Free A Dark-Adapted Eye by Heather Crews Page A

it,” he snapped.
    “There’s something else,” she said, and waited until he looked at her before continuing. “I know where Lucinda is going to be tomorrow night. That club. The big one. It’s supposedly her favorite.”
    “Stars,” I said.
    Rubbing a hand over his eyes, Les turned to me. “Ivory and I were arguing about this when you came home yesterday. We’ve talked about it ever since the murdered girls started showing up, but we’re never going to agree on it. He’s not going to like me asking you now, but it’s not his decision.”
    “What isn’t?”
    “Whether or not you’d like to help us catch this vampire. Lucinda.”
    “What do you mean?” I heard the creeping apprehension in my voice.
    Les’s eyes were serious, his expression grim. I could see how hard it was for him to say his next words. “I mean, Asha, would you be our bait.”
     
    ~
     
    Being a vampire meant falling into a coma-like sleep during the day, at least as far as Aleskie was concerned. She overtook Ivory’s bed after slurping up the bag of blood he’d brought home. He tacked a blanket over his window to keep it dark for her, and then he and Les traded off sleeping and checking on her. They were rightly suspicious of her vampire nature, but she never moved.
    “She’s nearly healed already,” Ivory told me midmorning, while Les slept. He stowed a couple extra blood bags in the fridge.
    “But they really hurt her,” I said, eyeing the bags with distaste. “Those guys who jumped her.”
    “Vampires heal fast. Sleep helps. And blood.”
    I shuddered a little. “Vampires are so . . . so . . .”
    “Believe me, Asha,” he said sagely. “I know.”
    “If you agree to help us,” Les told me when Ivory next dozed, “we’ll go to Stars tomorrow night.”
    “Okay . . .”
    “I want you to think about it. I don’t want you to worry because this might not even amount to anything, Aleskie could be wrong, or lying . . . Anyway, I’m going to check the place out t onight, so we’re at least somewhat prepared.”
    “Right. Well, I’ll let you know in the morning.”
    “Don’t feel pressured. You don’t have to help.”
    It had been an odd day and I didn’t know what to do with myself. The house hummed with the usual afternoon sounds: car doors slamming as the remaining people in the neighborhood r eturned from work, the shrieks of children freed from school.
    Bait.
    I sat in my room thinking about it. The very word reminded me of fishing, which wasn't exactly a pleasant association. I'd been once with my family, the one and only time we ever did anything together. We’d camped up in the mountains before the vampires came. Ivory had tried to show me how to put the worm on the hook but I was too disgusted to even touch the thing, so I'd used raw bacon instead. I hadn't caught anything and after a while I'd grown tired of fishing anyway. It was boring, requiring a patience even I didn't have.
    Ivory wouldn't want to let me wriggle around like that worm on the hook and he wouldn’t ask me to. I was his sister. What did it mean that Les, on the other hand, was willing to ask me to put myself out there to attract a vampire? Though if there was no other way to catch this vampire called Lucinda, it was better to use me, I supposed, than some innocent stranger. Maybe that was his reasoning.
    Tomorrow night, he had said. It would happen so soon. Too soon. There wasn’t nearly enough time to decide how I truly felt about the matter, yet I had to decide quickly. No pressure, he’d said. Except I did feel pressure, because how could I say no? This was the first time they'd asked for my help. The first time they'd needed it. Maybe I didn't want to be potential vampire fodder, but I didn't want to let them down. Or any of the girls who might become Lucinda’s future victims if I refused to help.
    I couldn’t stop picturing the girl in the park. I imagined others like her, dead because I’d done nothing.
    Les left after dark