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He stared at me.
Okay, this was going to be worse than pulling teeth.
“Holden, I—”
“We can talk about it later. Can we find Sutherland and get out of here, please?”
He said later, not never. I’d take what I could get.
No one came to meet us in the stairwell, touting a long-untouched rifle or a baseball bat. Apparently everyone in the city had come to the general consensus they should either flee or hide, because no one was getting in our way. When we knocked on Sutherland’s door, it took him a few minutes to answer, and in that time Holden and I stood awkwardly next to each other in the hall, neither of us saying a word.
When the door opened, my father—forever seventeen—blinked out at us. He was wearing Star Wars pajama bottoms and a rumpled black Henley shirt. His blond hair, something he’d passed on to me, was sticking up in the back like he’d just rolled out of bed.
“Hello,” he greeted, as if this were a perfectly normal social call.
“Dad, you need to get changed and come with us.” He could have stayed in his pajamas if he wanted to. It wasn’t like he’d be cold outside. But I had to draw the line at letting him wander around barefoot. Only Sig could get away with doing that, and even he tended to put shoes on when he was on the street.
“Are we going somewhere? Did you bring your mother with you?”
My heart clenched. Right before I’d killed Mercy, I’d called Sutherland and put him on speakerphone for her. It was a low blow on my part, meant to catch her off-guard, and I hadn’t taken time to consider the impact it might have on my dad. He was already unstable. What would happen when I admitted to him she was dead?
And I’d killed her?
Perhaps now wasn’t the best moment for that particular revelation.
“No, she’s not here.”
“Where is she?” He wasn’t going to make this easy on me, was he?
“She’s in Louisiana.” Her head was, anyway.
“That’s too bad.” Turning his back to us, Sutherland walked into his apartment. I nodded Holden forward, and we both followed, shutting the door behind us.
The gloom inside was total. Sutherland hadn’t bothered to light an emergency lamp or find candles, since being a vampire meant he didn’t need any light to see by. When he emerged again from the bedroom, he’d changed his pajama bottoms for a pair of jeans and some beat-up brown boots. His hair was s
till an uncombed mess, but I didn’t bother to point it out. He was the supposed parent here, not me.
“I was watching Friends, but the TV stopped working. I waited an hour, and it still wasn’t working. So I got bored and lay down,” he explained.
“That was good, you did the smart thing.”
“I was going to go ask my neighbor if their TV was working, but I thought you’d get mad.”
I really was the adult here.
“I would have. You were right to stay here.”
“Where are we going?”
“Some friends and I are looking for someone, and we think you might be able to help.”
Holden snorted, not even trying to suppress the noise.
Whatever else he might think about my father, Sutherland was a vampire. If we could use Clementine and Reggie for help, we could certainly use Sutherland. One willing vampire was as good as the next.
“I can help?” Sutherland seemed eager to lend a hand. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but when he was with the western council he was an active warden. They would send him on runs and make him do menial tasks for them. Since coming to New York, he’d been forced to sit in an apartment and watch dated DVD box sets. I hadn’t considered he might want to be useful, because I’d spent so much of my time trying to protect him.
“Yes, you’ll be very helpful.”
