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“She said . . . ” I licked my lips and forced out the words. “She said . . . it would only work . . . if I play it in front of the full council.”
“Play.” The light fluctuated. “It is a recording?”
“Yes. Sort of.” I wasn’t really clear on that part, but this didn’t seem the time to bring it up.
“From she whom you call Artemis . . . to us?”
“Yes. And it’s about more than Pritkin . . . John . . . Emrys,” I gasped, my oxygen-starved brain finally coming up with the name Rosier used for his son. “There are other things . . . you should know.”
The light flickered again for a long moment, or maybe that was me. I was starting to have trouble seeing now, too. I reached for my last reserves of strength, only to find that I didn’t have any. This needed to be over. . . .
And then it was.
“We will hear what the Huntress would say to us,” the light told me. “You will be summoned.”
And then good old-fashioned electricity came rushing back, and a wave of furious clapping and whistling broke over me, and a couple of empty rugs spiraled out of the sky, their contents gone like the star, like the Allû, like the whole room as I fell into nothingness.
• • •
I woke up with a gasp, my hand on my throat, feeling like I was being choked. And that I was stuck in some twilit nothingness, waiting for a verdict that was so important, it meant everything, but that I couldn’t control. Or even predict . . .
But I wasn’t in dim light; I was in no light. And if anybody was here with me, they were being damned quiet about it. I stared around, panting, but as far as I could tell, nothing stared back. There was only velvety darkness, the soft shush of air-conditioning, and the familiar scent of the fabric softener the hotel used on my sheets.
I relaxed back against the bed with a relief so profound it made me dizzy.
Or maybe that was something else. It felt like the bed was slowly revolving beneath me, a faint, drifting feeling, like the lazy roll of the carpet before Rosier arrived. . . . Rosier.
And suddenly, everything came rushing back.
Pritkin, I breathed, and started up—
Which was when the lazy drift became a tidal wave threatening to sweep me off to some other shoreline altogether.
I lay back slowly, carefully. And the crashing waves gradually diminished to nauseating undulations. Which wasn’t a great improvement, but at least I was conscious. But lying there, trapped by my body, virtually helpless when I had about a thousand questions to ask—
I almost wished I was unconscious.
Because this was torture.
But, slowly, my eyes adjusted. Enough to see a strip of light leaking in under the door, some night-in-the-city faux dark sifting in through a minuscule gap in the blackout curtains over the windows, and the soft glow of my alarm clock, too dim to read. And a small rectangle gleaming on the nightstand, just below it . . .
And I found I could move, after all, because it was my phone.
My hands were shaking so much that I almost dropped it, and the light from the screen was blinding up close. But my fingers somehow found the right buttons. U K?
I hit SEND. And then I waited, feeling dizzy and sweaty and hopeful and sick. And keeping an eye on the door because the vamps usually knew when I’d woken up. Changes in my heart rate and breathing told them, even when I wasn’t about to hyperventilate.
For a long moment, there was no response. And my breathing started to get ragged, which was stupid, because it wouldn’t help. I told myself to calm down, that signs of distress were only going to get me noticed faster, that the last thing I needed was a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer. . . .
But it wasn’t working.
And then I got a text back, and felt my spine unknot slightly.
Until I read it.
Yes, now let me sleep.
Sure, Caleb, I thought viciously, jabbing in a response. S P K? tel me [email protected] hapnd!
