Eph shook his head. “Just me realizing that the bottom line is that Zack goes free. Whatever it takes to achieve that, I’ll do.”
“I think that’s amazing, Eph. I really do.”
“You don’t think the Master will see right through this?” he said. “You think it will believe that I could do this? That I could betray the rest of you?”
“I do,” she said. “I think it fits the way the Master thinks. Don’t you?”
Eph nodded, glad she wasn’t looking at him at that moment. If not Nora, then who was the turncoat? Not Fet, certainly. Could it be Gus? Could all of his bluster toward Eph be a cover? Or Joaquin was another possible suspect. All this twisty thinking was making him even more crazy.
…
He heard something out in the main display area. Stirring noises, once assigned to rodents, nowadays meant only one thing.
Nora had heard it too. They switched off their flashlights.
“Wait here,” said Eph. Nora understood that, for this subterfuge to succeed, Eph had to go alone. “And be careful.”
“Always,” she said, drawing silver.
He slid out through the door, careful not to bump the handle of the sword jutting out of his backpack. He pulled on his night-vision monocular and waited for the image to stabilize in his vision.
Everything looked still. All the mannequins had normally sized hands, no extended talon for a middle finger. Eph circled right, keeping to the edge of the room, until he saw the hanger swinging gently on a circular rack near the down escalator.
Eph drew his sword and went swiftly to the top wooden step. The nonworking escalator ran along a narrow, walled space. He descended as quickly and as quietly as he could, then took in the next level from the landing. Something told him to keep going down, and so he did.
He slowed at the bottom, smelling something. A vampire had been here; he was close behind. Strange for a vampire to be out on its own, not otherwise industriously employed. Unless patrolling this department store was its assigned task. Eph ventured out from the escalator, the floor revealed in green. Nothing moved. He was about to start toward a large display when he heard a light click in the opposite direction.
Again he saw nothing. Ducking low, he wove around the clothing racks in the direction of the noise. The sign above the open doorway gave directions for the restrooms and the administrative offices, as well as an elevator. Eph crept past the offices first, looking in every open door. He could come back and try the closed doors after he had cleared the rest of the area. He went to the restrooms, nudging open the door to the women’s room just a few inches to see if it made much noise. It was nearly silent. He entered and scanned the stalls, pushing open each door, sword in hand.
He returned to the hallway and stood listening, feeling as though he had lost whatever thin trail he had been following. He pulled on the men’s-room door and slipped inside. He passed the urinals and poked open each stall door with the tip of his sword, and then, disappointed, turned to leave.
In an explosion of paper and trash, the vampire leaped out of the open trash barrel in the corner near the door, landing on the edge of one of the sinks across the room. Eph lurched backward at first, cursing and swiping at the air with his sword to ward off any stinger attacks. He quickly asserted his position, leading with his silver, not wanting to get backed into a stall. He brandished the weapon at the hissing vampire and circled past it, coming close to the barrel it had sprung from, paper rustling at his feet.
It squatted there, gripping the smooth edge of the sink, its knees up around its head, looking at him. Eph finally got a clear glance at it in the green light of his scope. It was a boy. A ten- or twelve-year-old of African-American descent, with what looked like pure glass in his eyes.
A blind boy. One of the feelers.
The feeler’s top lip was curled such that, by night vision, it looked like an appraising smile. His fingers and toes gripped the front edge of the sink counter as though he were about to pounce. Eph kept the tip of his sword pointed at the feeler’s midsection.
“Were you sent to find me?” Eph said.
Eph sagged a bit in dismay. Not at the response, but at the voice.
It was Kelly’s. Speaking the Master’s words.
Eph wondered if Kelly was somehow responsible for the feelers. If she was their wrangler, so to speak. Their dispatcher. And if so, if indeed these blind, psychic vampire children had been placed under her unofficial command, how fitting and sadly ironic at the same time. Kelly Goodweather was still a mother hen, even in death.
“What made it so easy this time?”
The feeler pounced, but not at Eph. The boy sprang from the countertop across the restroom to the wall, then dropped down to the tile floor on all fours.
