20. Isaiah

My hunger is growing.

Feeding on Patten barely sated me. It also re-awakened a hunger for fresh, not microwave warmed bagged blood.

Hot, straight from the vein, pulsing with life, and…

Stop, I warn myself as my mouth waters and my fangs drop. You will lose control, and it was hard enough to stop feeding on Patten.

I can’t risk doing it again. Even if it wasn’t enough to fully satisfy me. I don’t trust myself to drink more.

It takes a minute, but my fangs return to their sheaths, and I refocus on the present.

It’s late evening, nearly 6 p.m., and Jade is sitting with Shep at the dining table, looking over a map of Wilkerson’s mountains. She came downstairs with Patten an hour ago. Both had a lazy, satisfied look about them. It was clear what they’d been up to.

To me and to Dominik, who has had a dark look stamped on his face ever since. Surprisingly, he hasn’t set Patten on fire.

Yet.

It took me a while to wonder why that was. Jade wants nothing to do with Dominik. She couldn’t have been any clearer if she tried. After what she did to Almeth with her new emerging power, there’s every chance she’d use that new power on Dominik.

I wonder if he knows it.

Dominik is standing beside the couch, hands stuffed in his pockets, bright green eyes fixed on Jade. She must feel his attention, but seems determined to ignore him.

My gaze moves on.

Patten must have noticed Jade is ignoring Dominik for him to be smirking as he chomps through a bag of chips.

Outside, the sky is darker, and we’re no closer to finding and killing the collector. The longer we don’t find him, the more chance we give him to come after us.

Conscious I’m being observed, I turn from the backyard window, toward the kitchen.

Patten is studying me, still loudly chomping.

When he says nothing, I lift my brow. “Problem?”

“Not yet,” he responds mysteriously as he seals the chip bag and stuffs it back in the open cupboard beside him.

I refocus on the window, no longer distracted by thoughts of Amelie, but about this collector and where he might be hiding. “Could he have a secret bunker?”

“Maybe,” Shep says. “But finding it is going to be harder if that’s the case. The only way we’ll know is if we go into those mountains and there’s no telling what’s waiting for us out there. He’d see us coming from a mile away.”

We all fall silent.

The obvious thing would be to pile into the car and drive out there. Deal with this thing here and now.

I’m not the only one who is trying not to look at Jade.

The collector grabbed her, and he would grab her again. None of us wants to go into that mountain, and none of us wants to leave an enemy at our back.

As I think of a way we can get to the collector without Jade winding up in one of his cells, my mind inevitably returns to my hunger.

Patten suddenly grips my arm, startling me more than it should have. My eyes narrow with suspicion. “What are you doing?”

Patten pulls me toward the front door. “Need a drink. You’re coming with me.”

Shep whips his head our way, frowning as he rises. “That is not?—”

“A good idea,” Patten interrupts. “Probably not, but I’m going stir crazy in here. Need fresh air.”

“In a bar?” Dominik lifts a brow.

“Yes, people breathe in bars. Don’t ask such a stupid question again.” Patten tugs me from the room, stopping long enough to snag the car keys from the side table. “We won’t be long.”

“Be careful!” Shep yells.

“Yes, Mom,” Patten yells back.

Jade laughs.

Patten slams the front door shut and strides toward my white Audi’s driver’s seat. Being outside is not a good idea when I’m this hungry. Being in a bar is a worse one.

As if Patten senses my hesitation, he looks at me. “Don’t even think about it.” He lowers his voice. “This isn’t just about hitting a bar. Let’s go.”

Curious, I cross over to the passenger side and get in. “Why are we going to the bar?”

“Easy. You’re going to feed.”

I stare at him. “I’m going to do no such thing.”

“Yes, you are. Close your door.” He starts the car and takes a second to scan the street. Probably for his father. I do a quick sweep of my own. This residential street is a quiet one. If any members of Amelie’s family have hidden themselves nearby, I neither hear nor see them.

“You’re starting to resemble Casper the Friendly Ghost, which means you need to chow down on someone.” Patten pulls the car away from the house, forcing me to close my door or get out. “I’m not waiting for you to faint again.”

I close the door since I have no desire to dive out of a moving vehicle.

“I’d rather you did not refer to it as that.”

He shrugs. “Doesn’t change what it is. You need to feed. So we’re going to get you fed.”

“And the reason you’ve decided that you’re the person responsible for this?” I wonder if it’s his refusal to look at me after I fed on him. It made him uncomfortable.

No, his response to the bite did that.

And Patten, for all his seemingly easy-going nature, has more hangups than he lets on.

The drive to Pick your poison takes minutes. It’s only after Patten has parked outside that he cuts the engine and turns to face me. “You do a shit job of looking after yourself.”

But that isn’t all this is.

He moves to get out. I grip his arm, stopping him. “The truth.”

“We’re like the Ninja Turtles, so we have each other’s backs.”

I lift my brow. “Ninja Turtles?”

He nods. “Jade is April, Dominik can be Shredder, the evil one. Shep is the green one or the rat master, you can be the blue one, and I’m Donatello.”

That isn’t the truth. Or it isn’t only the truth. He doesn’t want to talk about the bite, and I don’t want to provoke him into it, especially after he volunteered to feed me.

My brow rises higher. “They were turtles. And how is it you only remember one of their names?”

He shrugs. “Name just stuck. Now let’s go find you a human juice box. There were a couple of witches in there last time that might do, if you don’t mind something a little sour and bitter tasting.” Shrugging off my arm, he climbs out of the car and heads for the entrance.

Feet from it, I stop him again.

He lifts his brow, waiting for my response.

“Thanks for caring that I resemble Casper and wanting to do something about it. Please stop referring to people as human juice boxes.”

He claps me on the arm. “No problem. I was getting worried you’d get so pale you’d fade into the walls and we’d lose you for days.”

I pull the door open. We don’t immediately enter, scanning the room first. The last time we were in here, Almeth had been about to hit Patten with a broken pool cue when I’d intervened. The bar is still showing signs of that short but messy fight.

Someone has cleared the broken bottles away, though there are far fewer bottles on the back than there had been before. The bar itself has a fair amount of dents and scratches, and the bartender, a middle-aged dark-haired man in a black T-shirt, is glaring at Patten.

“It doesn’t look like we’re welcome,” I say.

Patten looks around the room. “Yeah, well, we’re not stopping. Just grabbing some takeout and leaving.” He leans his shoulder against mine and, lowering his voice, speaks out the side of his mouth. “Any sign of anyone looking to stake you?”

I do another slower, more thorough examination of the bar. No one has Amelie’s family’s distinctive red hair, though they could have dyed it, and not all members of her family had her sharp, delicate features.

“No.”

“Okay.” Patten takes a step inside.

“I don’t trust myself to stop,” I say quietly.

He stops and turns to me. “That’s what I’m here for. You won’t kill anyone if you don’t want to.” He pauses. “Unless it’s a witch. No guarantees I’ll stop you then.”

“Thanks.”

He nods and walks inside. “Wait here.”

I yank him back. “What do you mean, wait here?”

“I’ll go grab you a human juice box.”

I look at him.

“The name’s stuck now,” he says. “There’s a witch over there. I figure the world could do with one less witch to curse a poor guy. I’ll chat her up a bit, get her to follow me out here, and then you pounce.”

I’m mid-way through telling him that I don’t pounce, have never pounced, and don’t intend to start now when a soft pop and a faint disturbance of air makes me shove Patten to the ground.

He yelps, a sound he quickly cuts off. He must have spotted the bullet lodged in the door.

A man in dark green fatigues darts down toward a darkened street.

I leave Patten on the floor.

The man, maybe one of Atticus’s guards, maybe one of Amelie’s family members, is pulling the door of a parked navy sedan open when I reach him.

He fumbles for the gun in his belt, but all I see is his vein bulging in his neck. All I feel is white-hot rage that he came within a second of hitting Patten.

I have my fangs in his throat, hungrily gulping, when footsteps pound toward me.

Patten whisper-shouts. “Wait. We could bring him back to the house and… Oh.”

I lift my head, my body pulsing with life and belly deliciously full.

“Maybe the next guy?” Patten says.

I look down, taking in the man’s glazed eyes.

No. Not again.

Amelie’s colorless face, frozen in death, takes shape in my mind.

I scramble to my feet, retreating as I drag the back of my hand over my mouth, hating what I did but craving more of the taste of his blood.

Patten squeezes my arm. “It’s kill or be killed. That guy made his choice when he came after us. Let’s go before someone sees us.”

“And the body?” I make myself look away.

“You heard my da. This is Atticus’s town. His mess. He can deal with it.”