Winter Halo (Outcast 2)

The amusement lurking at the corners of his eyes suggested he was well aware of the reason behind my hesitation. “You’re safe enough here. They’ve issued an out-of-bounds alert, so the public won’t come near, and the vampires can’t during the day.”

Being safe wasn’t the problem. Being too aware was. And he knew it, damn him. But I walked over to grab the pack. “Do you mind if I head up to the top of the tower? I’d rather sleep under sunlight than false light.”

And well away from you, that inner voice added.

The amusement increased. No surprise there, given the pheromones stinging the air. But he didn’t say anything and neither did I. He simply shrugged and motioned me on.

I pushed the heavy metal door open, and then unlatched the silver curtain behind it. There was enough shifter in my blood that my skin tingled, but—like the vampire lights—it didn’t burn me as it would a full-blood like Jonas. I slung the pack over my shoulder and ran up the old concrete stairs, breathing air that was still thick with dust from the explosion. The ghosts dashed ahead of me, their tiny figures briefly finding shape. When we reached the metal exit plate at the top of the stairs, I drew back the bolts and pushed the plate open. Though it was also silver, it was so scarred with heat and blast damage it barely had any effect on my skin.

The children threw themselves into the bright sunshine, but I followed more cautiously, keeping low so that the building parapet hid me. The museum might have been declared out-of-bounds, but there was still the possibility that someone in Central was keeping an eye on us. The glass dome certainly didn’t offer much in the way of protection when it came to visibility. Not during the day, anyway. When I’d reached the shade of the building’s edge, I rolled out the pack and waited for the mattress to inflate. Then I stripped and climbed in. With the music of the ghosts’ murmurings streaming through my mind, I quickly fell asleep.

Dusk was rolling in on fingers of pink and gold by the time I woke. Cat and Bear were nearby, but—if the excited chatter drifting up the stairwell was anything to go by—the other ghosts were all downstairs.

I yawned and stretched, trying to get some of the kinks out of my body. The air bed was comfortable enough, but two nights of vigorous lovemaking had taken their toll—and that was a sad state of affairs. I might have made numerous incursions into Central over the last hundred years to satisfy base need, but I’d certainly never risk staying more than a couple of hours with my partner.

“What’s happening downstairs, Cat?” I flipped off the cover and began getting dressed.

Two images immediately flowed into my mind—Nuri and a stranger with orange hair and a pinched, worried face. Both were downstairs with Jonas.

Meaning, I hoped, that Nuri had found someone in Winter Halo whose position I could take. I shoved on my sandals, then deflated the mattress and rolled it up. I doubted Jonas would want to sleep up here, given that he was being employed to monitor the equipment.

I snuck across to the hatch, keeping low again even if it was probably unnecessary with night closing in so fast. Once the bolts had been shoved home, I clattered down the stairs, making just enough noise to warn those below. Jonas would have heard me stirring, but I didn’t want to do anything to frighten the other woman. If the images the ghosts had shown me were anything to go by, she was the flighty type. Which was odd, considering she was a guard—I’d have thought they’d at least make some effort to employ people who weren’t likely to run at the slightest threat.

Of course, given the attacks on the guards, maybe it wasn’t just a specific look they were after, but also a specific blood type. They were experimenting on the children because they were either rift survivors or the children of survivors, so anything was possible.

Jonas handed me a coffee as I stepped out of the tower, then took the pack from me. I gave him a smile of thanks, but my attention was on the woman sitting close to Nuri at the table. She was about the same size as me—the real me—but her eyes were yellow-brown, her nose broad, and her orange hair long and pulled back in a ponytail. Worry and fear oozed from her, and her body seemed to hum with the effort of remaining still. I suspected it was only the fact that it was almost dark outside that prevented her from fle

eing.

“Ah, Tig,” Nuri said, giving me a broad but decidedly false smile of greeting. “This is Sharran Westar. She has kindly taken up our substitution offer for the next couple of days.”

Sharran looked me up and down, and the worry ratcheted up several notches. “Are you sure she’s going to pull this off? I don’t want to lose my job, even after last night.”

I sat on the opposite side of the table and nursed my coffee in both hands. “What happened last night?”

She tapped her fingers on the table—nerves, not impatience. “The ghost got me, didn’t it? Felt me up good and proper.”

“Did you report it?”

She snorted. “There’s no point, is there? No one ever does anything about it.”

I wondered if Charles knew anything about the attacks—and whether they were the source of the staff problems he was having—or if it was something else. We knew about the high turnover of guards, but it would be interesting if there were something else going on as well.

“And this is the first time you’ve been attacked?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’ve been assigned to that floor before and never attacked. I guess my luck just ran out.”

“So everyone assigned to that floor is attacked?” Kendra had certainly implied that they were, but it was odd it took longer to happen to some than others.

Sharran hesitated. “It seems to happen to the newer recruits more often than those of us who have been there longer. But we’re not immune. Not now.”

Intuition stirred. “Was there any specific time you noticed it happening more to those of you who’ve been there awhile?”

“Well, it’s definitely gotten worse in the last week or so.”

A time frame that meshed with Penny’s escape and my emergence. I glanced at Nuri.

“Hence the lack of time we now have,” she said. “We have them worried.”