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His fingers were cold and sweaty; I could feel them shake against my skin. “Sh-she has a pulse,” he confirmed.
“You enthralled him. ” Something about her tone bothered me. She didn’t sound worried or even terribly interested in what was happening. Her body, too, showed none of the nervous energy I would expect from someone in her position. She was faking it. If she’d been afraid, I would have smelled it on her. The act was good, so good I’d almost believed it, and good enough I was playing along, but it was total bullshit.
Nolan didn’t move his hand, insisting, “No she didn’t. ”
Fact of the matter was, I had. My mind was still reeling from how well my experiment earlier had worked and that Nolan wasn’t still catatonic on the sidewalk. But this wasn’t the time to discuss that.
“What do you want from me?” I asked her.
Silence swam across the street, and for the first time Noriko looked right at me. Her expression was hard and cold, and no part of her showed any fear. All pretense dropped when she realized I was on to her. She lowered the sword and her entire stature changed.
Gone was the wary, fight-ready stance. She cocked her hip to the side and leaned against her sword like a Victorian dandy with a walking stick. A look of contempt with a hint of humor colored her face. This was the real Noriko.
“Well aren’t you smart?” she remarked.
“I’m rarely accused of that. ”
She twirled the sword against the sidewalk so with each turn the shiny blade caught the streetlight and flashed it in my eyes. She stared at me without flinching. Brigit had relaxed slightly, but she was still waiting for me to give the word. Nolan’s hand had tightened almost painfully on my neck. I could smell his fear, and I wanted to lick it.
“She was right about you. She told me this wouldn’t be easy, that you wouldn’t go like a fool. Can’t say I didn’t try. ” The smirk grew, held, and then was gone. “Come on, Nolan. ” She stepped off the sidewalk and into the empty street, turning to look at the boy. I should have tried harder to think of him as a man, but the fear radiating off him made it impossible.
He held firm to me and implored, “Secret?”
“Mmm?” My mind was overwhelmed, spinning in wild circles, trying to make sense of what Noriko had said. She who?
Nolan was standing beside me, staring at me. Brigit was snarling low and menacing at Noriko, but the petite Asian ignored the petite blonde.
“She won’t hurt you,” I said, watching Noriko, making sure she understood the promise of my words. “Will she?”
“Of course not. ”
I didn’t see the harm. Wherever Nolan lived, whatever his life before tonight had been, it was shared in part with Noriko and no harm had befallen him yet. Her quarrel tonight had been with me, but I still couldn’t figure out why she would attempt to kill me.
Nolan followed Noriko out onto the street, but his gaze was all for me as they walked away. Brigit came to stand next to me, and we watched the pair retreat into the night. She licked her lips, hoping for any forgotten traces of blood and finding none.
“Who was she talking about?” Brigit asked.
“Beats the hell out of me. ”
During our westward walk to Chelsea, I scolded Brigit voraciously about the etiquette of eating the unwilling.
“I told you to spook him, I didn’t tell you to feed off him!”
“But I did spook him,” she protested.
“You almost broke him. ”
Brigit shrugged, and I found it disconcerting how easily she had adapted to the vampire mentality. Maybe there was something in the blood that made it easy to ignore the well-being of humans, or maybe it was something specific to her maker’s line. That I shared a dark and bloody history with Brigit’s sire wasn’t a secret. He’d turned her into a vampire to goad me into fighting him, which I didn’t view as fair play.
At the time Brigit had been inconsolable about the loss of her mortality. Now, only a few short months later, she had begun to conform to the vampire way of life. She was still new, and as such was still receiving her blood primarily from Calliope like I did. But in spite of her overzealousness tonight, she had proven she might be ready to feed on live humans.
We parted ways for the night, but not without a few more curses on my part about her toeing the line too closely. If I was going to be her warden, I wanted to be just as irritating and pushy with her as Holden had been with me.
Holden.
I continued to walk north to Hell’s Kitchen, the night air as warm as a lover’s breath whispering dirty little secrets to me in the swell of each breeze. I closed my eyes, willing myself to fall into the dreamlike state where he could find me. I walked without seeing, guided by memory. He did not come to me in a dream.
I opened my eyes when I felt him physically.
