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“You can’t yell with your throat ripped out,” I tell her. “I might have shredded her to pieces.”
She flinches at the bluntness of my words, but I feel the need to be blunt. I am a monster, through and through. I did this to her friend, I did this to my love.
“She’s right though,” Wolf says, walking around the bed, running his fingers over the blood and smelling them. “If the wound was fatal, Lenore’s body would be here. It’s not. She’s gone. She didn’t come through the house, I would have smelled her. There would be a trail. So then, how did she leave the room?”
We all look to the open window.
Wolf walks over to it, pulling back the curtains further, examining the edge. “No signs of damage. But you don’t normally sleep with your windows open, do you?”
“Not usually,” I tell him. “But Lenore, she likes the air, she…” I trail off, my heart in a vice, the image of us squabbling before bed because she wants a cool breeze and I want the room as shuttered and dark and secure as possible. I swallow. “They could have been open, I don’t remember.”
Wolf shakes his head while Amethyst gestures to my pajamas again. “You need to stop being naked, Solon.”
“Humans,” I mutter, glaring at her while I slip my pants on.
She gives me a look right back.
One that says monster.
“I think she went out through the window,” Wolf says, peering outside. “I smell her blood here, though I don’t see it. And there’s something else. Brimstone.”
“Brimstone?” Amethyst repeats. “That’s an actual smell?”
“It is,” Wolf muses, eyes darting around the window.
Now I can smell it. “Sulfur,” I explain to Amethyst. “It’s sulfur.”
“Witches,” Wolf says. “Her parents?”
“Fuck, I hope so,” I say. Sulfur is often associated with magic, though her parents have never smelled like sulfur. Different herbs maybe, nothing entirely unpleasant. I’ve also never known them to have the ability to fly, or at least scale a house of this height, but magic is often surprising.
I head over to the wardrobe and pull out a t-shirt, slipping it on, then I create flames in the middle of the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” Wolf asks.
“To see her parents,” I tell him. “They might have her.”
Please let them have her. Please let her be alive.
I step into the Black Sunshine, quickly sealing it up behind me, then waste no time in leaving the house, running through the empty city in this gray dead world. Occasionally I see a shadow soul lurking in the distance, but I know they’re attracted to me because of my despair, so I keep running until I’m standing outside the house on Lily Street.
I’d like to just appear inside their apartment, but ambushing two vampire slayers, who may or may not be on edge, would probably result in my death. And while I have no doubt I probably deserve such a death, I won’t welcome it until I know what happened to Lenore.
I look around me and then step up on the front stoop, at least partially sheltered from the street, and after I’m confident there are no prying eyes or passing humans milling about, I create a flaming door in the gray, stepping out into the real world again.
I place my ear against the door to Lenore’s apartment, listening for signs of her, but there’s nothing. I don’t smell her either. Suddenly my hopes are fading.
Then I do the same to her parents door right beside hers, leading to their apartment above. I can hear faint murmurs, both Elaine and Jim talking to each other. I ring their doorbell, realizing I should have brought my phone. Perhaps texting them from the house would have been smart, but it felt like this was quicker.
In moments, the door opens.
It’s Elaine, staring at me in surprise.
“Absolon,” she says, then her adrenaline spikes. “Where is Lenore?”
Fuck.
“She’s not here?” I ask, unable to keep the panic out of my voice.
She shakes her head, looking over me in fear. “No. No, I haven’t spoken to her today.”
“Can I come in?” I ask.
She hesitates. It’s not wise to invite a vampire inside your house, but I know she has the slayer’s blade somewhere on her body, probably strapped to her leg beneath her cargo pants. If she does, it’s absolutely going wild with me standing so close to her. Every passing second the blade is telling her it needs to be driven straight into my heart.
Patience, I tell the blade. Let’s see what horrors I’ve done first.
“Yes, of course,” Elaine says, snapping out of it, and I wonder if she heard my thoughts. She opens the door wider and I step inside. She looks me up and down, eyeing my pajama pants and t-shirt. And I’m barefoot. I hear her heartbeat accelerate. “What happened? Where did you come from?”
