Edie Spence (Book 5): Bloodshifted by Cassie Alexander

with a growl.
    “I didn’t find any useful way out yet. I’m working on it.”
    “You do realize that with every moment here you weaken?”
    “Thanks for the reminder.”
    “We’re saying you need to hurry, girl. Not just for yourself, but for us.”
    Like them being in danger would hasten me to action. I snorted. Then their shadow inside the bag suddenly flattened completely, like a gopher dropping into a hole.
    I shook the bag. “Shadows?”
    The bell rang as Celine pushed open the door behind me, and I understood why they were hiding. She was carrying a bag of food just like I was, and eyed me, my fingers still covered in grease. “Club’s closed, and mostly cleaned. Thanks for being so much help.”
    “You’re welcome,” I said back with equal sarcasm. “Do we have to present ourselves again?” I figured Jackson would have come and found me if so.
    “No. Usually everyone drifts off when they’re done.”
    “And all your ladies, they’re through?”
    “It’s a Tuesday,” she said with a shrug. “The promise of sex can only do so much—and only men who have to work tomorrow can afford them.” She carefully took her shoes off, lining them up beside her bed, and then sat down on it and pulled out her burger. Maybe being a daytimer meant getting to eat all the hamburgers you wanted, hooray. I folded the top of the bag the Shadows were in to keep them safe and set it down nonchalantly.
    “Do you enjoy being a daytimer?” I asked, to keep our conversation going and so she wouldn’t ask why I’d been talking to a bag.
    Celine made a face at me while she chewed. “Yeah. It’s fantastic. Rainbows and ponies, the whole time.” She took another huge bite of burger.
    It was hard for me to imagine her being any other way, but clearly she hadn’t always been a daytimer. She must have had, once upon a time, other hopes and dreams. They were probably pinned like butterflies underneath her framed head shots. “What were you before this? An actress? Or a model?”
    She swallowed, then took another bite, rather than answer me. I watched her eat, trying to wait her out, but it didn’t work. When she was done she pulled her legs up onto the bed. “Can it be bedtime now?”
    “Is anyone else going to try to kill me tonight?”
    “Only in my dreams.” She dusted her hands off and then reached up to draw the curtains of her bed.
    I went to set the bell over the door. Then, lying down in my nest of pillows and sheets again, I turned the light off.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    I heard a rustling sound from the bag. The Shadows were probably setting themselves free, or they were faking it and would be trying to hitch a ride to the dump with the trash tomorrow, agreement with me forgotten. There’d be no way to talk to them with Celine in the room, but right now they weren’t my first priority. I needed to sleep first, to keep up my strength, and to see if I could find that strange vampire in my dreams.
    As an ex-night-shift nurse I was good at operating tired—which would probably be a good thing if I managed to live long enough to be a parent. But the punishment for that was sometimes my body held on far longer than it ought to, as if I were fighting sleep itself. Between worrying about the baby, Asher, and Anna, I could be up for the next forty days straight.
    Somehow though, in the abyssal dark of the catacombs, I finally slept.
    *   *   *
    Instead of dreaming about my house this time, I was in a land of rolling hills, covered in desert scrub. I spun around making sure I didn’t have any company and muttered, “The hills are alive.” I took another look in all directions. “I guess that’s okay, as long as they don’t have eyes.”
    “Why would hills have eyes?”
    I jumped, startled anew, and found a man standing behind me. I decided to not honor his question with a discussion of seminal horror films. “Is it you?”
    He nodded. He looked like he’d just stepped off a statue, because he was wearing a