“Oh, and Lex?” Maven added. “In the interest of fairness, you should know that if you don’t perform to our satisfaction, there is no deal. Itachi will do whatever he wants with the child, and we’ll kill you if you interfere.”
She said it in a completely reasonable, “just so you know” kind of tone, which somehow made it worse.
“You can try,” I said quietly. Itachi chortled with laughter at that, but Maven just smiled, almost sympathetically.
I rose from the chair and held out my hand, with my wrist still encircled by the delicate handkerchief. “I believe we have a deal.”
After we shook, Maven called for Quinn. I didn’t think anyone would be able to hear through the thick office door, but vampires must have good hearing. He popped his head in, his eyes widening slightly as they took in our new positioning in the room. “Ma’am?” he said to Maven.
“We have a task for you, Quinn.” She nodded toward me. “We’d like you and Lex to locate Darcy. Find out if she and Victor were sent by a third party. Then kill her.”
A sputter of shock came out of my mouth, and Maven turned her head to look at me. She raised an eyebrow. “This is the Old World, Lex,” she said matter-of-factly. “If you truly plan to work for us, you’ll need to understand the way we do things. I accept your stipulation against killing, but Quinn has no such condition.”
I looked at Quinn, but his face was completely unreadable. Maven continued, “Lex, you’ll work with Quinn at night, hunting for Darcy. During the day you’ll work with the Pellars to advance your magic. Quinn will set that up for you. Begin tomorrow.”
I stepped away from the chair, but paused and looked back at the vampires. “And Charlie?”
“I’ll put the word out,” she promised. Itachi gave me a polite, dismissive nod.
Feeling a little dazed, I followed Quinn into the hallway, where I stumbled and had to lean against a wall. He stopped a few feet ahead of me and retraced his steps. “You okay?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said, working to control my voice. “Just a little lightheaded.” It wasn’t the blood loss. I had bled more while shaving my legs. For some reason leaving Maven’s presence felt like moving from strong sunshine into the shade again—not necessarily a bad feeling, but definitely an adjustment.
I suddenly felt very young, and very naive. It reminded me of my first deployment to Iraq, where the customs, language, government, and daily risks were so different that it felt like I was on another planet. But now the displacement was happening in my hometown. A mile from the hospital where I was born.
Quinn waited patiently until I straightened up again, a question on his face. “Sorry, this is all just happening really fast,” I mumbled. “I think I just agreed to go vampire hunting. With a vampire.”
“Yeah, well, it’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” he said frankly. “Most witches are told all about magic by the time they hit puberty. If you’re going to tag along with me while I go after Darcy, you’re gonna have to pick up a lot of information fast.”
I looked up at him. “I’ve got no love for Darcy,” I remarked, “but are you really okay with just killing her? You were a cop.”
With exaggerated patience, Quinn took my elbow and propelled me forward, his grip like a concrete cuff on my bicep. When we had passed through two rooms, he leaned over and whispered, “They could still hear you, you know.”
“Oh.” Oops.
“To answer your question, I don’t feel great about it, no. But I don’t have a choice,” he said, his tone bitter. “Not everyone volunteered for a deal with Maven and Itachi.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, a little hotly. “Do you think I woke up this morning hoping I’d get to feed my blood to a vampire?”
Quinn hesitated. “Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t mean you . . . My situation is different, that’s all.”
“Different how?” I said.
He looked away. “I was sold to them.”
My eyes widened. “You were—”
“Come on,” he said brusquely, giving me a gentle push. “Let’s get you home for some sleep. You have magic lessons tomorrow.”
“Oh screw that,” I shot back. “You’re starting now, right?”
He hesitated. “Well, yeah . . .”
“Then I’m coming with you. What do we do first?”
Quinn sighed, his cool demeanor momentarily ruffled. “You’re going to be a pain in my ass, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” I told him, and I felt a smile spread across my face. Not a nice smile. “But not nearly as big as I’m about to be in Darcy’s.”
Chapter 13
One of the many things I’d never bothered to consider in my thirty-one years of life were the logistical problems that came with the care and keeping of vampires.
As I followed Quinn out to his car, a gray Toyota sedan that had probably been purchased for its anonymity, he gave me a rundown of how vampires lived, starting with the fact that they were pretty much dead while the sun was up. “Unfortunately, that leaves us vulnerable,” he said, “so vampires keep really great hidey-holes, often underground. Victor and Darcy have a basement apartment not far from campus. We’ll go there first, see if we can find any clues about where she might have gone.”