Page 40 of Kissed the Mark
Leandra turned to face me at this. I triedvery hard to look at her face and not anywhere else to bepolite.
“Sorry for not telling you. She—she saidno.”
“Well, not very surprising there. I think Imust have intimidated her pretty badly.” She tapped her chin,turning back to her map. “We can tackle some of these areas,though. They’ll probably be sleeping—more ideal than doing itduring the day, I suppose. You were close to the goose, so youwould know if it had any odd habits, or distinctive marks orwhatnot. Though that’s definitely the hard way…”
“Leandra.”
“Olympia.”
“Can I trust you?” I asked.
She turned around again, studying me.“‘Trust’ is a big word,” Leandra said finally. “Trust me withwhat?”
It was the kind of answer I wanted tohear—not reassuring and clearly not a lie. “I’m kind of scared ofhow you’ll take it. Especially with all the work you put into…” Ididn’t know whether I meant the hours she’d clearly spent on themap today, or the possible years she’d spent on research.
Leandra stood from her spot on the floorwith an elegance no human could hope to emulate. “What are yousaying?” she asked, and her voice was carefully steady.
“The goose doesn’t exist anymore.” I wavedmy hand, imitating the way it burst into feathers in a pantomime noone else but maybe Beatrice Newell would have understood. “And itwas neverreallyyou. It was…” I paused, gauging herreaction. She expressed very little, but her grip tightened aroundher arms, fingertips turning white. “I don’t want you to be mad atFrancesca.” A bold statement, considering just recently I had triedto kill the witch for similar reasons.
“Don’t tell me it was a golem?” she said,and slumped back to the floor in an overly dramatic puddle ofvampire limbs. “Oh, God, not again! Tell me it wasn’t a golem.”
“Again? What? How many times has thishappened?”
“I trusted the Gallos. Foolish of me. Ofcourse they wouldn’t help a poor, unfortunate vampire, yearning forher one heart’s true desire…”
I knelt down in front of her. “Hey,” I said,in as assuring a tone as I could muster. When the hell had shetried this before and gotten tricked by another witch in anidentical way? I had taken such a long time to come to thatconclusion. “Hey.”
“No, it was just so much more convincingthis time… Granted, I never got close, but I watched the way youtook care of her… I thought your instincts would be good for ittoo, but I guess I was wrong.”
My eye twitched at the insult on myintelligence. “Don’t worry, Leandra. We’ll get you—we—we’ll get youtrue immortality and power somehow?”
A tear plipped off the end of her nose ontothe carpet. “You promise?” she asked, eyes shining.
“Er, sure.”
“Okay. We should start packing.”
“Packing?”
But she was already up, having extracted asuitcase from somewhere, and was stuffing it full of random books,pens, a paperweight on her desk shaped like a hummingbird. “Yes,packing. If we could find the goose, we could have used theimmortality I got from killing it to protect you—but if we can’t,we should leave. I was thinking, I didn’t get to thoroughly searchViktor Lehmann’s villa because I thought he could be back anyminute, so we should go to Austria, and I’ll further my researchuntil I figure out how we can do this without those damn, meddling,heartless witches who—”
“What if I don’t want to go to Austria?” Iasked, following her around as she shoved more into the suitcasethat I could determine no clear purpose for.
“We go to Austria, or you can stay here andtake your chances with the vampire queen. As for myself,I’mgoing, and I’ll be able to better protect you from her if you comewith me.”
“Okay. If we’re going to Austria, I need totell you something else.”
“Have you betrayed me yet again?” she asked,throwing her hands up. “I don’t know how many revelations I canhandle today.”
“Well, when you check your phone, you’llknow I was the one meeting with Matt Rivera.”
Chapter Twenty
Mateo Rivera
“OLYMPIA,” LEANDRA SAID, AND I could tell by hertone that her patience with me was wearing thin. I hoped she’dstill protect me from Patricia, whatever that entailed. “You havegot to be kidding me.”
“Check for yourself,” I said, my heart in mythroat.
