Hands touch my face ever so gently. I open my eyes, and Maurice is so close I could count every eyelash should I want to.
“Still with me?”
“You—This was a bad plan.”
“Not my best,” Maurice agrees, his laugh the faintest puff of breath. “We’re lucky they got here.” He frowns, looking back at Vlad. “Howdidyou get here?”
As if on cue, a voice calls from the hall. “Vlad? Asher? I can come in now, right?”
I look back to see another vampire standing in the doorway to the house. He’s a young man, wearing a sunshine yellow shirt open to his midriff, long white shorts, and boat shoes. Vlad moves past us quickly, crowding him up against the wall.
“Itoldyou to wait outside until it was safe.”
“It is safe,” the new vampire—I assume this is Grant—says, just as Asher comes down from upstairs.
“He’s not wrong,” Asher says.
Maurice comes around me to stand in the hall as well, though he keeps in contact the entire time. “You tracked the fae?” he asks.
Grant snorts, then laughs when Maurice looks at him. “No. Your phone. Just took us a minute to get through the wards without him noticing.”
“My phone?”
“You don’t have it? It’s somewhere here then. I set it up so we could track it before you left. Remember? I thought you might get in trouble and not bother giving us a ring.”
“You…” Maurice’s brow furrows. “You can do that?”
“All your phones are set up to do that,” Grant says.
Asher scowls now. Spatters of blood colour his cheeks and throat. “Mine too?”
“Yep.”
“Turn it off.”
“Tell you what,” Grant says with a cheeky grin, “when you work out how to do it yourself,youcan turn it off.”
“Grant,” Vlad says, his tone a warning, but Grant ignores him. His gaze is distant, face turned in the direction of the kitchen.
“There are still fae here.”
Asher growls, but I shake my head.
“Cellar,” I say. Oh, everything hurts now, and I’mhungry, which is definitely a problem. “They’re chained up.”
“With iron,” Maurice says, though his concerned gaze is on me again. “Did any of you think to…?”
Asher looks at Grant, who nods and slips out of Vlad’s grasp, running out of the house. He returns a moment later with a bag of blood, which I take from him gratefully. I ignore the curious look he gives me, and Maurice lets out a little growl.
“Go help Asher get them out,” he says. “They might not be as scared of you.”
It’s true, and though Vlad grumbles, he does nothing more than watch as Grant and Asher disappear into the kitchen. I hear the cellar door open and the thud of their feet as they descend.
Maurice draws me into the living room and pushes me into a chair. Vlad stands between us and the open door, and Maurice drops to his knees before me, resting his hands on my thighs.
“Drink, Njáll,” he says. “We’ll keep you safe.”
I have no doubt about that—hewill keep me safe. I tear into the bag, drinking greedily, and it’s not enough to sate me, but it takes the edge off my hunger and I groan as the break in my arm finally heals.
