Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor [60]
She shook it off. He wouldn’t, would he? The feeling faded and she told herself it had only been paranoia, but over the rest of the day it came and went in scattered chills as Zuzana danced a dozen more times, gaining confidence with each performance, and Mik’s violin case filled again and again, far exceeding his promised take.
He and Zuzana tried to coax Karou out to dinner with them, but she declined, pleading jet lag, which was not untrue but was also not foremost on her mind.
She was certain she was being watched.
Her fingertips fluttered against her palms. A prickle sparked there and traveled up her arms, and as she walked off the bridge and into the cobbled maze of Old Town, she knew she was being followed. She paused and knelt, pretending to adjust her boot as she pulled out her knife—her ordinary knife; her new crescent moons were in their case at her flat—and slipped it up her sleeve while scanning ahead and behind.
She saw no one, and kept going.
The first time she’d come to Prague, she’d gotten so lost exploring these streets. She’d passed an art gallery and a few blocks later doubled back to find it, and… couldn’t. The city had swallowed it. In fact, she had never found it. There was a deceptive tangling of alleys that gave the impression of a map that shifted behind you, gargoyles tiptoeing away, stones like puzzle pieces rearranging themselves into new configurations while you weren’t looking. Prague entranced you, lured you in, like the mythic fey who trick travelers deep into forests until they’re lost beyond hope. But being lost here was a gentle adventure of marionette shops and absinthe, and the only creatures lurking around corners were Kaz and his cohorts in vampire makeup, ready with a silly thrill.
Usually.
Tonight Karou felt a real threat, and with each step she took, cool, precise, she willed it to manifest. She wanted to fight. Her body was a loaded spring. The way it so often taunted her with the phantom of what else it might be doing, at this moment, she was sure that in her phantom life she would fight.
“Come on,” she whispered to her unseen pursuer, ducking her head and quickening her pace. “I have a surprise for you.”
She was on Karlova, the major pedestrian route between the bridge and Old Town Square, and tourists continued thick as fish. She moved among them, darting and erratic, throwing looks back over her shoulder more to craft the illusion of fear than in the hope of catching a glimpse of her stalker. At the intersection of a quiet side alley, she ducked left, hugging close to the wall. She knew this territory well. It was riddled with lurking places for Kaz’s tours. Just ahead, the curve of a medieval guildhall created a hidden niche where she had several times lain in wait in ghost garb. She moved into the shadows to tuck herself away.
And came face to face with a vampire.
“Hey!” said a sharp voice as Karou worked a quick reversal of momentum and tottered backward, out of the shadows. “Oh god,” said the voice. “You.”
The vampire leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms in an attitude of bored superiority.
Svetla. Karou’s jaw clenched at the sight of the other girl. She was model tall and thin, with a harsh kind of beauty that was sure to age scary. She was wearing white face paint and Goth eyeliner, with fake fangs and a dribble of blood at the corner of her ruby lips. Kaz’s sexy vampire vixen to a T, black cape and all, and she was, most inconveniently, wedged into Karou’s intended hiding place.
Stupid, Karou admonished herself. It was tour hour. Of course Kaz’s hiding places would be stuffed with actors. It often amused her, as she walked through Old Town in the evening, to see bored ghosts leaning against walls, texting or tweeting while they waited for the next clutch of tourists to be led along.
“What are you doing here?” Svetla asked, her lip curling like she smelled something off.