Not your boyfriend.
He would tell me when.
I bring you back.
My son lives." "What does he want me for?" I asked, while still absorbing that Blackwood had known when I was alone.
I couldn't believe someone could have been following me--even if I hadn't detected them, there was still Adam and Samuel.
He shook his head.
"Don't know." He reached out and grabbed my wrist.
"I have to take you now." "Fine," I said, and my heart rate doubled.
Even now, I thought with a quick glance at the gate and the ten-foot stone walls.
Even now I could break away and run.
But there was Chad.
"Mercy," he said, forcing his voice.
"One more thing.
He wanted me to tell you about Chad.
So you would come." Just because you knew it was a trap didn't mean you could stay out if the bait was good enough.
With a ragged sigh, I decided that one deaf boy with the courage to face down a ghost should inspire me to a tenth of his courage.
My course laid out, I took a good look at the geography of Blackwood's trap for me.
It was dark, but I can see in the dark.
Blackwood's house was smaller than Adam`s, smaller even than Amber's, though it was meticulously crafted out of warm-colored stone.
The grounds encompassed maybe five or six acres of what had once been a garden of roses.
But it had been a few years since any gardener had touched these.
He would have another house, I thought.
One suitably grand with a professional garden and lawn service that kept it beautiful.
There he would receive his business guests.
This place, with its neglected and overgrown gardens, was his home.
What did it tell me about him? Other than that he liked quality over size and preferred privacy to beauty or order.
The walls surrounding the grounds were older than the house, made of quarried stone and hand laid without mortar.
The gate was wrought iron and ornate.
His house wasn't really small--it just looked undersized for the presentation it was given.
Doubtless the house it had replaced had been huge and better suited to the property, if not to the vampire.