TWENTY-FOUR

YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.”

I eyed the abandoned building with the blown-out windows, crumpled far wall and dilapidated roof with more than a little dismay. To make matters worse, it was surrounded by a junkyard. A smelly junkyard. Even Fabian looked like he wanted to run.

Bones shrugged. “I don’t see the problem. It’s quite safe.”

You vindictive, manipulative—

“Care to see your room?” he interrupted my mental rundown. The look on his face said he was enjoying this.

“Let me guess—it’s that smashed-up car right over there,” I said, pointing to a flattened old Buick.

“Oh, you’re not staying out here,” Bones replied, walking over to the shell of the building. “Quasimodo!” he shouted.

There was a loud creaking noise, like what a machine would sound like if it could feel pain. Then from out of the ruined side of the building, two vampires appeared as if sprouted from the ground.

“We thought you’d be here an hour ago,” one of them commented. “Her food’s cold.”

I was about to assure this unknown person that the smell had killed my appetite anyway, when a brunette seemed to levitate from the crumbled concrete next to him.

“Catherine.”

I gave Bones a glare promising terrible revenge. He didn’t look at me, but his mouth twitched.

“Next time,” my mother said, forgoing a hello, “call if you’re going to be late.”

The building was a front. The section that appeared to have collapsed hid an elevator complete with fake concrete blocks on top of it. At least the structure below had its own air-conditioning system, so the stench from the junkyard was greatly lessened in the underground dwelling. My guess was that it was an old bomb shelter. Don used some of those back in the States for his base of operations. Waste not, want not and all that.

“Welcome to Trash Castle,” my mother said as she gave me and Fabian the tour. “They had to drag me in here against my will when I first saw it. I’m sure your scurvy husband chose it just for revenge.”

So was I, but I wasn’t going there. “Bones isn’t my husband, as I’m sure you’ve been told.”

She gave me a shrewd look. “You don’t believe that.”

Six minutes, ten seconds. That’s all it took to make me want to run out of here screaming.

Bones wasn’t here. He’d dropped me off with a comment that he had business elsewhere. It had been all I could do not to yell, “Why did you risk your life taking me from Vlad’s if you still can’t stand to be around me?” But that would let on about how much I cared. So I didn’t say a word. I watched Bones leave without once asking when, or if, he intended to come back. Would I rather rot under a huge trash heap than admit how much it hurt to see him again, let alone see him walk away? You bet.

After three days at Trash Castle, I decided it was the perfect place to be if you wanted to go crazy but had a limited amount of time to do it in. Being fifty feet under a dump locked in the equivalent of a cellar with a listless ghost and an outspoken mother, all while thinking about the man who’d left me, was bound to bring on insanity faster than any circumstance I’d experienced before. Soon the idea of banging my head against a wall seemed like a fun way to spend ten minutes, and I fantasized about near-death experiences like they were a chocolaty dessert. Puberty had been an aromatherapy session compared to this.

Despite the smell, I took to going topside and clearing out sections of the junkyard just to do something. Fabian had his own way of dealing with the situation. He watched endless TV. My mother read or did crossword puzzles, in between comments about how if I would have listened to her, I wouldn’t be here today. Was it any wonder I preferred spending my time around stinky garbage?

I’d been sweeping up the far section of the dump when I heard the thrum of the automobile. Even though I knew it couldn’t be a lost tourist, since it was clear that we were on the ass-end of nowhere, I hadn’t waited to see if it was friend or foe before climbing to the top of the nearest garbage heap. Death? Didn’t scare me. It would be a vacation from Smell Central.

“Who came up with the password Quasimodo?” Spade muttered as he got out of his car.

“Hello, Spade,” I called out, shaking the debris off the rake I’d made from thin strips of metal and a truck axle.

Spade stared up at me, revulsion and disbelief competing on his handsome face.

“Lucifer’s hairy ball sack. You’ve become a Morlock.”

Seeing Spade looking so suave in his white shirt with his shiny black shoes and creased pants reminded me that I was covered head to toe in dirt and probably smelled like a bad case of flatulence.

“I’ve been buried underneath a junkyard for days, what did you expect?”

Spade slammed the door to his car. Just looking at it, I fought an impulse to jump in and drive until I passed out at the wheel.

“I can’t sit back and watch you and Crispin drown in your own stubbornness any longer. Good Christ, Cat, just die already and be done with it.”

I blinked. “Fuck you too, pal.”

“Move back to your vehicle, you’re not expected,” Techno, one of the vampires stationed there, said. He’d come around from the side of the building and had an Uzi that was loaded with silver bullets pointed at Spade.

“I’m on the list, you imbecile,” Spade barked. “Now turn around before I break that toy off in your arse.”

Spade’s back was to me. I grabbed a nearby tire and chucked it at him, smiling to see tread marks ruin the perfection of his white shirt. “Don’t talk to him that way, he’s doing his job.”

Spade recovered from the tire beaning him in the back and was in front of me with nosferatu swiftness.

“For God’s sake, Cat, take the leap, what are you waiting for?”

For a second, I wondered if I’d really lost it. It sounded like Spade was trying to taunt me into killing myself.

“Did I do something to piss you off?”

Spade spun around, balling his fists. Techno looked at me in confusion, as if questioning whether I was in danger.

“Want me to shoot him?” he inquired.

“Do you want to incite things? You’re barely human now; why do you persist in clinging to your last useless, mortal shred?”

“Don’t shoot,” I said to Techno, who’d raised the Uzi with purpose. “In fact, go away.”

“He’s not—” Techno began to sputter.

“Not what?” Spade asked. “Not supposed to tell her about it, I’ll wager? That’s why she’s looking at me like I’m barmy, right? Because she doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about.”

My jaw clenched. Techno’s face confirmed it all. Son of a bitch.

“Is it the ghouls again?” I asked, inwardly cursing that I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems, I hadn’t been suspicious about the lack of word on that front.

Spade gave Techno one last threatening look before folding his arms.

“Yes, it’s the ghouls. Their rhetoric is growing bolder. In certain areas, Masterless vampires have begun to disappear. It could be they’re stupid and got shriveled by one of our own kind, but there’s reason to believe it might be something more.”

I stared at him. Spade’s tiger-colored gaze was uncompromising. Gregor is behind this, I realized. The more paranoia about me becoming a vampire/ghoul hybrid, the more support he garnered for his cause to get me back so he could control me.

“Why wasn’t I told?”

Spade rolled his eyes. “Can’t you guess? Crispin doesn’t want this to influence your decision whether to turn into a vampire.”

“He doesn’t care about me,” I muttered before I could stop myself.

“You’re an idiot.”

I could feel my eyes turning angry green. “Excuse me?”

“Idiot,” Spade repeated, drawing the word out for emphasis. “Why do you think he fetched you from Vlad’s? Crispin knew if it came to a choice between you or Vlad’s people, you’d lose. Tepesh might be fond of you, but he’s beastly protective of his people.”