The Den of Shadows Quartet (15 page)

“Don’t you live somewhere? Or do you just follow me around all day?” Before, she had asked him a similar question as a joke, but this time she truly wanted an
answer. It seemed a bit too much of a coincidence that he was out here tonight.

“I
live
nowhere,” Alex answered, his voice serious despite the hint of teasing she could see in his eyes, “and it isn’t day.”

Jessica shook her head again as she realized there was no way to get a straight answer from him.

As she contemplated this fact, she noticed a design on his right wrist, which was only visible because his sleeve had slipped up when he had leapt from the tree.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the tattoo.

Alex rolled up his sleeve to reveal the entire design: a black wolf with golden eyes and white fangs stalked across his wrist. Jessica knew this beast; it was Fenris, the giant wolf who swallowed the sun in Norse mythology. Aubrey had the same design on
his
right wrist.

She took a deep breath to keep herself from speaking until her thoughts were under control.

This could not possibly be a coincidence.

Over the past day, she had struggled to come up with an explanation — besides the impossible one that Alex
was
Aubrey — that would account for all the similarities between the two of them. Now a stunningly obvious scenario at last occurred to her: Alex was a fan of Ash Night. Aubrey was described down to the last detail in
Tiger, Tiger
. What would stop someone, if he was so inclined, from getting black contact lenses, a matching pendant, and replicas of Aubrey’s tattoos?

But before Jessica could comment on Alex’s tattoo, he asked her, “What are you doing out here so late at night?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she answered, still unnerved. “You?”

“Maybe I
am
stalking you,” he teased.

“Well, then I’m flattered,” she joked back, though the light words masked more serious thoughts. If her theory about his fascination with Aubrey the vampire proved true, how far might he take this role-playing game of his?

She began walking in the general direction of her house, and he walked with her. Their conversation fell into silence.

“You’re quiet suddenly,” Jessica observed. They were within sight of her house, and she had stopped walking to look at him. “What are you thinking about?”

Alex sighed. “Nothing you would care to know.”

“Why don’t you tell me, and let me be the judge of that?” she pressed.

“Blood and death and people who know too much,” he answered, his voice more tired than threatening. “Go inside, Ash Night. I’ll speak to you another time.”

He walked away silently not giving Jessica a chance to respond. By the time her mind had processed his words, he was out of sight.

Her anger rose again for an instant, in reaction to the fact that yet another person had somehow discovered who Ash Night was.

However, the anger was quashed by a prospect that was intriguing, yet frightening. If he was Aubrey, and vampires did exist, and he and his kind knew who she was … her life could end up being a great deal shorter than she had intended.

“H
OW CUTE
,” Fala spat, approaching Aubrey as he entered Las Noches. “How disgustingly cute.”

“Excuse me?”

Fala laughed, a biting sound that told anyone within hearing to beware. “Do you honestly think I haven’t been keeping my eye on the author, after all the trouble she’s been causing? And you’ve been out there practically
flirting
with her!”

For a moment Aubrey hesitated, fighting an urge to check on Jessica and make sure Fala hadn’t harmed her after he had left.

“Leave Jessica alone,” he commanded, his voice hard. It wasn’t wise to show any attachment to a human, but he refused to let Fala harm the girl.

“What is it about this human?” Fala sneered. “Aubrey the almighty the hunter, the warrior, who feels nothing but contempt for anything mortal … If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were attracted to her.”

He laughed in answer to her taunt, which she had
obviously hoped would bother him more. “You’ve made up my reason, Fala. What’s
your
interest in her? Fala, the child who has been abused and hunted by almost every immortal creature on Earth, the coward who wants power without risk, the fake goddess …” He paused and watched the rage flicker through her eyes in response to his references to her humiliating past — the past Ash Night knew all too well. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.”

Aubrey knew this last accusation was ridiculous. Fala hated him far too much to be jealous of his attraction to anyone, much less a human. But the expression on her face as he said those last words was priceless.

“You vain, arrogant, human-loving
idiot,”
Fala snarled. Then she disappeared before he had a chance to retaliate.

Aubrey ignored her words and chuckled as he wandered over to the bar. He wasn’t worried about Jessica for the moment. Had Fala actually killed her, she would have made it clear that she had done so. She would have insisted on sharing every bloody detail with him.

C
ARYN
R
ASHIDA WAITED
inside the front door as Anne Allodola went to wake her daughter. Caryn ran over possible scenarios in her mind for the hundredth time.

“She’ll be down in just a moment,” Ms. Allodola said as she returned.

Caryn nodded nervously. She had made up her mind, and this time she would not let Jessica’s frosty putdowns turn her away. Of course, waking her up might not have been a good idea, but how was she to know that Jessica would still be sleeping? It was almost noon.

When Jessica finally came downstairs, Caryn could instantly tell that she was in for a challenge. Jessica’s aura hummed with annoyance and anger, as well as some confusion. As soon as she saw Caryn, the emotions found an outlet.

“What the hell do
you
want?” Jessica snapped.

Caryn flinched slightly “I need to talk to you, Jessica.”

“About what?”

“Alex.”

Jessica’s eyes narrowed as soon as Caryn said the name, and she stopped trying to herd Caryn out the door.

“What about Alex?” Jessica asked carefully. When Caryn looked toward the kitchen, where Anne was not-so-subtly eavesdropping, Jessica sighed. “Come upstairs. We can talk in my room.”

Caryn hesitated at the doorway to Jessica’s room, which was threateningly dark. There was no light besides the glow that came from a red Lava lamp on the shelf. Jessica removed the lamp’s bottle so that the light shone pure white, but that only served to illuminate the room’s gloomy monochrome.

“This is your room?” Caryn asked before she could think not to. She noticed one lonely hint of color: a violet pillow on the corner of the bed, half lost beneath the black comforter. She wondered how Jessica would react if she told her that violet was the color of humanity.

Caryn had a sudden, irrational desire to rescue the pillow from the blackness. That much she could do easily. Unlike Jessica, the pillow would not fight her.

“Say what you came to say, Caryn,” Jessica growled.

Caryn went over the million different scripts she had prepared to tell Jessica the truth, then discarded them all. She walked to the shelf and sifted through the rough manuscripts until she found Jessica’s copy of
Dark Flame
.

“I’ve heard about this,” she said. Most of the world — excluding the humans — had heard of Ash Night’s
Dark Flame
.

Jessica frowned, and Caryn could tell she was trying to make sense of the comment. Before she could formulate an answer, Caryn continued.

“How did you … get the idea for that book? And
Tiger, Tiger?”
she asked.

Jessica laughed, appearing shocked by the ordinariness of the question. “You came here to ask me how I get my
ideas?”

Caryn took a deep breath to steady herself. “Not entirely” Her next words came out in a rush. “I wanted to ask if you knew they were true.”

Jessica’s expression was suddenly drained of its amusement.

“Get out, Caryn,” she ordered coldly.

Caryn took a step back from Jessica’s sudden vehemence.
Denial
, she reasoned. Jessica knew the truth but refused to accept it. It made perfect sense that she would fight back against anyone who attempted to convince her of what she was desperately trying to ignore.

Caryn inhaled deeply when she realized that she’d been holding her breath for the past few seconds.

“What do you know about Alex?” Caryn pressed. Jessica was exceptionally strong. When forced to see the truth, she would be able to accept it. If only Caryn knew how to convince her!

“I said, get out of my room,” Jessica repeated.

“Will you think about what I said?” Beyond that simple request, Caryn was out of ideas. “Please?”

“If you’ll leave.” The answer was little more than a growl.

Caryn reached into her pocket and pulled out the
letter she had written earlier, after several drafts. She held it out to Jessica, who snatched it from her hand.

“Happy now?” Jessica snapped.

Jessica’s rampaging emotions were starting to make Caryn dizzy, so she nodded meekly and hurried out of the room. As she paused in the hallway, wishing she could think of some way to reason with Jessica, she heard the lock turn in the door. A few moments later loud music began to spill into the hall.

J
ESSICA SPRAWLED
across her bed with mindless noise blaring in her ears and tried to reason things out.

Caryn was playing with her. She knew the Rashidas and Alex had some relationship; they hated each other too much to be perfect strangers. For all she knew, Alex and Caryn used to date. Now they had ganged up to play a game of “let’s mess with the author’s mind.”

It was cleverly done, she admitted reluctantly. Alex’s portrayal of Aubrey was perfect. She wondered who Caryn was trying to be. If it was a game, it was well practiced and planned between them.

There is no if
, she scolded herself.
Vampires do not exist!

Jessica had no love of mind games, especially ones played by childish idiots like Caryn. She wondered if Caryn realized just how little sense of humor Jessica had when it came to her books.

Frustrated, she opened the letter that Caryn had handed her and scanned it quickly.

Then she read it again, more slowly, and then a third time.

I am signing with my true name now. I don’t wish to lie to you as all the others would
.

“What is going on here?” Jessica asked the black walls. They said nothing — they rarely did, though when she was dead tired they sometimes made an exception.

Everyone who had read Ash Night’s first book knew who Aubrey was — what he looked like, where he was from, how he spoke, and how he thought. The two books that had gone through her editor’s office revealed
the dark corners of Aubrey’s past and his present, and had reached into the wider vampiric world to show its customs and politics.

Never once had these books mentioned the Smoke line of witches or their immortal mother, Macht, whom Caryn had so casually referenced in her letter.

Without conscious thought, Jessica picked up one of the manuscripts that had been sitting on her shelf for months now. Though she hadn’t read the novel since she had written it, she remembered the characters inside. The story was set years earlier; the witches mentioned in it would be Caryn’s distant ancestors. Jessica knew, through the eyes of her vampiric characters, all about the Smoke line. But
only
she should have known, because the manuscript had been read by no one else. The fine layer of dust on the binder was proof that no one had picked it up recently. There was no way Caryn could ever have read it.

The girl’s words echoed in Jessica’s mind:
What if it was all real? If Ash Night’s vampires actually existed?

And more recently:
I wanted to ask if you knew they were true
.

Though Jessica hadn’t delved too far into the world of the Smoke witches, simply because they were of little interest to her vampires, she knew their basic beliefs. If a Smoke witch was aware that someone was in danger, it was that witch’s duty to protect him or her.

If it was true, Jessica was certainly in danger.

If they were all real …

If Aubrey existed, and Jessica had met him, then why was she still alive? He had no scruples about killing, and she had shown the world every weak
moment of his past. Yet when she mentally replayed her conversations with him, there was no sense of threat. He seemed more to be flirting with her than hunting her.

She needed to know if it was true. She knew these characters better than she knew even Anne. They had been her thoughts and life for years. If there was the slightest chance that they were real, she needed to know.

She needed proof, and to get that, she needed to see for herself.

I
N
J
ESSICA’S NOVELS
, New Mayhem was the base of vampiric power in the United States. The town, which was hidden from the human world, was home to the ruling class of vampires — Silver’s line, including Aubrey. Their presence had given it a flavor of darkness that Jessica knew she would recognize if she saw it.