“Miss Scarlett,” Wyatt said, breaking the long silence. I jerked upright, turning to look at him. His expression was troubled and serious beneath the cowboy hat. “I need to know that you’re going to hold up your end of our bargain.”
I blinked. “You’re expecting me to have a big ethical panic over killing Arthur and Lucy? Man, you’ve got the wrong girl.” If the only way to save Jameson was to see two murderous vampires dead, I could handle it. Besides, they wouldn’t be the first deaths on my hands. I couldn’t afford to get sentimental about it.
“That’s not what I meant,” Wyatt said. “I want to make sure you have your priorities straight, that’s all. Killing the Holmwoods needs to come before saving your friend.”
“Uh, my hope is that those two things pretty much go hand in hand.”
“Yeah, but has it occurred to you that Jameson might not choose you over them?” he contended. “He might want to kill as many of us as possible, just like the Holmwoods.”
“Then I’ll change his mind,” I said stubbornly.
“And what if he puts himself between us and the Holmwoods?” Wyatt argued. “What will you do then?”
I hated to admit it, but he had a point there. “It’s not going to come to that,” I insisted, trying to believe it.
“And if it does?”
“Then I’ll try to wound Jameson so you can get to the Holmwoods. Or lure him out of the way. Something. We can make this work.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Wyatt said cautiously, “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you so hell-bent on saving him, after . . . what he’s done?”
There was a sort of implicit understanding there that I had slept with Jameson, but Wyatt was too much of a gentleman to mention it. Maybe I should have been embarrassed, but I just didn’t have it in me.
I thought about not answering the question, but like it or not, Wyatt and I were in this together. We were going into a dangerous situation, and he deserved to know the truth. “Because he’s me,” I said quietly. “If a few things in my life had gone a little differently . . . he’s me.”
There wasn’t a lot more to say after that.
We were out in the desert, on dirt roads that stretched for miles and miles of uninterrupted nothingness. Finally, Wyatt pulled the truck off the road, seemingly at random. He killed the headlights and pointed forward. “The station is about a half mile up that road,” he explained. “We can’t park too close without giving ourselves away, and even driving past might look suspicious. We should walk from here.”
I tucked the Glock in its holster into my jeans and checked my knife belt, then waited as Wyatt strapped on five different guns: one on his ankle, two in a belt holster, and a shotgun and a rifle on straps that crisscrossed his chest. Then he filled the pockets of his coat with ammunition, and handed me several spare magazines for the Glock, which I managed to tuck into my knife belt. It seemed kind of like overkill to me, but at the same time, it was kind of comforting.
Wyatt led me about fifty yards from the road, and we began to walk parallel to the road, sticking to the desert. He stayed twenty feet ahead of me so he could see better, but the area was surprisingly well-lit, thanks to the three-quarter moon. “What about snakes?” I said to him as we started out. I didn’t need to raise my voice; he had enhanced hearing as a vampire. “I’m not a huge fan of death by cottonmouth.”
“Cottonmouths live in Florida and Texas,” he called over his shoulder. “Around here we have sidewinders and rattlesnakes.”
“That wasn’t exactly reassuring.” I didn’t have a particular phobia about snakes, but I am naturally opposed to anything that snaps toward me real fast with fangs. Thank God I was immune to vampires.
He laughed. “I should hear them first, and if one does attack, the venom wouldn’t kill me. You just walk where I walk.”
After that, I stayed quiet, so I wouldn’t distract him, and made an enormous effort to follow his path as closely as possible. A couple of times he paused and suddenly veered to one side, circling an area, and I was careful to do the same. He might have been messing with me, but I’d rather be the butt of a joke than snake food.
After about fifteen minutes of walking, I could make out a brightly lit building just off the road. Wyatt motioned for me to catch up with him. “That’s the boardinghouse,” he murmured. I didn’t know much about architecture, but it actually sort of reminded me of those big plantation buildings you see in the Deep South: white, rectangular, with a big second-story porch held up by Grecian columns. The lights were on inside and out, and as we got closer, I could see a few shadows moving around in front of the windows. It wasn’t the Holmwoods, I was certain: it was only nine thirty, and the second Demeter show was just starting, an hour away from us. But it would make sense for the Holmwoods to send ahead a couple of guards and maybe a few humans to help with setup and provide snacks. Literally.
At this distance, there was no way to know if I was looking at humans or vampires, but I wondered idly if the Holmwoods were also planning to offer the vampires actual food and drink, which they could consume thanks to Jameson. That would be just the kind of novel gesture that would build trust. Get a bite to eat, then venture back behind the building for a nice moonlit walk and bang! Twice-dead vampires.
We were approaching from the side, but the plan was to avoid the boardinghouse entirely for now, taking up positions in the ruins behind it. I clamped down on my radius and let Wyatt get ahead of me again, so he could use his vampire senses to guide us. He paused, listening hard for a moment, and then eased us around the side of the building, going slow and leaving lots of space between us and the brightly lit windows.
For one surreal moment it felt just like I was a kid playing Ghost in the Graveyard again, only this time the threat wasn’t just being caught by one of my brother’s friends and having to go wait on the front porch with the other losers. This time we could die. Well, Wyatt could die again, I guess.
We crept all the way around behind the boardinghouse, where there was pretty decent lighting coming from a few miniature lampposts. At an angle to the building, I finally spotted the remains of a tiny structure—maybe a smokehouse or outhouse. Something ending in -house. At any rate, Wyatt had been right: there were now three standing walls.
He led the way to the shadows behind the ruins, where we could keep an eye on the building. We were far enough from the light that no humans would be able to see us if we peeked out. Vampires would be a different story, but with all the lights on in the mansion we’d at least see their silhouettes. I hoped.
I could just barely see Wyatt give me a nod and lean back against the ruins, cradling his rifle. I crouched down next to him, getting comfortable, and then slowly released my radius. No one else was back here, and I didn’t want to tire out too quickly.
Now all we had to do was wait until Lucy and Arthur showed up. Hopefully they would come out back before the party really got going, but if not, we would wait until we saw a bunch of shadows moving and go peer in the windows until we spotted them. Then I could extend my radius and Wyatt could shoot them through the windows with his little arsenal.
It wasn’t the most sophisticated plan, I admit, but one thing I’d learned from my misadventures in LA was that a loose plan was often the best plan.
While we waited, I took occasional quick peeks at the rest of the property. The whole place was a lot bigger than I’d imagined from Wyatt’s little sketch. The back of the boardinghouse opened onto a neat gravel patio area that was probably rented out for receptions—I saw stacks of small tables and chairs leaning against the side of the building. At the far edge of the gravel, there were a few feet of green lawn and then the kind of loose wooden fencing used for cattle. I couldn’t see the ends of the fence—they just stretched out into the darkness—but in the center was a small metal gate, sized to fit a golf cart or ATV. I could just make out the two paths beyond that. One would go left, meeting up with the dirt road, which was probably how they used to get livestock back there when the place was a hunting club. Hopefully Cliff was working the SUV around to that area right now.