He doesn’t love you, Ophelia tried again. You’re a means to an end and you know it. I could feel Ophelia trying to work her way into my mind, but the memory—the real memory—of Alex and me was too strong and Ophelia was losing power. Her voice was softer, more distant but still hard: I’m tired of these games. It’s just me and you now, Sophie, and I’m coming to get you. I smiled in spite of Ophelia’s ominous warning. When I felt her leave, I slid into a hot shower.
When I padded into the living room Alex was in the kitchen with a huge, grease-spotted white bakery bag and two plastic-lidded paper cups filled with coffee. He held one out to me. “Skinny mocha, half whip, extra cocoa and a shot of hazelnut.” He reached into the bakery bag and balanced a chocolate glazed donut on a napkin. “And a donut.”
I took both and grinned. “You really are an angel.”
He raised one brow salaciously. “I aim to please.”
I felt myself go red from toenails to the top of my head.
“Did I miss anything while I was gone?” Alex asked, mouth full of maple glazed.
I pried the lid off my coffee and took a large, sweet, hazelnutty swig. “Not a thing,” I said.
I grinned and realized I was ravenous. We took the bounty to the coffee table and set out our spoils. I was halfway through my second chocolate-glazed Bavarian cream filled when I felt the cold prick of fear slink up my neck. I cocked my head, listening.
“What’s up?” Alex took a slug from his paper coffee cup, then finished a second maple bar in two bites.
“Listen.”
Alex plucked a pink-sprinkled number from the box. “To what?” he said as I stared at him, eyes wide. He picked at a stripe of pink frosting while I watched him. “I’m secure enough in my masculinity to eat a pink donut.”
“It’s not that.” I stood up and ran to the bench by the door, pawing through the heap of purses, shopping bags, and jackets that Nina and I had discarded there. “A phone is ringing.”
Alex sat back with his pink donut, nonplussed. “Life was so much simpler before the invention of that thing. I gotta say, I was pretty sure it wouldn’t catch on. Boy, was my face red... .”
“Shut up, Alex,” I said, “I need to listen.”
I tore through the entire pile of bags and then followed the sound on hands and knees. “Ah ha!” I reached under the couch—all the way to my shoulder—and slid out the offending phone. It stopped ringing immediately and my stomach dropped. I held up the phone.
“This is Nina’s phone.”
“So?”
I held the phone aloft. “Nina doesn’t go anywhere without her phone. Nowhere. If she showered, she’d take it there.”
“So, maybe she forgot.” Alex patted his flat gut. “I’ve got room for a third.”
“You don’t understand. If Nina’s phone is here and Nina is not, then something is wrong.” I tucked the phone in my robe pocket and ran to Nina’s closed door. “Something is seriously wrong.”
“Nina?” I knocked spastically, then pushed the door open, plunging inside her room.
To call Nina’s room a bedroom is misleading; showroom would be more apt. Along with the occasional na?ve neck, Nina’s fangs were deeply entrenched in all things fashionable and she wore every decade of her life with that fashionable fervor. Thus, her room was lined with boutique-quality couture all the way back from the 1800s; Victorian corsets mingled with Juicy hoodies, hand-hewn necklaces and tatted lace from the Edwardian ages merged seamlessly with hip-huggers and love beads.
“She’s not here,” I said, my mouth going dry.
I jumped—and so did my heart—when the phone rang again. I dove into my pocket.
“Hello? Nina?”
There was laughter on the other end of the line and then a piercing, primitive scream. “Hey there, sis,” Ophelia said. “I think I’ve got something of yours.”
Ophelia continued to giggle and I heard the wailing scream again. Then heaving tears. Then the phone went dead.
“Who was that?” Alex asked.
I turned to him, suddenly feeling leaden. “That was Ophelia. And she’s got Nina.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
I shook the phone as if an explanation would fall out. “Ophelia has Nina. She’s hurting her.” I slapped my palm to my forehead. “That’s why she sent the Nephilim. She wasn’t trying to scare me, she was trying to distract me, get me all wrapped up in the fire at People’s Pants.” I swallowed a sob. “And it worked.”
Alex took both my hands and led me to the couch, trying to get me to sit down.
“No,” I said, dodging him. “We have to go. Now. We have to save Nina.”
“Where is she?”
I frowned down at the phone, my vision blurred with a fresh wave of tears. “I don’t know.”
“It’ll be okay. Nina’s an immortal; there’s not much that Ophelia can do to her, right?”
I gaped. “Except drive a stake through her heart, cut off her head, light her on fire, send her out in the sunshine, shoot her with a silver bullet ...”
“I thought that only worked with werewolves.”
“Oh, now you’re paying attention to legendry?”
“Lawson—”
“No, now.” I peeled off my bathrobe and yanked yesterday’s (pre-Pants fire) clothes off the floor. I was hopping on one foot, trying to get into a pair of jeans, when Alex stopped me.
“Calm down, Lawson, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”