“You were followed.”
Or she brought someone, says a voice in his head. But she wouldn’t. The rules are clear, and neither one of them has ever crossed the lines.
“You’re right,” says Shea, and her voice has gone thin. “Dancing sounds perfect.”
She pivots on a dime, making her way toward a wide-open door on the lower level. His hand snaps out and he captures her by the elbow, halting her escape.
“Not yet.”
His eyes remain trained on the woods. He’d been sure—so sure—that something in the trees had been staring back at him just then. But the heartbeat is gone. He’s not worried. Whoever it is, the Gravewood will take care of them. Slowly, he slides his gaze toward Shea. The slow-healing arch of his most recent bite peeks out from beneath her sleeve. His hunger salivates inside him. He chokes it down.
“You’re shaking.”
“It’s cold,” she lies. Her ears are crimson.
He releases her, lifting his chin toward the door. “After you, then.”
The lower level of Mercy Lodge is thronged in bodies. Lysander and Shea enter through the pool room, enveloped at once in the thump of bass and the smack of chlorine. The air is thick and warm. It gathers in drips along the stone as they weave out into the exterior hall, past the old pinball arcade and through the crowded salon. As usual, some of tonight’s attendees are Mercy, some aren’t. The smell of blood stings the air, freely given. Mercy hopefuls, paying due, or else blood bunnies, offering up a vein.
He doesn’t like it down here. He can’t tolerate the lights, the crowd, the noise. He allows it because it keeps his inferiors happy, and he needs them happy. Needs them loyal. Needs them true. Still, it was better outside, when it was just the two of them.
Just the two of them, and the watcher in the woods.
With his thoughts on the Gravewood, he veers out into the smoke-stung hall. Shea tails after him, sticking close. The hallway is low and thin, the stone archway pressing low as a dungeon. Shea ducks in nearer as they head up the stairs and back out into the great hall, veering toward the ballroom.
Here, the walls are lined in vast Grecian columns. The tables have been pushed out to the sides, chairs stacked alongside them. A set of wide double doors hang open, letting the night air slip in off the veranda. Leaves scuttle across the carpet, nudged on by the wind. Once, the room was used for weddings. Now it sits empty. A husk, like everything else in the Gravewood.
“You liar,” Shea accuses him the moment they’re alone. “You didn’t even want to dance.”
“I did.” He makes a show of looking all around. “I do. A ballroom is the perfect place.”
“We can’t even hear the music.”
It isn’t true—he can hear it just fine. A heavy rock song thuds in the air like a heartbeat. Directly in front of him, Shea’s nervousness hasn’t gone away. She toys with the edge of her sleeve, the scabbed-over mark of an incisor peeking out at him. That hard whip of hunger lashes him anew. He does what he can to ignore it.
“Something happened today,” he says. “You’re upset.”
She blinks up at him, surprised. This isn’t a part of their game. They don’t ask personal questions. They don’tdig. It’s a business transaction, this thing between them. Quid pro quo. Something for something. They’re not supposed to think of each other after. In the daylight.
He thinks about Shea Parker all the time.
“What do you care?” she asks, wary.
“You’re no fun when you’re distracted.”
“And you’re not nice when you’re hungry.”
He regards her through a watery slant of moonlight. She stares back, her toes turned in. Off in the distance, the music stops. The crowd jeers. The sound is muted, punched through by the wind.
When they speak, they do so at the same time.
“Dance with me—”
“You should feed.”
An abrupt silence follows, interrupted only by the far-off call of an owl. He feels, curiously, as if he’s been pierced with a dart. The sting sets in as Shea presses on, her face all the way red.
“It’s just that we’re going to waste hours beating around the bush like this.”
