he gets into a fresh relationship.” Or, thinking about it, perhaps he got into a fresh relationship every time he did a complete emotional reset. Vampires had a tendency to fall back on old ways a lot on account of being, y’know, dead.
“I suppose he’d think the same about me, now?” Sofia looked a little crestfallen at that. The car crash that was dating Patrick Knight was still fresh for her, and her experience with him had been, from what I could tell, significantly less unhealthy than mine was.
“Very likely. It’s not his fault, it’s how he’s made—Yelena’s the same. My money’s on it being a bloodline thing.”
“Umm.” Flick waved a hand. “Back to being selfish girl for a moment. I’m not sure we addressed the what-if-she-tries-to-kill-me-again issue?”
We hadn’t. “Stay by Sofia. I think her whole”—I waved my hands in a way that I hoped expressed an inexplicable power tied inextricably to daylight itself—“will protect you for now. I’ll make some calls tomorrow and see if I can arrange something more permanent, but you may have to lie low until…”
“Until?” Flick seemed upset and I couldn’t blame her. It was a bad word to end a sentence on.
“Until we can fix this. Somehow.” Which probably meant taking out Yelena, which was hard enough, and the Prince of Wands, which was so difficult that Julian had left me to die rather than even think about trying it.
There wasn’t much more to be said, so we finished or threw away our tea as the mood took us, and tried to catch as much sleep as we could in the face of the night’s distractions. Having Flick’s bed to myself was, I hated to admit, far more comfortable than sharing it with somebody I was trying hard not to touch. It still smelled of her in a way I found strangely reassuring. She seemed like a good person. I hoped nobody ripped her heart out.
14
Tea & the Hunt
In an unreal city, a great black wolf watched my dreams. Was it her, or was I conjuring a phantom of her?
“Yelena?”
The wolf remained silent, watching me with beady red eyes. Its skin hung a little strangely and I thought if I looked closely I could see the scars from where it had been cut from Tabitha’s body.
“So we’re clear, I’m going to fucking kill you.”
The wolf did not seem overly impressed.
“Come for me all you like, but leave Sofia out of this.”
It padded forwards, growling.
Okay, maybe I’d been a bit hasty with the come for me all you like bit. I was never quite sure what the die in dreams/die in real life rule was—the Morrigan had definitely nearly killed me, but she’d been a special case on account of being older than dirt and psychic as balls. Then again this was a vampire with powers borrowed from a fae lord and stolen from a werewolf, so bets were seriously off.
Sitting on a red rock by the side of the river was the fortune teller from the South Bank. She held a card between her hands that showed a woman on a wooden throne, and between that woman’s hands a single pentacle.
“You aren’t by any chance here to help me out?” I asked.
“I’m a clairvoyant, dear. I watch. Besides, I’m too far away to help you now.”
Yelena came closer. She wasn’t breathing the way a living wolf would—beneath all the stolen skin and transformations she remained a vampire.
Hurry up please, it’s time.
The beast sprang, and I awoke.
Right. So as well as being drawn in my dreams to weird people who wanted to show me weird things, I also had Yelena stalking me. If I was lucky that meant she wasn’t coming after anybody else, but when had I ever been lucky? Besides, Yelena had always struck me as the sort to go in for equal opportunities torment.
It was still early. I couldn’t have had more than four hours sleep, but I was beginning to think sleep was overrated anyway. At least if I was awake I had marginally more control over who showed up in my head.
Ugh. Stuff. I was developing one of those long, awkward to-do lists where everything was nebulous enough that you could keep working at it forever but concrete enough that you couldn’t pretend it was a problem for another day.
I retrieved my phone from amongst the clothes I had shed last night while trying to get comfortable in a bed full of nope, and looked up Tara’s number. She didn’t