Chapter 4

P adma drove the carriage deep into Old Town, and the smoggy air made it difficult for me to track her, but Godor didn’t seem to have any issues. He coasted for long stretches, wings beating every thirty seconds or so.

The streets beneath us grew narrower, the houses sparser until they petered out altogether, opening out to accommodate woods and farms.

The air was clearer here, and Godor alternated between circling and trailing Padma as she drove the carriage up a dirt track before vanishing among the trees.

Where was she going? To the manor surrounded by more woodland, or the other way, toward the farm bordered by paddocks?

She emerged a moment later, clattering up the widening road, and took a left at the intersection toward the manor.

“Is Padma sick?” Godor asked.

“Not that I know of, why?”

“Doctor Jacq lives in Hyde Manor.”

A doctor? Was Padma sneaking out to see a doctor because she was sick and hiding it from me? “I need to find out what’s going on.”

Godor banked left toward the road but maintained a distance so that Padma wouldn’t spot us. He took us higher, circling as she parked the carriage on the drive, disembarked, and hurried into the building.

“Godor, take me down.” We landed at the edge of the woods in view of the house. This close, it was a dark and dead-looking place, not a single light burning in any window. But there was enough moonlight to show the cracks in the foundations and the thick moss climbing the walls. This was an old building, and it hadn’t aged well.

It might look as if no one lived here, but Padma had vanished inside, so someone must have let her in. This Doctor Jacq.

“Wait here. I’ll look around the back.”

Godor tucked his wings tight against his back. “Godor come with you. Godor good at sneaking.”

There was no harm in him coming with me. “Fine. Let’s go.”

We cut across the grass, keeping low and moving fast until we were up against the house, then we followed it around, peeking through each darkened window to find nothing but empty rooms filled with shadowy furniture. As we approached the back of the house, a pool of light was visible on the neatly cut lawn, and the hum of conversation drifted toward us. I slowed my pace as we reached the corner wall, straining to hear.

“…help you if I don’t have what I need,” a cultured female voice said.

“Please, Harriet, I need this. I swear I’ll have it for you next time.” Padma sounded distressed and desperate.

“This is a transactional deal. I made that very clear at the start, and it’s not a cure. You know that.”

“I know, I just…I need more time to figure out?—”

“There is nothing to figure out,” Harriet said. “The best you can do is accept it. I have a place where you can?—”

“No. Not yet, please. I need the transfusions. Just a few more weeks. Edwin has been researching, and we’ve ordered new texts from the Night Library. There could be answers.”

I slipped around to the back of the house, stopping on the outskirts of the rectangle of light.

“And if there aren’t any?” Harriet said.

“Then I’ll tell Orina the truth, and I’ll come here to end it.”

End it? What the heck? I stepped into the light spilling through French doors that opened into a sitting room area. Padma stood facing a young woman who was wearing modern-day clothes.

They both turned to stare at me, and the color drained from Padma’s face, leaving her red lips standing out starkly against her skin. But the woman merely smiled, ground her cigarette to death in an ashtray, then walked over to the doors to let us in.

“Miss Lighthart, how lovely of you to join us,” she said smoothly as if she’d been expecting me.

“How do you know me?”

“Everyone knows the new watcher.”

Figured. I looked to Padma. “What’s going on? What is it that you need to tell me?”

Her posture stiffened defensively for a moment, as if she was readying for a fight, but in the next beat, her shoulders sagged. Her mouth wobbled.

“Padma…” I stepped inside. “Please…I want to help.”

She shook her head. “You can’t help me.” Her eyes welled. “I’m turning into a monster, and I have no idea how to stop it.”

Harriet Jacq poured tea into Padma’s cup, her gaze flicking to Godor every so often almost warily. The bat boy crouched by the exit, his expression one of focused intensity as he watched her every move. He reminded me of a cat preparing to pounce. All he needed now was the telltale hunter butt wiggle, and I had no doubt that Harriet sensed it too. But she hadn’t asked him to leave. Yet.

He’d refused to come inside, but his vigilance warned that this woman was probably not to be trusted. So why was Padma here, trusting this woman with her secret? This woman who looked around the same age as me but whose eyes spoke of age and wisdom. I could usually tell if someone was other, and alarm bells were going off inside me when it came to Doctor Jacq.

She set a cup in front of me, and I shook my head.

I didn’t want tea, I wanted answers, but it was obvious that Padma needed a moment to gather her thoughts.

I gave her that moment by aiming the spotlight on the doctor. “What are you?”

Harriet’s brows flicked up. “A little intrusive, don’t you think?”

“Yes. But I need you to answer me.”

“I’m human, like you…mostly.” She smiled, closed-lipped, before sipping her tea. “That’s all you need to know, and all I’m willing to tell you.”

“You smell of death,” Godor said, his eyes narrowing.

“You have a good nose. I’m around dead bodies a lot.”

“A mortician?”

She tipped her head to the side. “Among other things.”

Then what was Padma doing here? “Padma, what’s going on?”

She exhaled. “Look, something happened to me a few months ago. After the fire. Edwin and Haiden know, but Merry…There was no point in telling her because she forgets anyway so…yeah.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay, so if I’m going to explain this then I need to start from the beginning. From the fire.”

“Okay. I’m listening.”

She nodded. “It was a late call. Two in the morning. Prime time for sucker activity and Sangualex jurisdiction, but they called us in anyway. That was the first off thing. I mean, we’d dealt with fires and other things during the day when they needed the help, but the nighttime…never. It was down by the docks. An old boathouse next to a small restaurant. The boathouse was ablaze by the time we got there, and the flames had caught on to the restaurant. We rushed inside to evacuate the people, but there were no humans inside. Just a bunch of dead vampires. Staked or headless. Some already ash, which told us a few of them were ancient. By this time, alarm bells were going off in my head. I ordered everyone to get out, but Merry heard banging from inside the walk-in freezer. Someone was locked inside. The flames were getting crazy. It was risky to cross the room to let them out, but I chose to take the risk.

“We opened the doors, and a bunch of vampires spilled out. They were wounded and bloodthirsty. They attacked us, but there was one who tried to help stop them. He wasn’t as wounded as the others and was still in control of his bloodlust. They were gunning for Merry because of her faeblood. But this one vampire protected her and got her out. We were close behind them when the beams gave way. Kassi, Ben, all the others…” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Only Edwin and I made it out.

“We found Merry unconscious on the ground a few meters away. The vampire who’d helped her was nothing but ash. Someone had killed him and knocked Merry out. Edwin picked her up, and we ran for the van, and that’s when the mullo appeared behind us. I shoved Edwin out of reach of the fog, but it swallowed me.” She stopped and took a gulp of her tea. “Being in the mist is like walking into your worst fears and becoming part of the nightmare. I was probably only in its grip for seconds, but it felt…it felt like an age. An age of dying over and over in different ways.”

“It’s how they feed,” Harriet said. “They use fear to disable their prey as they feast. Padma is lucky to be alive.”

“Lucky?” Padma’s lip curled. “Death would have been kinder. Edwin pulled me out, but it was too late.” She tugged down the shoulder of her top to expose the skin beneath, lined with black veins. “I’m infected. The virus in their saliva has no known cure. My blood is tainted now, and it’s turning me into one of them.”

“We don’t know that,” Harriet said. “No one has survived a mullo attack before. Not that we know of. So we have no idea what you’ll become.”

“Harriet has been transfusing me. Taking the tainted blood and putting fresh blood into me every week. It’s helped to slow down the infection, but my body continues to produce the tainted cells.”

“It’s in your bones now,” Harriet said. “In your very DNA.”

“No, there’s got be a way to cure it. To…revert it. Edwin will find a way.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility to put on him,” Harriet said.

Padma covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Let it take its course,” she said to her, then to me, “I have a safe place she can make the change and then we can run tests and see what we can do to help her. It’s impossible to find a cure for something when we don’t know exactly what we’re trying to cure. Your cells are still in metamorphosis.”

But what if there was no reversion? What if once she turned that was it? “No, we have to try to find a cure. I’ll help with research too.”

Padma looked up at me in surprise. “You will? But you have so much to deal with already.”

“I can handle it. I want to help.”

“Well,” Harriet said, “in that case, you’ll need to get me some more sucker rat blood. No blood. No transfusion. That’s the deal.”

So that’s what Padma had been doing? Hunting sucker rats? Alone. “Padma…does Edwin know you’ve been hunting alone?”

“He found out last week. But I told him it was a one-off hunt. I didn’t want to drag him into it.”

“Dammit, Padma, we’re a team.”

She stared at me for several beats. “I’m tainted, Orina. You know what that means. The blessing…the Order…Soon I won’t belong. I can already feel the power ebbing. I can’t risk Edwin getting hurt or infected because of me.”

It was true. The white wings blessing couldn’t be held by the impure. Infection born vampires couldn’t carry it and these mullo…Who knew what they were? “You can’t do this alone, and you shouldn’t have to. Three of us working together is better than you going it solo. We can watch each other’s backs. And there’s a cure for the regular vamp infection. We’ll make sure to get some to keep on hand before we go hunting.”

“Fabulous,” Harriet said. “Come back to me when you can pay for the transfusion.”

“Please,” Padma implored. “I need it tonight.”

Was this doctor seriously going to withhold her help? “Isn’t it your oath to help people in need? To heal?”

She snorted. “I’m not that kind of doctor, and I’m not a charity. But…I suppose I can do tonight’s transfusion for a different price. If you’re willing.”

“What?” Padma said. “I’ll do anything.”

Harriet smirked. “It’s not you that I need something from.” Her gaze slid my way. “It’s you.”

A shiver skated up my spine. “What do you want?”

“Nothing much, just a vial of your blood.”

“Why?”

“Do you ask the blood donation centers what they plan to do with your blood?”

“I’ve never donated.”

She smiled, mouth parting slightly to reveal pearly white teeth. “Well, consider this your first act of charity.”

I didn’t like her tone. I didn’t trust her either. But right now, she was the only person that could keep Padma from turning into…whatever she was turning into. And if that meant donating a little blood, then so be it.

“Fine. It’s a deal.”