He dropped Hector’s coat and ran back inside.
I looked over my shoulder and there was Jorgen, reared up on two legs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I didn’t think he looked like a Donkey or a Lady at all—but I knew what he’d once been.
Standing made him at least seven feet tall, with an angular wolf-like head, looming over me. I should have known he’d find me again. That’s what a Hound was for. He jumped after Olympio, and I threw myself into his path.
“Jorgen!”
The Hound drew up short. “Are you here for the kid? Or for me?”
Jorgen tilted his head down, and oh, how I wished for a doorway between us. He took a step forward, shoveling his nose at me, as if to push me back. I held my ground.
Hector whispered. “What … is that?”
“You can see it?” I wasn’t sure if Jorgen’s powers to hide depended on his proximity to Dren, or if he was generally hidden. Jorgen looked over to Hector, and then back to me.
I could see him running after kids to scare them since they could see him, like a bored junkyard dog. “You don’t eat them, do you?”
He looked at me through one of his too-human eyes. He didn’t blink.
“I don’t want to know. Why are you here?” I asked Jorgen. He came very near, slowly, and it was hard to steel myself not to back away. He was even more grotesque up close, and since my shun hadn’t protected me from him so far, I wasn’t sure what he was capable of. I stood very, very still as lips, slightly more human than Hound, grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me down the street.
“Hey!” Hector said in warning. I gently pulled my wrist away from Jorgen’s mouth and wiped it on my shorts.
“Jorgen, I have no idea what you want—or how I could even help you. ”
Jorgen growled, a human-sounding expression of frustration. He reached for my wrist again, and Hector stepped up. Jorgen eyed him with pure hatred, and his lips curled into a snarl.
“What is that?” Hector asked, trying to stand in front of me to protect me.
“It’s a Hound. I didn’t always work at your clinic—or the sleep clinic before. ” Now was the time to lay all my cards on the table, if I was going to get the truth. “I used to work on a floor for supernatural creatures that needed help. The Hound belongs to one of them. ” Not the entire truth, but enough. “He belongs to a vampire. Which I wish I could find right now. ”
At this, Jorgen stopped growling.
“That’s what you want from me, isn’t it?” I asked Jorgen. “To follow you. ”
Jorgen’s oversized wolf head bobbed, the patches where he was missing fur gleaming in the streetlight.
“Where?” Hector asked.
“I don’t know. To Dren, I assume. ” Jorgen bowed down at this, and his teeth slunk toward my wrist again. I pulled it away.
Dren was a vampire; finding him would solve my problem, right? Maybe. “I’d rather find a vampire that doesn’t hate me, though. ” I couldn’t really imagine my mother spending her life indebted to Dren now, could I? God.
“How did he find you?” Hector jerked his chin at the nightmare by our side.
“It’s what he’s cursed to do. ” I used a knuckle to push my cheek in to chew on. Could I get Dren to help me? Somehow? Was it worth the risk? Of course it was. It was my mom.
Just as I was talking myself into following Jorgen, even if I already knew I wouldn’t like where he would lead, Hector nodded. Subtly at first, but then grander, as if convincing himself of something. “All right. I’ll take you to her. I’ll show you. ”
“To who?”
Hector raised his hands to the sky. “To who else? The Queen of the Night. ”
* * *
This was a much better option, inasmuch as any option was better than dealing with Dren, a vampire whom I already knew had a grudge against me. Now a willing guide, Hector took us deeper into the city, with Jorgen following along like the Hound of the Baskervilles come to life. Jorgen whined periodically—it was clear we were not going the way he preferred, from the noises he made, and the way he wove at every corner—but he didn’t put his lips on me again, thank God.
We reached a place where there were women standing on the corners of the streets. Not dressed like hookers, or fiending for dope—normal women, in groups of two or three, talking, standing in place. Watching. When the first group saw us, they smiled at Hector. And one of them whistled out a call that I heard repeated far away. The graffiti on the walls changed—Reina colors for sure. “Are we in their territory now?”
Hector nodded.
“So I was right, there was a connection between the people with the bite mark shirts and the tattoos all along?”
“Presumably. I’ve never seen her myself. I’ve only heard about her. ”
“Why did you go in with her lot, then? The blood is for her, isn’t it?”