I’d seen dead bodies when I was with the army—too many of them. But those had all been reasonably fresh corpses, still in the process of decay and rot. Darcy’s corpse didn’t look like she’d died an hour ago, that was for sure. I looked back at Quinn, raising an eyebrow. “Jesus, how long was I out?”
Quinn let out a surprised laugh. “Our bodies do that when we die. Magic is connected to life; that’s what it prefers. When a vampire dies, the magic sort of abandons them, and the body returns to whatever condition it would have been in if the person had never become a vampire.”
I scrunched my face, thinking again of the horror movies Sam had made me watch when we were teenagers. “I thought vampires turned into dust.”
He shrugged. “Only the really, really old ones do that. Darcy was turned maybe thirty years ago, so she’s not that far along yet. Still a skeleton,” he added, almost cheerfully.
“Oh.”
The head with its bare skull seemed to be staring at me every time we passed a streetlight, so I flipped the blanket back over it and turned around in my seat again, buckling my seat belt. “Aren’t you worried about getting pulled over or something?”
He shook his head. “I checked all the lights already, and I’m driving at exactly the speed limit. Anyway, if I got pulled over, I’d just press the cop to forget me.”
I considered that for a moment. “So what do we do now?”
“Now we need to ditch the body,” he replied, his tone careful. I saw him glance at me out of the corner of his eye and understood that my response in this moment was important. I could ask him to drop me off before he got rid of Darcy’s body, and he might even agree. I had to admit, the idea was tempting: It was late, my body still ached, and the dogs would start tearing up the cabin pretty soon if I didn’t let them out.
But I was the one who’d begged to work for vampires, and the one who’d insisted on helping Quinn tonight. I had asked for this. And if I tried to pick and choose which parts of Quinn’s job to do with him, it wouldn’t speak well of my willingness to be a team player.
Besides, it wasn’t like we were burying an innocent, or even a human. I’m not a fan of killing by any means, but Darcy had come after Charlie, which was one offense I could never forgive. And she would have killed Quinn and me both if things had gone a little differently. I wasn’t going to shed any tears for her.
“Okay,” I said finally.
We drove in silence for a while after that. I knew this was my chance to ask some questions about the supernatural crap I had suddenly become a part of, but I just didn’t have the stomach for any more information right then. Instead, I fought to think about something that didn’t involve bodies or bloodshed. Each time I tried, though, my thoughts returned to Charlie. It was aggravating.
Quinn drove us through the outskirts of the city and into the mountains, the darkness deepening until there was nothing to see that wasn’t in the car’s headlights. The night was overcast and quiet, and after a while a chill crept into the car. I reached over and turned on the heater.
“Sorry,” Quinn said. “I don’t really get cold. I mean, I do, but it takes a lot.” His voice had taken on a shade of awkwardness.
“Yeah?” I said, stretching my legs out in front of me to get my toes closer to the heater. “That must be nice.”
“Listen, Lex,” he said, clearly uncomfortable. “I wanted to thank you.”
I turned my head to look at him, but his eyes were fixed on the road. “For what?”
“For sticking around when I was unconscious. Not letting Darcy . . . you know.”
He still didn’t look at me, and I realized that Quinn was embarrassed. He was supposed to be the vampires’ enforcer, and he’d let himself get benched by a psycho wielding only a front door. In front of me, the newbie human. “It never occurred to me to leave,” I said honestly, turning my head to look out the window so he could have a little privacy. Vampires could get embarrassed. What a weird concept.
After a couple more miles’ worth of silence, Quinn asked, “Did Darcy say anything while I was out?”
I considered that. “She said they were taking Charlie to some kind of middleman or dealer, who would hang onto her until someone else was ready to act. A ‘senior.’ I assumed that meant whoever she was working for.” I didn’t mention the weird link I’d created between us. Until I knew exactly what I’d done, and whether I could do it again, it didn’t seem like a good thing to share.
“She used that word, ‘senior’?” Quinn’s voice had taken on interest.
“Yeah, why? What does it mean?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much what you said—someone she considers a boss, a superior. It might even just be a vampire who’s a lot older than her—‘senior’ is a term of respect.”
“Could she have meant the vampire she’s pledged to . . . Kirby, right?”
I couldn’t see Quinn’s face very well at the moment, but I could practically hear the wheels turning in his head as he considered this. “Not necessarily, but it’s possible,” he said finally.
“Or maybe it’s the vampire Kirby’s pledged to,” I pointed out. “Itachi.”
To his credit, Quinn didn’t immediately leap to his master’s defense. He took a moment to consider it. “I honestly don’t think Itachi is responsible,” he said at last, and I realized that for the first time since I’d met him, he sounded completely human. For just a moment I caught a glimpse of what Quinn must have been like as a cop in Chicago . . . and as a regular man. He had a calmness, a centeredness, as if he considered everything thoroughly before acting. Then the glimpse was gone, and the unreadable Quinn had returned. “By Old World rules, he already owns your niece,” he said, still talking about Itachi. “There’s no reason for him to try and steal the kid away from himself.”