“It might not have killed me.”
And whoever did this wanted Alette to watch the approach of her own death, through the window, to torture her.
Glancing back at the pale sky, her face was ashen. She set her expression in a stoic mask.
I couldn’t just close the drapes. They weren’t open; they were gone, completely removed. I had to get her out of here. The footsteps continued upstairs, but the soldiers would be back down in moments.
“I’ll carry you,” I said, kneeling by the chair. I thought she’d argue, muttering about dignity with her British accent and stiff upper lip. She didn’t. Silently, she put her arms around my shoulders and held on as I lifted, cradling her. She was far lighter than I expected. She felt dried up and hollow.
I had no idea where to go with her. I couldn’t take her outside, not with daylight so close and no shelter handy. Frantically, I looked around.
“There’s a storage space under the stairs. The door is there, it’s a hidden panel.”
When she pointed to it, I saw the line that marked the door. Setting her down, I wrenched open the thin plywood door, wincing at how much noise I made. Quiet, had to be quiet.
Alette leaned on me, unable to stand by herself. Together, we fell into the storage space. I pulled the door closed just as footsteps sounded on the stairs over our heads.
We lay curled together against a pile of junk, holding our breaths. At least I held my breath. We stared at the door ahead of us as if we could see what was happening outside.
Footsteps crossed the floor of the foyer and stopped at the entrance to the parlor. Another set of footsteps followed.
“Shit,” a male voice said.
“Maybe she’s already gone,” a second voice said. “Burned up.”
“There’s not any ash. There should be ash. A burning smell. Something.”
“You ever see one of them go in sunlight?”
After a pause, the other said, “No.”
“Look, even if she found a way to escape, it’s too close to dawn. She won’t get far—hell, she won’t even leave the house. We’ll look.”
“You don’t suppose she turned into a bat or something, do you?”
“Uh, no.”
Footsteps crossed back and forth, moved to the back of the house, returned to the stairs. They didn’t come near the door to the storage space.
The closet ran the entire length of the flight of stairs, narrowing at the end. Des
pite this, we didn’t have much room to move. In the faint light that seeped through the crack under the door, I could see that the place was crammed with boxes, cleaning equipment like brooms, mops, and buckets, old baby strollers, a high chair, a clothes rack stuffed with coats. Like any normal family’s storage space. I got the feeling Alette had clung to the model of a normal family life after becoming a vampire.
I wondered how Leo fit into that.
“My hero.” She looked at me and attempted a grim smile. Then, she slumped back, letting out a soft groan. If I didn’t know better I’d have said she fainted.
I touched her, shook her shoulder. She was cold, stiff almost. Panicked, I almost shouted her name. I couldn’t lose her now.
She touched her forehead, wincing, for all the world like a distraught lady in a Victorian novel. We needed a fainting couch.
I hissed, trying to keep my voice to a whisper, “What’s wrong? What’s the matter? It’s the sun, isn’t it? It’s too close to dawn—”
“I haven’t fed tonight,” she said.
I stared at her, astounded. I was holding on to a starving vampire. Could I be any more stupid?
“Never mind that,” she continued, trying to sit up. “Leo is still in the house. We’ve got to find him, I won’t have him destroying what I’ve built here.”