“I smell mushrooms,” Quinn said grimly, nostrils flaring. Hel-Blar. “Or wet earth?” Nicholas punched the car, denting the hood. “I don’t smell any blood, though,” Quinn added. “Nicholas.”

Nicholas nodded, jaw clenched. “I heard you.” He slid into the car’s driver’s seat. His fangs were out, his eyes faintly bloodshot. He was pale even through the window. “There’s Hypnos on the steering wheel.”

“Shit.” I grabbed my laptop and monitored all the lines and signals going to any of the family phones or computers. Mom and Dad didn’t know I’d set them up that way.

“Anything?” Quinn asked me quietly. “He doesn’t look good, man. Hurry up.”

“Nothing—wait, no.” I hacked into Mom’s private account. “Gotcha. Shit. Shit!”

“What?” Quinn read over my shoulder, going pale. “Shit.”

Nicholas finally looked up from the section of the dirt road he was investigating. “What?”

“Message to Mom. From Saga.”

“Saga? The one we thought shot at Solange?”

I nodded. “Nick.”

“Spit it out already. What does she have to do with Lucy?”

“She kidnapped Lucy. She’s holding her hostage in exchange for official recognition for the Hel-Blar.”

Nicholas’s eyes went wild, like lightning striking a moonlit lake.

Quinn looked at me. “You guys see if you can track her. I’ll alert the others.”

“They’ll be out of range, too.”

“I know,” he said, jumping on his bike. “I’ll send out texts and then hit the caves and the camp. Don’t let him do anything stupid.”

“I’ll try,” I said as he sped away. I approached Nicholas warily. “Find any tracks?”

“No.” His voice was stark, cold as naked steel.

I inhaled deeply, cataloging the faint mushroom smell. “It’s not the normal mushroom stink, more like wet earth and leaves,” I said, frowning. “I don’t smell swamp—do you?” He sniffed and shook his head. I froze. “But I smell cinnamon.”

“Lucy doesn’t smell like cinnamon,” Nicholas said tightly. “She smells like cherry gum and pepper.”

“I know,” I replied just as tightly. “But Christabel smells like cinnamon.”

“What the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” But I did know we were both remembering the Hel-Blar attacking us that night we went to the beach. “Lucy’s prepared,” I said. But Christabel didn’t even know vampires existed. “Shit,” I said as the rain started to fall harder. My nostrils flared. “That way toward the woods.”

Nicholas turned on his heel. “I don’t smell Lucy.”

“Could Christabel have borrowed Lucy’s car?” I asked.

“I guess so.” He frowned. “I don’t smell Lucy anywhere.”

“And I definitely smell Christabel.” I wiped water off my face, stepping off the road into the fields of goldenrod.

“Where are you going?” Nicholas called.

“I don’t think they took Lucy,” I said over my shoulder. Thunder growled and lightning hissed. “And I’ll lose Christabel’s scent if it keeps raining.” Frustration simmered in my blood.

“Wait for me!”

“No, stay there. Just in case.” Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they had Lucy, too, or maybe they’d separated the cousins. Either way, Nicholas was Lucy’s best chance and I was Christabel’s.

I didn’t think. I just ran, trying to find my way through the smothering rain and the hundreds of smells in a forest during autumn: mud, leaves, apples. I concentrated on cinnamon, just cinnamon.

The faint trail took me through the deepest part of the oldest woods, where the canopy was so thick the rain barely came through. It was the only reason I didn’t lose her scent completely. The spicy warmth of it tickling my nostrils goaded me forward, through the swelling river and the frost gathering at the foot of the mountain. There was a dirt road, overgrown with weeds but clearly some kind of man-made road. I heard howling and snarling and I wasn’t sure if it was animal or vampire.

The road took me to the ruins of a frontier town, all rotting logs and sagging porches. Wooden signs creaked. The smell of mushrooms was thick, rancid. I gagged but took another breath anyway.

Because underneath the rot: cinnamon.

Chapter 13

Lucy

I didn’t know what to say.

And I always had something to say, to anyone, at any time. Especially Solange. She was crouched next to me in the ferns, delicate and pale as a pearl. The grizzled old guard was lying in the roots of a tree. I tried not to keep staring at him.

“He’s fine,” Solange muttered.

She was right. Technically he was fine. And I was going to ruin a perfectly good moment of intrigue. I pushed a frond out of my way, trying to peer into the shadows. There were a few torches in iron stands. The rain continued to patter listlessly, barely able to slide between the branches to the forest floor. The clearing was a narrow band of grass and wildflowers around the base of the mountain. Tents had been erected, like some kind of vampire circus or a production of Arabian Nights had come to town. There was a lot of silk, gold thread, carved mahogany, and a long wooden table roughly the length of the main street in town. Tin lanterns cast a warm pattern of light over its surface.