48. Alaric

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

ALARIC

W innie’s fingers dig into my arm. “Alaric.”

I scan the room, searching every face for the annoying witch or the vampire she was spying on. I can’t see either of them. “They’re not in the ballroom. Did you see her go off with him?”

“No, but?—”

I grab Winnie and haul her off the dance floor. Her words thud against my skull.

I don’t want to be a vampire.

This changes everything.

Winnie made me feel like I was worthy of love. But I cannot get that disgust in her voice out of my head. For all her pretty words, she looks at me and sees a monster. I thought she was different to all those villagers who’d burned and tortured me even after I helped them, but she’s not.

She doesn’t want to be like me. She doesn’t want me .

And I cannot flee this room. I cannot let loose the monster within me that she so fears, who now claws and scratches at my skin, desperate to take back what he has lost.

I have to deal with the killer first.

Guests call out to me, wanting us to join their groups. Everyone is curious about the human girl on my arm and what it means for our laws and my mother’s courtly interests, but I don’t care that I’m snubbing them.

There is a predator in my house, and even though he’s got the annoying witch, and I’d sort of love to lock her in a dark, soundproof room, she’s under my protection.

This monster will not allow such sacrilege in his house.

I veer away from the main doors. If Isis passed through them, her scent is overwhelmed by the vampires milling around, drenched in their expensive perfumes. I doubt he’d try to take her through the crowd and risk being seen spiriting away a human. I drag Winnie toward the side doors, where we’d spoken with Komal and Isis only a few songs ago. I stand under the doorway and sniff.

Winnie’s strawberry scent briefly distracts me, my heart flayed open by her rejection, but I catch a whiff of Isis’ patchouli perfume. “This way.”

“Alaric, slow down. We can’t?—”

I drop Winnie’s hand, realising that I’ve been dragging her faster than a human could possibly run, that I’m further proving that she should never have trusted me. “I’m sorry. He’s taken her down this hallway. I can smell her?—”

I sprint around the corner, following the scent. But right in front of the dining room, I lose it. It’s as though she disappeared into thin air.

A faint sound reaches my ears. A suckling noise and a woman’s whimper. “Please, no…”

She’s in my priest hole!

I don’t know how Baylor knew of its existence, but he’d taken Isis inside my secret room to pursue his wickedness. I tear the tapestry from the wall, revealing the hidden doorway. Winnie grabs the handle, but Baylor has locked it from the inside. I left the key back in my study, but we don’t have time for such niceties.

I tear the door from the hinges.

“Well, that’s hot,” a breathy voice whispers behind me. Winnie’s friend Beth. Members of the Nevermore Murder Club crowd into the hall as Winnie directs a candelabra into the gloomy maw of the room. This time, they all hear Isis’ whimper.

“She’s in there!” Winnie surges forward.

Panic seizes me. “No, let me?—”

But it’s too late. Winnie shoves her way into the room just as piles of art supplies and half-finished sculptures rain down on her.