s pretty glamorous to be a vampire. It makes sense that anyone would want that. So give her a break, okay? You’ve only got one daughter left. And Pauline, thanks for saving my sorry ass. Sorry I didn’t call you back sooner.
“And for everyone else, I thought I would show you something other than the glamour. This is what it’s like to sweat out an infection. I’ve got a bunch of water and some cans of creamed corn and I’m going to scream and beg and puke my guts up. The chains holding me are pretty good—”
Tana was drawing breath to say something else, when she heard the unmistakable sound of one of the bolts on the door turning.