I sigh and fish my dead mobile out of my pocket. “How much did you hear?”
Bunce takes the phone and plugs it into a charger. “Enough to write a book calledVampires of the West.”
“The last thing we heard was you ordering a strawberry milkshake,” Shepard offers. “Then you cut out.”
“We didnothear you ask about the Next Blood.…” Simon says, studying his miniature cheeseburger. He opens his mouth and shoves it in whole.
“I kept waiting for an opening,” I say. My extra teeth makeme sound like a 12-year-old with braces. I set the steak plate back down on the bed. “I wanted him to trust me.”
“Did he?” Bunce asks.
I feel like a fool. “No. He kept trying to get me to drink… someone. They treat this street like a twenty-four-hour buffet. And I kept saying,‘No, no, thank you’—well, you heard me. It felt exceedingly rude to say no to the bloodandthe alcohol. Everything started to get blurry. When we left the ice-cream shop, he grabbed a Normal and pulled us both into a shadow, demanding that I drink with him—it was a test, I think.”
Snow swallows fiercely. “He killed someone? Right in front of you?”
I meet his eyes. “No. He drank. And then he let the man go.”
“HeTurnedsomeone right in front of you?”
“I—” I look down at my lap.
“Oh, I doubt he Turned him,” Shepard says, smothering his chips in ketchup. “Vampireshateto Turn people. They either take a sip and let you go—or drain you dry and leave you dead.”
When Shepard looks up, we’re all staring at him. You could hear a gnome whisper.
“Which you already knew…” he says to me, “because youarea vampire.…”
Simon and Penelope turn back to me, speechless.
This is too much to digest. (This specific thing. Plus everything else. Plus two dozen tropical birds.) I shake my head. I shake it again. “I wouldn’t drink,” I say, picking up the thread. “I told him that I couldn’t. In public. But he didn’t believe me. He pinned me to the wall and demanded to know who I really was—what I wanted.”
“What did you say?” Bunce asks.
“I told him the truth.”
“Oh no,” she says—while Shephard is saying, “Good plan, always for the best.”
I rub my eyes. “I told him my first name, my real first name. And that I was looking for the Next Blood because they have my friend.”
“Not slick,” Bunce groans. “Not slick at all.”
“So, what’dhesay?” Simon asks.
“He told me to meet him at the Lotus of Siam. Tomorrow at two o’clock.”
SIMON
He’s sitting there on a black leather armchair. He’s sitting there in blue silk with red roses, shotgun scars shining on his pale chest. His hair is wet. His teeth are sharp. His feet are bare.
He used to be mine.
Maybe he still is. A little bit. Enough that I’m allowed to look at him.
But he’s less mine than he was three hours ago, that’s for bloody sure. He’s less mine every minute we spend in this town.
“Lotus of Siam,” Shepard says. “It sounds like a temple.”
“It might be code,” Baz says.
