Reckoning Page 0,1

hotel we used would have to have a decent shower. I reeked of nosferat, fear, and cinnamon buns, not to mention old dried rusty blood.

The fear and the blood, well, I could deal with that. But the spice scent was just a reminder of how much things had changed. I’d changed. I’d finally “bloomed” and become toxic to suckers.

Not that anyone was noticing.

I rolled my window down a little more. Suddenly remembered something. “You need smokes?”

“Nah. Not yet.” Graves stared out his window, running his coppery fingers over the armrest like he was searching for a way out. “Come on, Dru. We can talk about it, right?”

Talk about what? Where would I even begin? Hey, dude, sorry I didn’t come rescue you sooner. Sorry you got bit by the boy in the backseat when he was still a slavering wulfen broken to Sergej’s will and trying to kill me, back in the Dakotas when you were living in a mall and I had to shoot my dad because he was a zombie. Sorry I dragged you into this. Sorry I didn’t tell you what had happened in the gym with the Queen Bitch of the Schola; maybe if I had you might not have run off and got kidnapped. Oh, and while you were being tortured, I was kissing the guy who hates you most.

Yeah. Where to begin?

And I totally felt like an idiot for hoping he’d notice that I’d bloomed. I looked different now. Wider in the hips and a little bigger in the chest, and my face was heart–shaped like my mother’s instead of long like my father’s. My hair had streaked itself with blonde like I’d gotten a salon highlighting job, sleek curls instead of frizz—and the shape of my mouth had changed too.

Seeing a stranger’s face in a mirror is like vanishing. For a moment you’re not sure who or what or where you really are. Maybe Graves just didn’t notice.

How could you not notice, though? And if he did, he could’ve said something. Even hey, gee, nice hair.

But me expecting him to pay attention to a little thing like that right after he’d escaped a hole where he was being tortured by vampires wasn’t exactly fair, was it.

Yeah. Fair. Nothing about this is fair.

No. There really wasn’t anything to talk about right now. Nothing I felt like saying, or things I felt like saying that wouldn’t be kosher.

So I settled for prevarication. “I dunno.” I checked my blind spot, hit the blinker, and gave it some gas. We slid by the limping candyred semi like we were on rails. The sun came out for a moment just as we crested a hill, and the scenery was breathtaking. Pleated green hills rolled away, Pennsylvania opening up with late-spring color. It was probably gorgeous around here in the fall, too. I eased the accelerator down another tick.

Unfortunately, there was also a highway patrolman in front of the semi. We breezed by him; I swung back into the right lane and kept an eye on the rearview. Don’t act nervous. Not any more nervous than anyone else around a cop. You’ve got ID; you memorized the address on the paperwork. The touch throbbed inside my head, bruised and overworked, echoing like it was in a cathedral instead of a bedroom. The little tickle that warned me of danger was working overtime, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I was exhausted and hungry no matter how much fast food I took down, because I’d bloomed, or because we’d fought off Sergej and were still alive.

The world just seemed so much bigger today. And to top it all off, my jeans weren’t fitting right. Because the shape of my hips had changed. If I crouched down, I’d have a plumber’s crack, dammit. I hoped my T-shirt was long enough to cover it until I could figure out what size I was now.

My right hand played with my mother’s silver locket, picking it up and dropping it against my breastbone. The metal was only skinwarm. Not throbbing with heat or icy cold, thank God. Not warning me.

Graves shifted restlessly. “Cop.” Oddly breathless. “If he—”

“He’s not gonna.” I tried to sound sure. “We’re a touch under the speed limit; he’s got no reason to run our plate; we probably haven’t even been reported yet. Chillax.”

“I can’t believe this.” He moved again, and I wanted to tell him to sit still. He was broadcasting “guilty” and “nervous.”

But we pulled away from