Why did you come here, Goodweather?
Eph leaped back from the slain female. He and Bruno backed away, side by side, heading toward an unlit, windowless structure set against the high perimeter fence. Perhaps the vampires’ quarters? The camp strigoi’s nest?
Eph and Bruno angled themselves, only to find that the fence turned sharply and ended at another unlit structure.
Dead end. I told you.
Eph stood up to the vampires coming toward them in the dark.
“Undead end,” Eph muttered. “You bastard.”
Bruno glanced over at him. “Bastard? You the one who ran us into this trap!”
Once I catch you and turn you, I will know all your secrets.
That turned Eph cold. “Here they come,” he said to Bruno—and got ready for them.
Nora had arrived at Barnes’s office inside the administrative building ready to agree to anything, including giving herself to Barnes, in order to save her mother and get close to him. She despised her former boss even more than the vampire oppressors. His immorality sickened her—but the fact that he believed she was weak enough to simply bend to his will made her nauseous.
Killing him would show him that. If his fantasy was her submission, her plan was to drive the shank into his heart. Death by butter knife: how fitting!
She would do it as he lay in bed or in the middle of his dinner patter, so hideously civilized. He was more evil than the strigoi: his corruption was not a disease, was not something inflicted upon him. His corruption was opportunistic. A choice.
Worst of all was his perception of her as a potential victim. He had fatally misread Nora, and all that was left was for her to show him the error of his ways. In steel.
He made her wait out in the hallway, where there was no chair or bathroom, for three hours. Twice he left his office, resplendent in his crisp, white admiral’s uniform, strolling past Nora carrying some papers but never acknowledging her, passing without a word, disappearing behind another door. And so she waited, stewing, even when the single camp whistle signaled the rations call, one hand across her grumbling stomach—her mind squarely focused on her mother and murder.
Finally, Barnes’s assistant—a young female with clean, shoulder-length auburn hair, wearing a laundered gray jumpsuit—opened the door, admitting Nora without a word. The assistant remained in the doorway as Nora passed through. Perfumed skin and minty breath. Nora returned the assistant’s look of disapproval, imagining just how the woman had secured such a plum position in Barnes’s world.
The assistant sat behind her desk, leaving Nora to try the next door, which was locked. Nora turned and retreated to one of the two hard folding chairs against the wall facing the assistant. The assistant made busy noises in an effort to ignore Nora while simultaneously asserting her superiority. Her telephone buzzed and she lifted the receiver, answering it quietly. The room, save for the unfinished wooden walls and the laptop computer, resembled a low-tech 1940s-era office: corded telephone, a pen and paper set, blotter. On the near corner of the desk, just off the blotter, sat a thick chocolate brownie on a small paper plate. The assistant hung up after a few whispered words and noticed Nora staring at the treat. She reached for the plate, taking just a nibble of the dessert cake, a few stray crumbs sprinkling down into her lap.
Nora heard a click in the doorknob, followed by Barnes’s voice.
“Come in!”
The assistant moved her treat to the other side of her desk, out of Nora’s reach, before waving her through. Nora again walked to the door and turned the knob, which, this time, gave way.
Barnes was standing behind his desk, stuffing files into an open attaché case, preparing to leave for the day. “Good morning, Carly. Is the car ready?”
“Yes, sir, Dr. Barnes,” sang the assistant. “They just called up from the gate.”
“Call down and make sure the heat is on in the back.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nora?” said Barnes, still stuffing, not looking up. His demeanor was much changed from their previous encounter at his palatial home. “You have something you wish to di
scuss with me?”
“You win.”
“I win? Wonderful. Now tell me, what is it I have won?”
“Your way. With me.”
He hesitated just a moment before closing the case, snapping the clasps. He looked at her and nodded slightly to himself, as though having trouble remembering his original offer. “Very good,” he said, then went rooting in a drawer for some other nearly forgotten thing.
Nora waited. “So?” she said.