Chapter 16
I can’t sleep. After eating as much food as I can stomach, which does nothing to touch the hunger, I toss and turn on sheets that smell of equal parts bleach and mildew.
I keep catching myself right as I drift off, alert to any unusual sound, which—at the Just Fuck It, with its wafer-thin walls and ice machine that seems to be loudly grinding up bones—is every thirty seconds or so.
When I do manage to doze off, my dreams are filled with replays of Izzy’s jump and that suffocating pressure from outside the sorority house. In every case, I can’t stop her plummet but sometimes Devon isn’t there to save me.
That power, so intense that I couldn’t even run from it. I’m supposed to do something about that?
Other times, I see faces—Chessa, Daan, Carter, the ones I’m putting at risk with all of this—and I don’t know how to keep them safe, beyond staying away.
And then there’s everything that Devon told me. These elders, faceless beings in my mind, who seem too determined to use and control.
Poor Amelia, waiting and weighted at the bottom of her parents’ pool for someone to find her.
I’m never going to sleep again.
So, it’s a shock when a hand shakes me awake.
Breath explodes out of me and I scramble backward, clunking my head against the headboard, hard.
“Someone’s outside, Jo,” a voice says to my left.
It takes me a second to identify it, to remember where I am. Devon. The motel.
“You didn’t get me for my shift,” I say, my head muzzy with sleep or lack thereof. The room is dark now, despite the fact that the lights and television were on when my eyes were last open.
“Someone’s outside,” he repeats, sounding tense.
The air around him smells crisp and cold, as if he’s just come back inside.
His profile is a shadow over me, gray predawn light peeking through a crack in the curtains.
“I don’t know … they’re just standing there in the parking lot. Staring at our room.”
Adrenaline floods my system, and suddenly I’m awake.
I sit up. “Is it anyone you recognize?” In other words, someone from that merciless little cult chasing after him?
Devon shakes his head. “I’ve never seen either of them before. It’s a woman and a kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen.”
Her. A bad feeling starts to coalesce in my gut.
“Did you see what she’s wearing?” I ask. “Is it a dark blue trench coat kind of a thing?”
Now that my eyes have adjusted to the dim light, I can see him staring at me. “Yes, I believe so. How did you—”
“And the kid? Hoodie, baggy jeans, and black and white Vans?” I press.
Devon hesitates. “I couldn’t see his shoes, but that otherwise sounds accurate.”
That cannot be a coincidence. I saw that woman at the police station, then outside the Theta Iota house with that same kid in the checkered shoes. And now here.
“Is it just them?” I ask.
“As far as I could tell.” Devon looks uneasy with giving even that much confirmation.
It could be her. She could be the one who coerced Izzy into jumping.
Or, maybe it was the two of them together.
That might explain how the power was so overwhelming.
When I saw them at Theta Iota, they were maybe ten feet from the Delta Pi Gamma’s yard.
I didn’t see either of them during the actual event, but then again, I wasn’t looking and it wouldn’t have taken much to hide from Devon, who was distracted by what was happening to me and had obviously never noticed them before.
The idea of willingly confronting the source of the power that enveloped me so entirely makes my heart flip around in my chest, like a dog straining on its leash.
But if they hurt Izzy, then they likely also murdered Lennie, and that is not going to slide.
“Stay here,” I tell Devon, as I slide off the bed and stuff my feet into my shoes.
“They’re like us?” he asks.
“Yeah, I think so.” Standing around at five thirty in the morning in a motel parking lot alone, staring at a room, is a weird thing for anyone to do, but it makes more sense for a pair of spawn than regular old humans.
“If it’s who I’m thinking of, I’ve seen them before.
She was outside the police station and they both were across the street from the Oats. ”
He processes that information. “The spawn you’ve been looking for,” he says, and it’s not a question. “What are you going to do?”
End this. Try not to die in the process. That doesn’t sound particularly confident, so I keep it to myself.
I shrug into my coat—Carter’s coat—and for a second, regret claws at me so hard I can barely breathe. Carter will never know what happened to me. Not really. Maybe that’s for the best. But I’m almost positive he’ll blame himself.
I can’t do anything to change that, though. Not now.
I edge toward the window and peer through the opening in the curtains.
The paved lot is snow-swept and dim, except for the pool of light from the one functioning street lamp near the shell of the fenced-off pool.
The woman waits, hands tucked inside her pockets, hair loose around her shoulders. Just like when I saw her before. Only this time she isn’t pretending to be lost or checking her phone.
Next to her, the kid is rocking back on his heels, impatience radiating off him. His hood is down this time, revealing a closely shorn head. But the remaining hair sticks up in tufts at various intervals, either a bad cut or a sign of his frustration—it’s impossible to know which.
Flurries of snow scuttle along the ground and in the air, whipped by the wind, but not near them. The flakes hit an invisible wall around them and vanish. It’s as if they’re enclosed in a transparent bubble.
Someone’s repelling the moisture.
Shit. One of them is Sanguine. Technically, Sanguine’s spawn are drawn to water, subsist on water, control water, in all forms. Rivers, creeks, oceans, drainpipes, whatever.
However, at some point, they decided the walking water bags that are human beings were much more convenient.
It’s where the vampire legends come from.
It’s not the blood they’re interested in, so much as the water.
However, more critical than any of that, at this moment, is that a Sanguine spawn might still hold a grudge against me. Specifically.
“This is probably going to get messy,” I warn Devon as I start for the door.
“I’m coming with you,” he says, following me.
I glare at him over my shoulder. “No.”
“Stop me, then,” he says with a raised eyebrow.
I grit my teeth but say nothing. I should feed on him, draw his life force down, just to show him. But I can’t risk taking too much—he is still mortal—and … it goes against everything I believe in.
Even when your own life is at stake?
Apparently. Annoying, but true.
“Fine. Just … stay back.” I don’t wait to see if he agrees because, frankly, there’s nothing I can do about it if he doesn’t.
Yanking open the door, I step outside. Which is the exact moment my stomach chooses to rumble impatiently. Way to announce your own vulnerability.
I push my hand against it to stop the noise. Devon was right. I should have sought out more opportunities to feed last night, in my own way. It’s like walking into a battle with a gun and no bullets.
I’m going to have to start listening to him more. Assuming I survive this.
Neither spawn moves, not even as I step out from under the motel’s overhang into the parking lot.
The ground at their feet is dry, all the snow and ice evaporated, and now that I’m closer, I can feel the faint shiver of magic crawling up my skin.
Then the kid lurches forward, determination written plainly across his face.
Dread building in me, I brace myself, waiting for that blast of power to wrap itself around me, to drag me down and hold me in its suffocating embrace.
But the woman’s hand snaps forward, latching onto the back of his sweatshirt and jerking him to an abrupt halt.
“Maggie,” he protests as she drags him backward into the bubble.
“Shut up,” she says through clenched teeth. “Do it right, I told you.”
I stare at them both. What is going on?
The woman—Maggie—returns her attention to me. Then she drops her gaze to the ground and moves to a kneeling position, carefully balancing on heels that have no business in weather like this.
The kid does the same, but he moves with more ease and a bit more teenage “this is so stupid” attitude.
Really confused now, I start toward them again.
But when Maggie pulls her bare hand from her pocket, I stop.
Slowly, she reaches forward, holding her hand out, palm facing the slick asphalt.
As I watch, the moisture in my path to her vanishes, evaporating like snowflakes on warm skin but even faster. Her power moves around me, like a breeze ruffling my hair. But it doesn’t touch me, doesn’t pull from me. I don’t even feel thirsty. At least, no more than usual.
It’s nothing like the black hole experience of that other power.
Maggie clearly is Sanguine spawn, at least. The kid is still an unknown.
“It’s possible they’re here to secure an alliance,” Devon points out quietly behind me.
They both remain in that awkward kneeling position, gazes averted.
Possible, yes, but I don’t like the timing or the coincidence of them following me around campus.
Only one way to find out.
“What do you want?” I ask, keeping the ten feet of distance between us. Not that that will help. It just makes me feel better.
Maggie looks up, startled. “Oh. Uh. Am I doing this wrong?” Her uncertain face turns to Devon, a step behind me, then back to me, seeking reassurance. Fear holds her body taut, like her muscles and ligaments have been replaced with steel wire.
“Told you,” Devon murmurs.
I sigh. “Don’t kneel. That’s … that’s weird. I’m not … look, please get up.”
“See?” the boy hisses at Maggie, but she ignores him.
She rises unsteadily, tottering slightly on those sky-high heels. She flicks her overly long black bangs out of her eyes and that’s when I realize why she looks so familiar. Not just because I’ve seen her around campus.