“Just wondering if I could take you out for dinner tomorrow.”
“Really?” I stepped outside, back into the cold.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
I opened my mouth to say all the ways and reasons I could refute that, and then carefully closed it again.
“You don’t have to be so stunned either,” he said, during my pause.
“Sorry, Jakey. Just trying to walk outside and not trip in ice is all.”
“Uh-huh. So? Are you in?”
“I’m in. What time?”
“Six?”
“Sure. Want me to pick you up?”
“Sounds good.”
“Love you, Jake.”
“Love you too.”
I settled my and Gideon’s dinner into the passenger seat of my car, and carefully walked around to the driver side. The mall was two exits down, and I bet they’d be doing a brisk business in other returns today—I couldn’t have been the only one gifted the world’s most hideous belt.
The mall was a U-shaped structure around a curb-to-curb parking lot. I parked near the middle, in a space that the mall’s snowplow had cleared, prepared to walk the rest of the way in. I looked inside the box as soon as I’d gotten out of the car, to make sure the gift receipt was still at the bottom. God bless sensible Peter.
A car parked ahead of me. I closed the box and started walking for the store. The car’s driver got out and started walking quickly toward the wing of the mall behind me—not so strange, considering it was cold outside. She was bundled up against the weather in a fashionable parka with a furry hood, and she held something to her cheek, like she was talking on a phone, but I couldn’t see it.
I watched her, and I noticed she noticed me. Girls have to watch out for that sort of thing. Maybe not all girls, but I’d just checked my trunk for a vampire less than ten hours ago. My paranoia meter was at eleven. I didn’t like how close she was coming, but cell phones made people act stupidly. It was a scientific fact.
We passed another row of cars, then rounded a tiny snowdrift the snowplow had made. That’s when I saw another woman step out of the woman’s car. I stopped, and as the first turned to look at the second, and I saw that she wasn’t holding anything after all.
I turned and ran for my car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I was fumbling for my keys as they clattered behind. Some part of me still hoped I was overacting, but as I unlocked my door and caught the handle to open it, a hand grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back. One of my fingernails bent and broke inside my glove, and I hissed in pain as she shoved me to the ground.
“Fire!” I yelled, like I’d heard you were supposed to. “There’s a fire!” I scrambled to my knees and put my back against my car door. Now, inside my pocket, my badge was glowing day-bright. Hell of a time to warn me.
The two women stood there, heads cocked sideways, as if they were listening to something I couldn’t hear. “What do you want?”
Winter’s blood? Shit. Did they know? I scrabbled for my dropped purse. “Look, I’ll give it back to you—”
The first one, with the parka on, bent down, sniffing. She kept her eyes on me, breathing deeply.
“I’m sorry—my brother—you wouldn’t understand—” I sputtered.
The second one didn’t breathe at all. I saw her make a fist with a gloved hand and swing for me. I screamed and ducked lower—she hit my car instead, and I heard the door panel dent.
I crawled toward the front of my car. One of them grabbed my ankles and hauled me back. Reaching out, I put my hand into Peter’s gift box, tissue paper bleeding pink into the snow. The belt buckle rasped against asphalt as she yanked my deadweight again.
I flipped over, feeling the seams of everything that had just healed in my abdomen twist inside me, and punched out with the belt buckle by my fist. I caught the hoodless one’s jaw, and the skin there burned away. She cupped her hand to the wound, and for the first time her lips opened—to bay.
“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck—” I curled into a ball, to try to protect myself. I was going to die here over a single dot of blood, in a mall parking lot, with Chinese food cooling in my poor dented car behind me.
The baying woman looked up. There was a loud thump, and my car shook up and down. I looked up, and a trench-coated figure stood on my hood.
Dren.
“Sun’s down, girly-girl. Time to play.” He squatted on his boot heels and looked at the two other women. “You’ve started without me. Tsk.” Who would have thought this morning, when I was looking for him like he was Jimmy Hoffa, that I’d be so happy to see him now.