Page 30 of Smoke & Ashes
“You’ll what?” Yelena looked up at me with something that was almost amusement. “Kill me? I know you’ve grown a little since we last met, but I’ve always had power you don’t understand, Katharine.”
Something started moving in the darkness at the edge of the room. The King of Shadows had said—or at least strongly implied—that Yelena had been one of his creatures in life, and I’d known for a while that she had this creepy witchcraft schtick she could fall back on if the superhuman strength, speed, and cruelty weren’t enough.
Fuck it, let’s see what she’s got.I took a swing at her. I was pretty sure the attack caught her by surprise because there was no way seventeen-year-old me would ever have dared go for a vampire unarmed. Or at all, for that matter.
She dodged with that annoying speed and grace that vampires had and caught me by the wrist. I realised about half a second too late that letting an undead witch with blood on her hands get that blood on your skin was probably a bad idea. She said three words in a language I didn’t recognise and I felt a stabbing cold cut right through the guts of me, like my whole body had an ice-cream headache. Then she shoved me aside and went straight for Flick.
Here lies Kate Kane. Froze to death while failing to protect a teenager she nearly shagged. Total fuckup. Not especially missed.
I looked up from my pile of frozen agony on the floor to see Yelena drawing Flick into thatI will kill you in an inappropriately sexualised mannerembrace that vampires seemed to learn on day one of monster school. Fuck.
That was when Sofia went nova. She reached out to her friend in a way I found almost touching in its sincerity, then almost blinding as a burst of sunlight flooded out from her and chased the shadows from the room. Yelena recoiled and the bone-deep cold that had been holding me down began to fade rapidly.
The vampire retreated to the window, cowed but unrepentant. “Your Hellenic patron can’t protect you forever, and we will come for you and yours. Count on it.”
I was almost back up to full not-incapacitated-by-dark-magic-ness, and I wasn’t going to get a better chance to finish this. I threw myself across the room at Yelena, but she didn’t engage. Instead she drew the pelt around her shoulders, taking on the form of a gigantic black wolf and bounded through the window, shattering glass as she went. If I’d been less shaken or more reckless, I’d have gone after her, but her power would only increase as she got further from Sofia’s Aura of Loveliness and I didn’t know if shapeshifting was the only trick her stolen werewolf skin would let her bring to the party.
And yes, I’m very proud of myself for not taking theget yourself killed for no reasonoption. Thank you for asking.
Flick and Sofia were holding each other and crying so openly and sincerely that I felt distinctly uncomfortable intruding, but it was about to get really, really important for none of us to be here and even more important that none of us have blood on our clothes.
I steered the two of them back into Sofia’s flat, where they sat at the kitchen table—I doubted they’d want to take the sofa after what they’d seen on a basically identical piece of furniture—shaking. I wasn’t sure which of them I was more concerned about. It was true Sofia had less of a tough-girl vibe but Flick had seen way less of this shit, and a psychopath with the body of a teenager throwing a human heart at you was a hell of an introduction. Right then she looked very young and very scared and I was very, very glad I hadn’t fucked her.
“I’m going to call the police,” I explained. “Which is going to be complicated because the person who did this is probably working with the Prince of Wands, and his entire job is to make this sort of mess go away, and he can also control minds. So if you get asked any questions don’t lie, but don’t say anything you don’t have to, and trust nobody. Especially if they’re wearing a suspicious-looking scarf or their eyes are all glazed over.”
I got what I thought were nods of agreement, although in their position I’d have been half-listening at best. Part of me wondered if leaving the cops out of this would be the best plan, because I wouldn’t have put it past Sebastian Douglas to actively try to fit Sofia up for murder, especially if he knew that she was still doing the glowy thing that would keep her relatively safe from vampires. Then again, if he was, I didn’t think the corpses of three eviscerated young men were the way to go—even with vampiric poking you’d have a hell of a time convincing a jury that Sofia was the hearts-out-with-the-bare-hands type.
The cops showed up commendably fast on account of massacres getting their attention pretty damned quickly, and the rest of the night was the usual round of long interviews and awkward questions, mostly directed at me because I was the person who looked least like she belonged in a student let in North Acton. The sheer bloody violence of the scene worked out to our advantage, because it was very unlikely the police would get from “suspicious lady PI” to “three mangled co-eds” without some serious mental gymnastics they were not about to be doing.
We all gave our statements and our details and agreed not to skip the country, and then that was that. It was also about three in the morning, but I made us all caffeinated beverages anyway because I suspected nobody was going to be sleeping well that night.
“What happens now?” Sofia was sitting in Flick’s lap and staring at the table like she had at the candle.
“Long term or short term?”
“Either.”
“Short term you go to bed. Long term we’ll think about it.”
Flick gave me a slightly awkward look. “You can stay in my room, if you like,” she said. “I think I’ll be in with this one for the rest of the evening.”
Sofia glanced at the unslept-on sofa, then over her shoulder at Flick, then at me. “Kate,” her eyes widened. “You didn’t?”
“Y’know,” I said. “Iactuallydidn’t.”
“And if she had it would have been kind of on me.” Flick pulled an apologetic face.
“You’re both impossible. I should never have introduced you.” Sofia sipped her tea and went silent again. I think the opportunity to be shocked at my behaviour helped calm her down a bit. It was something familiar in a world that was getting increasingly … not that. Then again, now she’d gone full oracle, this was where she lived. She was probably going to have to get used to burying people.
Leaving her own tea untouched, Flick laid her head against her friend’s shoulder. “Not to come across as selfish or anything, but is she going to come back? And when she does is she going to try to kill me again?”
“Very likely.” I said. “On both counts. If we’re lucky she’ll realise that Patrick has a new girlfriend and move on to her instead.”
Flick didn’t seem reassured by this. “Okay, to be a bitlessselfish for a moment, doesn’t that mean a different completely innocent girl getting tormented and murdered?”
“She’ll have Patrick to protect her.” My own tea was getting cold but I wasn’t in the mood for it anyway. “And while he’s a dick, protecting people he’s obsessing over is the one thing he’s really, really good at. It’s literally his superpower.”
Sofia wriggled in Flick’s arms. “I still think we should warn them.”
