“Okay.” He kissed me sweetly. “Let’s get Lauren’s car again.”

He drove me to Kate’s house, and as we sat in her driveway for a minute, it was hard to say good-bye to him again.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said, and opened the door. “I’ll see you soon.”

Kate’s mom answered the door, and I went up to Kate’s room, where she was watching TV. She sprang to her feet when she saw me.

“Where the hell have you been?” she shouted, and yanked me into a tight hug.

“With Will,” I confessed. “He took me back to his place last night.”

“And?” She didn’t even hesitate.

“And … I don’t know. I’m glad he showed up and took me home.”

“We were having such a great time.” She seemed disappointed.

I laughed nervously. “Uh, yeah. Up until Brian started taking my clothes off.”

That made her pause. “Are you serious? Will didn’t say anything about that when he took you.”

I wouldn’t have expected him to. He was more of kick-ass-now-explain-self-later kind of guy. “Well, I’m glad he showed up. I was so gone I didn’t even know what planet I was on.”

“I’m going to freaking gut Brian. And Jay.”

“I can’t believe you left me alone with him,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “You have no idea—”

“God, Ell,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t even thinking when we left the room. It’s all my fault.”

I exhaled. “We’ve got to look out for each other when we go to things like this.”

“I know …”

“Were you okay after I left?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come with us?”

“I was mad, I guess. Will pissed me off, and I wasn’t ready to leave. I don’t even remember crashing. At least Will beat the crap out of Brian and those guys out on the lawn. After you left, it was all anyone could talk about.”

I gave her an unintelligible grumble in response to that.

“Are you okay, Ell? Really?”

I let out a long breath and sat on the edge of her bed. “I think so. I think everything is going to be okay.” I gave her a vague recap of how Will drove me an hour and a half back to his house, how I had thrown myself at him and he’d told me no, what had happened at breakfast, and then what he told me about wanting to give us a try. Telling that part to Kate didn’t make it feel any more real, but I got the familiar spins in my stomach when I thought about how fiercely Will had kissed me only hours ago. Remembering all he’d said to me made me dizzy, and I chewed on my lip to bring myself back down to earth.

“You two were made for each other,” Kate said.

He was a piece of me and when he wasn’t around, I never felt whole. “What did you say to him as we were leaving? I saw you yell at him from the porch.”

“Oh. Well, I had no idea what Brian had tried to do, and if I had I probably would haven’t yelled so much at Will. I feel bad about some of it now. I was just pissed at him for storming in there acting like your boyfriend, so I told him it wasn’t fair to you.”

It was impossible for me to explain the depth of my relationship with Will to Kate. “Thanks, girl. I’ve got to get home. Do you have my stuff?”

“Of course,” she said in a gentle voice, and handed me my purse and duffel bag. “Call me if you need to talk. I’m sorry I left you alone with that jerk. It’ll never happen again, I swear. I’ve got your back, girl.”

“I know. It’s okay. We all made bad decisions last night.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” We said good-bye and I went outside to my car.

When I got home, the garage was open, so I went through the door leading into the kitchen. I shut the door quietly behind me and heard the shuffle of footsteps on the stone tiles of the foyer. I slowly made my way through the kitchen, fearing the consequences of coming home so late.

“Mom?” I called. “I’m home.”

I rounded the staircase and saw my mom and dad together. Their bodies were so close I wondered if they were hugging—and why they were hugging, since they despised each other. When I saw my mom, I froze solid in my tracks. Ice flowed through my veins and the blood washed from my face as something kicked in my stomach, and my heart launched into hyperspeed. Blood caked her swollen and bruised face, her hair a rat’s nest. My dad held a tight fistful of hair, and his other hand was clamped around her throat. He wrenched her around to look at me, his face twisted with violence and a look so savage it took me a moment to recognize him. My mom’s eyes were wide and wild with terror and pain.

“Dad?” I choked, my eyes shifting from his to my mom’s and back. “What are you doing?”

“Your daddy’s been dead a long time, sweetheart.” He jerked my mother to get a better grip on her. His lips curled into a smile too sinister to be human, and then he began to change. His fingernails grew into talons that dug into my mom’s tender skin until more blood popped and she squirmed. Four pairs of fangs slid from his smile, and spikes tore through the back of his shirt, casting monstrous shadows across the floor in the porch light pouring in from behind him. “I should know. I tore out his rib cage myself.”

“Who are you?” I breathed, the words struggling to escape as if claws were around my own throat. Will’s words echoed in my mind: “If you come across a vir, you may not know what he is until it’s too late. They’ll shape-shift to take the form of a human in order to infiltrate.”