She tried not to slip in the widening puddle as she walked over to the door. Dizziness flooded her, and she looked down to see that her new white dress was covered in dirt and dried blood. Her sandals were gone.
It was almost funny, the way she couldn’t wear a single outfit without ruining it.
It was almost funny, but not quite.
Looking at the knob and the lock, Tana realized with surprise that although Gavriel had turned a key on the outside, the locking mechanism was on the inside. All she had to do was turn the bolt and the door opened. Which made sense, since this had been Elisabet’s room. She might have locked herself in at night, but no one would have imprisoned her here. Which meant that Gavriel never meant to imprison Tana; if anything, the lock was to keep other things out.
With that thought in mind, she stepped into the hallway.
Dimmed daylight streamed in through the heavily tinted windows—it looked like the same glass at the top of the Eternal Ball, the kind that filtered light safely for vampires. The party had mostly died down, although there were some humans left, sleeping on the steps or leaned against a bench. Tana walked past them, and the few that were awake didn’t even blink at the sight of her gore-smeared clothes.
Her stomach lurched. She could smell rich, dark blood pumping under human skin, could feel the heat rising off people as she passed. She drew in a breath and shuddered with hunger.
CHAPTER 30
On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Once upon a time there was a little girl, and she told a lie to her friend’s brother so that her friend’s brother drove her to the bus station.
She brought with her a bottle of orange soda, fifty dollars (half in change), sparkly slippers, and her cell phone.
He thought he was helping.
So did she.
CHAPTER 31
For I know that Death is a guest divine, Who shall drink my blood as I drink this wine.
—William Winter
Walking through Lucien Moreau’s house reminded Tana unnervingly of the morning after Lance’s party. Like then, she was the only one moving. Music was still playing somewhere, distant as the television had been that day. And looking at all of the sleeping bodies brought to mind the corpses of the kids from her school arranged on the floor. But these kids were just passed out, and now she was the monster walking among them.
She found her way through the ballroom with the high glass ceiling, where food was still lying out on a table, rotting in the shadowed sunlight. The remains of cakes and half a tart covered with glistening fruit. Sliced cuts of meat and spiky baguettes, half-peeled oranges buzzing with flies. Overturned bowls of sugared rose petals. Despite not having eaten for many hours, the sight of it made her feel sick.
Leaning against the wall, a shiver rolled through her. Ice crystallizing inside her.
Was Valentina still here? She remembered waking to Valentina’s voice, remembered cold concrete beneath her and steel against her fingertips. A basement, she’d thought. But was that a real memory?
Tana kept moving, stumbling through rooms. There were parlors and toilets, a kitchen with gleaming appliances and a butler’s pantry full of old-fashioned weapons. Then she found an alcove with a door that led to a staircase spiraling downward.
The stone steps were cold on her bare feet. She felt that chill rising up through her legs to freeze her belly, to rime her throat with a frost that would never melt.
She found herself in a vast basement. Wooden racks held bottle after bottle of wine on one wall. On the other were twelve cells. They were large and they smelled of sweat and heat and blood. In them were boys and girls, all of them lovely and none older than twenty.
Most were sleeping on the stone floor, wrapped in blankets, their heads pillowed on rolled-up clothes or backpacks. Some, isolated from the others, wore muzzles. A few had saline drips like the one hanging from a nail in Elisabet’s room, two flights of stairs up. Three girls were awake, one weeping quietly near a makeshift toilet, while another two played dice.
Tana thought of the Cold girls and boys that had been chained to the walls the night before. At first, when she’d seen the kids in the cages, she’d thought they were a fresh batch and the others were dead. But now, she realized Lucien must keep them here for weeks, months, however long he could. Any blood supply was too precious to waste. The infected must be the muzzled ones, drugged into sleeping away each day in restless, red-soaked dreams.