Chapter 3

"I did not," said Emma, "kill that woman."

"Yes, and I'm sure you didn't have sexual relations with her either, President Clinton." Regina was clearly not in any sort of mood to deal with this. "But as you are currently the prime and only suspect, and as I seem to recall you promising me very recently that this wasn't going to end up as a scandal, explain. Now."

"It can't have been me because I'm not even in Boston!" With that, Emma was forced to divulge that she had gone to London, that her investigation into the witan records had unearthed the bizarre incongruity of Killian Jones being reported missing when he wasn't, and her trying to figure out what to do now, all of which made Regina sigh louder and louder. "So," she finished. "I know it looks bad, like I killed Lily and then fled the country, but they have to see that. . . "

At that, she trailed off. If nobody had seen anyone else coming or going from Lily's apartment after she left (which they wouldn't have, as a vampire could both move at undetectable speed and use the mesmer to make humans forget, both facts which she herself had just nicely proven) they would conclude that she had killed her then, taken a cab to Logan, and purchased a getaway ticket, staying at the airport overnight rather than risking going back home and being arrested. No way around it, it was a sequence of events which would have set off all her "guilty as shit" instincts if she'd heard it in regards to someone else, and as she worked catching crooks for a living, she did know something about that. "Regina," she said again. "You know me. You know I'm not a killer. You have to tell them that."

"Every time anyone ends up in the news for murdering someone, their family always says they don't know how they could have possibly done it, it's not who they are. Do you think they'd listen to me even if I did?" Regina sounded half-exasperated, half-sad. "And you've made the situation worse by meddling around in the witan records in London. It looks like you're trying to alter or conceal evidence, that you were the one framing that other vampire for your crimes. What did you say his name was, again?"

"Killian," Emma said reluctantly. "Killian Jones."

"What?" Regina drew in her breath in a hiss. "Killian Jones?"

"Why? Do you know him?"

"Yes," Regina said, even more reluctantly. "He's my brother."

"What? What the hell, is this another Zelena situation?" In that case, thank God she'd dodged that bullet. Even if she felt just a tiny prick of regret. "Regina, why didn't you tell – "

"Not my biological brother," Regina snapped. "My blood brother, which I trust even you know means that we were made by the same vampire sire. Frankly, he's an idiot. He swoops about in his sparkly coat like the Dark Prince of the Night and broods like a champion, but he's useless when it comes to any fangs-out action. I'd doubt it was him who carried out the Harvard attacks even if we'd got the report back that listed him missing. He's never even been to America as far as I know, or if he has, it was before I was a vampire. As long as Gold lived in Great Britain, leaving for too long might take away from quality failure at vengeance time."

"What?" Emma felt like a talking parrot, but this was digging into an entire dimension of family history of which she had hereto been completely unaware. Regina had never mentioned who had made her, or for what purpose, and when the subject was even obliquely approached, Emma got a feeling Regina would rather gnaw off her own arm than talk about it. "Who's Gold?"

Regina's hesitation was palpable. Then she said, "The vampire who turned me – and for that matter, Killian Jones, a century or so before me. The circumstances in which it happened to Jones were. . . violent. Personal. He came out of it sworn to track Gold down and destroy him, and he burned quite an impressive swath of mayhem across the supernatural world in pursuit of this goal. He disappeared a while back, I'd wondered what he was doing these days. Practicing his eyeliner technique and writing depressing songs for harpsichord, I imagine."

"What happened to Gold?"

"He's dead," Regina said, very shortly. "Some time ago."

"And we're sure about this? Or do we believe it just because a book said so? After all, if someone's messing around with it for Jones, there could be other aberrations."

"Yes, thank you, Miss Swan, I am able to grasp the implications. As it is, I am quite sure of this circumstance, and it's none of your business why. Besides, we're getting off track. The longer you stay in London, the worse it's going to look for you. If you want to clear your name, you'd better get back right away and face the music."

"I can't leave now, the sun's about to rise. Even if I booked a flight tonight, it would be another night after that until I could try to straighten out whatever the hell is – "

"Well, that's your problem, isn't it?" Emma could hear rustling in the background on Regina's end of the call, as if she was flipping through a stack of papers. "This is serious, Emma. The killer made sure to leave clear indications that it was a vampire, and even the human policemen are suspicious. They're already asking to talk to your son. If I was Henry, I don't know what exactly would be going through my head right now, but it wouldn't be good. I can promise that."

"Oh God." Emma felt another, larger chunk of ice coalesce in her stomach at the idea that she might have put Henry in danger somehow. Even if she hadn't, Henry was the one who had decided to involve himself and then her in this situation, trusted her to find a way to fix it, not throw gasoline on the blaze. "I'll get the first flight after sundown tonight."

"Do that," Regina said. "I'll see what I can turn up on this end. In the meantime, try your hardest not to get caught up in any more compromising situations, as that really wouldn't look good. I'm a vampire queen, not a defense attorney, and you make a tough row to hoe even for one of those. Good night." With that, not leaving Emma time for a final word edgewise, she hung up.

Emma sat staring at her phone for a moment longer, checked the time, and decided she could make a run downstairs to one of the hostel's public computer terminals and book an airline ticket. Thank God for long English winter nights, as it gave her slightly more room to maneuver than it would in Boston, but naturally their Internet connection was crap, kept timing out, and she was seeing double by the time the purchase page cycled through to a confirmation screen. She ran it out on the printer, stuffed it into her purse, then wobbled upstairs like a woozy drunk at the end of a long night of bar-hopping and just barely made it into her room in time. If vampires absolutely had to be out during the day and/or not immediately shut off at sunrise, there were boosters they could take, similar to shots of epinephrine or adrenaline, but they were total hell on the system. Even the most depraved, drug-fueled bender an aging rock star could possibly devise did not compare to what it was like coming out of one of those things.

It was deep dusk when Emma woke, briefly couldn't remember why she felt so shitty, then groaned as memory hit. She checked the clock, realized she needed to get moving if she wanted to account for London rush hour traffic and get to Heathrow on time, and sprang out of bed like an electrocuted grasshopper, zipping around and tossing things into her bag, double-checking that she had her ticket, and stepping out into the soggy evening. She put out an arm to hail a cab, but it just roared right past her, splashing her with dirty water from the curb, and she gave its departing bumper the finger. Then a friendly voice said, "Need a ride, ma'am?"

Emma glanced warily over her shoulder, having not previously had the impression that there was someone there. It was another vampire, probably a patron of the hostel, who smiled at her in a charming fashion and was clearly under the impression he was doing her a favor. "I have a car."

"I. . . thanks, I'm good." Emma didn't accept rides from strangers even in the usual course of things, vampire or not, and with Regina's warnings in mind about not getting herself into a worse pickle, this was definitely out. "I'll just – "

"Come on." He was behind her, whereas he had been to her left a moment ago, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a second vampire, this one with overly slicked hair and a leather bomber jacket, casually strolling up from the right. "We just want to help."

"No, really. I'll handle it." A prickle on the back of her neck warned her of the approach of a third one. Possibly more. And at that point, she realized beyond all doubt that they certainly weren't here to be good neighbors and help out a fellow immortal from sheer altruism. In fact, as far as she could tell, exactly the opposite. She whirled around and ran.

At once, five or six more broke from cover in an alleyway up ahead and converged on her. These ones weren't vampires, but they were definitely drones, hangers-on to a vampire coven, and mesmered out of their damn minds, almost literally. In this state, they could, if not completely replicate the physical ability of a full vampire, at least come close enough to cause serious problems. They outnumbered her at least ten or twelve to one, and to judge by the sound of racing footsteps from further down the street, more were on their way. Staying exposed here was clearly an invitation to total disaster, and at that moment, Emma decided that if a full coven plus their drones were attacking her in public, it was something that the witan could very well stand to know about. After a split second of paralysis, she broke from her stupor, rocketed up the nearest building in a display of seamless parkour that Spider-Man would have envied, somersaulted to her feet, and jumped from roof to roof until she saw the dark pane of the Thames come into view. Following it east would lead her straight to Westminster.

There were yells and thumps behind her as her attackers followed her up, trying to spread out and box her up before she could get a clear lane to run. One of them loomed directly in her path, and Emma went airborne, locked a leg around his neck, and pulled him into a spin out of the way, throwing a second one over her shoulder with an impact that rattled the windows of the nearby boating club. As he fell, he tripped up one of his onrushing compatriots, which caused enough of a confusion for Emma to gain a few lengths. But they must be communicating with their fellows on the ground, as she could hear skittering and swearing as they vaulted up the walls of the warehouse she was aiming for, and she had to change direction on the fly, jumping three stories down to the sidewalk, staggering as she caught the impact in her knees (she could still feel it hard enough to make her teeth clack) and running faster. They were marking her from the rooftops, catching up quickly from behind, and even moving at vampire speed, it was going to take her at least another ten or fifteen minutes to get to Westminster. That could be recognized as far too long an interlude of time for things to go really pear-shaped, and if they had more reinforcements along the way to call in, that would render them even more unfortunate. She didn't know if they were planning to kill her on sight – she didn't think so – but nor did she have any desire in the least to find out. Assholes.

Wandsworth Bridge was coming up fast. Emma cut hard right, dodged as a red double-decker bus loomed up directly in her field of vision, horn blaring, and somersaulted onto its roof, probably giving the poor driver a heart attack. She crouched low, riding it across, then jumped off among the warehouse tenements on the south bank and bolted up the nearest one, catching a glimpse of her attackers in momentary confusion on the far side of the river. While the temptation to shout a Mummy reference at them was considerable, she nobly refrained; they'd figure it out soon enough. And indeed, she could already see them bounding across the bridge in horribly long, lithe leaps, yelling and pointing up at her, and the most industrious of them was already halfway up the graffiti, less than thirty yards behind. Shit. Even if she did make it to Westminster ahead of these losers, there was no way she would be able to hold them at bay – and minimize further disruption – long enough to get into the witan bureau and calmly file a police report. Which meant, as much as a horrible idea as it was considering she was already wanted for a murder which she hadn't committed, she was going to have to start thinking offensively. There were at least thirty of them after her by now, and self-defense would have to be the plea.

Emma sped up, even though she was already going almost as fast as she could – heard the wind snapping and popping in her ears, cleared the next bridge like an Olympic hurdler, and raced through the obstacle course of Battersea Park, up toward the famous power station on the eastern edge. It was decommissioned now, so she wasn't risking a blackout on half of London, but this was still going to be spectacularly dicey. She reached the foot of the nearest tower, crowned by one of four white smokestacks, and began to shimmy up it, hearing her bones creak and her fingernails split, some old vestige of humanity reminding her that she had no business climbing up here fifty and then a hundred feet in the air, freezing winter wind threatening to tear her off, with a crowd of slavering yahoos on her tail. But she ignored it, jumping down onto the roof, racing to the nearest control boxes, and yanking them open, hard enough to send rivets spraying. She ripped out the dormant electrical wiring in bundles, scattering it across the cement, and waited until her attackers were well in. Then she pulled a lighter out of her pocket (you never knew when you'd need a spark), jammed it on, and threw it into the nearest thicket.

The effect was instant and gratifying. A current sparked, popped, and then exploded, a chain reaction flashing up the maze of twisted wires, and she heard shouts and curses as the fire caught, her pursuers dodging and blundering trying to get away from it as it licked up on all sides. Vampires were not at all fond of it, as it was very much one of the ways in which they could die, and Emma scraped her palms on the cement leaping up onto the far side of the structure, throwing herself down the drop on the far side, and feeling the ground crush into her knees like a sledgehammer at the bottom. Throwing a wild glance back, she could see the eerie glow of flames licking at the dark sky, hear an unearthly howling, and smell the distant wisp of charring immortal flesh. Bile burned in her throat, and for a moment she felt rooted to the ground, horrified at what she had done. Then the spell broke, and she ran.

She was coming up on Vauxhall Bridge. This time she judged her leap atop the roof of a double-decker bus better and hence did not cause any heart attacks, rode it from south to north, and could see the distinctive silhouette of Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey just ahead of her. There were sirens in the distance; somebody must have noticed, obviously, that the old power station was on fire. Whether or not there would be enough left of the corpses to prompt further questions was one that she herself did not have the luxury to ruminate on. She didn't think she'd gotten all of them, and now they were going to be angry.

Emma could feel her limbs starting to tremble with exertion as she sprinted from rooftop to rooftop, the London streets appearing in brightly lit flashes below her feet as she leapt, ordinary people out for a night at the theater or the club or the restaurant, all the things there were to do in the city, having no idea that an immortal was running for her afterlife just a few dozen yards overhead. She could hear shouting coming up fast. No, they definitely weren't all dead, and yes, they were very, very angry. Even if their orders weren't to kill her, they might conveniently forget that in the heat of revenge for their fallen comrades. And she couldn't keep running forever, was already close to reaching the limit of her tether. Then she'd have to make a stand, and while it might exempt her from facing charges in Boston if she was also murdered first, it would be, to say the least, inconvenient for everything else. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Emma ran across the roof of the ancient Palace of Westminster, mentally apologized to the English Heritage Trust, then jumped down onto the bridge. She had to keep zig-zagging from bank to bank, trying to confuse them, but there were still plenty of pedestrians on the river walk, and she didn't think that the vampires were going to be particularly discriminating about collateral damage at this point. Her arms were shaking as she labored up onto the roof of the nearest building, then made one final leap onto the London Eye, which was closed for the night. She climbed hand over hand up the gondolas, wind whistling through the metal struts, as Southwark fell away vertiginously beneath her. Her clawing fingers slipped on the slick Plexiglas of the gondola at the top of the wheel as she monkeyed to the door, jerked it open, and dove inside, collapsing on the cold steel floor gasping and retching. She swung gently back and forth, four hundred and forty-three feet above the river, wondering how much, if any, time this was going to buy her. Oh God, she was so fucked. So very, very beyond fucked.

After several seconds allowed her to regain a modicum of composure, she pulled herself around on her stomach and peered through the girders at the ground below. There was no one there for a few moments, enough to give her a sick stab of hope that she'd actually outrun them, but then she saw them – about eight or nine, she couldn't tell if that was the remainder and the rest had fried at Battersea, or they had sent out the rest of the survivors to comb the other bank – pulling up. They looked in every direction, jumping onto the pier and swarming the promenade. Go away. Go away go away go away. She couldn't tell if they were vampires or drones. If they were human, they wouldn't be able to see her all the way up here, but if not –

At that moment, as if drawn by a magnet, one of them pulled a flashlight from his belt, pointed it up at the higher reaches of the wheel, and his gaze locked directly onto hers. Emma saw his mouth open in a shout, directing his colleagues' attention to his discovery, and felt her sputtering brain, which had already had far too much asked of it in a single evening, grind to a halt. She was trapped up here like a cat in a tree, there was nowhere else to run, and while she might be able to make an entertaining musical chairs of it for a bit by leaping from gondola to gondola, she wouldn't get past them waiting at the bottom. All they had to do was climb up here, roust her out, and that would be the end of it. What a stupid way to die, what a stupid, stupid –

And then, Emma saw a dark blur flash into the middle of them like a striking cobra, so fast that it was impossible to tell at first that it had been something at all, and not just the night wind. But then one was down, and so were two more, and she wriggled on her belly across the gondola floor, pushed the door open a crack, and looked down just in time to see one of them thrown twenty feet into the river, bleeding profusely from the stump where his head used to be. She clapped a hand to her mouth, stifling a scream, as one of the assailants was backing away, swearing loudly, and looking in every direction for the threat. He did not get far. The next second, he was being used as a missile to level the remaining three of his compatriots, they stumbled and toppled together like bowling pins struck with the ball, and were thus rendered a groaning pile of assorted tidbits, none of which could be reassembled into anything functional, far less dangerous. Then there was a hiss, a snap, and a pop, and they went silent.

Emma stared down at the heap of bodies that until a few moments ago had been the remaining half of her attackers, fighting an even stronger urge to vomit. Whoever had done for them wasn't likely to be a friend to her, and seeing as they were clearly far more dangerous than whatever gang of rent-a-thugs had been sent after her, she doubted that she was in any more –

"Emma?" The whirling dervish slowed, acquired human proportions, resolved into a dark figure in a long black jacket, those unmistakable blue eyes staring up at her. "You all right, lass?"

Motherfucker. Emma crashed back against the wall of the gondola, discovering that whatever profanities she had used upon last acquaintance with him were now revealed to be entirely inadequate. She sucked air for twenty seconds, not that it did all that much, ran a shaking hand over her face, then clenched it hard into a fist. She pushed open the gondola door and stared down at Killian Jones. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

He shrugged, unperturbed. "I was in the neighborhood, and you appeared to be having a spot of bother. If they were actually your friends and you were in fact making arrangements for a nice tea, I'll apologize, but it didn't look that way to me."

Emma didn't answer, edging out of the gondola and starting to climb cautiously down the frame of the wheel. As she was jumping the last twenty feet to the ground, she missed her footing and plunged, and before she could fear that she too was about to end up as vampire pâté on the pier, he caught her, wrapping strong arms solidly around her waist and setting her upright. "Looks like it's been the hell of a night. Who were those?"

"I don't know." Emma pulled rather too sharply away from his touch, afraid that otherwise she would bury herself in his chest and shake for five minutes, and that clearly was of no benefit to anyone. "I was trying to get a cab to the airport when they ambushed me. In Hammersmith. I think I – I think I killed some of them at Battersea, but the rest – "

"You ran here all the way from Hammersmith?" He looked impressed. "But I'll agree that I'd want to know who exactly is setting a full pack of hunters loose on you, especially when – whoa, bloody hell, lass, easy there. Easy."

"I'm all right," Emma said muzzily, though in fact she had just swayed and nearly collapsed, the world turning a strange sort of blurry and slow around her. "'M fine, just. . . give me a minute."

Killian continued to look at her like a mother hen. "How long has it been since you've fed?"

"I had some – some Red yesterday." Emma wished she sounded more assertive, as he was guiding her solicitously to a bench and making her sit down. "Look, just put me in a cab to Heathrow, I'm probably going to miss my flight and I'm in a world of trouble already – "

"Red?" He made a derogatory noise. "You've done all this and nearly been killed while running on the damn equivalent of celery sticks and water? No wonder you look like that. Christ."

Emma felt a sensation like a bee sting, as a vampire did every time someone said that around them, and he looked guilty; he was old enough that it probably didn't bother him. "Sorry. Old habit. But that's bloody unacceptable. Here."

With that, he lifted his wrist to his mouth, and with a flash of sharp white fangs, bit down. She was about to tell him not to, that she'd just wait and find a drone somewhere, that it wasn't that bad, but then the rich sweet scent of it was in her nostrils, seductive as the finest wine, and she was so hungry, and so weak and shaky, and she couldn't hold back. She clamped on and sank her own fangs, pulling and sucking, gulping several intoxicating swallows. She had rarely fed off other vampires before, as it always ended up feeling too intimate for her comfort, and she noticed the difference immediately. Human blood was good, but this, the blood of a fellow immortal and an Old One to boot, was delicious, and she felt hazy and stupefied and satisfied and surreal, lapping up a final sweet few drops before sense returned. She pulled back, as mortified as if she'd just run naked through a black-tie gala. "Fuck. Oh, fuck. I didn't – I'm sorry, I didn't – "

He held up his other hand, stalling the flood of apologies, as he licked closed the fang punctures on his wrist. Emma felt a thousand times better than she had a few moments ago, the world resolving in crystal-clear quality, sounds amplified, sight sharp as a blade, legs fully up to the task of supporting her once more and indeed, running straight up the Shard if need be. She had never experienced quite such a powerful result of a feed, and spent several moments getting herself under control, as if afraid that she would go off like a hydrogen bomb if she moved too quickly. "I need to get back to Boston."

"Aye, you said you were in trouble." He eyed her consideringly. "Which, frankly, I could have inferred from the crowd of homicidal maniacs on your tail, but somehow I collect you mean something different."

"Yeah. Long story." Emma got to her feet. He did as well, overturning the corpses of her assailants into the Thames; they would dissolve into dust, at least if they had been vampires, but it was a bit too much to try to explain to the Met in the meantime. "Why were you, as you put it, in the neighborhood when they attacked anyway?"

"Because after your visit yesterday and the revelation that someone in the witan has been altering the Old Ones registry, I thought it might be prudent to be better acquainted with such information myself." He smiled, fangs disappearing as the heat of the feed passed. "They, of course, did not know a thing about it, and insisted that the error in my status was an honest mistake. I disagreed. There may have been a scene. It was regrettable."

Emma raised an eyebrow, as she could imagine quite well what sort of scene he meant. She hoped he hadn't gone too far overboard, but she couldn't be sure. Even if he had saved her life, and no matter Regina's disparaging opinion of him as useless when it came to real action, he was quite clearly old, powerful, and dangerous with no compunctions about hunting and killing, even if this lot had probably deserved it. In contrast, that caper at Battersea had been the first time that she deliberately decided that she had to kill, and it was still rattling her. An hour ago she had been trying to get a taxi to the airport, to head home and face whatever shitstorm was brewing in Boston, and now she had emphatically failed at keeping herself out of the exact kind of sticky situation Regina had warned her against, while winding up in company with the one immortal she'd been fearing (or hoping) she would see again. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

"Look," she said. "Thanks, but I really need to get going. Regina's already going to have a fit when she hears about this, and that will probably mean I – "

Killian gave her a sharp look. "Regina? Regina Mills?"

"Yes. Your sister?" At that, she had the satisfaction of causing him to look flabbergasted. "She's the queen of Boston, and she's going to bite my head off, probably literally, when I get back."

Killian was clearly opening his mouth to ask how she had known that, decided it was no use, and changed his mind. After a moment he said, "I'm coming with you."

Seeing her about to object, he went on swiftly. "It's clear that whoever's causing this mischief has it out for both of us, lass, and seeing as I just saved your arse, I may be called on to do it again, especially if you're otherwise occupied. And I may wish to see Her Majesty writhe a bit when I turn up." His smile turned slightly feral, and Emma was left with the distinct impression that while they might both hate their shared sire, this mysterious and supposedly dead Gold, Killian and Regina had not forged any warmer relationship because of it. She wondered if reappearing with Killian in tow might be the only thing that Regina would appreciate less than the fact that she had gotten herself fingered for murder in the first place, and almost thought it was worth it on those grounds alone. And it couldn't be denied that if things went south, which it seemed they were well in the process of doing, it could be useful having a fanged terror in her corner. Assuming that was where Killian Jones planned to stay, and that he wasn't just setting up some other duplicity on the sly. Just because he'd helped her once, whether because he found her attractive or was intrigued by the challenge of a woman turning him down or whatever, didn't mean he was planning to do so again. His interest in this was for saving his hide, not hers.

Still, though. Still.

"Fine," Emma said, deciding that arguing him out of it, while theoretically possible, would take far more time than she had to spare, and was only in service of a point that she'd have to make later anyway, about what the rules were and how she expected him to follow them. "Let's get moving."

The first half of the night had made her, for obvious reasons, leery about trying to get another cab. Nor did she want to post on Fangd, even though there was a section for stranded immortals in need of a ride or a couch or whatever; her attackers (or whoever had sent them out) could well be monitoring it, waiting for her to log on and divulge her location. So Killian, having changed his sweeping high-collared jacket for something slightly less melodramatic, pulled out his phone (she was somewhat surprised that he knew how to use one, though indeed he squinted and poked at it as if he wasn't entirely sure) and made a call. They stood in apprehensive silence, except for the sirens still wailing across the river, until headlights strafed the street corner, whipped around at top speed, and a low-rider muscle car, bouncing on its shocks due to the volume of the thumping-bass rock music blasting out of it, screeched to a halt in front of them. The window rolled down, and someone – a werewolf, Emma could tell by the scent, though indeed she had already guessed – stuck his head out. "Oy, someone call for a lift?"

Killian rolled his eyes ever so slightly, reached for the passenger door, which would have been the driver's side in America, and held it open for Emma. "We certainly didn't call for the pleasure of your obnoxious music, no."

The werewolf grinned crookedly. "Some other blokes would thank me for doing 'em a favor, wouldn't they?"

"Just drive," Killian ordered, sliding into the backseat, pulling the door shut, and yanking the seatbelt over his head, just in time to be driven flat into the new car scent-sprayed leather as their mysterious chauffeur accelerated. Glancing over at him, Emma could tell that he was young, the equivalent of mid-twenties for a human; she wasn't quite sure what it worked out to for a wolf. A short brown buzz cut, big dark eyes, prominent ears, and a crooked who-me grin that she rather liked, despite herself. She was somewhat surprised that Killian had any friends at all, let alone from the other side of the supernatural tracks, but then reminded herself that since she and Ruby were close, even an Old One, who had lived through the wars when Teeth and Tails very much were not at peace, could possibly have decided to bury the hatchet. How was another question.

"And as usual, you're a pain in the arse." The werewolf slammed on the brakes as they fetched up at the back end of one of London's ubiquitous roundabout queues, then floored it again. Emma felt her face practically rippling as whatever the speed limit in the city was, they broke it. Looking over at her, he added, "My name's Will, by the way. Will Scarlet. You are?"

"Emma." She clamped hold of the seat with both hands, wondering if his driving wasn't actually more dangerous than being chased down the Thames waterfront by a pack of murderous vampires. "How do you two know each other?"

There was a brief silence, a glance exchanged, and some coughing, in which Emma grew instantaneously certain that however their first meeting had obtained, it involved bad decisions, an industrial amount of alcohol (or in Killian's case, blood that was more Jim Beam and/or Jack Daniels than plasma) and vast, vast regret the next morning. This both entertained her inordinately and caused a brief, unwelcome prickle of jealousy to rear its head, which was not germane to this or any situation in the least and had to be ignored. She concentrated instead on bracing for a potential crash at any moment as Will revved onto the M4, screaming up behind slower-moving cars and overtaking them so ostentatiously that Emma thought either they were going to be pulled over or caught up in an episode of British road rage, which would just put the cherry on the crap sundae of the evening's events. But as it was at least currently getting them to Heathrow with no ambushes, she decided not to complain. She could already see that there was no way she was going to be able to catch her originally scheduled flight, which departed thirty-six minutes from now, and would have to deal with the hassle of rebooking, getting Killian a seat, finding some way for this to be maneuvered around the fact that she at least would be knocked unconscious with the sunrise, the fact that she had burned approximately twelve people to death a few hours earlier, and was only in worse trouble when she got back to Boston. Completely to her horror, she felt salt stinging her eyes, blurring her vision.

"Hey." Killian reached forward from the back seat, sensing her distress, but she pulled her hand quickly away from where he had been about to take it. "It's all right. We'll work it out, eh?"

Emma didn't think so, but she was oddly comforted that someone did, and sniffed hard, trying to make it less obvious. She said nothing until they finally veered off at the exit for Heathrow, Will did a donut into the dropoff zone, and they clambered out. They thanked him, Emma still unsure if she had left her stomach back in Westminster, and he burned the midnight oil out of sight down the ramp, leaving the distinct smell of seared rubber in his wake. They stood side by side, still somewhat stunned, until Emma remarked, "You slept with him, didn't you."

"What? Did not."

"Okay, sure." Emma had to admit, she enjoyed watching Tall, Dark, and Broody squirm like a schoolboy. "We'll go with that for now. It's all right, we're all modern vampires, we have werewolf friends and lovers. I'm not here to judge."

"Indeed." He did that ridiculous eyebrow thing at her again. "But why this sudden interest into my preferences, love? The trivial matter of Will Scarlet aside, I am an open-minded gentleman. Shall we say, flexible. I'm quite sure I can do it in a way you'd very much enjoy."

Emma felt her cheeks go warm, which wasn't easy to do when your body usually didn't generate it. Then again, she had rather opened herself up for the conversation to go in this direction, and turned away too quickly, leading them into the harsh fluorescent lighting of the terminal. Now came the delightful problem of sorting out their flight arrangements. Her plane was probably pulling out of the gate exactly now, they could get on another one tonight but then have to spend seven or eight hours on a layover in Istanbul or Paris or Reykjavik or wherever, and since the time change was working in reverse, if they got on an early flight tomorrow morning it would still be daylight when they arrived in Boston. Killian might be old enough to withstand it, but she would definitely be out, and even if they were working together as circumstances dictated, she wasn't sure she was going to trust him to haul her ass around. He could probably make sure they avoided notice, whether by moving at vampire speed or just mesmering everyone nearby into thinking that it wasn't odd at all that he was casually carrying an unconscious woman through a major American airport, but Emma would have balked at allowing it even from someone she knew much better and trusted far more (which, to be fair, was almost no one, but still).

She turned to him. "How long can you stay awake during the day?"

"If I have to, love, most of it. I can't be dismantling any more brigades of miscreants, though." He considered her carefully, apparently having thought of the same potential flaw in their travel arrangements as she had. "And if you really want to get back as soon as you can, you're going to need to try something new, darling. Trust."

Emma flinched, unsettled at how easily he had read her. "It's not that I don't appreciate you helping me out back there. I do. But this is a lot to ask."

"Aye, it is." His face was serious; he didn't appear to be belittling the magnitude of what he was requesting her to do, or making light of the distress he intuitively knew it caused her. "I can't say I'd be in any hurry to trust a vampire I just met either, and one who clearly can wreak havoc if he puts his mind to it. But if nothing else, recall that I do have a vested interest in finding out who's trying to set me up for something which, despite all my other manifold misdeeds, I haven't done, and hence it's in my interest to keep you safe. We do make quite a team, love."

Emma supposed she couldn't deny that either, seeing as the two of them had earlier put thirty other vampires permanently out of commission, and there was no braggadocio or bravado in his voice when he talked about his crimes, as if he was proud of them; in fact, he sounded more subdued and tired than anything. She studied his face for a long moment, then turned on her heel. "Let's find out how the timing works out. Then we'll see."

A trip to the British Airways ticket counter later, they discovered that the next flight out was at eleven-thirty the next morning, arriving at a little past two PM, and since Emma's finances were already feeling the pinch of two international plane tickets in a row, she didn't want to put them through the extra burden of changing airlines. She would be unconscious for the whole thing this way, however, unless Heathrow happened to have a duty-free where you could purchase the daylight booster shot, and the memory of what it had felt like the last time she'd done that were almost enough to seal the deal on the spot. She wavered one more time, then made a decision that she hoped she'd live long enough to regret. "Fine. We'll take it."

Once Killian had been booked onto the eleven-thirty as well, they went to spend Emma's second night in the last three uncomfortably trucked up on the cement-hard seats of an airport terminal, feeling as tense as if she was about to be put under anesthesia for a complicated surgery. "You can handle this?" she asked, unnecessarily. "Make sure nobody notices?"

"Yes, Swan," he said patiently. "Whatever daft complications we're likely to encounter, someone asking me what is going on will be the least of them."

Emma supposed she would have to take her reassurance where she could find it, and shifted on her jacket, staring up at the glass ceiling. "I take it you didn't learn anything about who might have been meddling with the Old Ones registry?"

"No, as I said. Likely better for me to get out of London for a bit, anyway."

Emma paused. Then, since there was no one else nearby and no better way to pass the time, she decided a few more questions couldn't hurt, as long as he remained in a more or less compliant mood to answer them. "Have you ever heard of someone named Naomi, or possibly Nina? An old vampire, a woman. I don't know who she is, but she seems to be involved with this mess somehow. And I think she might be responsible for the murder that's now being blamed on me."

Killian propped himself on an elbow, eyeing her narrowly. "No, love, I can't say the name's familiar. Doesn't sound like someone you want to be mucking around with, though."

"It's a little too late for that." Emma fiddled restlessly with a loose thread on her sleeve. "Henry, my son – he teaches at Harvard, he was the one who tipped me off to this in the first place. If he's in danger now. . . there's no way I'm stopping until I find her, and I take her down."

"You have a son?" He regarded her in interest. "Blood son, I imagine?"

"No, he's mine the. . . the old-fashioned way." She swallowed. "He was ten when I was turned."

"That must have been difficult." Again, there was no edge of sarcasm or mockery in his voice, only a soft empathy that made her want to get up and run into the bathroom, hide until she felt steadier, less in danger of cracking. "He's grown up now, then?"

"Yeah. Older than I am, physically. Thirty-two." She laughed humorlessly. "It's strange."

"I was thirty-two when I was turned," Killian commented. "Of course, that was damn near three hundred years ago."

Emma glanced at him, hearing something carefully and purposefully offhand in his voice, as if it could have just been making light conversation, but which made her want to know more. But since one's birth as a vampire also necessarily entailed their death as a human, it was as déclassé as asking a loved one about their funeral arrangements. And from what little Regina had told her, he hadn't wanted to become a vampire either, had been turned against his will by Gold, the same way she had been by Zelena. But that was definitely something sensitive and painful she had no business prying into, especially as she was currently trusting him with her life for the next twenty-four hours and as such didn't want to give him any reason to resent her. "Well," she said, trying to change the subject. "You've never been to Boston before, I imagine?"

"No."

"Here's my address." She scribbled it on a piece of paper, then pulled her apartment key out of her pocket and stuffed it into his hand, trying to disguise the faint tremble in her own. "When we land, take us there. It should only be a few hours after that until dusk, so hopefully I'll be awake soon. Oh, and I invite you in. You can eat if you're hungry, I only have ONeg, though."

From the faint wrinkle of his nose, this was not a particularly appetizing prospect, but he gallantly disguised it. "I'll figure it out, love. Try to relax."

"Not happening," Emma muttered, but did at least do her best to pretend that every muscle in her body wasn't clenched tight as a soccer mom's sphincter at the top of the roller coaster's first drop. Time passed in that strange slow way it had during her overnight sojourn in Logan, until at last she could hear her SleepyTime app buzzing on her phone, and knew that dawn was drawing near. Since the next time she woke up, she would either be safely at home in her apartment in Boston or God alone knew where facing God alone knew what, she groped out in sudden panic, gulping back a scream, and felt Killian's hand catch hers, holding strong and reassuringly, and didn't have the heart to pull away. "Get me home," she whispered. "I'm counting on you."

"Aye, love. I'm right here, I've got you." He squeezed. "It's all right, Swan. Go to sleep."

Emma's eyelashes were fluttering, but she stubbornly held out until she could see the distant cracks of dawn through the glass terminal walls, spreading out in sullen flushes of color along the eastern horizon. The dark well was drawing her down, but she kept her gaze fixed on Killian's face, willing herself to know if this was a terrible mistake, if she could somehow wake up and get away if it was. But the thrall was growing darker, deeper, and at least she knew that since vampires did not dream, there would be no nightmares under there. The shadowy wings were rising, wrapping around her, and she could no longer resist.

She let go, and fell.