Page 76 of Firedrake Betrayal
“Thanks for caring that I resemble Casper and wanting to do something about it. Please stop referring to people as human juice boxes.”
He claps me on the arm. “No problem. I was getting worried you’d get so pale you’d fade into the walls and we’d lose you for days.”
I pull the door open. We don’t immediately enter, scanning the room first. The last time we were in here, Almeth had been about to hit Patten with a broken pool cue when I’d intervened. The bar is still showing signs of that short but messy fight.
Someone has cleared the broken bottles away, though there are far fewer bottles on the back than there had been before. The bar itself has a fair amount of dents and scratches, and the bartender, a middle-aged dark-haired man in a black T-shirt, is glaring at Patten.
“It doesn’t look like we’re welcome,” I say.
Patten looks around the room. “Yeah, well, we’re not stopping. Just grabbing some takeout and leaving.” He leans his shoulder against mine and, lowering his voice, speaks out the side of his mouth. “Any sign of anyone looking to stake you?”
I do another slower, more thorough examination of the bar. No one has Amelie’s family’s distinctive red hair, though they could have dyed it, and not all members of her family had her sharp, delicate features.
“No.”
“Okay.” Patten takes a step inside.
“I don’t trust myself to stop,” I say quietly.
He stops and turns to me. “That’s what I’m here for. You won’t kill anyone if you don’t want to.” He pauses. “Unless it’s a witch. No guarantees I’ll stop you then.”
“Thanks.”
He nods and walks inside. “Wait here.”
I yank him back. “What do you mean, wait here?”
“I’ll go grab you a human juice box.”
I look at him.
“The name’s stuck now,” he says. “There’s a witch over there. I figure the world could do with one less witch to curse a poor guy. I’ll chat her up a bit, get her to follow me out here, and then you pounce.”
I’m mid-way through telling him that I don’t pounce, have never pounced, and don’t intend to start now when a soft pop and a faint disturbance of air makes me shove Patten to the ground.
He yelps, a sound he quickly cuts off. He must have spotted the bullet lodged in the door.
A man in dark green fatigues darts down toward a darkened street.
I leave Patten on the floor.
The man, maybe one of Atticus’s guards, maybe one of Amelie’s family members, is pulling the door of a parked navy sedan open when I reach him.
He fumbles for the gun in his belt, but all I see is his vein bulging in his neck. All I feel is white-hot rage that he came within a second of hitting Patten.
I have my fangs in his throat, hungrily gulping, when footsteps pound toward me.
Patten whisper-shouts. “Wait. We could bring him back to the house and… Oh.”
I lift my head, my body pulsing with life and belly deliciously full.
“Maybe the next guy?” Patten says.
I look down, taking in the man’s glazed eyes.
No. Not again.
Amelie’s colorless face, frozen in death, takes shape in my mind.
