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“Who is Redgrave, exactly?” Bianca asked.
“A vampire I know. Not someone you ever want to meet.”
So—Balthazar clearly cared about Bianca, but he hadn’t told her everything about himself. Not even the few snippets of his past that Skye had learned the last couple of days. That was interesting… Wait. Had he said Redgrave was about to strike?
Skye said, “Are they coming right now?”
“They’ll be more likely to come after they think you’ve gone to bed.” Balthazar went to her lamp and snapped it off. Instantly, her room went from cheerily bright to shadows, illuminated only by Bianca’s faint aquamarine glow.
“Hold on—we’re trying to get them to come in? Is that really a good plan?”
“They’re going to come,” Balthazar said. “Better now, when we’re expecting it, than later when we aren’t.”
Which was logical, if terrifying. Skye slowly nodded. “We ought to get it over with now, before … before my parents get home. I don’t want them in the middle of this.”
“Don’t worry,” Bianca said. She was fading into transparency, her glow hardly more than a shimmer now. “Balthazar’s here if I fail.”
Bianca was their first line of defense? What exactly were they planning?
The last of the blue-green glow faded. Though Skye knew Bianca must still be there, she was now invisible and silent. Moonlight off the snow provided enough light at the window for her to see Balthazar’s outline, a broad, reassuring shadow. She stepped toward him, seeking both safety and comfort. He remained utterly motionless.
Her entire house had never seemed so quiet. Though Skye knew two others were in the room with her, neither of them was breathing. No wind was blowing, so even the usual rushing sound of the breeze through the trees was absent. The silence surrounding her was complete—
—so much that, from one floor up, Skye was able to hear a faint scratching, then a pop of metal on metal. And, as her heartbeat sped up and her breathing became shallow, she even heard the soft creak of the back door being opened.
The Time Between: Interlude One
December 29, 1776
Trenton, New Jersey
IN ALL HIS MANY YEARS IN NEW ENGLAND, Balthazar had never known a winter as bleak as this. The snow lay on the frozen ground, nearly two feet thick, soft even weeks after falling because the sun had not provided enough warmth to melt any of it, however briefly, and create ice. It muffled sound and made the terrain unfamiliar. Roads and towns he had known for over a century were strangers to him now.
Redgrave disliked the snow. Bloodstains showed too easily, as did their tracks.
“And yet there’s nothing like a war for business,” Redgrave said for the thousandth time that winter. He lounged in front of the fire in the small inn where they’d taken up residence. Between the foul weather and the nearby hostilities, Redgrave and his tribe were the only guests—and thank God. “You’ll never eat your fill as often with less trouble than you will during wartime, I promise you that, my little darling.”
Redgrave’s long fingers stroked through Charity’s fair curls as though she were his pet cat. Balthazar’s gut churned; watching Redgrave touch his younger sister in that way had never ceased to disgust him, though at least—after nearly a century and a half—Charity no longer flinched.
“We should head south,” Constantia said, leaning her head back against Balthazar’s chest. He resisted the urge to push her away—that never worked, not for long, and defiance created more trouble than it was worth. Her gown was the height of fashion—broad-skirted and bedecked with ruffles—and she’d even powdered her hair. In this modest inn, with its beaten wooden benches and plain stone hearth, she looked as out of place as an emerald amid riverbed stones. “Washington won’t move again so soon. I’m sure of it. We’ll have to travel farther afield if we want to keep feasting.”
“Ready to see a bit more of the world?” Redgrave crooned to Charity, who nodded obediently. Her stare was unfocused, and the sleeve of her dress had fallen off her shoulder.
Lorenzo’s feral grin widened as the barmaid came in, carrying a tankard of ale for them. The barmaid was young and pretty—coal-black curls and plump, rosy cheeks—but no slattern meant to service the male guests upstairs for a few coins exchanged quietly on the back stair. Perhaps she was the innkeeper’s niece, or the daughter of a friend, Balthazar thought: a girl here to earn a bit of extra money for her family during a hard winter, pretty enough to cheer guests who otherwise might grumble about the cold rooms or poor food.
But that meant she was pretty enough to tempt the cruel. Balthazar had seen that wild light in Lorenzo’s eyes before. It meant pain, and death, and the crumpled bodies of women thrown to the floor like rags.
“Will you be wanting dinner?” the barmaid asked, acting more nervous than she ought to have been. She understood something was wrong about this group; she was more perceptive than most, Balthazar thought. This stirred in him nothing more than pity. It would have been better if she hadn’t known what was coming. The girl continued, “We’ve a fine stew tonight. Right filling.”
Lorenzo ran one finger along her forearm as she poured him more ale. She jerked back, sloshing suds onto the floor and making the other vampires laugh. “We’ll eat our fill soon enough,” Lorenzo said, to even louder laughter. “You, my dear—I wish to write a poem about you.”
Oh, God. The subjects of all his vile poems were his worst murders. Balthazar wished he hadn’t seen the vulnerability or innocence in the young barmaid’s face. Then he would not have pitied her. He tried to deaden himself to pity—it would make this bitter existence of his slightly less cruel—but he hadn’t succeeded, not yet.
“What is your name?” Lorenzo asked. “I must know your name, you see. I must learn what rhymes.”
The poor barmaid, obviously longing to escape but unable to, replied, “I’m called Martha, sir.”
“Martha?” Lorenzo started cackling. “What in the world rhymes with Martha?” His Spanish accent hardened the th sound into a t.
