“He’s right,” Marid said, after we’d watched a moment. “We should go.”

Chapter 16

THE GROUP of us trooped back up the path in the other direction, to Ned’s town house. Before we left the park and the blackout area created by the disabled CCTV cameras, Ned adjusted his coat to hide his ravaged arm. To anyone watching, via camera or otherwise, we’d look like a group of acquaintances walking home after a night out. Actually, Marid, Ned, and Antony probably wouldn’t show up on the cameras at all. I stuck close to Ben.

Back at the town house, Emma came running into the hallway from the parlor.

“How did it go?” she asked.

Before I could answer, Ned closed and locked the door and shrugged off his coat so that she had an excellent view of the injured arm. Emma gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. A very human gesture.

Recovering quickly, she pointed vaguely to the back of the house. “I’ll go get something for that.”

“That would be lovely,” Ned said, a weak smile shifting his beard. “You might find some bandages for Ms. Norville as well.”

“I think I’m just about healed,” I said, unwrapping Ben’s shirt from my forearm. The wad of torn fabric had become a crusty mess. I frowned at it, then frowned at my arm. Sure enough, a fresh scab colored an angry, healing pink ran down the skin. When I flexed the muscle, it hurt, but not as much as it had before. Go go super healing.

“I’ll just throw that away for you,” Emma said. I handed the bloody shirt to her, and she ran back down the hall and disappeared around a corner.

“What exactly does one do to fix something like that?” I said to Ned, nodding at his own injury. Then I remembered. “Wait a minute, you’re not going to ask me to help with the first aid, are you?”

“One would think you’d been in such situations before,” Ned said amiably.

“You mean have I had injured vampires beg a pint off me? Yeah.”

Ben looked at me. “Wait a minute, what?”

Ned narrowed his gaze. “I can fend for myself, never fear. Let’s retire to the library, shall we?”

Infuriatingly, Antony was chuckling. “She’s a bit jumpy,” he said to Ned, leaning in to whisper. As if I couldn’t hear him.

“You can hardly blame her.”

“I hate vampires. Did I mention that?” Ben whispered at me.

I patted his arm. “Several times.”

He frowned. “I’m going to find a new shirt. I go through more shirts on these trips…”

Before he left to go upstairs, he leaned in for a kiss, which I gave him. His lips were warm, comforting, and sent a flush to my toes. I wanted to curl up with him right now—best way to heal. Soon …

When Ned settled into a big armchair by the fireplace, he actually winced and sighed. So he was in pain. I hadn’t been able to tell. He arranged his arm so it didn’t have pressure on it, ripping away the last of the sleeve and baring most of his torso. He had the body of a middle-aged man—a healthy middle-aged man in good shape, but the sparse hair on his chest was gray, and the skin was loose. Ben returned wearing a clean white T-shirt at about the same time one of the human staff brought a tray with tea and finger food, some kind of breaded meat pies. I wanted to dump the whole plate of them into my mouth. It made me think Ned was used to entertaining tired, injured werewolves.

Emma returned, carrying a pint glass in both hands, stepping carefully because it was filled almost to the rim with dark, viscous blood. She knelt by the chair, hovering, concerned, and Ned took the glass from her without spilling a drop.

Giving the rest of us a glance, he said, “Pardon me,” then tipped the glass to his lips. He drained it in a single go, throat working as he swallowed, not needing to stop for a breath. He kept the glass upturned for what seemed a long time, letting the last of the blood drain into his mouth. The tangy, heady odor of the liquid permeated the room. My nose wrinkled, and my shoulders tensed.

I hadn’t noticed how pale Ned had turned until the infusion endowed him with a flush that started in his face and moved downward. Drops of blood began to seep from the wound at his shoulder. Where blood had poured from my wound, the liquid seemed to coalesce along Ned’s. Clotting along the skin and muscle, it built up, took on shape, faded in color, melded into the jagged skin at the edge of the wound. The healing seemed to happen both very slowly, and all at once, like watching plants grow on a time-lapse film.

He closed his eyes and relaxed against the back of the chair. Flexing his hand, new muscles tensed and released. The arm was almost back to normal, only a fine web of pink scars revealing the injury.

“That never gets old,” Marid said. “It’s marvelous.”

“Hell of a cure-all,” Ben said. He offered me a meat-thing. “Hors d’oeuvre?”

I scowled at him. I couldn’t decide if I was starving, or if I’d lost my appetite completely.

A banging sounded from the door to the courtyard. The noise was slow, loud, steady, like someone was trying to break in.

“That will be Caleb,” Ned said. “Emma, will you let him in?”

She frowned. “He’d be happier if you met him.”

“He’ll see me soon enough. This isn’t the time for status and posturing. He can put up with an underling showing him in.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “You’re not an underling, you’re a protégé. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t understand that.”

She pressed her lips and returned to the hallway.

I expected an argument and didn’t want to miss anything. The door squeaked open, footsteps pounded, and Caleb marched into the parlor, stopping in the doorway to glare at us.

Ben and I both stood, an instinctive response to the anger Caleb radiated. His expression held challenge; we didn’t know if it was meant for us.

“You okay?” I said, testing.

Caleb looked away, and I relaxed. So did Ben.

“We need to talk,” Britain’s alpha said to Ned.

“Yes,” the vampire answered. “Sit down. Have some tea.”

I preemptively poured another cup from the still-warm pot. Sighing, Caleb found a chair that seemed strategically located in the middle of the room. He had a good look at us all from there.

As I brought him his tea, he pulled a flask from an inner coat pocket. Before taking the cup, he poured a measure of what smelled like whiskey into the tea, put the flask away, took the cup from me.