gave him a look. “Nope. Not playing that game—I’m not your dealer. If you want to know, you’re gonna have to ask her yourself. In the meantime, what would you say to a hundred and fifty?”
“I’d say you’re laughing at me.”
“Never. Two hundred?”
Carl tugged the primer toward him. It was all she could do not to follow it with a look as hungry as his. “Three hundred and fifty, and that’s generous. Call it a friends-and-family discount.” His expression softened. “For your dad.”
Melee swallowed hard. “How about two hundred and fifty?” she asked.
“How about you get out of my shop?”
He said it with a smile, but it was the smile of a cat who knew the score. Melee ran a silent tally of everything she’d spent in the last forty-eight hours, checking off the items on the crumpled list in her pocket. She’d had it memorized for weeks, ever since that final miraculous scholarship had gone through. Metallurgy for the Magitechnician, Twelfth Edition. One hundred and fifty. Nine Parts Iron: A Brief History of Thaumaturgical Transportation. One hundred and twenty-five. The Combustible Compendium. Fifty, but that was only because the pawnbroker had just sold a gilt alchemical set to a senior with three fawning hangers-on who agreed to split the exorbitant fifteen-hundred price tag between them, and he was more than satiated. Melee had been an afterthought.
Three hundred and twenty-five spent in the past two days, and all but one textbook purchased. She touched the cover again and watched the cheap cardboard dimple beneath her fingertips. It was ridiculous, really, considering the shape it was in. Carl was asking too much—he knew he was asking too much—but he’d stated his price and showed his fangs, and she knew better than to push now. Three hundred and fifty for family and friends? Yeah, that was certainly for her father.
“You won’t find it, you know,” Carl said, before she could step away from the counter. “This book. Anywhere else in the city. I know that for a fact.”
“How did you …?”
“Don’t worry, I can’t read your thoughts, though in this case I don’t need to. You were thinking of trying another shop.”
“You’d be surprised what’s out there,” she said, but her words sounded hollow, even to her.
Carl spread his long, spidery fingers over the glass countertop. They shone like old ivory in the dim light of the shop. His nails, Melee noticed, were very sharp. “I get the lists of all required texts from the professors at the university. And the institute,” he added, glancing again at the primer. “All of us on Pawn Row do, and, child, we fight fang and nail to make certain we have those books available for the dear, desperate students like you. When I tell you that I was the only broker to get a copy of this one, I can assure you it’s the truth. I have the receipt.”
Melee looked at his hands, looked at the primer, and drew in a long breath. Sometimes she really hated vampires.
“Three hundred. And,” she added over his faint growl, “and I’ll tell that arithmancy student to come to you for her orrery. That’s a guaranteed four hundred within the next twenty-four hours.” Then, because she figured she could hardly lose any more ground by it, threw in, “Take it or leave it.”
The growl deepened, wavered, and gave way to a throaty chuckle. “You are your father’s daughter, aren’t you? Well, then, darling, I’ll take it.”
She stuffed the book into her patched satchel as Carl turned to the cabinet behind the counter, unlocked it, and removed a long black box, its surface gleaming from repeated use. He set it between them and flipped open the catch. The faintest scent of antiseptic wafted up from the crystal vials, plastic tubing, and graduated cylinders tucked inside, the purpose of each Melee had learned intimately, repeatedly, and painfully over the last few days. She rolled up her sleeve—her right one, as she didn’t want him seeing how much she’d already paid with her left—and rested it against the glass.
The one thing you could say for Carl, or any vampire in business on Pawn Row: they worked quickly. Leather cuff and tourniquet, iodine swab and tubing laid out, needle drawn (“Brand-new and sterile, I promise,” he said at her look) and a stool dutifully pulled up. Then the needle prick, the slow bleed, and the world narrowed to the warm red line traveling from the crook of her arm to the cylinder carefully spread with anticoagulant, the reflection spilling across the glass in strange patterns she felt certain any signometry major would tell her spoke of life and death in no uncertain terms.
“Make a fist, darling,” Carl said absently, his eyes fixed on the rising red line. “Helps it move faster.”
Melee obeyed. Three hundred milliliters was more blood than she’d thought. It was always more than she thought. She closed her eyes. The last purchase. This was the last thing she needed today, the last thing she needed at all. Tonight, she would recover, stuff herself silly with ice cream and sticky rolls and wine, watch her dad’s favorite movie, maybe take the dragon out for a quick flight beyond the edge of the city. Tonight would be a good night.
Tomorrow, she would worry about the upcoming term.
“There you are, my dear. All done.”
She opened her eyes at the sharp pinch of the withdrawing needle. Carl pressed a square of gauze to the inside of her arm and directed her to bend her elbow as he busied himself with cleaning up the residual payment on his equipment. His touch was cool and firm and clinical, but she knew better than to expect gratitude, or even gentleness. She didn’t know a single vampire with good counter-side manners. A thick feeling crawled up the back of her throat at the sight of three hundred milliliters of her swirling in that glass cylinder. Only it wasn’t her, not anymore, and certainly not by the way Carl was eyeing it. She hoped he’d at least have the decency to wait until she’d left to start drinking.
Melee reached across the counter and tore a piece of tape from its dispenser near the gauze. “Thanks, I’ve got it.” She slapped the tape over the gauze and hopped down from the stool. Now—
That’s strange. For such a fastidious vampire, Carl’s liger-skin carpet was in terrible need of dusting. Her nose itched, and ten thousand pins prickled along her spine, and she wondered how many dead skin cells she had just inhaled. There was a rushing sound in her ears. Her arm hurt. Is that a dust bunny, or something alive? He really needed to vacuum, and—
Why am I on the floor?
“Easy!” Carl scurried around the counter and hauled her upright. “Not too fast. You know how this works, darling.”
Her stomach roiled, half queasiness, half shame, as she sat on the stool again. She could almost hear the gossip circulating around Pawn Row. Did you hear about Old James’s girl? Poor thing can’t count, apparently. Let herself get drained dry. Passed out, quick and clean as you like on the floor of de Rosia’s …
“I’m fine,” she panted. “Carl, really, I’m okay.”
“Yes, and I’m an inebriated gargoyle. Here.” She flinched at the touch of cold metal and even colder skin as he slipped an iron thaler into her palm. “Dinner is on me. Go get yourself something with sugar in it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Nonsense.
