Minutes later, Tenzin was free as a bird and sitting on the ground, staring at the door that Vano had locked. “His people are going to do something to the trailer during the day. Break it possibly. Try to drag me out.”
René’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”
“Why else would he tie me up in a trailer?”
“I can think of a few reasons to tie you up, but none of them involve murder.”
“Boring,” she snapped.
“Murder?”
“Your flirting,” she said. “It used to be amusing. It’s not anymore.”
He muttered something in French that she didn’t care about translating.
Tenzin spoke to herself. “He doesn’t know I don’t sleep. Why would he?”
René’s eyes went wide. “At all? You don’t sleep at all?”
“You didn’t know that?” Tenzin frowned. “I suppose not—why would you?”
He sounded nervous. “So the past few nights when you’d been asking me to sleep here—”
“I’ve been awake all day, yes.” Something was tingling. Some unknown sense was setting off alarms. “Don’t worry; I don’t stare. Much.”
“How the fuck—”
“Shhhh.” She threw a pillow from the couch at him. “Shut up.”
What was it? Vano clearly had a plan to get rid of her, so what was it?
René sulked in the corner. “Your caravan is much nicer than mine.”
“I’m sure it is. Ben’s is nicer still.”
He rocked back and forth. “It doesn’t shake as much as mine does.”
“That’s because—” Oh.
Oooooh.
She heard it then, the whisper-quiet business of the camp. The sun would be up within half an hour, which meant the darigan were setting about their business, retracting the braces that kept the trailers even, readying for the camp to move.
Except her trailer. No one was readying her trailer to move.
Tenzin smiled. “He’s going to leave us.”
René jumped to his feet. “What?”
“Relax.” She waved him back. “This complicates things, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“Some of us can’t fly, Tenzin!” René was fuming. “Some of us have plans we’ve been working on for weeks that are more important your little feuds with Vano and Ben.”
“You’ll get your treasure,” Tenzin said. “Didn’t I promise?”
“Your deal was that I stayed in here during the day for some reason I now realize was not trying to make Vecchio jealous.” René began to pace. “The deal was not losing the biggest potential score of my immortal life because you pissed off the wrong vampire.” He started toward the door, but Tenzin was on him. She throttled him and sent him flying back into the bed.
“Sit,” she growled. “Didn’t I just say you’d get your treasure?”
“What is wrong with you?” René yelled even as his eyes began to blink longer with every minute. “You should be running outside and telling Radu what Vano did.” He blinked harder. “You should be… tell Vecchio.”
“Ben will be fine.” The last thing Vano would do was hurt Ben. Too many people knew Ben was working for Radu. Not many knew that she was here though. Therein lay the brilliance of Vano’s plan.
Utter silence told Tenzin that René had fallen into day rest. She walked over, bent over him, and slapped him hard across the cheek.
“What?” He sat up straight, his eyes wide. “Tenzin?”
“Just checking to make sure I can wake you when it’s time.”
“What?” He didn’t answer because he slumped to the side, falling into day rest again.
“Never mind.” She patted his shoulder before she dragged him onto the floor.
It was always good to have an earth vampire handy. That was why she’d lured René into her caravan. Not to make Ben jealous but to have another tool in her pocket.
Tenzin sat next to René and waited until the attack came.
33
Ben passed the day in a dreamless sleep. Nothing disturbed him. Nothing nibbled at his brain. He slept peacefully for the first time in months, and he woke with two certainties in his mind:
He still loved Tenzin. He didn’t know if they could be together, but he also didn’t know how not to love her. He’d said horrible things to her the night before, most of which he didn’t mean, but he wanted to be with her if she was still willing.
Vano had the emerald goblet, and he was planning a coup against his brother and sister. The signs were all there. Kezia might be wise to it, but Vano was the ringleader and Radu completely underestimated him.
Which meant that Ben’s only goal in the next week before the festival—other than trying to mend things with Tenzin—was to break into Vano’s trailer and find the emerald goblet to prove to Radu that his brother was the source of the trouble.
He lay in bed, listening to the night birds waking. An owl hooted in the distance, and the strong scent of lilac told him that wherever they’d moved, flowers were blooming nearby.
Ben sat up and stretched, washed his face in the kitchen, and drank from the preserved blood in the fridge. He didn’t love cold blood, but he didn’t hate it either. Sometimes it was oddly, and grossly, refreshing. He’d stopped trying to explain why. He leaned against the small counter in the kitchen and listened to the birds.
Something was off.
Something was… wrong. It was too quiet.
Ben pulled on a pair of pants and walked to the door, swinging it open to reveal nothing but the sloping hills beyond his trailer and nothing else.
No fires. No musicians. No camp.
The Dawn Caravan was gone, and there was only the faint scent of something burning and a hint of kerosene in the air.
Shit.
SHIT!
What happened? Had Radu tipped his hand to Vano? Had he found the thief himself? He’d had an agreement with Radu. He wasn’t supposed to back out without a single word.
Ben walked down the steps and turned in a circle.
When he saw the wreckage, his stomach dropped.
Beyond the oak trees, there was a single caravan smoldering, the body split open to reveal ashes everywhere. There was a mark on the side, a distinctive blue logo he remembered from the first night in her trailer.
It couldn’t be. His mind couldn’t process what he was seeing. It wasn’t hers. It couldn’t be. He raced toward the burned-out carcass, his mind rebelling at the images before him.
They wouldn’t have burned her trailer.
This was an accident.
She hadn’t been inside.
No, no, no, no.
Ben stood in the middle of ashes and yelled, “Tenzin?”
He looked to the swiftly darkening sky. Nothing.
Where was she? Because she couldn’t be in the trailer and she couldn’t be gone because he would feel it, right? He’d taken her blood. She was in him. If she was gone—
“Tenzin!”
Ben flew up and raced over the camp, scouring the air for any hint of her.
She wouldn’t have left him. She wouldn’t have just flown off. He flew back to the wreckage of the trailer and kicked through the ashes where the door would have been. His foot hit something hard and he bent down, lifting up a heavy metal lock burned black by the fire.