Wayward Son - Rainbow Rowell Page 0,78

didn’t know Baz was a vampire for years.”

“I knew,” Simon says.

Baz shakes his head, rolling his eyes. “Literally nothing you say is helpful.”

Lamb looks right through Simon. “Did you grow up with them, too, invisible boy?”

“He’s not usually invisible,” Baz mutters.

“A vampire, two mages, and a Bleeder.” Lamb sighs and stands up. Every one of us flinches. “I’m going to need a cup of tea.”

“Oh, thank magic,” Penelope says at the same time as Simon says, “Tea?” and Baz says, “Crowley below, please let us have some.”

I always accept food and drink from Maybes, though it can be a risky business. (My mother would be horrified if I ever turned down food as a guest in someone else’s home.) But I’m surprised to see this bunch being so polite. I turn to Penelope, sitting next to me on an antique loveseat. “You’re not worried about being poisoned? Or scalded?”

“I’ll worry after I have my tea,” she replies.

Lamb brings out a tray. Simon gets a plastic casino mug. The rest of us get china.

“I’ve been thinking,” Lamb says, pouring Penelope’s tea, “and I can’t come up with a single reason to help you. Or even to keep listening.”

“Common decency,” Penelope suggests—and the vampire actually laughs. His whole face crinkles up when he does.

“We’d be in your debt,” Baz adds.

Simon scoffs. “We would not!”

“You’re already in my debt,” Lamb says. “You’re still alive.”

“We could say the same of you,” Penelope counters.

The vampire chuckles. “You’re really quite funny,” he says to her. “I know you don’t mean to be.”

I hold out my still-empty cup, leaning a bit in front of her. “The reason to help them,” I say, “is that you share an enemy.”

Lamb looks at me and starts to pour. He’s listening.

I nod toward Penelope and Baz and (probably) Simon. “They’re not stupid. They know they don’t stand much of a chance against the Next Blood, even if you help them. But they’re going to try anyway. And I promise you this—they won’t go down without a fight.”

I sit back with my teacup. “These Silicon Valley vampires have never tangled with Speakers before. They don’t know what it’s like to be hunted and cornered with wands. They’ve never taken significant losses. Well … they’ll learn. Even our worst-case scenario benefits you—we’ll cause chaos for the Next Blood, we’ll get in their way.”

Lamb is sitting again, next to Baz. He narrows his eyes at me. “How do you know that I consider the Next Blood an enemy?”

“Everyone knows that Las Vegas is at war with the Next Blood,” I say. “And you’re the king of Las Vegas.”

* * *

“The Vampire King?!” Penelope shouts at me, as soon as we’re in the elevator. “When were you going to tell us he was the fucking Vampire King?”

“I wasn’t sure!” I really wasn’t—not till I said it out loud, and Lamb smiled and bared his fangs at me.

“You needed to be sure? ‘I think he might be the Vampire King,’ you could have said to us. Or, ‘Hey, guys, did you know there’s a Vampire King? There is! And this could be him!’”

“I’d only heard him described once,” I say, “and it was from a drunken ditch imp.”

“What was the description?” she asks.

“Baby-faced and beautiful, and slick as oil on ice.”

Simon huffs. Penelope punches me hard. “That’s obviously him, Shepard! For snake’s sake!”

The elevator doors open.

“We get our things, and we go,” she says. “Shepard, you get the truck. We’ll meet you out front.”

Baz is frowning. “But Lamb might yet help us—”

Penelope looks ready to punch him next. “The jig is up, Baz! We can’t sleep under the Vampire King’s roof! Especially now that he knows what we are.”

“He doesn’t know what I am,” Simon gloats.

“A foolhardy oaf?” Baz says. “I think he got that, actually.”

“You wouldn’t call me that if I’d rescued you!”

“I didn’t need rescuing!” Baz hisses. “I was getting to him. He was listening.”

“More like you were listening,” Simon says. “While he told you a bunch of fairy tales about vampires saving princesses and slaying dragons.”

“For the last time, Simon Snow, only a depraved savage would slay a dragon!”

“I wasn’t trying to kill it!”

We turn a corner—our room is just up ahead. “Five minutes,” Penelope says, typing something into her phone. “Get your stuff and get out.”

Baz and I stop walking.

“Guys,” she says, getting ahead of us. “Come on.”

“Penelope,” I say quietly. She finally looks up and sees the two people standing at our door: a man and a woman, both wearing very