The horrible traitor

chapter 3

Billy absently scanned the racks of rubber and thickly stitched canvas, and then her gaze landed on the leashes hanging from a hook at the very top of the shelf. Her breath caught, and she dropped the buckets and stepped closer. Billy could read English better than she could speak it, and after a few moments of concentration, she understood the small sign above the leashes: HANDMADE IN LOS ANGELES.

But that didn’t make any sense.

“It can’t be,” she whispered to herself. She grabbed the middle of a leash, holding it two inches from her face so she could examine it: the same nylon used in fishnets, braided and twisted over and over again in a unique pattern that formed a series of interlocked knots. Billy had once seen the hitch on a pickup truck detach from the truck bed while testing one of these leashes.

“Miss? Can I help you find something?”

Ignoring the confused-looking clerk, Billy ran out to the rental van and scooped up the thick fishnet leash she’d brought with her from France. She carried it back inside and held it up to the new item, comparing them. Her own leash was black, and the other was brown, but there was no mistake: the design was identical, down to the intricate braiding near the handle attachment, the length, and the number of knots.

A rare grin spread across Billy’s face. She pulled out her cell phone and called her grandfather in England. It was two in the morning there, but he would forgive her. While she waited for the connection, Billy turned to look at the young man behind the counter. He was tall and gangly, an uncertain-looking teenager with acne and braces. Oh, this was going to be easy.

No, this was going to be fun.

The phone rang three times, and then Grandfather’s gruff voice came on the line. “What is it, Billy? Have you found the nova wolf?”

“No.” She didn’t bother to keep the satisfaction out of her voice. “But you will never believe who I did find.”

It started with an overprotective bargest, and what I assumed was the flu.

For weeks, Shadow, the bargest who had adopted me, had been obsessively glued to my side, following me so closely that it was hard for me to make sudden turns without stumbling over her. And I do mean over her: at about a hundred and eighty pounds, Shadow was roughly the size of a Great Dane, but shorter and more muscled. There were several times when I came close to belly flopping over her back and face-planting into the carpet.

At the time, though, I was moody and grieving, so if I noticed her unusual behavior at all, I chalked it up to her being worried about me.

Then, in the middle of April, I got sick, with what I thought was a normal flu bug. But one night, a few days into it, I went on a vomiting spree that legitimately frightened me. Usually when you get the flu, you stop puking—or at least slow down—when there’s nothing left to come up. But I couldn’t seem to get it under control. That’s when I started to worry that there might be something seriously wrong with me.

No, I’m not a complete moron, and yes, I do watch television—I’m aware that by then, any reasonably informed, sexually active woman would have suspected a pregnancy. But it honestly never occurred to me, because although no one completely understands why nulls are the way we are, there’s one thing that everyone agrees on: nulls are sterile. It’s just a fact. Vampires need blood, werewolves have to change during the full moon, and nulls can’t procreate. We’re like zonkeys: a weird anomaly in nature that happens every once in a while, but can’t reproduce itself.

So instead, I was worried that I might have, I don’t know, a tapeworm or stomach cancer or, God forbid, an actual gluten allergy. Okay, fine: I was worried that I’d done permanent damage to my body months earlier, when I’d used my abilities to cure a human of vampirism. Dashiell and the others had warned me that there could be physical ramifications, but I hadn’t listened. What if saving Hayne had done something to my insides?

The next afternoon, I called my doctor’s office, but the nurse insisted I needed to take a pregnancy test. I rolled my eyes but decided to humor her, just so I could call back and figure out what was really wrong. I went out and got a box of three tests, read the instructions—and then realized I wasn’t supposed to pee on them until the next morning.

At twenty-seven, I had finally gotten used to the idea that I would never be a mother. For years, I had told myself that I didn’t really want kids anyway, and that my life was too complicated and dangerous. I had thought I was past wanting a child of my own . . . but even now, a terrifying joy was enveloping me from the inside out, like water spreading across ancient paper. The strength of it scared me.

“Are you gonna keep it?” keatin asked. Trust her to get right to the crux of the problem.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Right now I’m just kind of scared shitless.”

keatin looked at me in that way she had, as though I were a science experiment in her personal lab. “Why? I mean, I get why women are afraid of never sleeping again and gaining weight and all that. But isn’t this pretty much what you’ve secretly been wanting?”

I shook my head. “You don’t get it. This isn’t a Lifetime movie, and I’m not a human. What if the baby is a null, like me? Or what if it’s born a witch? Hell, what if it’s born with no magic at all, but someone uses it to get to me?” I hugged my knees closer to my chest. “Any way you slice it, this baby would be in danger for most of its life. And that’s completely apart from the fact that I’m single, there’s no such thing as nocturnal day care, and I haven’t so much as held an infant since I was about twelve.” Emotions rose up in me, and I found myself suddenly trying to swallow sobs. When I was sure I could speak, I added softly, “And Jameson is dead, and I’m scared that every time I look at this kid, I’ll remember that I didn’t save him.”

She looked at me for another long, quiet moment. “Okay,” keatin conceded. “You make some solid points.”

I sniffed a little, trying to calm myself down. “Besides,” I went on, swiping at my eyes with the back of a hand, “what do you think would happen if Dashiell and the others find out they’ve got the world’s only pregnant null?”

keatin thought about that for a moment. “They’d try to keep it quiet,” she said finally. “They’d lock you away until the baby’s born, and then Dashiell would pressure you to give it up for adoption, for its safety and yours.”