“It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“I love you,” I told her, as I always would.
“I love you,” she answered, as she always did.
The darkness pulled away as my eyes finally adjusted.
Lula sat above me. There were more cuts on her face, a bruise across her temple. She looked pale and haggard. She was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“I told you I was bright,” Abbi said from behind Lu.
Abbi looked much older, her mouth set in a grim line, her gaze hard and angry. Hado behind her was a massive black cat, prowling, gold eyes burning like flames in the night.
“You weren’t supposed to tie me to Rhianna,” Abbi said. “I could have been here faster. I could have found you faster and burned all the vampires faster.”
I tried to sit, but the world spun. Lu pressed on my chest. I gave up and stayed where I was.
“I knew you’d find us,” I told Abbi. “Because you are magic like that.”
She tipped her head, looking at me through narrowed eyes. “Because we’re family.”
Then there were more hands, as Franny helped me sit. “Here now,” she said, passing me a bottle of water. “Drink slowly.”
Lula stood with her own bottle of water and drank it while keeping an eye on Hatcher.
The hunter moved from body to body, studying their faces, then gathering hair from some of them.
I polished off the water and, ignoring the warning look from Franny, pushed up to my feet. My head hurt, and I’d be feeling aches and pains for days, but I could walk.
“Where are Variance and Rhianna?” I asked Franny.
“I took them home for medical attention. I’m here to take you all back.”
“No one leaves until I get my token,” Hatcher said.
He came closer, still in the shape of the hunter we’d first met. I didn’t know much about ghouls, but he looked just as dirty, tired, and bruised as the rest of us.
“Where’s the book?” Abbi asked.
“Where’s my token?” The hunter looked at her, then at Lula and me.
Abbi opened her palm. In it was a small coin, carved symbols around its edge, and in the center, what looked like a human standing by a fire.
“You don’t want to lie to me,” Abbi said clearly. “I can kill you.”
The hunter met her eyes. He’d just witnessed the power she had called upon to kill the vampires. He had to know she could absolutely back up that threat.
“I buried it,” he said, addressing her, then me and Lula in turn. “In Adrian. The midpoint of the Route. There’s a windmill there. It’s beneath it.”
That was about fifty miles west of here. There were a lot of windmills there. I couldn’t believe it was that close.
“How do we know that’s true?” I asked.
“We’ll keep the token until we have the book,” Lula said.
“That’s not what we agreed on,” he argued.
“It’s what we’re doing,” I said. “We’ll meet you at the windmill in Adrian tomorrow night. Before sunset.”
