“I’m not sure.”
“What’s his name?”
“Agatha.”
Lamb’s eyebrow twitches. “Ah.”
I stop myself from saying,“It’s not like that.”
“What do they want from her?”
He’s going to find this out anyway, if he helps me—“She’s a magician.”
His hands drop between his knees, and his blue eyes are wide. “Talk about starcross’d lovers!”
“I’d rather not.”
Lamb rubs his chin. “So… your girlfriend is one of their Speaker guinea pigs.…”
“There are others?”
He shrugs. “Well, there must be.”
I feel sick to my stomach. I scoot to the edge of the sofa. “Lamb, please, I’m not asking you to get involved. Just point me in the right direction.”
“You wouldn’t get anywherenearthem,” he says. “They have guards, guns, archers.…”
“Just tell me what you know.”
“You’ll be killed, Bazza.”
“I’m not a precious antiquity, remember?”
“You are certainly not an antiquity.”
Suddenly—from one breath to the next—Lamb is sitting next to me on the sofa. Before I can even react, his lips are by my ear. I wait for him to bite me—can you be Turned twice?
“There’s something in the room,” he says, voice so low only a vampire sitting right next to him could pick it up. “Can you hear its heartbeat?”
I close my eyes. Can I? I hear my own heart, faint and always a few beats slow. I hear Lamb’s, a similar dirge. Ah… there. Icanhear it—and I recognize it.
“Simon,” I say, my eyes flying open.
In that moment, Lamb’s empty chair lifts up and slams down into the floor. One of the wooden legs seems to tear itself off and fly towards Lamb’s chest. His fangs are out. He grabs the leg midair and raises it like a club—
“No!” I shout, catching Lamb’s arm.
Just as the door to his flat flies off its hinges.
Bunce is standing there, with the Normal, holding out her purple gem.
“Hands in the air, bloodsucker, or I’ll burn this whole city to the ground.”
53
SHEPARD
The vampire holds the stake in the air, giving Penelope some thousand-year-old stink eye. She doesn’t budge. He drops it.
