Of course, there I’d had to worry about who would sell me to the suckers next. And worry about Graves, missing and presumed tortured. And Christophe pushing me in the sparring room, and outside it shoving me in every direction except the one I wanted to go. Now Gran’s house was gone, my last best card gone up in smoke. Nowhere left to go, nowhere to hide, nothing even remotely approaching a safe harbor.
“Shit,” I muttered. I pulled my knees up onto the seat, hugged them. If I could just curl up small enough, maybe I could stop the feeling of the world spinning out from under me again. Since that cold Dakota night when I’d dreamed of Gran’s owl and didn’t tell Dad the next morning, the whole world had started whirling faster and faster. Every time I thought I found something solid, it was yanked away.
Time to grow up, Dru.
Except I’d never felt like a kid. Maybe with Gran, but she never believed in sugarcoating anything. I’d felt grown-up all this time, especially since she . . . died.
No matter how grown-up I felt, though, things kept knocking me around.
The rest of the world didn’t think I could drive, or drink anything stronger than a Shirley Temple, or even vote or run my own life. Even though I could canvass the occult network in pretty much any city in the US, take out a poltergeist . . . or be Dad’s backup in a house with bleeding walls and howling voices even he could hear, a house that was the haunted equivalent of a Venus flytrap.
We’d brought out the little boy who’d wandered in there and returned him to his family, and they’d paid Dad for it . . . but I’d still be treated like a criminal if the cops ever picked me up and found out I was under eighteen. Locked up or locked down, no matter that I was more capable than plenty of so-called adults.
I could face down the king of the vampires in a burning warehouse, but they’d stick me in high school. If I ever came to the attention of the authorities, juvie would be the only place they’d think of putting me.
But it wasn’t just that. No matter how grown-up I tried to be, there was a place inside me where being grown-up didn’t reach. That place was scared and cold and abandoned, and I didn’t have the energy to push it down or keep it locked away right now.
Gooseflesh rose all over me in big shivering bumps, and it wasn’t helping by the way I was sweating even under the blast of air conditioning.
Fear-sweat.
A draft of sticky cinnamon scent boiled up from my skin. Why was I smelling like them? Like Christophe, with his apple-pie cologne, and Anna, with her flowery reek of spoiled carnations.
And that was another thing. I’d heard Anna clearly, inside my head. She’d all but forced me to drink her blood. What the hell was that? Nothing Gran ever said prepared me for something like this. Not even drinking from Christophe’s wrist while I almost died from a gunshot wound had given me a clue.
“Dru.” Graves reached through the space between seats. His hand closed around my shoulder, gently enough I could ignore the iron strength running underneath his skin. “Hey. I’m sorry. It’s okay, all right? It’s okay. Don’t.”
Ash whined again, in the very back of his throat. He was depending on me, and I’d gotten Graves into this too. I was sucking at getting them out and keeping them safe, despite trying as hard as I could.
No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, it just wasn’t enough.
Christophe glanced at me. There was a faint sound—he’d swallowed, audibly. “Graves.” He shifted a little in the seat, took a left. “I apologize.”
I put my head down on my knees. Tried to breathe deeply.
“No problem.” At least Graves didn’t sound angry. Or grudging. “I, uh, well. We’ll get to a hotel soon, right?”
Christophe hit the brakes, eased up. The car crept forward. “Very soon.”
“I’ll keep track of Ash. We’ll get room service. You take Dru and get her something good. Something nice, you know?” Graves squeezed my shoulder, but gently. I guess he was trying to be comforting.
Too bad I was past being comforted.
“I think she needs to rest for a while,” Graves continued. “She’s, uh, pretty broken up. About the house. The fire.”
I’m right here, I wanted to yell. Don’t talk around me, for Christ’s sake.
But I didn’t care. They could do whatever they were going to do. I had enough to deal with, keeping my stomach from emptying itself all over the dash. Keeping the screaming inside me locked down in my throat where it couldn’t come out and break every window in the car.
“She . . . has had a difficult time of it.” Christophe spaced the words evenly. Neutral.
The space inside the car relaxed. I kept breathing into my knees, my eyes shut tight. The engine purred along, smoothly, carrying us all.
We finally made a sharp right, tires bouncing a little.
Christophe let out a long breath. “Here we are. Four Seasons, at your service.”
“Swank. Can we afford this?” Graves actually sounded grudgingly impressed.
“Of course. Nice rooms, discreet staff, quiet. Just the thing.” Christophe brought the car to a stop, nice and easy. “Let me do the talking. Just stay behind me, and try not to look . . . well, never mind.”
I made up my mind I wouldn’t care. Breathed into the comforting hollow between my jean-clad knees, wished the dark could last forever.
“Dru.” Mocking and businesslike, Christophe was back to his old self. It was almost a relief. “We’re going to have to check in, kochana.”