Page 38 of Kissed the Mark
Melanie shook her head. I noticed now thattears welled in her eyes. Well, that was on me for not thinkingabout making her relive her trauma.
“Oddly, the vampire did not attack Melaniewith fangs, nor did she suck any of her blood,” the woman said.“She did not smell like a vampire either, which leads us to believeshe wasn’t.”
Of all the things… If only Mayfair weren’tso isolated, we could have figured this golem thing out days ago.But no, no one wanted to talk to each other about the importantstuff. I felt an extreme irritation that had nothing to do with thefact that my hands were bound.
Melanie cleared her throat. Tearfully, shebegan, “The next time I saw her, though, she was wearing—”
“That’s enough,” the woman said. “Enoughdetails for an outsider.”
She had seen Leandra a second time,definitely the real Leandra, unless somehow she had spottedgolem-Leandra in the oversized T-shirts I’d put her in, but itdidn’t seem likely. Why they wouldn’t want me to know this,however, struck me as incredibly odd. They’d told me so muchalready.
If real Leandra had seen her, I would askher directly, not that she liked toanswerquestionsdirectly. But maybe she had been telling the truth about using thisto help Patricia.
The door opened, and a few people filed out.I was about to be dismissed, and I only had a very narrow window toconvince Melanie to come out with Leandra. It seemed like she wasreally under their extreme protection here. I wasn’t sure theywould even let her come.
I thought of Leandra, asking me to do thiswithout telling me why, and Mateo, telling me clear as day what hewanted me to do and what he hoped to accomplish from it.
In the end, they dismissed me, and I kept mymouth shut.
Chapter Nineteen
Distraction Tactics
AFTER THE WEREWOLVES FINALLY RELEASED me, and I mademy way back to Mayfair on foot, a dismal thought occurred to me: Ineeded a backup plan, and that backup plan was something I’d beenavoiding thinking about for a while now. Sure, I was curious aboutthe outcome of everything I’d been dragged into lately; and sure,Leandra was beautiful, and knew her way around my body; but none ofthese together were worth losing my life to the vampire queen, athought that I kept brushing off because I didn’t want to deal withit.
If everything fell through, I had to give upthe life I’d made for myself here, the thrills I got from huntingdown the different mayor-sanctioned marks, and return to the pettypolitics and squabbles of the Unseelie court, where countlessfairies with the same chaotic impulses I had were stuck together ina palace with very little to do. It was where I’d grown up, and itwas a place I did not look forward to returning to as a lastresort. Many of the people who were stuck at court were those whohad done something so egregious in the human world that theyweren’t allowed back, or wouldn’t be for some time, and those werethe bitterest, most vengeful fairies you could encounter. Once I’dgotten my feet cemented to the carpet of my bedroom for a week forspilling my drink at dinner. I abhorred the thought of becominglike that, but I knew if left to that fate, I would.
?
There was something about traversing veryfamiliar streets that had the same effect as highway hypnosis,where you blinked in one place and suddenly you were 50 milesfurther on your trip; I experienced such a thing now, having beenin the forest one second, and in front of the lawyer’s office thathoused Leandra’s second lair the next.
I supposed subconsciously, Leandra wanted meto come back, and I had held onto that thought in the back of myhead. Mateo would want answers from me soon, too. As wouldPatricia. How did I get myself so embedded in these vampires’business?
Leandra was waiting for me right on theinside of her lair. “You stopped responding to my texts! I thoughtsomething had happened to you,” she said. She sniffed the air. “Yousmell like the forest.”
“Thanks,” I said, pushing past her into theroom.
Leandra made eye contact with me, invitingme to say more, and then looked away when I didn’t. “I want you totake a look at something,” she said, before I could think how I wasgoing to word my excuse for not getting the newly turned werewolfto go out for croissants with her. Leandra tugged at a corddangling from the ceiling and pulled down a giant drawing of themost detailed map I’d ever seen of Mayfair. I approached it in awe;it was incredibly done and lovingly made, handwritten place namesand landmarks, even businesses. Everywhere that was of anyimportance to Leandra, I guessed. I saw Sugar & Spice listed,various bars including The Scale & Ale, the vampire mall marked“Vampire Central.” In one particularly familiar area she’dscratched out “The Jade Spirit” and above it in tiny letters:OLYMPIA’S APARTMENT.
There were no other residences labeledanywhere on the map.
“This is really beautiful,” I said, andmeant it. “When did you do all this?”
Leandra snapped her fingers impatiently.“I’ve made this over numerous years. That’s not what I’m trying toshow you, though. Look.” She tugged at a second cord, revealing aclear plastic sheet marked up in red Sharpie that overlaid the map.I squinted at it, unable to make out the pattern. Parks? A pond?The main square downtown? The site of the farmer’s market?
“I did a lot of research on the Spotted inMayfair Facebook page and on Reddit,” Leandra said. The idea ofLeandra at a computer, browsing Reddit, nearly made me ill withdiscordance. “These are the most likely places for goosecongregations within Mayfair’s borders.”
It was as though my brain had leaked out ofmy ears and splatted on the floor. All this effort…for geese. Therewere at least fifteen circled spots on the clear sheet over themap, some of them with short notes (“ten sighted on February 1st”)and some with extended notes (“complaints filed with city aboutWalmart parking lot”).
“You have a lot of time on your hands, huh?”I joked, my brain whirring. I needed to tell her the goose haddied, became roadkill or something.
Or I could tell her the truth, but I stillwasn’t sure how she would respond to that.
“If I get locked up in here during the day,there’s not much else to do but research. And I’ve researchedalmost everything I can think of about the Viktor Lehmannthing.”
I cleared my throat. My hands were shaking alittle. “So the plan is to just go to high concentrations of geesein town and hope I recognize one of them?” I asked, trying not tosound like I was making fun of her.
“No, that’s ridiculous,” she said. “That waswhy I wanted to get that werewolf out and away from the pack. Shesmelled the past me before, and werewolves have great senses ofsmell, especially new ones. I have no doubt she would be able topick the goose out of a lineup, or even track it down if we’relucky.”
