Peeps

“Pepper steak?” I said. “Oh, crap.”

“Hey, it’s not against the law, dude,” Lace muttered as Rebecky walked away.

“What isn’t against the law?” Sarah asked, licking her fingers.

“Eating meat,” Lace said. “Sometimes people change, you know?”

Sarah smiled. “Oh. Used to be a vegetarian, did you?”

I started in ravenously on my own pepper steak. Otherwise, I was going to faint. “She was. Until recently.”

Sarah looked from Lace to me, then giggled. “You’ve been very naughty, haven’t you, Cal?”

“It was Cornelius.”

“Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” Lace asked.

Sarah sighed. “Well, Lacey, things are about to get complicated.”

Lace raised her hands. “Don’t look at me, girl. I never even kissed this guy. In fact, I’m really pissed at him right now.”

“Oh, poor Cal!” Sarah said. Then she added in a cruel baby voice, “Did kitty beat you to it?”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Lace said.

I dropped my fork to the table. Things were spi

Sweeping Sarah’s bottle of pills into my pocket, I pushed Lace out of the booth and dragged her toward the door.

“What the hell!” she shouted.

“Cal,” Sarah called. “Wait a second!”

“We have to leave,” I hissed to Lace. “She’s one of them.”

“What, an old girlfriend? I could tell that.” Lace paused, looking back at Sarah. “Oh, you mean …?”

“Yes!”

“Whoa, dude.”

As we reached the door, I glanced back. Sarah wasn’t following us, just watching our retreat with an amused expression. She pulled out a cell phone but paused to wave it at me: shoo. For some reason—old loyalty? lingering insanity? — she was giving us time to get away.

The street in front of us was thronged with pedestrians, but I didn’t smell any predators among the crowd—just lots of humans crammed together, ready for infection and slaughter. I kept us moving, tugging Lace along in one random direction after another.

“Where are we going, Cal?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to get out of here. They know about you.”

“Know what about me? That you told me all your Night Watch stuff?”

I didn’t answer for a moment, trying to think, but Lace pulled me to a stop. “Cal? Tell me the truth, or I’ll have to kill you.”

I glanced behind her—still no signs of pursuit. “They sent Sarah to find me.”

“And you told her about me?”

“No! You did. When you ordered that pepper steak!” I tried to get Lace moving again, but she pulled me to a stop.

“What the hell? What’s pepper steak got to do with this?”

“You’re starving, right? Feeling faint? And you’ve been craving meat all day…”

She didn’t answer, just stood there with eyes narrowed, my words finally sinking in. “Um, earth to Cal: You and I didn’t sleep together.”

“Believe me, I know. But you see, there’s this new strain… I mean, turns out it’s an old strain, and it has to do with cats. They’re the vectors we have to worry about now.”

Unsurprisingly, this explanation didn’t alter Lace’s perplexed expression. She just stood there staring back at me. A few passersby bumped into her, but the contact didn’t register. Finally, after ten long seconds, she spoke slowly and clearly. “Are you saying that your fat-ass cat has turned me into a vampire?”

“Um, maybe?” I coughed. “But I can test you, and we’ll know for sure.”

“Dude, you are so dead.”

“Fine, but wait until we find someplace to test you.”

“Someplace like where?”

“Someplace dark.”

Finding pitch blackness in Manhattan isn’t easy at noon. In fact, finding pitch blackness in Manhattan isn’t easy anytime.

I considered going to Lace’s apartment, but if the Watch was looking for us, they were as likely to start there as anywhere. I also thought about renting a hotel room and yanking the curtains closed, but if Lace was infected, there was no point throwing away money. We might be on the run for a while.

The pills were still clutched in my hand; even if Lace was infected, we could control the parasite. I could analyze the garlic-and-mandrake compound and keep her human. We could escape whatever the old carriers had pla

“What about a movie theater?” Lace asked.

“Not dark enough.” The light from exit signs always drives me crazy during movies. “We need cave darkness, Lace.”

“Cave darkness? Not a lot of caves in Manhattan, Cal.”

“You’d be surprised.” My nerves twitched as a trembling came through the soles of my boots. We were standing on the sidewalk grates over Union Square station. I pulled her toward an entrance.

I swiped us through a turnstile and tugged Lace down the stairs and to the very end of the platform, pointing into the darkness ahead. “That way.”

“On the tracks? Are you kidding?”

“There’s an old abandoned station at Eighteenth. I’ve been there before. Plenty dark.”

She leaned over the tracks; a small and scampering thing darted among discarded coffee cups.

“The rats won’t bite you,” I said. “Promise.”

“Forget it.”

“Lace, we subway-hacked all the time in Peep Hunting 101.”

She pulled away, glanced at the couple on the platform watching us, and hissed, “Yeah, well, I didn’t sign up for that class.”

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t sign up for any of this. But we have to know if you’re infected.”

Lace stared at me, her eyes gleaming darkly, like wet ink. “What happens if I am a vampire? Do you, like, vanquish me or something?”

“You’re not a vampire, Lace, just sick, maybe. And this strain is easy to control. Look.” I pulled the pills from my pocket and rattled them. “We’ll get out of the city. Otherwise, they’ll put you into treatment. In Montana.”

“Montana?”

I nodded, pointing down the dark tu

The 6 train rattled into view, and we waited as the platform cleared. I tugged Lace into the security camera blind spot, just next to the access ladder down to the tracks.

She looked down the tu

“Not cure. Control the parasite. Make you like me.”

“What, all superstrong and stuff?”

“Yeah. It’ll be great!” After the ca

“But the disease will kill me eventually, right?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. After a few hundred years.”

Lace blinked. “Dude. Major consolation prize.”

We ran down the middle of the tracks.

“Don’t touch that,” I said, pointing down at the wood-covered rail ru

“The famous third rail?” Lace said. “No problem. I’m a lot more worried about trains.”

“The local just passed. We’ve got a few minutes.”

“A few!”

“The abandoned station’s only four blocks away, Lace. I’ll know if the rails start rumbling. Supersenses and everything.” I pointed between the columns that held up the streets over our heads, the safe spots. “And if a train does come, just stand there.”

“Oh, yeah, that looks totally safe.”

We charged down the tu

The express train swerved into view ahead, taking the slow curve with one long screaming complaint. The cold white eyes of its headlights flickered through the steel columns like the light of an old movie projector. In the strobing light, I saw that Lace had come to a halt. The train was on the express track; it wouldn’t hit us, but the approaching shriek of metal wheels had paralyzed her.