had blood on his shirt, and he could feel smears on his mouth. Thinking more clearly now that he’d fed, he decided to go to his own chamber upstairs and clean himself up. But as he walked toward the doors, the air in front of him shimmered, and Mary suddenly appeared, transparent magenta hair glowing in the lamplight.
“I found them,” she gasped, again making unsettling sounds as if she could still breathe. Sometimes, he wondered if she knew she was dead.
“They’re in Portland,” she rushed on, “staying in some old church.”
She seemed about to say more when she saw the blood on his face and shirt, and she stopped.
Julian could feel some of his uncertainty draining away. Eleisha was still on another continent.
Philip led the way off the public Streetcar and stepped down onto Eleventh and Couch. He made sure Eleisha was following, and then he started walking toward Twelfth Street, as earlier this evening, Eleisha had mentioned going to the Whole Foods store parking lot.
He was sick of hunting in parking lots.
He was sick of feeding in cars.
He was sick of drinking from wrists and leaving victims alive. He used to revel in hunting. Now the whole ordeal felt foreign and unnatural and unsatisfying.
But he could not speak such thoughts to Eleisha.
If he did, she might not forgive him.
And he would rather feed from wrists and alter petty mortal memories for eternity than lose Eleisha.
That was the reason he’d come here, following her on this foolish quest to buy a “safe house,” after which she would locate this coiled serpent who’d been writing to her, seducing her with lies. Julian was behind this. He had to be. Who else knew Maggie’s home address? Who else knew Eleisha’s name and could connect those elements? No, Julian was leading Eleisha into a trap, and since Philip couldn’t stop her from rushing down this path, he was forced to follow and protect her.
Five nights had passed since she’d written to Rose from Portland, and now they were stuck in a waiting period, uncertain what the next step would be.
Eleisha fell into step beside him. Tonight, her hair hung loose, and she wore a white tank top over a chocolate brown broom-stick skirt. He sometimes teased her and called the latter a “hippie skirt,” but he liked the way it flowed when she walked.
“This is my favorite part of the city,” she said. “I watched it develop over the years.”
Apparently—and he still found this hard to believe—she had lived in the same house here with doddering, decrepit William from 1912 to 2008. How was that possible? He would never have submitted to such an existence. To make matters worse, she seemed to miss her old life. He did not understand her.
But that didn’t matter. She made him feel things he’d never experienced, things he couldn’t name. She fed him something he never even knew he was hungry for.
And tonight, he had more reason to be pleased with her.
He liked his new hair.
True to her word, Eleisha had found a stylist named Ricardo, so flaming he might have set off the ceiling sprinklers. He tutted and tutted over Philip’s “magnificent” hair and swore he wouldn’t touch it with a pair of scissors. But in the end, he’d charged three hundred dollars for the haircut, and Philip now looked much more modern . . . like the photo of Viggo Mortensen. He was very pleased.
“Do you like my hair?” he asked.
Eleisha tilted her head back and rolled her eyes. “Yes, Philip. I’ve told you over and over: I like your hair. Women will swoon at your feet. Now focus on hunting. You need to control the situation better this time.”
She was heading for the parking garage.
He stopped.
“Can we not try something different?” he asked. “Are you not bored with cars?”
For nearly two hundred years, his only entertainment had been hunting in every possible variety of ways, and as powerful as his feelings were for Eleisha, she had managed to make it a tedious chore.
She turned around and frowned in confusion. “Well, we can’t leave an unconscious person in the street. They might get robbed . . . or worse.”
How could she possibly be such a sheep?
An idea struck him, something to make this more fun. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? “You want me to try harder . . . to do this without your help, no? Then we make it a game.”
“A game?”
“Yes, I will think of someplace clever—difficult—to lure a mortal. I