Free The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

that doesn’t make sense,” Tana said, leaning against the cushioned headrest. “Mercy can’t be evil. It’s a virtue—like kindness or courage or…” Her voice trailed off.
    He turned to look at her. “This is the world I remade with my terrible mercy.”
    She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense, either.” Then, helplessly, she yawned.
    He laughed, sounding like any boy from her school. She wonderedwhat color his eyes had been long ago. “Go to sleep, Tana. Lean back your seat. If you let me borrow your car for tonight, I promise I will repay you.”
    “Oh yeah?” she asked, looking at him, with his bare feet and plain, dark clothes. “With what?”
    The smile stayed on his lips. “Jewels, lies, slips of paper, dried flowers, memories of things long past, useless quotations, idle hands, beads, buttons, and mischief.”
    She was almost sure he was joking. “Okay. So where are we going?” she asked, her head nodding against the window.
    His voice was soft. “Coldtown.”
    “Oh,” she said, blinking herself awake again.
    “I must. But if Aidan comes through the gates with me, he’ll be safer, and you’ll be safer without him. They’ll hunt for him out in the world. And he’s likely to start hunting, too.”
    “But what if he doesn’t want to be a vampire?” Tana asked. As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized that he would want it— of course he would want it. Didn’t he say as much before he attacked her? Being a vampire would get him all the glory he could ever imagine—he wouldn’t just be known as the guy at a party most likely to seduce someone else’s girlfriend or the small-town boy yearning for a big city. In Coldtown, he would be drowned in attention—and the massacre at the farmhouse would make his story only more tragic. More romantic.
    Plus, Aidan was hungry.
    She was the one who didn’t want to be a vampire. And she was afraid that as time went on, she’d become less and less sure of that.
    “The fever is in his blood,” Gavriel said. “He looks for no cure but one. I think he is decided in his heart, but who can confess to such a decision?”
    “It’s hard to fight the infection,” Tana said, her voice coming out harsher and more despairing than she’d intended. She didn’t want to talk about her mom. She didn’t want to tell him that the fever might be in her blood, too. In a few hours, she could be as bad as Aidan. “They can’t . You don’t understand. It takes them over and they can’t think straight.”
    He said nothing in return. In that silence, she realized how stupid she was being. He must have been infected once, must have given in to it, must know better than she did how it felt.
    “If you go to Coldtown,” she said, hoping to change the subject, “you won’t be able to get out. Are you sure whatever you’re going there for is worth it?”
    “What’s that?” he asked suddenly, one hand leaving the wheel to touch her arm.
    “What?” she said, looking down.
    His long fingers traced the outline of the scar just beneath the crook of her elbow, his expression unreadable. Her skin felt too warm against the coolness of his touch, as though she were feverish. “These are old marks,” he said finally. “You were just a child.”
    “Should it matter?” Tana asked. She was usually careful, but she must have pushed up the sleeves of her dress.
    “Why should death discriminate between age and youth, you mean?” he asked calmly. “Death has his favorites, like anyone. Those who are beloved of Death will not die.”
    She was relieved he hadn’t asked her any of the awful, stupid questions she’d grown used to: Who bit you? I heard that it doesn’t hurt when you’re bitten—does it hurt? Did you like it? Come on, you’re lying, you did like it, didn’t you? But then, he must know most of the answers. “Seems like Death came back for me.”
    He grinned, a subtly odd grin that somehow made her smile back. “You drove him off