know ’bout the festival? Where’re you from?”
I smiled. “Portland.”
She smiled back, and we talked all the way to a run-down mini-mart. Philip glanced back at me once. He went inside and came out with a case of Henry Weinhard’s Ale that must have cost twice what Culker gave him. Didn’t this situation seem unusual to any of them?
“Awesome,” Scott said. “My car’s two blocks south.”
Becky kept moving closer to Philip. I’m sure he noticed.
We all piled into a rusted Buick Skylark with cigarette butts falling out of its ashtray. We ended up driving to Capitol Hill, but Scott spent twenty minutes trying to find a place to park.
Piles of dirt and garbage had been plowed to the sides of the road. One decrepit apartment building melted right into the next one. Every available parking space seemed filled with a dented Volkswagen Golf. Babies cried through open windows, and some guy down the block kept yelling, “You bitch!” over and over again.
I wanted to go home, but we didn’t have one.
Scott finally managed to squeeze the Skylark between two cars, and everybody climbed out. I’d figured out by then that Becky’s parents didn’t live in a house.
“We can’t be too loud,” she said. “The guys below us are crack dealers. One of them gets mad easy.”
Charming.
Something about her apartment’s interior touched more sorrow than its outside. Small arrangements of dried flowers sat on paint-splattered tables. An old mattress was covered by a hand-stitched quilt. Cheap lace curtains blew out from chipped windowpanes. Someone cared about this place enough to try to make it a home.
Culker broke open a Henry’s. “We should’ve bought some chips or M&M’s.”
“Order a pizza,” Philip said. “Isn’t that what you Americans do?”
“Can’t, I’m almost broke.”
“I’ll pay.”
Could they possibly be this blind? Jet sat alone. What was she thinking? It’s funny how Wade had given me a different perspective of mortals. On impulse, I reached out and touched her mind—as I would have with Wade—not expecting to get through. Psychic pictures come to us only when feeding or when another vampire dies. But to my surprise, her immediate thoughts flowed into me as though she were speaking.
Philip was the most perfect thing she’d ever seen, and she usually didn’t go for white guys. But what was he into? Why was he here? If he was looking for some kind of threesome, he’d pick Becky. That was obvious. Not that Jet cared. Her baby boy was with a sitter, and she ought to get back soon, anyway. His ears were bothering him, and she’d need to take him to the doctor tomorrow.
I pulled out, reeling internally. How long had that taken? Had she felt me? Only seconds seemed to have passed, and she continued watching Philip with the same cautious curiosity. She had a little boy? I wanted to know more but didn’t know how to deal with the moment’s revelation.
Was I more like Wade than I realized?
Philip caught my attention suddenly by sitting down next to Becky and touching her bare thigh. I hadn’t seen him touch anyone yet, and the movement of his hand was slow, light, gentle. That’s why he hadn’t grabbed my hand in the carnival. Touching was only for victims.
The room fell silent as he leaned down and kissed her. Everyone—including me—watched the gradual movement of his open mouth as he licked her lips and face. His pale hand moved up her side, feather touch, like a concerned lover. Nobody else moved.
What was he doing? This didn’t make sense. If he wanted to lure her away from her friends, he should have just asked. She’d have followed him off a cliff.
The red polyester couch they sat on showed huge gaping holes of foam rubber. Becky’s breathing quickened when he moved to her neck. Completely lost in his gift, she tried to put her fingertips on his face. The scene changed.
Click.
He ripped out a chunk of her throat before I could blink—right in front of her friends. Instead of falling into a hazy state of slow motion, the world rushed to a hundred miles an hour. Scott started screaming as blood shot out of her jugular and covered his T-shirt. Philip jumped over the back of the couch and landed on top of him.
“No way, man,” Culker kept repeating from the center of the room. “No way.”
Philip stopped Scott’s screaming by flipping him onto his stomach and breaking his neck with a loud crack. Then he smiled up at Culker.
Until that point, I’d been too