Home > Daughters of Darkness (Night World #2)(5)

Daughters of Darkness (Night World #2)(5)
Author: L.J. Smith

Oh. Oh, no.Oh, no ...

Three minutes later she heard the click of the doorbehind her, but didn't care enough to turn.

"What are you doing?"Kestrel's voice said.

Jade looked up from her frantic efforts to resuscitate the two kittens she held. "They'redead!" she wailed.

"Well, what did you expect? They need to breathe, idiot. How did you expect them to make it through two days of traveling?"

Jade sniffled.

"Rowan told you that you could take only one."

Jade sniffled harder and glared. "I know.That's why I put these two in the suitcase." She hiccuped. "At least Tiggy's all right." She dropped to her knees and peered in the cat carrier to make sure he was all right. His ears were laid back, his golden eyes gleaming out of a mass of black fur. He hissed, and Jade sat up. He was fine.

"For five dollars I'll take care of the dead ones," Kestrel said.

"No!" Jade jumped up and moved protectively in front of them, fingers clawed.

"Not likethat," Kestrel said, offended. "I don't eat carrion. Look, if you don't get rid of them somehow,Rowan's going to find out. For God's sake,girl, you're a vampire," she added as Jade cradled the limp bodies to her chest. "Act like one."

"I want to bury them," Jade said. "They shouldhave a funeral."

Kestrel rolled her eyes and left. Jade wrapped the small corpses in her jacket and tiptoed out after her.

A shovel, she thought. Now, where would that be?

Keeping her ears open for Rowan, shesidledaround the first floor. All the rooms looked like the living room: imposing and in a state of genteel decay. The kitchen was huge. It had an open fireplace and a shed off the back door for washing laundry. It also had a door to the cellar.

Jade made her way down the steps cautiously. Shecouldn't turn on a light because she needed both hands for the kittens. And, because of the kittens, she couldn't see her feet. She had to feel with her toe for the next step.

At the bottom of the stairs her toe found something yielding, slightly resilient. It was blocking herpath.

Slowly Jade craned her neck over the bundle of jacket and looked down.

It was dim here. She herself was blocking the light that filtered down from the kitchen. But she could make out what looked like a pile of old clothes. A lumpy pile.

Jade was getting a very, very bad feeling.

She nudged the pile of clothes with one toe. It moved slightly. Jade took a deep breath and nudged it hard.

It was all one piece. It rolled over. Jade looked down, breathed quickly for a moment, and screamed.

A good, shrill, attention-getting scream. She addeda nonverbal thought, the telepathic equivalent of a siren.

Rowan! Kestrel! You guys get down here!

Twenty seconds later the cellar light went on andRowan and Kestrel came clattering down the stairs.

"I have told you and toldyou," Rowan was sayingthrough her teeth. "We don'tuse our-" She stopped, staring.

"I think it's Aunt Opal," Jade said.

Chapter 3

She's not looking so good," Kestrel said, peering over Rowan's shoulder.

Rowan said, "Oh,dear," and sat down Great-aunt Opal was a mummy. Her skin was like leather: yellow-brown, hard, and smooth. Almost shiny. And the skin was all there was to her, just a leathery frame stretched over bones. She didn't have any hair. Her eye sockets were dark holes with dry tissue inside. Her nose was collapsed.

"Poor auntie," Rowan said. Her own brown eyes were wet.

"We're going to look like that when we die," Kestrel said musingly.

Jade stamped her foot. "No, look,you guys! You're both missing it completely. Look atthat!" She swung a wild toe at the mummy's midsection. There, protruding from the blue-flowered housedress and the leathery skin, was a gigantic splinter of wood. It was almost as long as an arrow, thick at the base and tapered where it disappeared into Aunt Opal's chest. Flakes of white paint still clung to one side.

Several other pickets were lying on the cellar floor.

"Poor old thing," Rowan said. "She must havebeen carrying them when she fell."

Jade looked at Kestrel. Kestrel looked back withexasperated golden eyes. There were few things they agreed on, but Rowan was one of them.

"Rowan," Kestrel said distinctly, "she wasstaked. "

"Oh, no."

"Oh, yes," Jade said. "Somebody killed her. And somebody who knew she was a vampire."

Rowan was shaking her head. "But who would know that?"

"Well ..." Jade thought. "Another vampire."

"Or a vampirehunter,"Kestrel said.

Rowan looked up, shocked. "Those aren't real.They're just stories to frighten kids-aren't they?"

Kestrel shrugged, but her golden eyes were dark.

Jade shifted uneasily. The freedom she'd felt on the road, the peace in the living room-and now this.

Suddenly she felt empty and isolated.

Rowan sat down on the stairs, looking too tired and preoccupied to push back the lock of hair plastered to her forehead. "Maybe I shouldn't havebrought you here," she said softly. "Maybe it's worsehere." She didn't say it, but Jade could sense her next thought. Maybe we should go back "Nothingcould be worse," Jade said fiercely. "And I'd die before I'd go back." She meant it. Back to waiting on every man in sight? Back to arranged marriages and endless restrictions? Back to all those disapproving faces, so quick to condemn anything different, anything that wasn't done the way it had been done four hundred years ago?

"Wecan't go back," she said.

"No, we can't," Kestrel said dryly. "Literally. Unless we want to end up like Great-aunt Opal.

Or"she paused significantly-"like Great-uncle Hodge."

Rowan looked up. "Don't even say that!"

Jade's stomach felt like a clenched fist. "They wouldn't, she said, shoving back at the memory that was trying to emerge. "Not to their own grandkids. Not to us."

"The point," Kestrel said, "is that we can't go back,so we have to go forward. We've got to figure out what we're going to do here without Aunt Opal tohelp us--especially if there's a vampire hunter around. But first, what are we going to do withthat?" She nodded toward the body.

Rowan just shook her head helplessly. She lookedaround the cellar as if she might find an answer in a comer. Her gaze fell on Jade. It stopped there, and Jade could see the sisterly radar system turn on.

   
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