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“And dog your every step, Cassie!” Splinter.
“But when someone is actual
ly trying to kill me, what the hell are you doing?” A bottle took out the overhead fixture, shattering the decorative shell and raining sparks down onto the already freaked-out vampires.
And then I stopped, not because I’d run out of things to say, but because one of the vamps had caught sight of the mysteriously floating beer bottle. And it seemed to piss him off. “I have had enough of this shit,” he announced viciously, lining up a shot.
I didn’t bother moving; I just waggled the bottle provocatively. “Want it, motherfucker? Want it? Then come get it!” And then I ran like hell.
A bullet smashed into the wall beside me, another shattered a hallway light and a third tore through a pretty little painting, drilling the girl on the swing straight between the eyes. I didn’t care; I was more concerned about the girl on the wall, who was looking pretty damn blue and pretty damn dead. I stopped for a split second, staring in horror at my slack features and my lifeless face, and then I was merging with my poor abused body and—
Nothing.
Blackness.
Cold.
So cold.
Silence.
Until someone started screaming. “Don’t you die, don’t you die, don’t you fucking die on me—”
And someone was pounding my chest and someone else was forcing smoke-flavored breath down my throat, and he really needed to gargle because that was just gross, and then I was choking and gasping and flailing weakly and Marco was dragging me against his huge, rapidly moving chest. “Are you all right? Are you fucking all right?” he yelled right in my face.
“Urp,” I said brilliantly. And then I threw up on him.
Chapter Twenty
I thought there was a good chance the fridge was possessed.
It was subtle about it, but I had its number. I knew its ways. Oh yes.
“How the hell did nobody hear him?” someone demanded harshly. I couldn’t see who it was because he was outside the kitchen. But it sounded sort of like Marco. Or like Marco might sound if he wanted to bite someone’s head off their body.
One of the vamps must have thought so, too, because he was awfully tentative when he answered. “He . . . apparently, the mage threw a silence spell over the lounge. We couldn’t hear any—”
“I’m more interested in why you couldn’t see. All of you congregated in one place, with not a single fucking one watching your fucking charge—”
“The apartment was supposed to be empty!” Another, slightly less cowed voice said. “And she hates it when we hover—”
“Then you play pool, you play cards, you watch without making it obvious. But you fucking well watch!” Something crashed into a wall.
Nobody said anything that time. Or maybe I just wasn’t listening. After all, someone had to keep an eye on the fridge.
There were slash marks in the front, spaced evenly like evil eyes, glowing with yellow light from the inside. And that couldn’t be the usual fridge light, could it? Wasn’t that supposed to go out when the door was closed? I thought I saw something move behind one of the slashes, but then I blinked and it was gone.
Oh yes. I knew.
Pritkin came in and knelt by my chair. “You can’t go to sleep yet, Cassie,” he told me, handing me a heart murmur in a mug. It smelled good, but not good enough to wake up for. I mumbled something and turned over, burying my face in the nice, warm shoulder someone had thoughtfully provided.
Only to be hauled up again.
So I sighed and snuggled into a nice, warm chest instead.
“Drink.” My hands were wrapped around the mug.
I pushed it away. “Don’ wanna. Wanna sleep.”
