“Ara, why are you laughing?”

“I—” I burst out again, the torturer’s concerned eyes hilarious. “Y—you’re so serious.” I sobered and put on my best ‘Joker’ face, delivering a line from the last Batman movie I saw.

Jason didn’t find it funny. He closed his eyes for a second, then glanced over his shoulder. I looked too, seeing the little red blinking light of the camera the coward king used to watch his dirty work be done for him.

“Why do you keep looking at that?” I asked. “Who else is watching us?”

He looked back at me and leaned closer, a small white flashlight in hand. “No one—not right now, anyway.”

“Then why is it so fascinating?” I didn’t even flinch when he shone the light right in my eyes, as if I couldn’t even see light anymore—like my eyes were dead.

“When it’s green,” he whispered so lowly I almost didn’t hear.

“When it’s green what?”

“It means the council are—”

“It’s green,” I said and he stood back, stiffening. I burst into laughter again. “O. M. G.,” I said, like a teenager. “You are so funny. You look like a deer in the line of headlights.”

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop laughing.”

“Why?” I said, laughing louder.

“Because as soon as the Council decides you’ve lost your mind, they will transfer you to the lab.”

“The lab?” I rolled my shoulder, heaving with giggles. “Vampires have a lab?”

He looked like an agitated kitty, tired of the string, about to attack the hand. “The lab, Ara—” he grabbed my face in one hand; I stopped laughing, “—is a white room, steel bed, no clothes, strapped down, several men towering over your conscious body, cutting, probing, removing organs.”

I gasped, the air catching my dry throat, making me cough again.

He released my cheeks. “You think what I’ve done is brutal—wait until you’re transferred to the upper council and their scientists, Ara. You won’t know suffering until you’ve spent an hour with them.”

I swallowed. “Why do they need to do that—you’re already conducting tests?”

He ditched a tool on the table beside my chair. “These medieval experiments don’t tell us much. They need a full examination.”

“Examination?”

“Yes.”

“Will I be dead?”

“No.” He pressed a straw to my mouth, but I couldn’t sip.

“Ara, drink.”

“No.”

“Drink.”

“No.”

The cup came away and he shook his head as the light on the camera went from the red I hadn’t noticed, back to green. “You are your own worst enemy, Miss Thompson.”

“Kill me?”

“If I do that, I will sit where you do.”

“God!” I huffed, feeling giggles rise again. “This is so fucked up.”

“Language please, Ara.”

“Oh, right, sorry, Dad. Didn’t realise my manners were relevant in this situation.”

“Manners always are.”

“Good, then, please, will you release me so I don’t have to be cut open and pulled apart while still breathing?”

His phone buzzed. He lifted it only an inch from his pocket then sighed. “Come on.”

“What are you doing?”

Looking up from cuffing my feet, he said, “We should’ve had most of this done by now. I have to hurry.”

“Will they let you keep me if you haven’t finished the tests?”

“No.” He stood again with his arms folded. “Did you really not know?”

“Know what?”

“What you are.”

I shook my head. David didn’t either.

“I’m not surprised. You don’t taste or smell any different to a human, and you clearly don’t have any powers yet.”

We stared at each other for an intense, wordless breath, then, he drew back with a sigh and reached out to the table, grabbing a black, rectangle clipboard. “Now—” he flipped the paper, “—next on the list is…”

I waited, my breath warm in my stomach, my chin itching from blood, and my eye stinging where sweat dripped from my brow. “Jase?”

“What?” He looked up from his notes.

“Can you…can you please scratch my eyebrow. It’s really itchy.”

His eyes narrowed; he scratched his head then slowly reached across and eased my itchy spot—exactly where I wanted him to.

Oh, blissful mind readers.

He chuckled, then sobered. “Okay, regeneration time.”

“Re-what?”

“I need to see how long it takes you to heal cuts.”

“Heal cuts?”

“Yes.” He placed the clipboard on the table again. “You’re a vampire, Ara, you heal fast. Well—” he tilted his head and looked at my eye, then my gaping lip, “—not so fast now, because you’ve had no blood or food for thirteen days. But if you were full strength, you wouldn’t have even bruised.”

“How long will I take to heal?” I asked in a pathetically high-pitched voice.

“Well, that’s what we need to investigate, silly.” He materialised beside me, spinning a pair of scissors around his fingertip. “A clean cut, unlike that one—” he nodded to my lip, “—should take a few seconds. But, weakened, the Lilithian body can take up to a few days—even weeks to heal.”

“What are you going to do with those?”

“Relax.” He walked to my feet. “These are just to cut some of this fabric off you.”

“No,” I cried as he grabbed the lace and made a hole with the tip of the scissors. No. Not my dress. Not my beautiful dress. My chest sunk as he cut the entire base away and left my legs, from an inch below my underwear, exposed—the dress crumpled at an odd angle where he had to reach beneath me to cut the underside away.

“Sorry to tell you this, but there will be nothing left of it after the High Council finish with you, and—” he dropped the fabric to the floor, “—you won’t be needing it at all when Drake comes for you.”