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After they left, she’d been so sleepy that she could barely keep her eyes open, so she went to bed. And slept like the dead. Which she might well have been, except that Stinky had stolen her half-finished beer.
Fortunately, Duergars are immune to drugs and poisons, which was a good thing. Otherwise, he’d have been dead years ago from all the crap he eats. Seriously, Stinky will never starve.
So, somebody might have tried to knock out or poison Olga, who had brought in the troll kid, and then an attack came that very night that ended with that same kid getting stabbed. Seemed like they might be connected. Especially since she’d said that the two leaders hadn’t been keen on coming here. They’d wanted to take the boy to a troll healer, halfway across town, and Olga had made them divert. Because she hadn’t thought the boy would survive the trip.
Maybe they hadn’t, either.
Ymsi was looking at me over his shoulder, like he was wondering what I was thinking. Or maybe he wanted some comfort, Dory! I was bad at that, but Ymsi was a good kid; one of the most genuinely sweet people I knew. He hadn’t deserved any of this.
“You couldn’t have done any better,” I told him. “Caedmon and I tried together, and we couldn’t stop her.”
And, okay, that finally got a reaction.
Ymsi blinked. “You fight?”
“Yes, we both did. But it—she—got away. She was powerful, Ymsi, but you tricked her. You tricked her and you won.” I got up. “You ought to remember that.”
Ymsi just looked at me, blinking slowly, like he was trying to process that.
But when I looked down from the stairs, on my way out, the sink was in his lap and he was eating.
Chapter Thirty
My thoughts were still on the puzzle from last night when I reached the hall, and found it full of vampires. That would have been bad, but not surprising, since Ray had come with accessories. Only these accessories were naked.
They were standing in a line from the dining room to the downstairs bathroom, leaving the what the hell stretching almost the entire length of the house. Some had towels wrapped around their waists or draped around their necks; others sported embellishments in the form of flip-flops, shower caps, or bath brushes; and a few even carried baskets of toiletries. But there were also plenty of different-colored buns in view, along with sunken chests, man boobs, and hairy shanks.
And then it got worse.
“Dory?” Claire’s voice came from somewhere upstairs. “Is that you?”
I looked up, and I swear my heart stopped.
Holy shit.
I grabbed Ray, who for some reason was completely filthy, and shook him. “What?” he asked.
“Dory?”
I swallowed. “Uh, yeah? Hi, Claire.”
“Hi, yourself.” The voice floated down from the direction of my room. “I’m just going to change your sheets, okay?”
“Sure,” I squeaked. “Thanks!”
“Do you need any towels?”
“Yeah, we could use—” Ray began, before I clapped a hand over his mouth.
“What was that?”
“I said, sure, if it’s no trouble,” I called up.
“No trouble. I have some fresh ones in the laundry room—”
“No!” The laundry room was downstairs. “I mean, no, I just remembered—I’m fine. Tons of towels!”
“You’re sure?”
