“Was it you at the boy’s house?” I asked.
“Poor boy,” said the voice sadly, but it was more solid now. “Poor boy with the yellow car. I wish I had a yellow car…”
Ghosts are odd things. The trick would be getting all the information I could without driving it away by asking something that conflicted with its understanding of the world. This one seemed pretty cognizant for a ghost.
“Do you follow Blackwood’s orders?” I asked.
I saw him. Just for an instant. A young man above sixteen but not yet twenty wearing a red flannel shirt and button-up canvas pants.
“I’m not the only one who must do as he tells,” the voice said, though the apparition just stared at me without moving its lips.
And he was gone before I could ask him where Chad and Corban were… or if Amber was here. I should have asked Corban. All that my nose told me was that the air-filtration system he had on his HVAC system was excellent, and the filter had been dosed lightly with cinnamon oil. I wondered if that had been done on my account, or if he just liked cinnamon.
The things in the room—plastic bin and bed, pillow and bedding, were brand-new. So were the paint and the carpet.
I pulled on my shirt and pants, regretting the underwire bra he’d taken. I could maybe have managed something with the underwire. I’ve jimmied my share of car door locks and a few house locks along the way as well. The shoes I didn’t mind so much.
Someone knocked tentatively at the door. I hadn’t heard anyone walking. Maybe it was the ghost.
The scrape of a lock and the door opened. Amber opened the door, and said, “Silly, Mercy. Why did you lock yourself in?” Her voice was as light as her smile, but something wild lurked behind her eyes. Something very close to a wolf.
Vampire? I wondered. I’d met one of Stefan’s menagerie who was well on his way to vampirehood. Or maybe it was just the part of Amber who knew what was going on.
“I didn’t,” I told her. “Blackwood did.” She smelled funny, but the cinnamon kept me from pinpointing it.
“Silly,” she said again. “Why would he do that?” Her hair looked as if she hadn’t combed it since the last time I’d seen her, and her striped shirt was buttoned one button off.
“I don’t know,” I told her.
But she had changed subjects already. “I have dinner ready. You’re supposed to join us for dinner.”
“Us?”
She laughed, but there was no smile in her eyes, just a trapped beast growing wild with frustration. “Why Corban, Chad, and Jim, of course.”
She turned to lead the way, and I noticed she was limping badly.
“Are you hurt?” I asked her.
“No, why do you ask?”
“Never mind,” I said gently, because I’d noticed something else. “Don’t worry about it.”
She wasn’t breathing.
Here and now, I counseled myself. No fear, no rage. Just observation: know your enemy. Rot. That’s what I’d been smelling: that first hint that a steak’s been in the fridge too long.
She was dead and walking, but she wasn’t a ghost. The word that occurred to me was zombie.
Vampires, Stefan had once told me, have different talents. He and Marsilia could vanish and reappear somewhere else. There were vampires who could move things without touching them.
This one had power over the dead. Ghosts who obeyed him. No one escapes, he’d told me. Not even in death.
I followed Amber up a long flight of stairs to the main floor of the house. We arrived in a broad swath of space that was both dining room, kitchen, and living room. It was daylight… morning from the position of the sun—maybe ten o’clock or so. But it was dinner that was set at the table. A roast—pork, my nose belatedly told me—sat splendidly adorned with roasted carrots and potatoes. A pitcher of ice water, a bottle of wine, and a loaf of sliced homemade bread.
The table was big enough to seat eight, but there were only five chairs. Corban and Chad were sitting next to each other, with their backs to us on the only side set with two places. The remaining three chairs were obviously of the same set, but one, the one opposite Corban and Chad, had a padded backrest and arms.
I sat down next to Chad.
“But, Mercy, that’s my place,” Amber said.
I looked at the boy’s tear-stained face and Corban’s blank one… He, at least, was still breathing. “Hey, you know I like kids,” I told her. “You get him all the time.”
Blackwood still hadn’t arrived. “Does Jim speak ASL?” I asked Amber.
Her face went blank. “I can’t answer any questions about Jim. You’ll have to ask him.” She blinked a couple of times, then she smiled at someone just behind me.
“No, I don’t,” said Blackwood.
“You don’t speak ASL?” I looked over my shoulder—not incidentally letting Chad see my lips. “Me either. It was one of those things I always meant to learn.”
“Indeed.” I’d amused him, it seems.
He sat down in the armchair and gestured to Amber to take the other.
“She’s dead,” I told him. “You broke her.”
He went very still. “She serves me still.”
“Does she? Looks more like a puppet. I bet she’s more work and trouble dead than she was alive.” Poor Amber. But I couldn’t let him see my grief. Focus on this room and survival. “So why do you keep her around when she’s broken?” Without allowing him time to answer, I bowed my head and said a quiet prayer over the food… and asked for help and wisdom while I was at it. I didn’t get an answer, but I had the feeling someone might be listening—and I hoped it wasn’t just the ghost.
The vampire was staring at me when I finished.
“Bad manners, I know,” I said, taking a slice of bread and buttering it. It smelled good, so I put it down on the plate in front of Chad with a thumbs-up sign. “But Chad can’t pray out loud for the rest of us. Amber is dead, and Corban…” I tilted my head to look at Chad’s father, who hadn’t moved since I’d come into the room except for the gentle rise and fall of his chest. “Corban’s not in any shape to pray, and you’re a vampire. God’s not going to listen to anything you have to say.”
I took a second slice of bread and buttered it.
Unexpectedly, the vampire threw back his head and laughed, his fangs sharp and… pointy. I tried not to think of them in my neck.
It wasn’t nearly as creepy as Amber laughing right along with him. A cold hand touched the back of my neck and was gone—but not before someone whispered, “Careful,” in my ear. I hated it when ghosts snuck up on me.