“The oak said,” the fae said in English-accented Welsh, “Mercy would free me in the Harvest season.”
I stared at him, and he smiled before the vampire did something painful to him and he closed his eyes to endure. If he’d understood Welsh, I was sure he’d have done something more extreme. How the oakman knew I’d understand him, I didn’t know.
There are two ways to free a prisoner—escape is the first. I had the feeling that the oakman was looking for the second.
When he finished, the oakman was barely conscious, and Blackwood looked a dozen years younger. Vampires weren’t supposed to do that—but I didn’t know any vampires who fed from fae either. He picked up the oakman with no visible effort and tossed him over his shoulder. “Let’s get you a little sun, shall we?” Blackwood sounded cheery.
The door to the room closed behind him, and a woman’s trembly voice said, “It’s because you’re too much for him right now, dear. He did try to make you his servant ... but your ties to the wolves and to that other vampire—and how did you manage that, clever girl?—have blocked him. It won’t be forever. Eventually, he’ll exchange enough blood for you to be his—but not for a few months yet.”
Mrs. Claus ghost stood in the cage with her back to me, looking at the door that had closed behind Blackwood.
“What does he want from me?” I asked her.
She turned and smiled at me. “Why, me, dear.”
She had fangs.
“You’re a vampire,” I said.
“I was,” she agreed. “It isn’t the usual thing, I admit. Though that young man you met earlier is one as well. We’re tied to James. Both his. John was the only vampire James ever made—and I blush to admit that James is my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“He was always so kind, so attentive. A nice young man, I thought. Then one night one of my other children showed me the murdhuacha James had captured—one of the merrow folk, dear.” That faint accent was Cockney or Irish, I thought, but so faint I couldn’t be sure.
“Well,” she said, sounding exasperated. “We just don’t do that, dear. First off—the fae aren’t a people to toy with. Secondly, whatever we exchange blood with could become vampire. When they’re magical folk, the results can be unpleasant.” She shook her head. “Well, when I confronted him...” She looked down at herself ruefully. “He killed me. I haunted him, followed him from home all the way to here—which wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had. When he took that other man, the one who was like you—well, then he saw me. And found he still had use for this old woman.”
I had no idea why she was telling me so much—unless she was lonely. I almost felt sorry for her.
Then she licked her lips, and said, “I could help you.”
Vampires are evil. It was almost as if the Marrok himself were whispering in my ear.
I raised an eyebrow.
“If you feed me, I’ll tell you what to do.” She smiled, her fangs carefully concealed. “Just a drop or two, love. I’m only a ghost—it wouldn’t take much.”
12
“I COULD JUST TAKE IT FROM YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP dear,” the ghost said. “I was only trying to make it a gift. If you give it as a gift, I can help you.” She looked like the sort of woman you’d hire to watch your children, I thought. Sweet and loving, a little complacent.
“You won’t,” I growled. And I felt a little pop of something. Something I’d done.
Her eyes widened and she backtracked. “Of course not, dearie. Of course not—if you don’t want me to.”
She’d tried to cover it up. But I’d done something. I’d felt it once before, in the bathroom at Amber’s house when I’d told the ghost to leave Chad alone. Magic. It wasn’t the magic the fae used, or the witches, but it was magic. I could smell it.
“Tell me,” I said, trying to put some push behind it, imitating the authority that Adam wore closer than any of his well-tailored shirts. “How did Blackwood manage the haunting at Amber’s house. Was it you?”
Her lips tightened in frustration, and her eyes lit up like the vampire she had been. But she answered me. “No. It was the boy, James’s little experiment.”
Outside of the cages and out of reach was a table stacked with cardboard boxes. A pile of five-gallon buckets—six or eight of them—was on one corner. They fell over with a crash and rolled to the drain in the center of the room.
“That’s what you were,” she called in a vicious tone that sounded wrong coming out of that grandmotherly face. “He made you vampire and played with you until he was bored. Then he killed you and kept playing until your body rotted away.”
Like Blackwood had done to Amber, I thought, except he hadn’t managed to make her into a vampire before he’d turned her into a zombie. Here and now, I told myself. Don’t waste energy on what you can’t change just now.
The buckets quit rolling and the whole room was silent—except for my own breathing.
She shook herself briskly. “Never fall in love,” she told me. “It makes you weak.”
I couldn’t tell if she was talking about herself or the dead boy or even Blackwood. But I had other things I was more interested in. If I could just get her to answer my questions.
“Tell me,” I said, “exactly why Blackwood wants me.”
“You are rude, dear. Didn’t that old wolf teach you any manners?”
“Tell me,” I said, “how Blackwood thinks to use me.”
She hissed, showing her fangs.
I met her gaze, dominating her as if she were a wolf. “Tell me.”
She looked away, drew herself up, and smoothed her skirts as if she were nervous instead of angry, but I knew better.
“He is what he eats,” she said finally, when I didn’t back down. “He told you so. I’d never heard of it before—how should I have known what he was doing? I thought he was feeding from it because of the taste. But he supped its power down as he drank its blood. Just as he will yours. So that he can use me as he wants to.”
And she was gone.
I stared after her. Blackwood was feeding from me, and he’d gain ... what? I drew in a breath. No. The ability to do just what I had been doing—controlling a ghost.
If she’d stuck around, I’d have asked her a dozen more questions. But she wasn’t the only ghost around here.
“Hey,” I said softly. “She’s gone now. You can come out.”
He smelled a little differently than she did, though mostly they both smelled like stale blood. It was a subtle difference, but I could discern it when I tried. His scent had lingered as I’d questioned the old woman, which was how I’d known he hadn’t left.
He had been the one in Amber’s house. The one who’d almost killed Chad.
He faded in gradually, sitting on the open cement floor with his back toward me. He was more solid this time, and I could see that his shirt had been hand-sewn, though it wasn’t particularly well-done. He wasn’t from this century or the twentieth—probably sometime in the eighteen hundreds.
He pulled a bucket free of the pile and rolled it across the floor, away from us both, until it hit the oakman’s empty cage. He gave me a quick, sullen look over his shoulder. Then, staring at the remaining buckets, he said, “Are you going to make me tell you things?”
“It was rude,” I admitted, without really answering. If he knew something that would help me get Chad, Corban, and me out of there in one piece, I’d do anything I needed to. “I don’t mind being rude to someone who wants to hurt me, though. Do you know why she wants blood?”