“Picks us up? Who’s picking us up?”
“Somebody from Black Cross will come. Once I broke in the antique store, I used their phone, left a message that I was headed here. I’ll call back and tell them where to pick us up, once we know ourselves.”
“I don’t want to walk around this neighborhood for too long.” I cast a suspicious glance at a broken-out window.
“Bianca, think.” Lucas stopped in his tracks and, for the first time all night, looked like his old snarky self. “Who should be afraid here? Us or them?”
Why would these people be scared of me? Then it hit me, the punch line to the joke of my life: I’m a vampire.
I started to giggle, and Lucas joined in. When I lost control, tears welling in my eyes, he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight.
I’m a vampire. Everybody’s scared of me. ME. And Lucas? He’s the only guy who can scare vampires. All these rough-looking people—if they knew—they’d run for their lives.
When I could breathe again, I stepped back from Lucas and tried to examine our situation calmly. It was hard to think about anything besides him, though, and how lost we were. The fluorescent streetlight drained all the brightness from Lucas’s bronze hair, so that it looked simply brown. Maybe it was exhaustion that made his face so pale and drawn; I could only imagine how tired I looked.
“It’s nearly midnight. Where are we going to stay?” My cheeks flushed with heat as I realized what I’d said—which sounded a lot like an invitation for Lucas and me to spend the night together. Then again, hadn’t we run off together? Maybe it was natural for him to assume that we’d go to bed. Maybe it would’ve been natural for me to assume that, and there had been times I’d wanted to be with him too desperately to sleep. Tonight, though, on top of everything that had just happened, the prospect only made me feel awkward and nervous.
Lucas seemed to have realized our predicament at the same moment I had. “I haven’t got my credit cards with me. Kinda left in a hurry. We just spent the only cash I had in my pocket.”
“The only thing I brought was a flashlight.” Too-bright signs from the few open stores made me squint. “We’d have been better off with a slingshot and Oreos.”
The rainstorm that had been raging in Riverton hadn’t made it here, so we didn’t have to worry about getting soaked as we walked around, trying to think of what to do. We were damp and exhausted and unsure of each other, and we did a poor job of acting casual as we passed bail bondsmen and liquor stores. Spending the night curled on different benches in some run-down park wasn’t an appealing prospect.
For reassurance, I lifted my hand to my sweater, the place just beneath my collarbone where I’d pinned my brooch this morning. It seemed like a thousand years ago. But the brooch was still there, the carved jet edges of each petal cool against my fingertips.
At that moment, we walked past a pawnshop, three golden spheres outlined in neon above its door, and I realized what I had to do.
“Bianca, don’t,” Lucas protested as I pulled him inside the seedy little store. Shelves were piled with randomly stacked junk, all the things people had to get rid of, like brightly colored leather coats, sunglasses with metallic frames, and high-end electronics that were probably stolen. “We can go back to the bus station.”
“No, we can’t.” I unfastened the brooch from my sweater, trying hard not to look at it. If I caught sight of the perfect black flowers, I’d lose my nerve. “This isn’t about being comfortable, Lucas. It’s about being safe and having a place to talk. And—” And to say good-bye, I thought but could not say.
Lucas thought that over for a second before he nodded.
We probably both looked completely dejected as we walked to the pawnbroker, but he didn’t seem to care. A skinny man in a polyester shirt, he hardly paid any attention to us. “What’s this? Plastic or something?”
I quickly said, “It’s genuine Whitby jet.”
“I don’t know from Whitby.” The pawnbroker tapped his fingernails against the carved leaves. “This thing is pretty old-fashioned.”
“That’s because it’s antique,” Lucas said.
“I hear that a lot,” the pawnbroker sighed. “Hundred dollars. Take it or leave it.”
“A hundred dollars! That’s only half what it cost!” I protested. And it was worth so much more than money. I’d worn it virtually every day for months, the visible symbol of the love I felt for Lucas. How could this man look at it so coldly?
“People don’t come here for the best return on their investment, sweetie. They come here to get some cash in their hands. You want the cash? You’ve got my offer. Otherwise, get outta here and stop wasting my time.”
Lucas wanted to take the brooch back rather than let it go for so much less than it was worth. I could tell that much by the stubborn set of his jaw. I was learning that Lucas would often do something he felt strongly about, even if it wasn’t the right move—and for us, keeping the brooch wasn’t the right move. Resolutely, I held out my hand, palm up. “A hundred dollars, then.”
For our sacrifice, we received five twenty-dollar bills and a paper ticket that promised us we could reclaim the brooch later, if we somehow came into a fortune in the next couple of days. “I’ll get the money,” Lucas insisted as we walked outside and turned toward the one motel we could see. “I’ll get it back for you.”
“You said you were rich, when you bought the brooch for me. Was that true?”
“Uh—”
I raised an eyebrow. “Not exactly?”
“I have access to Black Cross money, and there’s a decent amount of that. But I’m supposed to spend it on supplies. Necessary stuff.” He shrugged. “Not jewelry.”
“You got into trouble, for buying that for me.”
Lucas shoved his fists into his pockets, his mood black. “I told them that I work for them, basically. But I don’t get a salary or hazard pay, so as far as I’m concerned, they owe me. That’s exactly what I’m going to tell them when I explain that I’m buying the brooch back. Because it’s yours, Bianca. It belongs to you, period.”
“I believe you.” I put my hands on either side of his face. “But it’s not the most important thing, okay? The most important thing is that we’re safe, we’re together, and we get a chance to figure this all out.”
“Yeah.” Lucas’s damp, rumpled hair was warm against my fingers, and he closed his eyes as I brushed it backward. “Now let’s find a place to stay.”
We had to walk only a couple more blocks before we found a cheap hotel. At the front office, a small room that smelled like beer and cigarettes, Lucas made sure to get us a room with two beds, which made the clerk look at us funny from behind her wall of bulletproof glass. I tried not to think about the precious brooch being sold to pay for one night in a small room with rickety twin beds and dark blue woolen covers, with only the light from one small porcelain lamp to see by. We didn’t touch each other as we walked in, not even to hold hands, but I was incredibly aware of the fact that we were alone together in a bedroom. He turned on the lamp between our beds, but that didn’t put me at ease. Instead, I found myself noticing how Lucas’s white shirt was slightly stuck to his body because of the rain. The near-transparent cotton outlined the muscles of his back.
