Houdini held his finger to my lips, searching my eyes with an indiscernible look on his face. “I can’t read your mind, but just remember that my blood is already inside you. One more drop will hardly matter.”
I couldn’t close my mouth when he pushed his finger between my teeth and fed me the falling drops. His finger swiping my tongue made me reflexively swallow, and the familiar taste made memories of our blood exchange resurface. I’d been so enamored by him back then that all things seemed possible.
“There,” he said, looking down at my healed hand. “You’ve always had good instincts, but there’s no point injuring yourself if it won’t lead to victory. Even without the bracelet, I could pin you.” He stripped out of his tank top and bent down, wiping up the small pool of blood on the floor. “You’re more interesting when you’re alive. Remember that.”
After a final look around, he swaggered out of the room. “You can move now,” he said, closing the door behind him.
My entire body came unglued, and I stumbled forward like a child using its legs for the first time. No wonder I’d always hated the idea of Vampire magic. All the times he’d charmed and controlled me were buried in my subconscious even if I couldn’t remember them.
I turned around and glared at him through the glass divider. “If you’re so fascinated by me, then why did you leave me?”
“Truthfully?” He approached the glass. “I don’t get attached to humans. Once I turn them, they go right into the hands of their new master. I do it right before the exchange so I don’t have to deal with… sentiment.”
I sat down in the wobbly chair, my eyes staring vacantly at his laptop. Houdini hadn’t cared about me enough to search. “But you promised I was going to be a companion—a friend.”
He tossed his bloody tank top into a wastebasket. After wiping down his chest with a towel, he turned the stereo on low and returned to the desk. The singer on the stereo crooned “Your Heart Is As Black As Night,” filling the empty space in my soul. Houdini didn’t have any visible ink on his body.
Following a long sip from his thermos, he calmly seated himself. “Remember our conversation about choices? Sometimes they don’t always go as planned. You vanished that night, Raven. I went to the morgue, but you were gone. What was I to do?”
I laughed mirthlessly. “I didn’t vanish. I was taken.”
“By your Creator, I presume. After I made you, it occurred to me how dangerous it was for you to know your maker, so I scrubbed your memory of my face and our conversations. Faking your death in the human world was necessary, but abandoning you had never been my intention. Don’t you see how wonderful chaos can be? Had you stayed with me, you wouldn’t be half as interesting. You’d be just another Vampire with a sad heart.”
Disheartened, I folded my arms on the table. The truth was far worse than living in blissful ignorance. Even worse was knowing he planned to erase it all again, and yet part of me wondered if that wasn’t for the best.
He pecked a few keys on the laptop. “Someday you’ll look back and appreciate the gift I’ve given you.”
“I’d rather not be psychoanalyzed by a psycho.”
“How much does your partner love you?”
My stomach did a flip-flop, and I quickly averted my eyes after I glanced up and saw him staring right at me.
“That’s a curious pairing,” he remarked. “At first I thought it was just a working relationship, but the necklace suggests otherwise. Do you ever wonder how much you’re worth to him? Let’s find out.”
I sat back. Houdini wasn’t going to scrub my memory and send me home. No, he was going to put me on auction and make Keystone pay. How high was Viktor willing to bid for a scavenger like me who’d only been part of the team a short time? Probably not much.
“I think it’s romantic,” he continued. “Don’t you want to see how much he loves you in dollar signs?”
“Not really, Vamp.”
“The word doesn’t offend me.” Houdini leaned closer to the computer screen and frowned. “That’s interesting,” he murmured. “There’s a second bidder.”
“You can’t just auction me off like cattle. They’ll find you.”
“No one finds me.”
I leaned back on the chair legs. “With that hair, half of Cognito could find you.”
When he smiled, deep lines etched in his face. “I’m the great Houdini. I can get out of any tight squeeze. Is there anything distinct about my face? No, it’s average and forgettable. I’ve changed my hair and style a number of times, and no one ever remembers me.”
“All this work to live in a shithole in the Bricks.”
“The smaller space makes it easier to keep an eye on you.” He scratched the side of his face. “Admit it. When you came to the Bricks, you could see yourself living here. It has a certain… je ne sais quoi.”
“I’ll give you the key.”
“I’ll get it. Eventually.”
I noticed the way my reflection in the glass overlapped his. “You wrote those letters to Viktor. You said: I want what’s mine. So now you don’t want it?”
He rested his arms on the table. “Yes, I want the key. But the key isn’t mine. I wasn’t asking for the key.”
“You talk in riddles. If Viktor turns that key over to the higher authority, you’ll be going away for a long time.”
“The key is safely hidden inside the box, and only you know what it means. Anyhow, you don’t even know what the key opens, so it’s useless to you. The higher authority has more pressing matters than researching a key.”
“So then it’s money.” I glanced down at my necklace. Was I willing to part with something so precious?
After a few keystrokes, he sipped his drink again. “Let’s just hope your partner outbids the other guy. He’s already countered his offer twice in the past ten minutes. They have twenty-four hours to war before the auction closes. In the final hours, increments can only increase by no less than ten large, so no bumping it up a penny.” Houdini laughed, but not maniacally. It almost annoyed me how affable he was. “I should tell you about what happened during my first auction.”
“I feel sick.”
He looked up, eyes brimming with concern. “Would you like more tea to settle your stomach?”
“Why would you do this to me again? What if the other guy wins?”
He joined the fingertips of each hand so they looked like a mirror image. “Aren’t you curious to see what could happen? You never know, Raven. This could change your life in ways you never imagined.”
“I could be tortured again.”
He lowered his arms. “Again?”
I scooted my chair back. “You should have tried harder to find me. And who the hell sends their youngling off to a morgue? Do you really think some Creator put his spark in me and taught me all the mysteries of life? If you hadn’t done this to me, I’d be on a couch somewhere, watching reruns of Seinfeld. I’d have a real job and a normal life.”