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The second time I woke it was almost noon. The house was quiet and dappled in sunlight, and I was just dazed enough - just stupid enough - to attempt to stumble back to my bedroom. I resituated the blanket, only one forearm, a few toes, and my face visible above the quilting, and began the trek back upstairs. I made it through the living room unscathed, unaware of how lucky that made me. With only a few days of vampiredom under my belt, I'd yet to come into contact with that terrible little vulnerability known to all who've ever seen an episode of Buffy - the sunlight allergy. I was just conscious enough to tread carefully through the dining room, and it wasn't until I'd made it halfway to the stairs that I felt the pinch and sudden burn. I'd walked directly across a shaft of sunlight, my uncovered forearm catching the full exposure. I gulped in air, the pain of it nearly bringing me down into the beam - it stung like a burn, but tipped to unfathomably painful levels. The heat was astounding - like punching my arm into an overheated oven - and the skin immediately began to redden and blister. I yanked it back and clutched at the blanket with my safe hand, searching frantically for some way back into the dark, realizing that I'd trapped myself in a tiny sliver of shadow. I felt behind me for the doorknob, and pulled open the door of the tiny hallway closet, careful not to push myself back into the sunlight. When I'd maneuvered it open, I stepped backward into cool darkness, hunkered down on the hardwood floor, tears streaming from my eyes from the needle-sharp pain in my arm, and fell asleep.
CHAPTER NINE
THERE'S NOT MUCH WRONG THAT
CHUNKY MONKEY CAN'T FIX.
I thought I was in a coffin. I thought I was the brunt of some horrible Navarre joke, or some horrible Cadogan hazing ritual, and I'd been stuffed into a pine box like the dead girl I'd once thought I was. Starting to hyperventilate, I clawed at the blankets around me, then pounded on the walls, screaming for someone to let me out.
I fell forward when Mallory pulled the door open, landing face-first in her poofy slippers. Face flush with embarrassment, I rose to my elbows, spitting out bits of pink polyester fuzz. So much for the hard-ass vamp.
Mallory's voice was strangled, and I could tell she was working hard not to laugh. "What. The. Hell."
"Bad night. Really bad night." I sat down on the floor, tucking my legs beneath me, and checked the status of my arm. It was lobster red from fingers to elbow, but the blisters were gone. Supernatural healing was a handy trick for an absentminded vampire, although it would make my enemies harder to kill. Tit for tat, I guess.
Mallory crouched beside me. "Jesus, Mer. What happened to your arm?"
I sighed and spent a few seconds wallowing in self-pity. "Vampire. Sunlight. Poof." I waved my arms in the shape of a mushroom cloud. "Third-degree burns."
"Dare I ask why you were sleeping in the closet?"
I didn't want to embarrass her with a replay of her late-night antics, so I shrugged off the question. "Fell asleep, got too close to the sun, hunkered down."
"Come on," she said, taking my free elbow and helping me to my feet. "Let's at least put some aloe on your arm. Does it hurt a lot? Never mind. Don't answer that. You've got a master's degree in English and you've yet to string a subject and predicate together. I'll draw my own conclusions."
"Mallory!" Catcher's voice boomed down the stairs.
Mallory fixed her mouth into a tight line and walked me into the kitchen. "Ignore it," she advised. "Much like the bubonic plague, it'll go away if you give it enough time."
"Mallory! You weren't finished! Get back in here!"
I glanced up the stairway. "You didn't leave him handcuffed to the bed or something, did you?"
"Jesus, no." I incrementally relaxed, until she continued. "My headboard's a single piece of wood. There's nothing to handcuff him to."
I groaned and tried to wipe the image of a naked, bound Catcher writhing on the bed from my mind. Not that it was a bad image, but still . . .
Mallory kept us moving toward the kitchen. "He's pissed because he doesn't think I'm paying attention to his incessant goddamn lectures on magic." Her voice went lower, and she mimicked, "Mallory Delancey Carmichael, you're a fourth-class sorcerer with duties and obligations, blah blah blah. I think I understand now why the Order kicked him out; he was too bossy, even for them."
We went into the kitchen, and I took a seat while Mallory pulled a tube from a drawer next to the sink. She slathered cream on my arm with careful attention, then recapped the tube and set it aside. "I wonder if you need blood today."
I frowned, partly from the thought of drinking blood, partly from the realization that Mallory had become my predatory den mother. Since when had I become so needy? "I'm fine, I think."
"It's just that sometimes in the literature" - and by that she meant the occult fanzines that appeared in our mailbox with surprising frequency - "when vamps are injured, they need extra blood to supplement the healing process." Her gaze flashed up. "You are healing, aren't you?"
I nodded. "The blisters are gone."
"Good." She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bag, and my stomach began to grumble immediately.
"I need it," I sheepishly admitted, a little ashamed that I still had so little knowledge about the workings of my post-change body. I rubbed at a crick in my neck, no doubt the result of my having slept hunkered in a ball on the closet floor. "The fact is, for all this talk about how strong I am, I'm really not very good at being a vampire."
Mallory warmed the blood, poured it into a glass, and handed it to me. But she held up a hand before I could lift it to my mouth, went back to the refrigerator, and pulled out a celery stalk and bottle of Tabasco. She dotted some pepper sauce into the glass, then slipped in the celery. "Bloody Bloody Mary."
I took a sip and nodded. "Not bad. It could use vodka and tomato juice, but not bad for all that."
Mallory snickered, but her grin faded when Catcher stomped into the kitchen. In his hands was the thick leather-bound book I'd seen him looking through the night I'd visited my grandfather's office. He was half naked, a pair of jeans that rode low on his sculpted hips the only visible bit of clothing. The man had a body to die for - all curves and angles and little delicious hollows of sculpted muscle and flesh.
While I took in the view, Mallory yelled, "Will you quit following me around? It's not even your house!"
"Someone has to follow you around! You're a danger to the goddamn city!"
