Extrait

Mercy?” Wulfe’s voice was enough to wake me right up.

“You wanted to talk to me?” I wished I had more of Mary Jo’s glass of water left.

“Mercy,” he whispered. “Mercy. I can still taste you in my mouth.” I pulled the phone away from my ear because I didn’t want his voice that close to me. “I long for your blood on my tongue, little coyote-girl.”

Creepy. Of all the creepy people and monsters I’ve encountered—and a lot of monsters are pretty creepy—Wulfe is the one who gets to me the worst. I think it’s because he scares me the most. I had been thinking about drinking, and he started talking about it, as though he was reading my mind. He does that kind of thing a lot. He knows it bothers me, and that just encourages him.

“And I can see you turning to dust in the middle of the afternoon under the hot summer sun,” I told him, trying to sound bored. I did a pretty good job. Exhaustion and boredom sound a lot alike. “If your dream comes true, then mine gets to come true, too.”

“Life is not so fair, Mercy,” he said, and someone in the same room with him made a noise.

Any adult who has ever watched a p**n flick knows that noise. It’s the one that real people don’t make unless they are faking something.

“If you just called to flirt, I’m hanging up.”

He drew in a shaky breath, then moaned.

I hung up.

“Who was that, and why was he having phone sex with you?” asked Gary.

“I need to wash my brain,” muttered Darryl. “Next time I see that vampire, I’m going to squish him like a bug.”

“I feel violated,” I said, half-seriously.

The phone rang, and I set it on the table. It rang again, and we all looked at it.

Adam picked it up and hit the green button on the screen.

“Mercy, you spoil all my fun,” Wulfe said, sounding less psychotic and more petulant. “You keep killing my playmates. It’s only fair that you take their place.”

I don’t know which playmates he was talking about. Andre? Frost? Frost was the last vampire I’d killed.