a monster, I’m not a vampire, I’m not some weird sorcerer out to use your blood to open a portal to the netherworld. I’m just me.”
Still nothing. Okay, this was getting eerie.
And to think for one tiny moment I’d let myself believe that we could drive up here and meet some people without the whole thing turning into a mash up of a heist and a vision quest. On the plus side, I will admit that part or me secretly loved how much of my job involved picking locks.
The front door did not exactly pose much of a barrier on account of how it honestly did appear to be a nice couple’s holiday home on Lake Windermere, and not a secret fortress established in ages past against the event of supernatural assault. Inside it was—well, I had to go with Sofia on this one, it was lovely. Tile floors, cosy sitting rooms with comfy armchairs, and big wood-burning fireplaces. It would be an unhelpfully romantic place to hide out with your vampire boyfriend if he thought his jealously obsessed ex was coming to kill you.
There was no sign of a struggle, but that didn’t necessarily mean that there hadn’t been one. With vampiric mind control bullshit “struggle” didn’t have to mean “fight” and quite a lot of monsters knew how to clean up after themselves.
We searched the whole place, which wound up taking a while because the “whole place” turned out to include a boathouse and a converted stable, which added up to a lot of square footage to go over. They seemed to have been staying in separate rooms, which I was glad about because while I try to be right on and sex positive and shit, this girl was legitimately barely legal and that wasn’t something I felt at all comfortable thinking about. Her room still had that awkward transitional feel you got when people were moving out of childhood but weren’t so far removed from it that they should have been doing anything at all in the context of a vampire’s penis. Dolls mostly gone, stuffed toys still very much in evidence, that kind of thing.
We reassembled in the absurdly cosy sitting room and discussed options.
“I can probably track them if I have to,” I said. “But I’d rather not. My mother has been in my head far too much recently.”
“The girl is human,” said Tara. “Easier to follow than a vampire. I should be able to trace her without difficulty. But I’d also rather not until we have a clear sense of what we might be following her into.”
There was a very, very awkward silence. We were all looking at Sofia.
“I’m not sure I can,” she said. “I still don’t know how it works.”
Flick got out of her comfortable armchair and knelt down by Sofia’s comfortable armchair. Wow, this place had a lot of comfortable armchairs. “You’ve done it before. You need to concentrate. Here.” She held up a finger. “Look at this.”
“That’s your finger.”
“I know. I’m improvising.” Fishing her phone out of her pocked, she flicked on the torch and waved it in front of Sofia’s eyes. “Is that better?”
“No!” It was an emphatic no. “Just give me a moment.” Sofia shut her eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. Then she looked up. “So those three knights loved their sister so sore that they brent in love, and so they lay by her, maugre her head.”
That didn’t sound good at all.
“Umm”—Flick looked concerned—“I’m a mathematician, so all the maugre and the brent and stuff is a bit above my pay grade, but that sounds hella rapey.”
I was inclined to agree. “We should probably get moving.”
Tara didn’t say anything but slipped her dress from her shoulders and transformed at once into the shape of the great wolf. And then she was off after the scent, and it was all the rest of us could do to keep up with her.
31
Knights & Maidens
The woods around Lake Windermere would have been a really pretty place for a walk if we hadn’t been in a rush to stop a completely innocent girl getting maugred. I was hopeful—not confident but hopeful—that Sofia’s outburst hadn’t been literal. Things looked a lot happier for Elaine if she’d been speaking figuratively and fighting actual knights would get too fucking weird by half.
Tara led us down a narrow, winding path along a hillside that I was beginning to suspect wasn’t quite in the real world any more. It didn’t have the same chill