“That doesn’t sound at all like a needle in a haystack,” I groused.
“The Moon Rabbit can find it,” Hatcher said.
We all stared at Abbi. Behind her, Hado crossed his arms over his chest. She frowned. “I think I can. But you have to give me a strand of your hair.”
The ghoul snarled, showing way too many sharp teeth for the little girl shape he was wearing.
“I see you, but I don’tknowyou, Hatcher. Without something of you, your real form, I don’t think I can find your token. Not fast enough.”
“We have an hour,” Lula said.
“Forty minutes,” Variance said.
“At the most,” Lula went on. “Give her your hair, or the agreement is off. We’ll find the girl, and get the vampire’s blood, and track down the book without you.”
He said something in a language I didn’t know, but he was not happy. Still, he plucked a hair from his head and held it out for Abbi.
It was thick and coiled and a deep, dark blue.
Abbi dropped it into her mortar and waved the pestle in a circle, staring into the bowl as if it held secrets of the universe. Hado put his hand on her shoulder, and the bowl flared a bright white-green. Abbi whispered to it, stirring the contents.
“You will get Dominick’s blood,” Variance said.
Lula nodded. “We will.” There was more she wasn’t saying. That she intended to kill the bastard as soon as we got that blood.
“Maybe Brogan can stab him,” Abbi suggested, still staring in the mortar. “Like he stabbed Atë.”
Heat from embarrassment, but also pride, burned beneath my skin as Variance and the ghoul stared at me with new consideration.
“Yeah,” I said, my hand dropping to the vampire knife at my side, my gaze on the ghoul alone. “I can stab the vampire.”
It was a promise I could stab other things too, like ghouls who had tried to shoot my wife.
“Oh, I can see the token now,” Abbi said. “It’s very pretty.”
The ghoul made a small sound. “Are we agreed, then?”
Lula nodded. “We are agreed.”
The ghoul’s mouth did something between a grimace and a smile.
“This way,” he said.
We jogged to keep up as he dashed across the dark field, the sounds of our bootsteps filling the still air.
“Where will Dominick be?” Lula asked Variance as we neared the house.
But it was not a house. No, we didn’t have that kind of luck. It was a mansion.
“Dining hall,” he said. “That’s what they call it, but it’s a throne room.”
“Where is Rhianna?” she asked.
The ghoul child pointed to the left. “She should be in the outbuildings.”
Variance growled and it made the hair at the back of my neck stand up.
“Captive,” Variance spit out.
