The Vampire of Tinkerfall (Elysium #3)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

 For fear that Daphne would walk in to find her curled up in a pathetic ball by the front door, Trinket retreated to her room where she spent the night haunted by flashbacks and hallucinations. Voices whispered unintelligibly into her ear, every mumbled word filled with venom and malice. Spiders climbed the walls, and roaches scuttled across the floor, some even finding their way into her bed.

And all the while, her mind replayed conversations from Elysium. Conversations she'd had with Tory. The hushed words they would exchange while washing the grimy floors of the asylum or cooking the watery gruel they ate day and night. Words about the torture they faced from the orderlies. About their lives before Elysium. About the family and friends they would never see again.

It was a long and sleepless night.

When morning came at last, the hallucinations were no better. Roaches still roamed the room, and persistent moths fluttered their wings in her face. She rose from the bed and shuffled over to the window where she was greeted by dark storm clouds and sheets of rain pelting the glass. Hopefully Tory was somewhere safe and dry. Was she plagued by the same nightmares of Elysium? Had she experienced a similar sleepless night?

Trinket leaned her head against the windowpane and closed her eyes. She needed to tell Booker about Tory. Now that it was very clear her old friend was the vampire, she had to tell him. This was exactly the break he'd been looking for. Tory could lead him to Benedict.

Yes, she had to tell him. Today.

Ignoring the spiders spinning webs in her wardrobe, she pulled out a dress and brushed off a cockroach that had lost its brethren. She pinned up her braid, shook the mice out of her boots, and then took one last look at her pest infested room. With a trembling breath, she closed her eyes and made her way into the hallway.

There were significantly fewer hallucinations in the rest of the house. A cat sat at the end of the stairs and hissed at her as she passed by, but she avoided its imaginary claws. However, its displeased growls followed her into the kitchen.

Daphne was already cooking breakfast, and she greeted Trinket with a bright smile.

"Good morning," Trinket said, placing the kettle on the stove. "Lovely day, no?"

Scrunching up her face, Daphne cracked an egg into a bowl and tossed the shell away.

"Have you seen Mr. Larkin?"

Daphne shook her head and took up a whisk to beat the eggs into a light froth.

"Do you know what time he got in last night?"

Adding some cheese to the bowl, Daphne shrugged.

Trinket's chest tightened as her heart began to race. "Did he come home at all?"

Again, Daphne shrugged, a line forming between her eyebrows as she tilted her head to the side.

Trinket felt a pit in her stomach as she imagined all of the horrible things that might have happened to him. Had the Mice found him? Had they beat him and left him bleeding in the street? Or worse, had they taken him captive? Oh, why had she let him go off on his own like that?

Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

With her heart in her throat, she moved to race out the door and practically crashed into someone coming into the kitchen. "Lord, I hope you're not running because of a fire," Booker said, his gentle hands on her shoulders as he kept her from toppling over. "Although I see that Daphne is doing the cooking this morning, so I think we should be safe."

He flashed Trinket a teasing smile, and she let out a relieved breath at seeing him alive and unharmed. "Are you just getting in now?" she asked as she stepped aside to let him into the kitchen.