The Vampire of Tinkerfall (Elysium #3)

Chapter Thirteen

 Daphne had already let Gin in by the time Trinket and Booker returned upstairs. The urchin was scratching the back of her neck as she entered the foyer, and for one horrific moment, Trinket feared she had been bitten. But when Gin saw them emerge from below, she removed her hand.

No blood.

Trinket let out a relieved breath.

"Did you find her?" Booker asked as he made his way over to Gin.

She shook her head. "Lost her somewhere on Finch Street. Don't know if she turned into a bat or just ducked into one of the alleys."

He rolled his eyes. "My bet would be on the latter."

"She's fast," Gin added. "I could barely keep up with her. Think she might've seen me trailing her. Kept zigzagging all over the place."

"Were you able to get a good look at her?"

"Afraid not. All I saw was blonde hair. Although I think she was pretty skinny, too. Course, if she's stealing from stores, she's probably starving, so that'd account for that."

"But she didn't bite you, right?" Trinket asked, still worried that the urchin may be hiding an injury.

"Nah, I didn't get close enough to get bit."

"Well, I thank you for your efforts," Booker said.

"Of course," Gin said. "So how'd that shopgirl make out?"

"I treated her as best I could. Only time will tell now."

"She gonna turn into a vampire?"

He frowned at the urchin. "Please don't tell me you're falling for this ludicrous, as well."

"I'm just wondering why else you'd be treating her unless it was to keep her from becoming a monster."

"Poison," Trinket explained.

"Venom, to be more precise," Booker said.

Raising an eyebrow, Gin looked between them. "What the heck are you talking about?"

"This latest experiment was not fashioned after some fairy tale creature like a vampire," Booker said, pacing into the parlour. "She was created with a snake in mind."

"A snake?" Gin repeated as she and Trinket followed after him.

"Yes. It explains the bite marks and the bleeding. Some snakes inject venom into their victims to disable or kill them before consuming them. Or sometimes simply to escape a predator."

"And venom would make a person bleed from every orifice?" Trinket asked, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorpost.

Booker continued to pace up and down the parlour, tapping his fingers against his lips. "Perhaps. I don't really know that much about snake venom."

"Wow, something Booker Larkin doesn't know everything about," Gin said, widening her eyes in mock surprise.

Trinket chuckled at the urchin's sarcasm, but Booker was too lost in his thoughts to notice their teasing. "This makes so much more sense," he mumbled to himself.

"Hmm, snake, huh?" Gin said, sitting on the arm of the settee. "No wonder Scales is so interested."

This caught Booker's attention. He stopped his frantic laps about the parlour and fixed his eyes on Gin. "Scales? What about Scales?"

"He showed up after you left," Trinket said.

His face fell. "And?"

"He made it clear that he was just as interested in this vampire as he was in the Wolf and the corpses."