Nightshifted

Sike stopped in her progression and looked at me. “You mean you don’t know?”

The list of everything I currently did not know would fill a fucking library. Sike saw the look on my face, and took pity on my ignorance.

“The Zver call them nochnaya. She is a vampire child from two daytimer parents, an actual child of the night. She’s the reason they keep us daytimers tame, in the hopes that someday, one of us, one of our children, will be like her.” Sike inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Right now, she is still a little girl. A hungry, angry little girl. But she can grow, and change. Because unlike all the rest of them, she is actually alive. Hadn’t you noticed it?”

I pursed my lips, remembering imagining her heart beat the night before. Maybe I hadn’t known it—but I’d felt it.

“She’ll live forever until she chooses not to,” Sike continued. “And then when she dies, and rises again after three days … To vampires, she will be like unto a god.” She looked at me, her eyes daring me to challenge her. “One doesn’t tell a god when to stay, or when to go. She wanted to be free, and so she left.”

I didn’t think Sike would have stopped Anna, even if the Rose Throne had directly told her to. There was too much similar between them. She touched her bandaged wounds with curious fingers.

“She’s been so hungry, for so long. I am lucky that she let me live.”

And the thought that I might have come into my living room and found Sike’s corpse lying on my couch was the last straw. I almost shouted at her, “You would have let her kill you?”

“I would have died for her, and welcomed it.”

I shook my head. “You can’t mean that, Sike—”

A slow, true smile spread across her face. “I’ll never be powerful enough to exact vengeance for all that was done. But someday? She will be.”

She pondered this for a cheerful moment more, before lurching up into a stand. I jumped up after her, ready to catch her if she fell.

“I have to go now to get ready for your trial,” she said, folding the tatters of her shirt over her shoulder before picking up her coat.

I shook my head. “Stay here.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, right.” And maybe her car was so fancy it’d drive itself. “Sike, you’ve lost a lot of blood. They’ll understand.”

She shouldered her coat on, with a hiss of pain, and straightened its collar before speaking again. “Mr. Weatherton signed a contract. That is all that matters now.” She stalked toward my front door.

“Will she show up?” I called after her.

Her hand was on my door handle. “I would shrug, but it would hurt,” she said, and let herself out.

And then I was alone with my bloodstained couch. If Anna didn’t show up tonight, I wasn’t so sure Mr. Weatherton would still want the case.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

I sat in the middle of my very empty living room for a moment, gathering my thoughts. First off—I needed a shower. Badly. I was ten different kinds of gross.

Secondly, I should have written a letter to Jake and given it to Sike before she’d left. It wasn’t too late, though. I got paper from my nightstand and rummaged in my purse for a pen. Then I remembered about the pope water. I swirled my hand around inside my half-closed purse, searching, and found nothing.

I unzipped my purse all the way and dumped all of its contents out on the floor. I still had my wallet and keys, but the pope water was gone.

I tried to remember the last time I’d seen it. Meaty’d given it to me, and right after that I’d tucked it away. Ti wouldn’t have stolen it, and Sike surely wouldn’t have. Who else had I seen, between then and now?

Jake. Dammit to hell.

When I’d been in the bathroom at Molly’s. He’d been looking for money, no doubt. When he found an unlabeled but obviously medically related bottle in my bag, the temptation had been too great. It could have been a bottle of spit for all he knew … but of course he hoped that it wasn’t. He’d hoped that his nurse kid sister was bringing something illicit home, something that he could shoot up.

I was so tired, so worn out, so exhausted—and yet—fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck.

I called Jake a thousand different names under my breath as I drove to the Armory. At least I knew where he was staying—that was a change. I parked a block away, and trusted my ancient car, my current appearance, and my crappy mood to protect me as I walked the block in.

“We’ve already closed for the night,” the lady at the front informed me.

“I’m looking for my brother. I have to talk to him. It’s a medical emergency.”

She frowned at me. “Who?”

“Jake Spence.” I held my hand up to indicate his relative height. “Dark hair, healthy looking?” Asshole, thief, my mind continued.

“We really don’t allow visitors—”

I fished my badge up and out of my shirt. The County logo gleamed clearly under the cheap lighting, a tree reaching up from three hills. “I’ll just be a minute. It’s an emergency, I swear.”

She frowned but relented. “Fourth floor, a few cots in. If he leaves, he can’t come back in tonight.”

I nodded curtly. “Thanks.”

* * *

I raced up the stairs, fueled by anger and fear. I had to stop myself at the landing and breathe a few times, not to catch my breath, but to calm down. I wanted to slam the door open and go in yelling, but the other people here didn’t deserve that—just Jake. I went in.

The room had a five-by-five grid of cots. There were signs on the walls posting the rules of the Armory, reminding people to take showers, cajoling them to come to church on Sunday.

Three heads bobbed up at my entrance. Each of their faces had the exhausted look of hypervigilance, wiped out by PTSD from some previous personal war. I waved my hands negatingly at them and made my way to where I saw Jake, asleep.

“Jake, wake up.” I kneed his cot. He continued to snore. Just because he couldn’t kill himself with drugs didn’t mean he couldn’t keep trying. My brother was never a quitter. As I knelt down to whisper louder, I smelled beer on his breath. This time, I shook him hard.

His eyes fluttered open and slowly focused on me. “You look like hell, Sissy,” he said.

“I feel like hell. Where is it?” I shook his shoulder again.

“Where’s what?”

I inhaled and exhaled very slowly, and then addressed him like I would a patient I was about to throw down with. “Jake, I don’t have time to play games.” I watched realization dawn on his face—perhaps he saw the look in my eyes now that he most frequently saw in the mirror. Want.

“But it’s just water, Edie. It didn’t do anything.”

“Where is it?”

“Why? What is it?” he asked, sitting up.

“Jake—I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you! You can’t just take things from me. You can’t take anything from me anymore!”

“Fine. Hang on.” He yawned, then reached over to rummage in his bag, retrieving the bottle. Turning back toward me, he finally took all of me in, the shirt covered in zombie scrapings, the splashes of almost-vampire blood. “Edie, are you in some sort of trouble?”

I snatched the bottle from his hands and held it up in front of my eyes. Empty. Dry. I slammed it down onto my thigh.

“If you wanted to care—it’s too late.” I didn’t want these words to be the last ones out of my mouth at him, but I’d been holding so much in for so long. “You never cared about anyone but yourself, Jake. You always came first for you. I gave up so much to help you out, and you never even said so much as thanks.” I inhaled deeply and blinked back tears. “This is good-bye, Jake. I love you, I’ll always love you, but this is good-bye.”

He reeled backward, stunned. I stood up and stalked down the stairway, past the disapproving shelter manager, straight out to my car. I unlocked my door, sat down inside, put my forehead against the steering wheel, and sobbed.

* * *

When I could drive again, I got home quickly. Exhaustion helped. I was too wrung out to care. Everything felt dry—the bloodstains on my shirt, the cardboard taste on my tongue—and the events of the past few days felt distant and blurry, like I’d watched them happen to someone else.

Anna was gone. I’d rescued her twice, and she’d abandoned me. Ti cared, but he was gravely injured. The lawyers didn’t care if I lived or died, and Meaty, Charles, and Gina thought I was dead already.

Tonight Dren would come to take me away and there’d be nothing I could do.

Worst of all, I hadn’t even saved Jake, goddammit. It was all for nothing. All of it.

I went into my house and picked up all my medical things, shoving them back in the box, and took that box with me into the bathroom. Heaven forbid my landlord should find alcohol swabs littering the floor—he might think I was a junkie! I set the box down and kicked it as hard as I could, sending it skidding into the far tile wall.

Then I pulled the bottle of pope water out of my pocket, fully expecting to throw it in the trash. But the heat from my body or the angle I’d carried it had made two infinitesimally small drops coalesce on its glass wall. I flicked it with my fingernail, sending them to the bottom of the vial.

What, if any, good would that be? I couldn’t even get them out. Unless—

“No way,” I whispered. Then I ran to my box of supplies and hauled it out of the bathroom and dug through everything until I found an insulin syringe. Diabetic medicines were given in minute quantities, units so small you felt stupid double-checking them with another nurse. I popped it out of the package and pulled its orange cap off with my teeth—and really quickly remembered to hit the cap of the bottle with an alcohol swab, as Lord only knew what needle Jake had shoved in there before me.

I pierced the cap, and slowly drew the pope water out. Three units worth—0.03 milliliters, written down. Barely anything. It was so clear it was hard to convince myself that there was anything in the syringe but air. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">