compass, even with a gun to my head. That was a Hail Mary on my part, but it sucked him in.”
“I also figure if the light bombs hadn’t obliterated him, Nerezza would have. He should be glad he’s dead.”
“He’s not.” Feet bare, hair bundled up, and deathly pale, Sasha walked toward them with a sketchbook.
“Hey, hey.” Sawyer shoved the glass at Riley, pushed up fast enough to make his own head spin. But he hurried to Sasha, took her arm. “You should sit down.”
“Yes, I should. We should all sit down. Bran and Doyle went to the village for supplies. I wish they’d come back. If I’d seen . . . I wish they’d come back.”
“They won’t be much longer.” On her feet now, Riley walked from sun to shade as Sawyer nudged Sasha into a chair under the pergola.
“Where’s Annika?”
“She’s— I think she’s finishing the laundry. She loves doing laundry.”
“I’ll get her.”
“No, sit.” Riley pointed at a chair. “I’ll get her. Water, alcohol, juice?” she asked Sasha.
“Water, just water. Thanks.”
“You said Malmon’s not dead,” Sawyer began, “but—”
“He’s not. He’s alive. What he is now lives.”
“I don’t— Just get your bearings again. Let me go get that water for you.”
“No, let’s just sit here a minute. It’s overwhelming when it comes like that.”
“Headache? You need some aspirin—or, shit, that stuff Bran has for you.”
“No, no headache.” But she pulled pins out of her hair as if even the loose knot squeezed too tight. “It’s like opening a window, expecting a nice breeze, and having a tempest blow in. It just takes a minute to settle down again.”
“And Bran’s not here to help you settle.”
“You are. You’re steady, Sawyer. It’s your compassion. You have so much of it.”
Annika raced out of the house well ahead of Riley. “I can run to the village, very fast, and find Bran.”
“No, he’ll be back soon.”
Riley set down a large bottle of water, opened it, then poured some into a glass. “Hydrate, level off. We’re all fine here, and so are Bran and Doyle. You’d know if they weren’t.”
“Yes, you’re right. I just panicked for a minute.” Slowly, she sipped water. “I was painting. It felt so good, just so good to paint. Not to worry about anything for just a single day. I wanted to paint the hills, and the green, the way the light washes over the land. Not the sea this time. I prepped the canvas. I’d done some sketches before, and I set them out, organized my tools. I started to mix paints.”
She paused, looked down at the smear of sage green on her thumb.
“Then I turned away from the canvas, picked up my sketchbook. That wind,” she said to Sawyer. “It was blowing through me, so fast and fierce. I could barely catch my breath.
“I started to sketch.”
Setting the water aside, she opened the sketchbook to the first page she’d used.
“Malmon. In black tie,” Riley observed. “And Nerezza. But that doesn’t look like the room you saw them in before.”
“No, I think this is before. I think this is his house, in London. She went to him. And here.” Quickly, Sasha turned the page. “He went to her, and it really began. This is a kind of progression. Flashes, there were flashes of them. I could barely keep up.”
She turned the next page to a series of sketches.
“His arms,” Annika noted. “They have changed.”
“You see how the veins are so prominent. And they pulsed. And here.” With a fingertip, Sasha traced along the shoulder of one of the sketches.
“It looks like . . . scales.” Riley leaned closer. “A patch right there, of scales.”
“The light burns his eyes. The whites turned a pale, sickly yellow. And I know it’s subtle, but can you see the change?”
“The shape of his eyes,” Sawyer confirmed. “Longer.”
“He starts to wear dark glasses, all the time. Even in sleep. And every night he goes to her, and she puts more of this into him. She puts blood in wine, little by little, until she’s putting wine in the blood. He drinks. He drinks,” she repeated as she turned the page. “She rules him now. Some of the blood is hers, so she rules him now. My pet.”
Sawyer saw Bran come out, put his finger to his lips.
“He’s her creature, not fully changed, but hers. Through him she’ll have what she wants, what belongs to her. Perhaps she’ll keep him when it’s done. My pet. Until he no longer amuses her.”