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But someone else could.
“There! In the boat! They’re getting away!”
He had a brief moment to hear the shout taken up by what sounded like an army. And then swords being dropped and boots being shed, as the praetor’s guards prepared to jump in after them. And yet still the witch did nothing.
And neither could Mircea, for fear of being overheard.
Wait, she mouthed, as he glared.
Wait! as he shook her.
Wait, a pox take you!
And then a lightning bolt flashed, blindingly bright, and thunder boomed, so close and so loud that Mircea almost jumped out of his skin. And finally—finally—the witch threw out a hand, while everyone cowered in fear and the elements roared and the little boat, storm tossed and tempest rocked—
Went up like a powder keg had gone off.
Make that a hundred powder kegs, Mircea thought, pushing the woman the rest of the way into the water. And shielding her as best he could as explosion after explosion tore through the night. They displaced the waves in a huge trough around what had been the boat; they sent what looked like burning orange fireworks into the formerly darkened night; they lit up the entire expanse of waterfront, including the witch’s amazed face, resurfacing with a gasp, because she hadn’t expected that, either.
So that’s what half a skeleton’s worth of vampire bone gets you, Mircea thought, as the praetor’s men shouted, and the winds blew, and what was left of the little craft sank beneath the waves, to be carried away by the tide.
Chapter Fifty-one
I slept for over a day. And, for a wonder, nobody bothered me this time. Well, almost nobody.
I blinked my crusty eyes open to find another pair staring back at me. They were blue, a lovely almost-violet shade that human eyes never achieve without help. And huge, like those of an anime character come to life. And startled, because I guess they hadn’t expected to be suddenly looking into mine, either.
A small creature let out a bleat and stumbled away, into the middle of my bedroom floor, because somebody had brought me to Claire’s. He hunched down with arms over his head, like he thought I was about to strike him. And then just stayed there, shaking in fear.
I didn’t move.
The shaking increased for a moment, and the arms tightened. But when nothing happened, they loosened enough for one large, purple eye to peer out from underneath. It flicked toward the door, which was halfway open, but the owner didn’t budge.
I didn’t, either, because I’d recognized my guest, and wasn’t particularly worried about being attacked by a half-dead troll kid. Not that he was looking half-dead now. I hadn’t expected Olga’s rescue to be on his feet anytime soon, even in an obviously shaky sort of way, much less to be exploring the upper floors of the house.
But trolls are damned hardy, more so than me. I felt stiff and starved and badly in need of a drink, but I didn’t want to freak out the kid. So I just stayed there, unmoving, until he slowly, slowly, slowly stretched into a more or less standing position.
He had dark brown hair, thick and shaggy and completely unlike the twins’ baby-fine variety. He also wasn’t the usual gray-green, but more of a gray-teal, with bluish undertones to the skin. He had the small mouth and round face of a child, and even a somewhat smallish nose, which for trolls is more telling. To the point that I wondered how young he actually was. And then there were those eyes, framed by long, thick, dark lashes.
He was freaking adorable.
But he was also still hunched over somewhat, despite the impression I had that he was standing straight, or as straight as he could. Claire had put him in one of her old hippie shirts, loose and flowy and painter’s-smock-y, which was enormous on him, so all I could see was a head and some teal-colored toes. I supposed it was a miracle that he was getting around at all, but the posture looked uncomfortable. I wondered why—
Oh.
That was why.
The big eyes moved to my bedside table, and mine followed. And showed me that I’d had an earlier visitor in the form of my roommate, who knew a little about dhampir metabolism and liked to feed people. She’d loaded me up, probably because foo
d had a tendency to disappear if left in the kitchen.
As a result, I had three whole sandwiches waiting for me. I slowly reached out a hand and took one, a nice fat BLT, because Claire understands that the B is the most important part. Thick-cut, peppery B, complemented by her own homemade bread and vine-ripened tomatoes and bacon jam and—
I heard my stomach grumble. And be echoed a second later by a similar sound from under Claire’s smock of a shirt. My visitor was hungry, too.
I held out the sandwich. “It’s okay,” I said. “You can have it.”
The little troll didn’t move.
