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It doesn’t matter, though.
Nina levitates the furniture, unrolls a mat, and flows into her first yoga pose.
Puck, I think for Pom’s benefit. This is a memory.
So she’s not guilty?
Appears that way. I’m going to wake up now. See you soon.
Before Pom can protest, I come out of the trance.
After I update Kain on my finding, we set off to Eduardo’s quarters. When we get there, the bed is empty.
Kain’s fangs emerge. “He said he’d be here tonight.”
“Maybe he goes to bed later?” I look around the spartan bedroom for any hints.
“We’ll give him a few hours,” Kain growls.
For a while after that, we walk around the castle, and I enter people’s bedrooms and make connections—going down the remaining list of Councilors who voted to kill me. When we get to the last on that list, I recognize the living room we enter.
This is the dwelling of Albina, the Councilor who’d left a note apologizing for missing her dream link the last time.
I perk up. Avoiding me that time was shady. Maybe she should be higher on my list of suspects.
Kain sniffs the air, his face darkening. Fangs out in full force, he rushes into Albina’s bedroom.
I sprint into the room after him, only to halt abruptly.
On my wrist, Pom turns black.
On the bed lies Albina, or so I assume. Her naked body is vampire pale, with hideous bruises on her neck. Given her disheveled appearance, it’s not difficult to work out a case of erotic asphyxiation gone wrong—or worse.
Kain checks the pulse on her wrist, and I hold my breath, preparing for what he’s about to say.
“Nothing.” He releases her wrist. “She’s dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A surge of adrenaline wipes away all traces of my earlier sleepiness. Kain said if more people die, I would follow—and now two have died on my watch.
Moving so fast he almost blurs, Kain rips open his wrist with his teeth and forces blood into Albina’s mouth.
Nothing happens.
Actually, that’s not true. Something happens, but not to Albina—to me. I stare hypnotically at the blood as Kain checks Albina’s pulse again, curses, and blurs out of the room.
Stumbling out of the bedroom, I locate the kitchen and heave half-digested bananas into the sink.
Where did Kain go? What should I do? Questions swirl through my mind, but not a single answer. I grope for a glass, pour some probably contaminated tap water into it, and gulp it down.
With yet another dead body on my watch, I’m unlikely to live long enough to get sick.
On every level possible, I feel horrible. I’m shaking, my mouth and throat are on fire, and I crave sleep the way a man craves water in a desert.
The walls around me close in.
I’m having trouble breathing.
Did I just discover another dead body? Did I really witness Hekima being eaten?
Could the sleep deprivation be giving me hallucinations?
I reach for the vial of diluted vampire blood. Am I craving this? Seeing Kain’s blood pour out of his body didn’t gross me out as it should have. It fascinated me. Is that the first stage of addiction? Some later stage?
Then again, if I don’t want to collapse and fall asleep this very second, I need to do something.
I can try severely limiting my dose. I pour a droplet of the watered blood into my glass and fill it again with water. Pocketing the vial, I dip my finger into the glass and flick off most of the moisture. It doesn’t get more diluted than this.
I lick the finger.
The pleasure is as intense as the last time, maybe even more so. I moan and smash my forehead into the refrigerator.
I can barely feel the pain.
Pucking puck, something’s trickling down my forehead.
I swipe at it and stare at the red liquid staining my fingers. Blood. Unlike before, my wounds aren’t healing. I guess my medicine was too diluted for that particular effect.
Worse still, I feel almost as sleep deprived as before.
Kain barges into the apartment with a disheveled Isis in tow.
Of course—when his blood didn’t work, he went to get a healer.
Isis narrows her sleepy eyes at me and points a finger at my forehead, shooting it with golden energy.
The healing warmth feels good, but not as intensely as vampire blood.
I touch my forehead.
The wound is closed.
“Don’t bother with her,” Kain growls. “Your patient’s in there.” He drags her into the bedroom.
I follow them in just as Isis hits Albina with a beam of golden energy, which she maintains as she checks the dead woman’s vitals.
The beam stops.
“I’m sorry,” she says in a sleep-raspy voice. “She was beyond healing.”
Kain slams a fist into the wall, burying his arm to the elbow.
Isis pulls a blanket over the body. “We should have Roger—or better yet, a human forensic expert—take a look.”
Roger. That name sounds familiar. Wasn’t he the one who’d made a sleeping drug for Leal?
