It took a moment to realize that one of the sleeping girls was Valentina.
Tana walked closer. She could almost see the warmth radiating off all of them, shimmering above them the way heat bends the light above a hot stretch of road. The two girls playing dice seemed to have come from the party and still wore their party frocks, but their hair was dull and their eyes were sunken. Both had shunts in their arms, the skin around them dark with bruising. One had a sore nearby, yellow at the center with an outer circle of green and black scabbing. To Tana in that moment, though, they all seemed heart-stoppingly beautiful. The scent of their blood welled up from underneath their skin, making her veins sing with need.
The weeping girl looked up and saw Tana. Her eyes went wide, and she sniffled noisily, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Then she stood and came to the edge of the bars. Up close, Tana could see her long black hair and dark skin. “How did you get away from him?” the girl asked. “He’s got cameras everywhere.”
Tana crossed the room without really deciding to, drawn to the girl. She told herself that she only wanted to free Valentina. She told herself that she would never hurt any of them, while her mind supplied her with images of biting, ripping, rending.
“I was here?” she asked, a little dazed.
The girl nodded, wiping her wet cheeks. “You were so pale, and there was so much blood on your dress that we thought you were done for. Then one of the vampires came for you, and we were sure you were done for.”
Tana wondered which one of them it had been. Had Gavriel been down here? “Did something happen? You’re crying.”
“I’m scared,” the girl snapped. “Most of them want to be here, but not me. He recruits kids off the street, offers them food and a place to sleep, says they can earn eternal life. My friend Violet went with him a month ago, and I haven’t seen her since. I came to the party to see if there was something on his recordings about what happened to her, but then they caught me in the recording room.”
Which made it seem as if Lucien didn’t usually grab people from his parties. As if he had taken Valentina for a reason—because she’d come in with Tana, who’d murdered a vampire? Because she’d been somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, like the girl? Tana looked up, into the eye of the lens. Then she turned her back to it, leaning toward the bars.
“Is there a key?” she mouthed. “How can I get you both out?”
The dark-haired girl came closer. One of her cheeks was smudged with dirt. She waved Tana in, whispering so she couldn’t be heard on the recording. “There’s two keys,” she said, her breath warm on Tana’s icy cheek. “One that fits in the lock on the cage and another one that unlocks the hinges so the door swings. But you’re not going to find them in time.”
It would be such a little thing to grab the girl’s wrist and pull it through the bars of her cage. To sink her dull teeth into yielding flesh. Tana’s fingers gripped the chilled metal, winding around it as if it were what she desired.
“Right,” Tana said, forcing herself to focus. Two locks. Two keys. Eight people locked in a cage. Eighty-eight days of hunger, all of them worse than this. “I’ll be back. I’ll find some way to get you out. I promise. Tell Valentina that I promise.”
At the sound of her name, Valentina stirred, turning in sleep. Tana wasn’t sure what she’d think if she woke, if she’d be angry to find Tana on one side of the cage and herself on the other.
“I don’t know who has them,” the dark-haired girl whispered. “Other than Elisabet. She comes down here sometimes and just looks at us. It’s creepy.”
Tana made herself back away from the cage and the girl, hoping that her expression wasn’t too like Elisabet’s. Creepy. Hungry.
“I hate to say this,” the dark-haired girl told her softly. “But you should get out of her while you can.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Tana said, hoping that would be answer enough.
She thought about going up to Elisabet’s room and searching it for the two keys, but maybe she didn’t need them. Maybe there were bolt cutters. Or maybe there was an ax sharp and sure enough to cut right through the lock. She walked around the basement, finding a door she couldn’t open and then another that led to a closet. Inside were an assortment of moth-eaten blankets, a broken chair, and a few tools. She bent down to take a closer look when someone grabbed her by the arm. She had time to lunge for the handle of a long screwdriver before she was hauled to her feet.
A vampire stood in front of her, his red eyes dim in the gloom. He had on a tuxedo shirt, although the jacket was missing and the bow tie hung loose around his neck, just wrinkled cloth. But even though he was dead, she could smell the blood inside him, magical and strange.