Page 83 of Bought for Blood

“How many people are in there?” she says.

“Twenty, give or take.”

“Give or take. You didn’t count?”

“I counted heartbeats. The house doesn’t show clients the ward; they bring people up to us. But a heartbeat carries through a building, and the ward sits two floors under the client rooms. Twenty, when I was last there. The number moves.”

“Moves how?”

“They’re sold. Or moved on.” I don’t add the third option.

“That doesn’t tell me anything.” Her eyes narrow. “What condition are they in? How many of them can walk?”

“I can’t tell you who can walk. I can tell you what their blood says, because reading their condition was half the reason I drank from as many as the house would give me. Their blood runs thin. Their hearts run fast. They’re weak, but they’re mobile.” My voice stays level. “I don’t think I saw the worst of them, though. Some of those people may need to be carried out.”

“Stretchers go in the second truck,” Nadia says. “I’ll see to it.”

“What about names?” the small woman presses. “Did you get any names?”

“Grace,” Viktor says. “That’s enough for now.”

Grace.

Serenity has said that name to me three times. The first was over dinner, weeks ago, when she asked me to find out what happened to her sister, and I told her I’d look into it. I never did. There was always the compound. Always something that mattered more. She stopped asking, and I let myself believe she’d stopped hoping, because that was easier than the truth.

The woman is nine feet from me. Alive. Mated, going by the mark. Carrying a child, going by the second heartbeat. There’s a mug in front of her that she hasn’t touched.

Four words.Your sister is alive.

Then I realize something else. If I say them, this room learns that I have Serenity. That I bought her from the same people we’re planning to burn. Viktor sends this woman and her bear to my house before dawn, and they’d be right to go. Nothing I could say in this room would hold for ten seconds.

And Serenity would walk out of my door with them.

I take my hand off the table and put it in my lap.

“Then let’s talk about the one we know of from our side,” Vanya says. She doesn’t need her notes for this. “Serenity Sangrey. I’ve had people hunting her. Every trace of her is always a month cold by the time we reach it.”

She says it to the room. She isn’t looking at me.

My eyes stay on the map.

Say it.

“Is she in that building?” It’s the bear. The first thing he’s said all evening, and it comes out in a low rumble, and every head turns.

“The ones they brought to me went by numbers. I never heard a name.” Which is true. Every word of it is true.

And I’m lying.

“Then she could be.”

“She could be.”

Grace stands up.

“Then we go fast.” Her chair scrapes back. “Tomorrow.”

“Sit down, Grace.”