She stretched, feeling the stiffness of her muscles. She was still groggy and for a moment imagined putting her head down and just sleeping on and on. But if Aidan opened his eyes and saw her like that, all curled up and delicious, like a blood-filled muffin, she doubted he’d resist biting. She pushed herself to her feet. The more she remembered where she was and what had happened, the more fear pushed away the last dregs of drugged lethargy.
Her purse was still slung across her body and she unclasped it, pushing aside everything that wasn’t the small manila envelope. Panic sped her heart and made her almost too afraid to look. But the marker was still there, tucked away safe. No one had taken it. For a moment, she actually thought nice things about Midnight and Winter—they might not care if she died, but at least they hadn’t robbed her.
She held the marker up to the light.
Just a little larger than a quarter and even lighter than one, it was terrifying to think that this gleaming coin, this object that was supposed to save her life, was small enough to drop through a drain by accident or slip through a hole in a pair of jeans. Bright silver with gold at the heart where the circuits were, surrounded by small angled cutouts in the metal, it looked like nothing so much as an old-fashioned subway token. She closed her hand into a fist over it, tight, then put it away.
She went over the rest of her inventory. She had the clothes on her back, her boots from home, and her handbag. That held the religious symbols and rose water she’d found at the party, a random assortment of cash rolled up in a brown paper bag, and the garnet locket with the broken clasp that Gavriel had given her in the parking lot.
At the thought of him, she pressed her tongue absently against her teeth, making the bite there sting anew. It throbbed along with the beat of her heart, drumming in her ears. When she realized what she was doing, shame heated her face. It was bad enough that she’d kissed him like that, but it was the same impulse as hitting the gas on an icy road, and she couldn’t let herself forget it.
He wasn’t going to save her. He didn’t even know where she was, no less that she needed saving. They weren’t going to sneak out of Coldtown to have mad, bad adventures together where he recited lots of poetry and visited Pauline at drama camp. If he liked her in some strange, savage way, it wasn’t the way humans liked one another and it wasn’t the way people in storybooks liked one another, either.
Stop being stupid, she told herself, even though it was much too late for that. She’d been a hundred kinds of stupid already.
“Tana.” Aidan rolled over on the mattress. His face was gentle with sleep, his hair messy, but his eyes watched her with a disturbing intensity. He slowly shifted into a sitting position, and she noticed that his lips had taken on a blue tint. He gave a long, shuddering sigh. It was almost forty hours since he’d been bitten, and he was looking ever worse as the hours ticked by. “What do you think Rufus and Midnight and those other psychos are going to do now?”
“Wait,” she said grimly, and after a moment, he seemed to realize what she meant. She said it again, though, just to be sure. “They’re going to wait.”
“I won’t—” he began, then stopped himself. The words were hollow anyway. They both knew he would.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re going to get out of here,” she told him, although there was a flatness to her tone. Even she wasn’t sure she believed it.
Leaning back against the wall, he didn’t seem ready to attack her yet, but she wondered how long she had. He was still just waking up. “Haven’t you ever thought about it—being a vampire?” he asked.
“Everybody’s thought about it,” said Tana.
“I mean, what with your mom and all—” He stopped abruptly, as though he’d just realized he’d stumbled into dangerous territory. He gave her one of his old, charming half smiles, a teasing one. “And you kissed a vampire. That’s crazy. That’s not usually what they do with their mouths, you know. I’m kind of jealous.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Like you care what I do. You dumped me, remember?”
“First of all,” Aidan said, giving her his most insouciant smile and holding up a single finger, “I never said I was jealous of him. Maybe I was jealous of you for getting all his attention. He’s not a bad-looking guy, if you don’t mind a side serving of lunatic raving. Good mouth.”
That made her laugh, a real, relaxed laugh, like in the old days.
“Secondly,” he said, holding up another finger, “you scared the hell out of me when we were dating, Tana. I was used to having girlfriends who’d yell at me or get upset about the stupid stuff I did, or try to save me from myself. You weren’t like that. Sometimes I felt like you were a better me than I was.”