Page 12 of Tell Me Why
She sighed, trying to see what he was seeing, but mostly just looking at foreign building facade and alleyways.
She’d fought her way through plenty of those, at this point, and they were largely the same kind of fight, each time. She didn’t see anything special about these.
Tell unlocked her door for her and opened it, moving on before she sat to go around to the driver’s side and starting the car even as she closed her door.
“WasHunteractually in danger?” she asked.
“Four miles,” Tell said, still good-humored, but cool andaway.
She sighed, waiting as they drove back toward Viella.
Her sense of distance within the city was poor, and she twice drew breath to ask a question, and Tell held up a finger, indicating that they hadn’t reached his arbitrary threshold yet.
Finally he nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Yes, it is anactuallydangerous place. There were five or six men there who would have set on us if they’d thought for an instant that they could win a fight.”
“Just… because?” Tina asked.
“There’s a market for vampire parts in various places in the world,” Tell said. “Outside of June’s, that sort of thing will get you hunted down and killed by vampires who enjoy that kind of challenge, but there are places where it’s allowed, dark places,where the social convention is that you don’t speak up or tell stories, no matter what you saw.”
“They would have gone afterHunter?” Tina asked. “Oryou?”
“The oldest parts and the newest ones are worth the most,” Tell said.
“New parts seem like they’d be very easy to come by without anyone ever knowing about it,” Tina observed, and Tell laughed grimly.
“With the exception of brand new, as you say,” he said. “The idea that someone might design a manufacturing system for year-old vampires hasn’t escaped a lot of us, but just leaving a brand-new vampire in a cell to let them age, so to speak, doesn’t put on the power factors that you’ll have gained by doing the things that we do.”
“What?” Tina asked. “What does thatmean?”
He grinned.
“I’m sure Ginger could explain it to you in terms that meant nothing to anyone but her. Most of us are just passively aware of it. It’s not like I cansmellit on you or anything, but you’re different from someone who isn’t going after it, trying to grow what you’re capable of.”
“I don’t understand,” Tina said. “Other than how much sun I can tolerate before I go completely immobile… I thought things were basically fixed, how I am.”
She remembered the feeling of beingpowerful, from when the djinn had turned her into a vampire that one time, and she was still salty that she hadn’t been like that after Tell had turned her, but she’d managed to let go of it, mostly.
Mostly.
“It’s subtle,” Tell said. “But you know that Hunter and I aren’t like the younger vampires. Ginger, either. It’s because of how old we are.”
“I thought that it was mostly knowledge and experience,” Tina said, and he shook his head.
“Again, Ginger would bulldoze you with knowledge, and all I have to go on is instinct, but I don’t think so.”
She frowned, considering it.
“So why were wethere?”
“Because no one goes there but to prove that they can walk in and out safely and the ones who don’t want to be overheard.”
“And… what was the actual conversation about?” Tina asked. “Who is missing?”
Tell looked over his shoulder, as though someone could yet be eavesdropping even as they drove.
“Isabella,” he said.
