girlfriend so don’t want to hear this, but Yelena is back and she will come for everything you care about. I’m sure you’ll think I’m on her side now but I’m not. I got no reply to either before making my way through to the sitting room, where Sofia was already up and dressed and making tea. Flick was also up in the most nominal sense, in that she was in the same tee-shirt and underwear combo she’d gone to bed in, clearly hadn’t brushed her hair, and was slumped over the table with a look that said give me caffeine or give me death.
Sofia threw me a cheery “Good morning.”
I came back with a slightly less cheery “You’ll be picked up this afternoon by a werewolf in a fancy car who’ll take you to Safernoc Hall. You’ll be safe there, and more importantly you’ll be far enough away from other people that nobody is going to get their heart ripped out for your benefit.”
Flick’s head lifted an inch or so from where it was resting. “Wow, you do not fuck about, do you?”
“Not where my friends’ lives are involved, no.”
Sofia actually clapped. “I’m not sure you’ve ever admitted we were friends before.”
“Sorry, let me rephrase: not where the lives of the girl my ex was obsessed with while she was creepily underage and her housemate who made an ill-advised attempt to bang me are involved, no.”
She giggled. “Too late. We’re friends and you can’t take it back.”
“I know I’m supposed to be the adult here, but I fucking hate you sometimes.”
“And for the record,” Flick raised a hand without looking up from the table. “I don’t think it was ill-advised. I think you’ve just got hang-ups.”
“Pretty sure my hang-ups are what made it ill-advised.”
Sofia pressed a mug of tea into my hands. “So what are you going to be doing while we’re hiding with the wolves?”
That bit was easy. “I’m going to hunt Yelena down, and I’m going to kill her.”
“Do you think it will be that simple?”
I shrugged. “Probably not. But if I don’t try I won’t know. If she’s with Sebastian Douglas that gets trickier. Even without his stolen god-abilities I don’t think I could take him. But by daylight it should be manageable. Her powers turn off when the sun rises, my mother’s don’t.”
“I don’t like this,” Sofia’s voice was a mixture of concern and censure. “It seems like it could go wrong very easily.”
I sauntered over to the work bench and began perusing the kitchenware. “It probably could, but I’m not sure what other choice we’ve got. Mind if I borrow?” I lifted a steel-handled carving knife out of a knife block.
“Probably a stupid question,” began Flick. “But what for?”
“Well I’d rather not try to rip her to pieces with my bare hands. That sort of thing gets old fast.”
Sofia was looking increasingly agitated. “Did I mention how much I don’t like this?”
“You did. But a killer vampire is out to destroy you, so, y’know, there’s compromises. Oh, and I’d recommend moving your dad as well. If Lisbeth’s still with him she might give him a fighting chance”—Lisbeth had been another of Elise’s “sisters” and so she had invulnerability on her side—“but he’d probably be safer somewhere he’s not a total sitting duck.”
I still hadn’t got a definitive yes-or-no on stealing their carving knife, so I wrapped it in as much newspaper and kitchen towel as I could find and stashed it in my inside coat pocket. Then I gave the girls my most casual “Later” and set out to look for Yelena.
The crime scene had been cordoned off by the police, but they’d left while we were catching our four hours of sleep, which meant I could go through and contaminate it with impunity. I’d have felt bad except that it wasn’t like they’d be able to arrest the killer. Even if she hadn’t been working with the guy who’d spent the past millennium making sure vampires don’t get arrested for stuff, she didn’t seem the type to come quietly. I picked my way past those little numbered triangles that marked where the cops had found important bits of evidence, and around the still largely undisturbed wreckage in the sitting room, to the window. There I shut my eyes and opened my mind to my mother’s realm. Tara had been right that vampires were hard to track by scent, but my strange heritage let me follow something different, something more primordial. It was channelled