But not yet.
“I will make you the same offer,” I hissed, jerking him close. “Name him, and this will be quick.”
“Name? Name who? I don’t—”
I put it into his mind, the whole scene. His face as the cage door slammed shut, and the face of the one making the offer. The one I needed.
“But, that’s all?” He looked incredulous. “That’s why you’re—”
The nails sank in more, up to the first knuckle. I was enjoying this. He saw.
He saw and it broke him.
“I don’t know! I never had a name. They don’t—”
“A location, then.”
“A warehouse, in Jersey. I can give you the address, but it won’t help. We only meet there a few times a year, to bid on the more unusual lots, and only when we receive a call—”
I stripped the location from his mind. An old place, abandoned, overgrown. Useless. I growled.
“Please! I don’t know any more—”
“That is…unfortunate.”
“—but I can give you whatever you want!”
“No,” I said, looking into the shadows. Where something gold glimmered against the dark. “You can’t.”
I came to, thrashing around, caught in a trap that threatened to smother me. And halfway through a scream. I cut it off abruptly, but it echoed in my ears, like the pulse in my throat as I fought to free myself from the clutches of—
My overstuffed comforter?
The old squashy thing hit the floor like a body, and I sat up, breathing hard.
My eyes darted around, trying to find the source of the threat, only there wasn’t one. Just my bedroom, the pile of bras still on the dresser, along with a gun belt and more of Ymsi’s wilting flowers. All lit by dust-filled beams of sunlight.
Which was wrong.…Wasn’t it? It had been dark. It had been—
I had a fleeting image of a slice of blood hitting a wall, a cigarette falling onto dirty concrete, and small golden footprints glowing against a dark street. And then a blast of pain hit me, hard enough to wrench a cry from my throat. Son of a—
I jerked violently, grabbing for my temples.
And fell out of bed for the second morning in a row.
My ass hit wood, hard enough to bruise, because I’d managed to miss the comforter. Of course. I dragged it over, but otherwise I didn’t move. I just lay there for a few minutes, clutching familiar softness, feeling weak and disoriented and listening to that damned bird again.
My head was pounding like the world’s worst hangover, and the cheerful little trills weren’t helping. I blearily thought about shooting it, but our fey visitors would probably object. I decided it wasn’t worth it and started trying to squint the alarm clock on my nightstand into view.
And got a second shock: 3:45.
Not so much a cheerful morning, then, as a cheerful afternoon.
I stared at the clock and it stared stubbornly back, insisting that yes, it really was that late. That I really had slept for something like sixteen hours. And yet I didn’t feel particularly well rested. In fact, I felt a lot like crawling back into bed.
Until I remembered last night.
The tendrils of whatever I’d been dreaming about had dissipated, but my little freak show yesterday was clear as crystal. My forehead was halfway to the floor anyway, so I just let it sink the rest of the way down. Oh, God. Why?