Edie Spence (Book 5): Bloodshifted by Cassie Alexander Page B

shoves in pieces of half-drained corpses that I wouldn’t feed a dog, then leaves them here to decay and foul me.”
    “A servant? Which one?”
    “Different ones over time. This most recent one, I could not say. The scent they leave behind is artificial—your world, not mine. And no one ever visits at night. But they’ve been absent for a month now.”
    Was there a way I could ask the others, safely? Jackson, maybe, but none of the rest of them. “How long does it take a vampire to starve to death?” I wouldn’t only have to free an angry vampire—I’d have to figure out how to feed one too.
    “Hopefully not as long as it takes for you to find me,” he said, lips pulled thin. “If you value your own life, and that of your child, you must find me quickly.”
    There were other things I wanted to know—how his dream powers worked, how he’d originally been trapped, and just how old he was—but for now the final thing I needed be sure of was my safety. “You promise you won’t hurt my child? Or me? Or my friends?”
    “Do you have any friends here?” he asked, eyebrows rising.
    “Who knows how long it’ll take me to find you. I might by then.” I already knew I didn’t want to kill Jackson. I frowned at myself. Dammit, Edie, dammit.
    “Then I promise to not kill you, your child, or anyone you mark as friend. Just find me as soon as possible.”
    Easier said than done. But if the Shadows had stuck around overnight, maybe they could be convinced, or threatened, into helping me. “I’ll start looking in the haystacks for you tomorrow.”
    A questioning look clouded his face. “There is no hay down here.”
    “It’s called an idiom. You’ve missed out on some things. Let me go back to sleep, okay? I might need the rest.”
    He looked for a moment like he might refuse me, long enough for me to wonder if even vampires could get lonely, and then acquiesced. I slept.
    *   *   *
    I woke up feeling unrested, but at least no one had tried to kill me during the night. Or morning. Whatever it was right now. I hadn’t felt the moment when the night had changed to dawn, but I had a feeling that Raven was asleep—it was as if a subtle weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I found the remote and clicked on the light and heard Celine complain inside her bed-palace.
    “I’m going to the restroom. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, send reinforcements.”
    Celine snorted. Her foot had pushed a corner of her curtain out of the way, and I could see her face pressed into a pillow, hiding from the light.
    I took the bag of fast food with me, to throw away, or so I could confer with the Shadows in private. The sooner I could set them loose to look for the prisoner, the better.
    I moved the bell and stepped out into the hallway—and found a pile of shirt boxes, with a nice note on top.
    Now you owe me, it said, and beneath that Estrella, with a flourish, as if she were signing an autograph for a fan.
    So that was the female vampire’s name.
    The door opened up behind me and I jumped, afraid Celine was coming after me. She held her ground. “What? You’re not the only one with a bladder,” she protested. Then her eyes flicked to the hip-high boxes of clothes, and she saw the note. Her lips, still the color of last night’s lipstick, puckered as if she’d just licked a lime.
    “I didn’t mean to—”
    Celine held her hand up for silence, and then walked around me, hand still outstretched. After that she sauntered on to the bathroom, and I was afraid to follow her.
    *   *   *
    It was probably impossible to piss Celine off more than her Mistress’s actions already had. I opened up the top box. It had a kilted skirt, pleats ironed neatly, and a folded white top below that. The second box held shoes, for the skirt in the next box—a slinky floor-length skirt with a tight black tube top?
    Each box was as improbable as the next, and many of them came with suggested shoes or items of jewelry. Was she