Page 88 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“Where is she?” I rushed out and down the hallway, Zion’s footsteps thudding behind me. If he was in my room, it meant she was alone and unaccounted for. I yanked on the door, thehandle bouncing off the wall with a loud bang, and extended an arm to prevent it from bashing my face in.

The bed in her bedroom was untouched, the sheets unrumpled, no usual sight of the cocoon she liked to tuck herself into.

“What are you doing?”

The sound of her curious voice drained the tension from my chest, and my shoulders relaxed as I spun around to her standing in the doorway. A few strands had escaped the messy bun atop her head and framed her angular face.

She slapped a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. “And why are you naked?” Her eyes bounced down and up, down and up.

She had not seen me without any clothes yet. I had no wish to elicit fear. From what she had shared, sex was something she endured, not enjoyed. And her thinking I would force myself on her was the total opposite of what I wanted.

I pulled her into my arms. “Little death.” She wasalive. “I assumed you were gone.” The smell of dew and musk coating the wild mess of her hair slowed my pulse. She must have been in her clearing in the surrounding forests.

“I told you both I wasn’t going anywhere.” She rested her palms on my chest, stroking me so slightly, tentatively, and five heartbeats later, pushed away. “But I will if you don’t hold up your end of the deal. Now what’s going on?”

“A soldier from the city slunk inside Gedeon’s bedroom. I snapped his neck before he got too close,” Zion explained.

Another bout of delayed realization dawned on me. He had handled the soldier. While he was in my room. Lurking while I slept.

Disbelief lowering my tone, I asked, “You were watching me sleep?”

“Sometimes, when I can’t fall asleep, I go to your room. I’ve done it for years. You’ve never noticed.” He shrugged like it was a frequent occurrence, not a hint of discomfort in being caught. “You’re a very heavy sleeper. Kind of like a baby kitten.”

Lacking words for an answer, I stared at him like an idiot. This was beyond his usual insanity.

Yet it did not feel wrong. Not at all. Which was the most unexpected out of all the events unraveling tonight. Including the fact that he had just called me a “kitten.” Typically, he did it to rile me up. Now, shock had removed such an option from the list of possible responses.

“No.”

Our heads whipped to her, white as a sheet, hovering at the head of her bed.

“No.No,” she repeated, then stormed past us and out of the room, her footfalls quickening as she neared the stairwell.

“What was that about?” Zion’s head swiveled, as if he was torn between staying in the room and chasing her.

Moonlight pouring out the windows caught the two wristbands delicately placed in the center of a fluffy pillow and their sparkles guided my legs to her bed. One green, one black. “They are identical to the bands the cities use.” But if the soldier had left them here, it also meant he had visited her bedroom before coming to mine. “Was he in your room?”

“Not when I was still there.” Zion took the wristbands from me and flipped them over, checking them for anything out of the ordinary. “She always wore the black one. Why would he leave a green one?”

“No clue,” I said before marching down the hallway. I was getting answers one way or another, but first, I had to know if he had been in Zion’s bedroom. The soldier had his photograph too.

“Anything?” Zion popped into his bedroom behind me.

Hooks and metal bars dotted the ceiling, some secured to the walls as well. A four-person bed—essentially two mattresses pushed together on top of a pale wood frame—and two mismatched bedside tables, one milky colored, like the bed frame, and a dark brown ornate piece with carvings of angels and demons on its drawer, occupied one wall, while the light gray, floor-to-ceiling closet covered the other, except where the door leading to the bathroom stood ajar. Other than that, not a thing was out of place, not even a pair of socks left to dry on the floor.

He always said he needed lots of space.What for?I restrained from asking. The reason was likely to be disturbing, and I doubted I would want to live with the knowledge.

“Well, here’s your answer.” Zion stopped at the foot of his bed and gestured to the red-streaked sheets. “This isn’t my work.”

“Are they not always like that?” Half the time, he wandered around with at minimum one speck of scarlet somewhere on him. Bloody sheets were the least surprising item in his room. Now what he held in the drawers of his dresser, that would peak the most interest.

“That’s why I have the underground. Less clean-up. Do you know how long it takes to get blood out of white bedsheets? Having a drain installed in our basement was the best decision I’ve made that year.”

A message then. Blood for Zion, wristbands for Kali. What was supposed to be in mine if I had not been in my bedroom?

UnlessIwas supposed to be the message.

“Let’s decide what to do in the morning. I doubt they have sent a formation of soldiers to do one job,” I said, turning to walk out. “We need to bring her inside before she does something reckless.” Like roaming our territory and forests, an easily reachable target Ilasall had now marked her as.