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Authors: Chris Marie Green

BOOK: The Path of Razors
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Her hunger grumbled, awakened from its stupor.
Yet all too soon, there was no more to imbibe, and Della grabbed at Noreen’s wrist just as the other girl pulled away from the cage with her emptied container.
With an impatient huff, Noreen twisted her way out of Della’s grip. “It was dicey enough getting this bit of a meal to you. I’m not about to stay and risk even more.”
“Why did you even dare it? There are cameras round, you know.”
Noreen cradled the Thermos flask. “Pity, I suppose.”
Della had spent over a year with this girl: They were classmates of a special breed. They had been good friends.
And, truthfully, they had been more family than either one had ever known.
“Noreen,” Della said, sensing how closed the other girl was to her—all shields up and blocking any classmate thought-links.
Nonetheless, she reached out with her mind, rubbing up against Noreen’s mental walls, wanting so badly to come in.
The other girl’s gaze softened, connecting to Della’s need, yet she still didn’t drop her defenses all the way.
Della whimpered low in her throat.
Noreen sighed, as if extending this one token. “Perhaps I understood what you did to Violet and seeing you punished for it doesn’t sit well. Perhaps ...” She glanced down, then back up. “Perhaps I even wish it had happened sooner.”
Encouraged, Della kept pressing her thoughts against Noreen’s closed ones, and when her classmate finally gave in, it was like breaking down a door to a clean, uncluttered room that bore a resemblance to Della’s own mind before it had become so foreign and possessed.
In their link, Della felt everything Noreen had been suppressing: The glee when Della had impaled Violet with the tree branch last night. The justice when Della had sent the ravens.
Then the other girl’s gaze hardened, just as her voice had earlier.
Violet was irredeemable,
Noreen thought,
and if you ask me to say that out loud or think it in front of Polly or Mrs. Jones or Wolfie, I won’t. I’ve learned how to stay out of trouble the best I can. I’ve learned to fade when I need to. You used to be good at that, too.
Then Noreen nudged Della out of her mind, closing herself off once again.
But Della knew the reason. Her classmate would continue to fade as long as she thought it was the easiest method of survival.
et it wasn’t, Della thought. It was the toughest way of all.
Noreen brushed a hand over her long skirt, clearly attempting to set matters back to normal. To fade away again.
“I’ll be leaving now,” she said, “while everyone’s still distracted by playtime with Wolfie. He’s in the middle of it all in the tavern room, with the girls scratching at him as he laughs and urges them on. And who knows when the cat will be back.”
Mrs. Jones.
A flash of that vampiress in the tub with the hanging, dripping girl roared through Della.
As Noreen walked toward a steel kitchen basin, where she no doubt intended to clean the Thermos flask of its blood, Della stopped her progress by knocking at her friend’s mind.
Reluctantly, the other girl opened up again.
Mrs. Jones,
Della thought, because saying it out loud would be unwise.
Be careful of her, all right? Be very, very careful.
I always do my best.
Noreen turned toward the basin.
Della halted her friend again by thinking,
Briana, Sharon, Blanche ... ?
At the list of their departed classmates, Noreen glanced over her shoulder, the anguish of losing their companions mapped all over her expression.
Della grasped the cell bars as the boys next to her watched both vampires, back and forth, while cowering in their own cages.
You’ve always played the dancing jester, Noreen,
Della thought.
But you’ve also wondered about what became of our classmates. Haven’t you? You just never thought about it too much, because you didn’t wish to know the answer.
I only wondered why they left.
You never saw a pattern? You never had questions?
Noreen stared at the Thermos flask in her hands. She was fading.
Yet Noreen was still open to a mind-link, and Della took the advantage and shared a few of the vision images she had been experiencing, every picture like a slap that caused her to cringe while giving it.
But when she had finished, it felt like a burden shared.
The Thermos flask fell from Noreen’s hands and clattered to the rock floor.
You think Mrs. Jones ...
she began, and there were mental tears soaking her thoughts.
Della nodded, even while keeping what had to be the worst part of the visions to herself.
Wolfie.
Did he know about Mrs. Jones’s baths, if she were indeed the one taking them? Did he know what precisely caused the youthful glow Della had noticed on their housematron’s flesh recently?
Or had Mrs. Jones managed to keep the secret for centuries?
Yes, that had to be it, she thought, seizing upon the excuse. Wolfie would never be an accomplice to the sacrifice of his darlings, his little loves.
It had to be all Mrs. Jones.
Noreen had wandered closer, a hand over her mouth, as if to keep herself from screaming, just as Della had been trying to do for hours now.
And Della had been so hoping Noreen might only tell her that the images were rubbish.
Perhaps if Della explained a bit more.
Every six months,
she thought to her friend,
one of our class disappeared. There were always justifications: Running away. Disinterested parents suddenly becoming interested enough to claim their child from Queenshill.
Tears were seeping from Noreen’s eyes now, and Della felt the oncoming ache of them, too.
Their beloved classmates. Their friends.
Their trust in the elder who had been tasked with protecting them when they had been told over and over that, in the Underground, they would be cared for by Wolfie, always.
This was no rubbish.
It was somehow all too true, wasn’t it?
Della forced herself to continue.
That was the reason Mrs. Jones would never reveal who was in her select Queenshill vampire classes before us. She was hoping we wouldn’t discover a pattern of disappearances.
Noreen’s hands had only tightened over her mouth. More horror. More tears.
Della looked away, trying hard not to picture each of her friends hanging above a bathtub, their blood slipping from a gash in their throats. Unlike humans, vampires like Blanche, Briana, and Sharon would not have fully perished with only a cut to the throat, for if they were dead, their bodies would have fully disappeared, just as Mrs. Jones had always warned.
They would have still been as alive as a vampire could be.
Torture, Della thought. They would have needed to be tortured and somehow restrained mentally as well as physically for Mrs. Jones to procure the blood that was still young and fairly pure from the class of new vampires.
Her very own handpicked harvest.
What should we do?
Noreen asked.
Shaken, Della looked into her schoolmate’s saucered gaze.
Act as if you don’t know anything, and don’t ever go anywhere alone with Mrs. Jones.
But should we tell Wolfie?
The question rocked Della, even if somewhere in the black of her mind, she had been wondering the same.
No,
she answered.
Let’s not.
Was it because she feared breaking his heart if he knew what Mrs. Jones had been doing?
Or was it because she was scared witless that he did know?
Della could tell Noreen was stashing the Wolfie questions away, too, as her classmate reached up to grasp a cell bar just above one of Della’s fists.
Then what happens now?
Noreen asked.
Della already knew. In a way, she had known ever since Wolfie had put her in this cage with no assurances of ever getting out.
She hadn’t realized until now that he had refrained from promising anything to her, even though Wolfie always tried to make things better for his charges.
Do you know what’s in store for you, little girl?
The reminder mauled her, and she found herself giving impromptu instructions to Noreen, unable to hold back.
Perhaps a short, anonymous note for the others to find, Della
mind-thought.
Disguise your writing. Mention something very cryptic about the patterns of Queenshill students’ disappearances. Leave it in a Queenshill girls’ room and be there when they find it, then destroy the note before anyone else can see. It will be as
if
it never existed, yet
if
the previous Queenshill girls feel as strongly as we do—if they haven’t forgotten their pain in all the excess down here, as Mrs. Jones probably hoped they would-they’ll talk and spread the subject, hoping for answers they might have never found about their friends. Perhaps they will even discover courage to find those answers now. And no one will know who left the note unless you let down your shields, Noreen.
The other girl seemed confused, but then understanding gradually dawned.
Della moved her hand up the bar, covering her friend’s.
There’s power in numbers and in the hurt
of
losing friends. If any of the surviving members of previous Queenshill classes had suspicions, we’ll know soon enough.
If
it doesn’t work, we’ll both keep up shields as to what we know. By then, we’ll realize there’s no hope for discovering anything.
Noreen shook her head.
What are you saying?
Della backed away from the bars and absently ran her fingers over the slim red tie that all the girls in her class had chosen to wear because it reflected their oneness.
I’m saying we need to get to the truth before it gets to us,
Della answered as she thought of the vampiress in the tub again.
But then, just under the pulse of that image, she saw the vampire in the bed, tearing and gnawing at the girl he had once held on his lap.
EIGHTEEN
THE DRUNK PATROL
DAWN had basically guilt-tripped Breisi, who’d already been put through the remorse wringer by Frank, into escorting her to the wine bar where Eva was hanging out. They needed to get her mom back while avoiding any more encounters with that shadow girl. Breisi had already said that the only reason she’d blazed over from headquarters was because Natalia had reported that Dawn’s earpiece had gone out, and that news hadn’t sat well with the Friend.
What a pal, huh? But Dawn knew her Friend would defend her and probably even Eva, like a ghosty wildcat if it came right down to it. Breisi was too upright to ever really turn her back on someone.
That was the hope, anyway.
They were moving at a rapid clip along Borough High Street on their way to Tooley Street, where the bar was supposed to be located. At the same time, Dawn kept up a conversation with Breisi. It didn’t matter that people were staring—for all they knew, she had a Bluetooth device on.
“Believe me,” she said while keeping one hand in her jacket pocket, her fingers touching the reassuring heft of the mini flamethrower. “I do know where you’re coming from, Breez. I’d have been a jealous wreck in the same situation, too. I don’t fault you for that.”
“Listen to you—the voice of experience,”
Breisi said next to her.
Dawn thought about Matt Lonigan, who’d almost had her convinced back in L.A. that she might be able to do the boyfriend thing for once.
Breisi seemed to realize her verbal blunder.
“That didn’t come out the May—”
“Sure it did.” Dawn cupped a near-frozen hand over her nose as they maintained their tempo. It felt like half of her face was about to fall off from the chill. Jolly old England didn’t have anything on the jollier Southern California weather.
Breisi took advantage of the awkward pause to fly up to scan the rooftops, then dip back down by Dawn’s side again, and when she continued the discussion, Dawn sighed, occupying herself by scanning for any sign of Shadow Girl.
“Really, Dawn, I’ve tried to have patience.”
“Yup, you sure have.”
This girlfriend talk was harder than it sounded, but Dawn hung in there, mostly because Breisi seemed in need of some hard-core counseling.
“I knew Frank had a history with Eva and that it wouldn’t disappear anytime soon. But I was ready to weather that.”

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