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Loch paid the bartender, and all but sprinted out of The Blind Horseman.
I followed behind him, gathering power in case he decided to make a break for it. I’d won answers fair and square, and there was no way I was going to let him run out on them, damn it.
“Vampires have been coming through town,” I prompted when we were out of earshot of the tavern. “I want to know where they are. Oleander is sure you’d know where to look.”
Loch’s eyes flicked around the street. He shifted his weight as if he were preparing to run. “Why you need to find them? Two faerie students like you shouldn’t be gettin’ mixed up in vampire business. Let the bloodsuckers an’ witches fight it out amongst themselves. This don’t have anythin’ to do with us. It never did.”
“But if the vampires and witches start fighting, who suffers?” I asked, tone flat. “In the end, it’s you, and everyone like you. They won’t think twice about stomping the entire town out if you’re in the way.” We were quiet for a few seconds and I could tell my point had sunk in. “Now, can you tell us where to look?”
Loch sighed. “A bet is a bet an’ I always pay my debts. Don’t blame me if things don’t turn out the way you expect.”
“Let us worry about that,” Oleander said.
Loch sighed again before looking around. “Fine, but it’s your necks, not mine. Follow me.”
***
“The last time I saw them, they were gathering here,” Loch said.
He pointed toward the last building in the row. It was small, with a thatched roof like all the others in the small town. Its wide shop windows were full of clocks. Small, dainty pocket watches nestled on shelves, crystal wristwatches, and cuckoo clocks stacked to the ceiling. Grandfather clocks lined the walls further in. The fire inside the mantle had dwindled down to embers, giving the light an eerie, flickering quality.
“A clock shop? That seems... odd, don’t you think?” I asked Oleander.
“Not if you’re looking to disguise the sound of something suspicious,” Loch said grimly. “Just set the alarms to chime any time you want to have a meetin’. No one comes near the place. Too bloody annoyin’. I only know it’s a vampire hideout because the mail never gets taken in until after dark.”
I shivered. Mother had a grandfather clock in her room, and the chime was enough to drown even one voice. That many clocks could blot out the screams of a dozen screaming faeries if need be.
“This is as far as I take you. The deal was I’d tell you where to find the vampires, not wander in an’ make myself a meal.”
“Fair enough,” I muttered. “We’ve got it from here.”
I dug into my pocket and brought out the fifty Wanda had given me for emergency purchases at the start of term. Loch had earned it, in my opinion. And if this went badly... well, it wasn’t like I’d need it, anyway.
Loch snatched it from my fingers and then started speed walking away from us like he thought we’d change our minds and want our money back. I wished I could blame him for the reaction, but I didn’t want to go waltzing into the vampire den either. But if Oleander and I waited for backup, the vampires could pack up their prisoners and retreat to Location A, which was presumably in the next town over. That meant we needed to go in and take a look around. If Shasta was still alive, we’d free her, and I’d leapfrog us all back to my room in the castle.
“Shall we?” Oleander asked, sounding as grim as I felt.
“No time like the present.”
Oleander and I moved into the shadows beside the building, walking slowly to avoid notice. For the first time in my life, I found myself wishing for the inky dark hair every other witch sported. The flame brightness of my hair was like an eye-catching flare in the darkness. Thankfully, no one moved to the window to track our progress. The sounds of drunken men wandering the streets were a distant, echoing thing. The ticking clocks inside the shop scraped along my frayed nerves, making me jerk at every metronomic sound. I was surprised I could hear anything over the thud of my heart and the roar of blood in my ears.
The back door was locked, but when Oleander and I tried the cellar doors, they creaked open, revealing a set of stone steps that led down into the darkness. I pulled a small, handheld flashlight from the pocket of Oleander’s coat as we descended them, shining the beam around the interior. It came to a quivering halt when it landed on a huddled shape on the floor.
Shasta was even smaller than her picture led me to believe. She had curly blonde hair and green skin like Oleander. Her eyes were almost comically large, and her pink, bow-shaped lips were pinched tight with pain as she strained her chains. The simple white dress she wore was soaked in blood. In fact, blood was everywhere. It was on her hands, smeared across her face, on the walls, and pooling beneath a body not far from where she lay.
She cringed away from the light when it swept over her, raising a shackled wrist to shield her eyes, baring her sharp fangs at us with a hiss. The other shape didn’t move. Judging by the smell and the mottled skin, the person was dead, most likely at Shasta’s hands.
“Hexes and hoarfrost,” Oleander moaned. “Those crazy bastards actually managed it. They turned her.”
“Quiet,” I snapped, clamping a hand over his mouth as we moved slowly back up the stairs. “Just let me take a look around, and I’ll be able to jump back here when we’re better prepared. Now that I know the location, we can come back with keys and weapons and… hell, whatever we need to get the job done. But whatever happens, we don’t want to get caught down here by ourselves.”
Oleander shuddered but didn’t try to free himself from my grasp. Warm, salty tears splashed onto my hand as he stared down at his cousin. This had to be his worst nightmare. Shasta wasn’t just dead; she’d been turned into a bloodsucker without her consent and forced to murder an innocent.
I scanned the room, drinking in every detail. The dirt floor and the bodies on it. The shelves were full of clock parts, the spare manacles, every speck of blood. But mostly, I examined Shasta, committing her to memory. I was sure if I just memorized her face, I could follow her location, no matter how far away they dragged her.
I released Oleander a moment later, letting out a shaky breath. “Okay, I think I’ve got it. We’ll come back when we have Rook and Morgana. Give me a second, and we’ll—”
Something moved in the darkness beyond Shasta, and I froze. A moment later a pair of shiny dress shoes stepped over Shasta’s prone form. The man wearing them was dressed in his usual black attire, which seemed all the more sinister in this shadowy cellar. His skin shone alabaster in the flashlight’s beam, and both his fangs and the ruby stud in his ear reflected the light back at us.
