“What do you want?” Nellie couldn’t interact with the physical world, other than creeping people out when she “walked” through them, so there wasn’t a lot she could require in terms of material goods.
“I want you to come by here every day and change the channel to something new,” she said promptly.
I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. Of course. “Once a month, for a year. And it won’t always be me. Sometimes it’ll be a . . . helper.” I didn’t want to say vampire and set her off on another tirade, but I figured Maven could send one of the Denver vampires to do this, at least sometimes.
“Once a week,” she negotiated. “For the year, and at least once a month it’ll be you.”
“Fine,” I said, managing not to sound begrudging about it. “But I’m not leaving my watch as collateral for that long. This time you’ll have to trust me.”
She pursed her lips, but nodded. “All right.”
“What’s the cure?”
“Ain’t no cure,” she said, looking infinitely satisfied with herself. “Belladonna is powerful; you have to wait for it to flush through the system. Best you can do is speed that up a little.”
“How?”
Her smirk grew even bigger. “Easiest way is to cut the creature’s vein, drain out some of the toxic blood, and feed ’em untainted blood. Then wait a day or so and do the same thing all over. A’ course, the older they are, the faster they’ll heal.”
I gave her a skeptical look. That sounded suspiciously like Nellie trying to get me to bleed unconscious vampires to death, and I said so.
Nellie spread her hands, looking innocent. “Believe me or don’t. I said I’d tell you whether there was a cure, and I did.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.” I turned on my heel and started for the door.
“Wait!” Nellie appeared right in front of me again, forcing me to stop or walk through her. I’d walked through ghosts before; it wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed. Her eyes were calculating. “But I’ll tell you something else, Miss Lex, and this one’s on me. Jennie, she always had a bee in her bonnet about belladonna. Hated it, worse than Christian missionaries hated opium. Only time I ever seen Jennie get truly furious about something, it involved the grist.”
I thought that over for a moment. Could the attacks in Denver be geared toward Maven personally? Like some kind of distraction? That seemed kind of far-fetched. Distracted, I started forward again, but Nellie cried, “Wait! The channel!”
“You didn’t negotiate when the year starts,” I said sweetly, and left her cursing behind me.
I had every intention of coming back in a week to turn the station; I just wanted to mess with Nellie a little first. So I went outside and called Quinn, figuring he could pick me up in between his interviews. As it turned out, though, he had already finished his last interview and was already on his way to pick me up. I was surprised—he’d had to drive to three separate places and speak to three separate people—but then again, when you were pressing minds, I suppose you didn’t have to bother with introductions or small talk. That would save time.
“Did you learn anything?” I asked after climbing into the car.
Quinn shook his head. “As far as they know, none of them were involved.”
“What does that mean, as far as they know?”
He gave a little shrug. “One of the women seemed sort of confused, like she’d been pressed before. But that might be the result of Louis pressing her to forget a routine feeding. I can’t be sure.”
His lips were tight, and I realized he was frustrated. Or was it something else? “Are you okay?”
“I’m just . . .” He shook his head. “Talking to the regulars got to me a little bit.”
“How come?”
He was quiet for a moment, collecting his thoughts. I waited him out. We were on Highway 36, about seven miles from Boulder. You could already see the city lights glittering in the distance. Since I was a little kid, this view always felt like home. “Maven doesn’t like us to use the term ‘human servant,’ but that’s what these people are,” he said finally. “The vampires—we—screw up their heads, pressing them into keeping our secrets, never talking about their lives. Some of us even go so far as to make the humans think they’re in love. They give up everything on the off chance that—” He cut himself off abruptly, fuming.
“Is that why you won’t drink from me?” I asked softly.
Quinn stomped on the brake, driving the seat belt hard into my shoulder. He wrenched the wheel sideways to pull over onto the Davidson Mesa scenic overlook, letting out a sound that was shockingly snarl-like.
Whoa. I stared at him, openmouthed. Quinn was actually upset. I so rarely saw him experience visible emotional reactions; I kind of didn’t know what to do with it.
“Do you want me to drink from you?” he snapped. “See you as food?”
“No, but—”
“You don’t get it, Lex! Some of these assholes are using those people like—like drug dealers use junkies for sex.” Quinn bunched up his fists in his lap. “It’s so twisted, and the vampires feel nothing for them, and I would never—”
“Slow down,” I interrupted. “No, I don’t want you to feed from me. Not because I think you don’t care about me, or because I think it would make me a whore. Because it’s icky.” He let out a choked laugh. “But it does sometimes seem like you . . . want to.” I blushed despite myself.