in the current timeline. Dead, in a mausoleum in the fanghead cemetery. I had hoped that thread of flesh was also a thread of hope, but Leo hadn’t risen. He never would. I had gone to the graveyard and caught the stench of rot from his tomb.
Carefully, I said, “Your best? No. You were foresworn. Foresworn to the Dark Queen of the Mithrans.” I had just accused Soul of breaking an oath brokered in an interspecies parley, a deadly insult if she disagreed.
“Son of a bitch,” she spat. “I’ll see what I can do to get you help and information.” She ended the call.
I set my cell on the table beside me, beginning to feel the tiredness in my muscles and my gut. I’d been human too long. But Soul still owed me. I wondered when she would figure that out.
* * *
* * *
Alex stumbled into the TV room, where I sat, alone, staring out at the snowy world. He carried a tall, canned energy drink and took his seat at his empty desk chair. He smelled horrible and he looked worse. “Too many energy drinks?” I asked.
“Go away, Janie.” He looked my way and did a double take. “You’re human-shaped.”
I chortled. “Yeah. For a little while. I found a way to slow the progression of the cancer. Temporarily.”
“Everything in life is temporary. Even life itself.”
“That sounds very fatalistic.”
He said something under his breath and punched keys. Opened a laser-light keyboard on the desk. Tapped the desk there too. He was using multiple keyboards at once. Screens came to life everywhere.
I moved up behind him, my eyes taking in the screens. Nothing looked out of place. Nothing looked unexpected. No invaders. No big-cats. “Alex?” I asked softly. “What’s wrong?”
He stopped, his fingers clenching under the laser light. “My brother nearly died. Again. It’s hard.”
Softly I said, “If you can get him to sign the proper papers, and if he dies, and if I can get him to a fanghead in time, I’ll make them turn him.”
“Lot of ifs in there. What if it’s an enemy fanghead?”
I laughed, and it was a nasty, awful sound. I remembered Klaus, the vampire I had claimed and bled to save Eli in the snow. Claiming was evil. Was a type of slavery. I had set him free, but it had been an afterthought, not something I planned, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. “I’ll force any fanghead I can find to turn him. And then, if necessary, I’ll kill the vamp to keep him from claiming Eli. And I’ll bargain with my own life to get Amy Lynn Brown to feed him, exclusively, for a year.”
Amy Lynn had special blood that helped vamps through the devoveo—the ten years of madness after being turned—in record time. Her blood, exclusively, would mean a clean, fast, sane transition. Hopefully. And as the DQ, I could make it happen. “And that goes for you too, now that you signed the papers. We’re family.”
“Promise?”
“Pinky swear.” I held out my pinky finger. He reached back without looking and stuck his pinky finger in the air. I hooked mine through his and we squeezed. Pact made.
“Ant Jane! Ant Jane! Ant Jane!” EJ hurtled from the kitchen into the TV room. “You gots Jane face!”
I lifted him up into the air and tossed him high. When he landed in my hands, a twinge of pain slanted through me. I’d already been Jane too long. “Not for long, though. I’m about to put on my Beast face.”
“The better to eat you with,” Angie Baby said from the doorway opening. Her face was set in disapproving lines. Or—
“Jane?” Alex said. “We got problems.”
I had wandered toward Angie and I returned to Alex, EJ over my shoulder, me leaning over Alex’s shoulder, looking at the screen that held his attention. Instantly I whirled back to the doorway and picked up Angie Baby. I shielded her from the view of the screen and carried her back to Molly. Angie was shouting, “No fair, no fair, no fair, no fair!” as I carried her and her brother back to the kitchen.
My BFF took one look at my face and shushed her child. “You need doors on the office,” was all she said.
“Yeah. I’ll put it on the list.” Back in the office, I gestured for Alex to put the camera feed on the main screen.
“It’s the feed from inside . . . maybe a church or a fancy spa,” he said, “and it’s being