“I need to go see what’s up. Watch him,” he told Lucy.
She nodded, and James jogged up ahead, still carrying his unconscious vampire refugee over his shoulder, until he reached Brigit, where he set his burden down beside the other canvas-wrapped vampire.
Lucy kept on walking, but being more or less alone with the scar-faced man made her nervous.
“You’re not one of them,” he said to her. He was moving slowly, clearly struggling to bear the weight of the bundle over his shoulder.
She looked at him, then at Utanapishtim, who was still listening to every word, following behind, soaking it all up and not making a single comment. He carried his own burden as if it were a twig.
“They’re my friends,” Lucy said to Scarface. “You, on the other hand, are not.”
“You’re so wrong about that.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We were trying to save you from them when we took you in. Still are. All this stuff we’ve leaked to the press about you being wanted—it’s bull. We’re just trying to get you to come in…so we can protect you. They’re going to kill you, Lucy. You know too much.”
“And you know far too little,” she said.
“Listen, listen, I’ll…I’ll make you a trade. You help me get away, and I’ll make you a trade, okay?”
He was back to a normal tone of voice again. The others were too far away to hear—or maybe not. Utanapishtim was closer and, she thought, trying to listen in.
“You have nothing I could possibly want,” she said.
Scarface looked quickly ahead at the others, then spoke. “I have the book,” he whispered, and he patted his breast pocket. “The one that tells all their secrets, the one no one is supposed to have.”
“You get the tiny version?” she asked, with a derisive look at his shirt pocket.
He tugged on something, revealing just the edge. “Electronic version, right here on my phone.” As he moved, the canvas bundle shifted on his shoulder and a pale, slender hand fell free.
Lucy lunged, tucking the hand back in even as smoke began to spiral from it. “Be careful!” she snapped.
“For God’s sake, will you focus here?” Scarface demanded. “You’ve chosen the wrong side in this, and you’ll know that if you just read the book. I’ll give it to you. Just let me go and it’s yours.”
“I’m not letting you go.” And besides, she thought snidely, she already had the very same material on her own phone. In fact, she had Lester Folsom’s own “eyes only” version.
She caught herself, realizing that she’d processed that thought very loudly. She wondered if anyone else had picked up on it and glanced ahead, knowing she probably ought to tell James she was in possession of the book.
Would he be angry that she’d kept it from him? Would he insist she destroy it, or hand it over to Rhiannon or one of the other vampire elders? She didn’t want to give it up. She wanted to read it first—find out everything that James might not have told her already. And even knowing parts of it would no doubt be biased and untrue, books were sacred to her. Knowledge was everything.
She would finish reading it, and then she would tell him and let him do whatever he wanted with the thing.
“Come on, Lucy. You’re a scientist. Don’t you want to know the truth about them?”
Utanapishtim stepped up behind the man, gripped his shoulder. “Silence, prisoner. Wish you to die now?”
“I’m going to die anyway, if you don’t let me go. You don’t know what they’re capable of. They’ll drink my fucking blood, for God’s sake.”
“Loo-see, go there.” Utanapishtim pointed ahead, to where James was speaking to Brigit. “You belong…beside…you man. Go.”
“But James asked me to watch him.”
“I king! You go!”
He growled the words, jabbing his forefinger in James’s direction, and Lucy jumped into motion, but first she snatched the phone from Scarface’s pocket.
He glared at her.
“Sorry, pal. You’ve got nothing left to bargain with now.”
She took the phone with her to where James and Brigit were crouched behind a boulder. Utanapishtim had spoken with so much authority that it had seemed far beyond her ability to argue with him. By the time she was catching up with James, it was a done deal, and just as well. She’d been shaken by the scar-faced man. But she had at least taken the precaution of confiscating his bargaining chip. God forbid he give it to Utanapishtim, with his