Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(72)

“Nicks and Slick,” I swear. (Bunce is a terrible influence.) “You think I’m one of them!”

Lamb lowers his chin. It’s a challenge.

I start laughing. I can’t stop. “Seven snakes!” I choke out. “Eight snakes and a dragon!”

“What is this,” he asks, “are you stalling? Or hysterical? You know the terms of our treaty, the punishment is severe—”

“Lamb, no! I am hapless and ignorant and out of my depth, but I am not that.”

He narrows his eyes to slits.

I stand up. “Take a walk with me?”



* * *



I saw it on my way in. A pet shop, in the same strip mall as the restaurant. I know that Simon and Penny must be watching me. I hope they notice that I’m holding my hand in the thumbs-up position at my side. (That’s their idiot sign for “all’s well.”)

I buy a rabbit. I tell the shop owner that I have one at home, and I’m familiar with them. And then I walk with Lamb around the corner, behind a skip.

“Anyone could be watching,” he says. “It’s broad daylight.” Lamb caught on to my game as soon as we walked into the pet shop. He looks disgusted with me—but also a little curious. I used to share a room with that look.

“Block me,” I say.

He stands closer.

I break the rabbit’s neck in my hands and suck it completely dry. (I don’t spill a drop on its white fur or my cuffs.) Then I toss it into the skip.

Lamb looks utterly put off. “Oh, Baz,” he says in dismay. “No wonder you’re so pale. You’re malnourished.”

I laugh. “But I’m not one of them.”

“No,” he says, eyeing me with one brow aloft. “You’re a starving child from an oppressed nation who has barely met himself. But you are not one of them.”

Lamb’s still blocking me from view. Crowding me against the wall and the bin. I feel the rabbit’s blood rising in my cheeks. My fangs haven’t quite retracted.

He’s close enough to make me feel my height advantage.

“Help me,” I whisper. “Tell me where to find them. They have my friend.”





51





SIMON


“He’s getting in the vampire’s car,” I say. “We have to stop this.”

Penny grabs my arm. “He gave us the thumbs-up signal, Simon. We have to let him go.”

“I wouldn’t expect a vampire to drive a Prius,” Shepard says. Like we have time for aimless musing.

I open the truck door and jump out. “Give me my wings back!”

“Simon”—Penny’s being fierce—“get back in. We’ll follow them.”

The Prius is leaving the parking lot. I suppose I don’t need wings. I start running after it.

After a few seconds, my wings burst out of my back. And then—I disappear.

I mean, I’m still here. I’m flying above the Prius, I can see it below me. But I can’t see my own hands.

I wonder what spell Penny has cast, and when it will wear off. I don’t take my eyes off Lamb’s car.





52





BAZ


I know I promised Snow that I wouldn’t leave with Lamb. But I think I might have finally broken through with him. (Lamb.) What was I supposed to do—insist that we continue our conversation next to the skip?

I assume Simon and Penelope are right behind me. I’ll call them again as soon as I get a chance.

Lamb’s got his sunglasses back on. He cuts his eyes towards me without turning away from the road. “Have you always been…”

I raise an eyebrow. “A picky eater?”

He laughs. “Yes.”

“Yes,” I answer.

He grimaces. “But why?”

Because I didn’t want to kill anyone, I think. But that argument won’t work with him. Instead I say, “Because I didn’t enjoy being bitten.”

He glances over at me, turning his head this time. “Then someone was doing it wrong.”

I shuffle in my seat. “It just feels barbaric to me. Why should I turn on humanity? I was born one of them.”

“It’s the natural way of things,” he says. “It’s the circle of life.”

“There’s no circle,” I say. “We don’t die. We aren’t born. We don’t reproduce.”

“We do,” Lamb insists. “We were. We can.”

It’s my turn to be put off. “Vampires have children?”

“Someone made you.”

“My parents made me. A vampire killed me.”

He sighs. “Then allow me to say how much I enjoy the company of your ghost.”

I look out the window. I don’t see Shepard’s truck in the mirror.

“It might not be the circle of life,” Lamb says. “But it is the food chain. I didn’t see you feeling sorry for that pig we had for lunch. Or the rabbit you had for dessert. Everything eats something else.”

I swing my head towards him. “What eats you?”

He raises an eyebrow, giving me a taste of my own medicine. “Existential despair.”