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Janet’s lips turn down in false sympathy. “Oh, baby girl. You really have no idea, do you?”
“No idea about what? If you have something to say, say it, Janet. I really do have a lunch date and I’m already late.”
“Your sister is playing you like a violin.” Janet becomes a blur and suddenly her face is inches away from mine as she whispers, “You and Darcy both, but I won’t let her win, and I won’t let you trap the man I love. Put that spell back where you found it, stay far away from Darcy until after Annie’s wedding, and promise you’ll never lay so much as one grubby little finger on him again, and I’ll let you live. How’s that for an offer you can’t refuse?”
“My sister doesn’t have a duplicitous bone in her body,” I say, “And I’m taking this card to frame as an art piece for the house. That’s it. I didn’t even realize it was a spell,” I fib, “and I don’t know what to do with it now that I do. I have zero experience using my powers, you know that.”
Her eyes glitter and I fight the urge to shrink away as she bends her head even closer to mine. “All right. If you insist on lying, we’ll do this a different way. Stay away from Darcy and do your best to convince him to stay away from you. Make him believe you couldn’t care less about him, or I’ll make sure neither of us ever touch him again.”
I blink faster. “What? Are you—”
“Threatening to stake him in his sleep? Yes, Blaire. I am. I love him too much to see him locked in a miserable relationship with a powerless witch. And if I can’t have him…”
She trails off with a casual shrug of her own that chills my blood another degree.
“He’ll kill you before you take two steps into his bedroom,” I say as I shift my weight into my heels, putting a few inches of distance between us as I prepare to run. “And even if you pull it off, you’ll be a dead woman. The Blackmores will know it’s you and destroy you for it.”
She shrugs again. “Maybe. Maybe not. But if I can’t get away in time, I’ve had a good run. I’m a hundred and fifty years old, baby girl, and I’ve never felt the way I feel about Darcy. We belong together. He’s my reason for sticking around for another hundred and fifty years, and I won’t let you take that away from me.”
I nod, thoughts racing as I try to think of a way to get her off my back long enough to zip over to the Blackmore estate and warn Darcy. Assuming I can get out of these catacombs and into the sun, it shouldn’t be that hard to manage. Janet won’t be able to leave the library until sundown. I’ll have plenty of time to reach Darcy and alert him to the danger from his ex.
I’m about to promise Janet that I’ll keep my distance—and then do the exact opposite—when she points a finger at my face and chuckles. “Nope, don’t lie. I told you; you’re bad at it. I can smell it on you before you open your mouth.” She drags in a deep breath, her lashes fluttering as she exhales. “But you still smell fucking delicious. If you give me no other choice, it won’t be a hardship to drain you dry.”
But she doesn’t lunge for my neck, and my gut insists she isn’t going to bite me.
If she were going to kill me, she would have done it already instead of wasting time threatening Darcy.
After all, we’re alone down here. People might suspect she’s the one who drained me, but there won’t be any witnesses or any way to prove she was the one who committed the murder. There are three other vampire clans in Nightfall, as well as clanless vamps living in the campground at the edge of town. Any one of them could have decided to come hang out in the library’s catacombs and feed on humans dumb enough to break and enter on a Sunday morning.
No matter how scary her skin-melting glare, my gut insists there’s no reason to be afraid. At least not that she’s going to rip my throat out here in the stacks.
Something Darcy said last night pops into my head, and I blurt out, “You’re forbidden from feeding on live donors. That’s not just an honor system thing, is it? Darcy did something to you, something to make sure you can’t bite me, even if you want to.”
Her expression darkens and her thin veneer of humanity falls away. For the first time I get a glimpse at the core of her cold, empty heart. She’s not just a predator or a monster, she’s a sociopath, and I would be stupid to judge her by the standards of anything resembling human decency.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t kill you if I want to,” she says, lifting her hands to reveal clawed fingers, topped by long, sharp nails. “I have other weapons at my disposal. Do what you’re told, little witch, or you and everyone you love will regret it. This is your last chance.”
Again, my gut insists she’s lying, but antagonizing her further could be dangerous. And I really do need to get out of here before Annie starts to worry.
I nod as I back away, lifting my hands in surrender. “Truce, okay?” I say, deciding a little dose of the truth can’t hurt. Janet is banned from Blackmore lands, so she won’t be carrying tales to Annie or Colin or any of the other clan members. And maybe hearing Darcy isn’t interested will be enough to convince her to leave the people I love alone. “You’re right, I do have a thing for Darcy. But he doesn’t have a thing for me. He told me last night. He isn’t in a place to have feelings for anyone and hooking up with a human isn’t on his radar. He said it would be too painful to watch someone he loved die again.”
Janet’s already pale face drains of the last of its color, leaving her lips so blanched they’re nearly blue. “He said that to you? He… He talked about his feelings like that?”
I nod and gradually speed my steps away from her, the hairs at the back of my neck once again standing at attention, warning that truth time with Janet wasn’t a good idea. “Yeah. He made it perfectly clear that he’s not into me.”
Her eyes blaze. “Stupid. You’re really that stupid. You have no idea how men work, do you?” she asks, her volume rising as she adds with a hysterical laugh, “He basically confessed he’s falling in love with you, you idiot. With you, a classless, uncultured, filthy little—”
“I shower daily, okay?” I cut in, hoping to distract her until I can spot the chalk mark that will tell me which way to run. “I might be classless and uncultured but lay off the grubby and dirty shit.”
“He could have had me,” she screeches. “Me!”
Her last shout is so piercing that I flinch, my eyes squeezing shut as my hands fly to cover my ears. When I open them again, Janet has poofed into her bat form and is flapping toward my face.
Pulse leaping, I cut to the left, sprinting away from the sound of flapping wings and the menacing chitters and screeches emerging from Bat Janet. After a few seconds, I realize I’m running away from the stairs and need to turn around, but every aisle leading off this spoke of the wheel is pitch black and some primal part of me refuses to race into the darkness with a vampire hot on my heels.
I’m about to grind to a stop, squat down, and hope Janet flies over my head, giving me time and opportunity to charge back the way I came, when I spot a soft red glow in the distance at the end of the aisle. A beat later, my eyes pull a very ordinary, modern “Exit” sign into focus.
Heart racing with hope this time, I run faster, comforted by the sound of Janet’s screeches growing fainter behind me. I’m pretty sure a real bat could easily outpace a human, even one running as fast as she can, but Janet isn’t a real bat and she’s been through a lot in the past twelve hours. She also probably hasn’t fed recently, since she was kicked out of the party pretty early in the evening.
