She looked as if she'd been somewhere between sixty and a hundred years old when she'd died--like Santa's wife, she was all rounded and sweet.
Quiet, that finger said.
Or maybe, just-- Don't let on you can see me.
Blackwood didn't see her, even though he had been using the other ghost as an errand boy.
I wondered what it meant.
She smelled like blood, too.
He put me in the cage next to the one that he had been keeping Chad and Corban in.
Presumably he didn't need to confine Amber anymore.
"This could have been so much more pleasant for you," he said.
The woman and her hushing finger were gone, so I gave my tongue free rein.
"Tell that to Amber." He smiled, showing fangs.
"She enjoyed it.
I'll give you one last chance.
Be cooperative, and I'll let you stay in the other room." Maybe I could get out through the roof of the other room.
But somehow I didn't think so.
The cage in the Marrok's house looks just like all the rest of the bedrooms.
The bars are set behind the drywall.
I leaned against the far side of my cage, the one that backed up to the cement outer wall.
"Tell me why you can't just order me around? Make me cooperate?" Like Corban.
He shrugged.
"You figure it out." He locked the door with a key and used the same key to open the oakman's door.
The fae whimpered as he was dragged out of the cage.
"I can't feed from you every day, Mercy," Blackwood said.
"Not if I want to keep you around.
The last walker I had died fifty years ago--but I kept him for sixty-three years.
I take care of what is mine." Yeah, I bet Amber would agree with that one.
Blackwood knelt on the floor where the oakman lay curled in a fetal position.
The fae was staring at me with large black eyes.
He didn't fight when Blackwood--with a look meant for me--grabbed his leg and bit down on the artery in the fae's groin to feed.
"The oak said," the fae said in English-accented Welsh, "Mercy would free me in the Harvest season." I stared at him, and he smiled before the vampire did something painful to him and he closed his eyes to endure.