“Connor,” I said patiently. “I can’t jump out of the window and I’m a lousy climber. Just let me sneak out the back.”

He sighed. “Fine. But hurry. Meet me behind those cedars.”

“More cedars,” I muttered. “That can’t be good.”

Connor didn’t answer, just dropped out of view. I didn’t even hear him land. I heard some of the brothers walking around on the third floor. I went quietly down the stairs, peeking into the living room. It was empty. I snuck down the hall toward the garden conservatory. I felt like I was back home, creeping around so I wouldn’t wake my mother when she was in one of her weepy moods.

“Hey, Christa.”

I hollered, jumping a foot off the ground. Apparently, I’d lost my stealth entirely when I died. “Solange!”

She tilted her head, smiling. She looked less scruffy than she used to, wearing a flowing shirt and with her hair in a neat braid. But her irises were delicately ringed with blood. My eyes were bloodshot but I’d been assured that would fade. Solange’s were getting more pronounced.

“You’re sneaking out,” she declared knowingly.

Crap.

“Um. No?”

“Are so.” She waved her hand. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sneaking out, too.”

“You are? Where?”

“It’s not exactly sneaking out if I tell you,” she said, grinning. “You go that way.” She pointed toward the back rooms. “I’ll go out the front.” She leaned in and the smell of her, wood smoke and roses, made me feel fuzzy. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me.”

She was gone before I could reply. I hurried through the glass-walled room, around potted orange and lemon trees with glossy leaves and banks of red lilies. Ivy trailed around the door.

The flagstones were littered with rose petals and acorns. I stepped onto the lawn instead and ran toward the cedars. Connor was shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

“This way.” He turned and darted away. I chased after him through the field. The grass was tall and damp. Birds lifted out of secret weedy nooks when we passed by. I was briefly distracted by my new ability to run fast and not lose my breath. I was grinning when we stopped on the outskirts of the forest. Moonlight percolated through the pine boughs.

“Do you know about the Helios-Ra?” Connor asked.

“Only that Lucy’s going to school at their academy outside town. Why?”

“They’re vampire hunters.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Well, sometimes they go all survivalist wackjob in the mountains. Some of those guys found the ghost town, and they’re going in to take everyone out—not just the Hel-Blar but Saga, Aidan, and their people, too.”

“How’d you find all this out?” I asked.

“Lucy called me,” he replied. “She’s been at that school for less than a day.” He sounded impressed despite the worry in his shoulders.

“That’s Lucy,” I agreed. “Shouldn’t we tell your parents or something?”

Quinn emerged from the trees. “No. Mom will charge in, and Dad will be caught in some diplomatic trap. Meanwhile, the hunters will take out the Hel-Blar, we’ll get blamed somehow, Saga’s undead pets will be let loose, and then who knows what will happen? It’s bad enough the royal court had to negotiate with kidnappers. But we’ll send the parents a message when we get there.”

“That’s why we’re going in,” Connor explained. “But you don’t have to. Aidan kidnapped you, after all. You’re allowed to hate him a little.”

“But he saved my life, too,” I said. “Twice. And if he dies, I’ll never find out about myself. My new self,” I corrected.

“We could use you,” Quinn admitted. “You might have negotiating power. You’re Aidan’s bloodkin now.”

My blood ran cold. Aidan wasn’t my father, but he was the closest thing to it in my new world. The Na-Foir were basically an unknown, according to Connor and his family—according to Aidan and Saga, too. I wouldn’t get answers about my bloodchange from anyone else. “I’m coming.”

“I figured,” Connor said, rifling through the pack his brother handed him. He pulled out a handful of stakes and gave them to me. “Here. But stay behind us when we get there. You barely know how to use these.”

“Let’s go,” Quinn urged. “Lucy and Hunter might already be there by now. The hunters were trying to go in before sunset to ambush them at their weakest. We might be too late. Nicholas already left.”

“Do you know the way back?” I asked Connor.

“I left a trail,” he answered, zipping up his hoodie. “Between that and the GPS coordinates I got from the hunters’ bush plane, we’re fine.”

“Are we running all the way there?” I asked. I might not have to worry about wheezing myself into an asthmatic fit, but running would take too long. I remembered that much about finding our way back.

“We’ve got a motorcycle trail that will take us most of the way,” Connor said as we skirted the edge of the forest, leaping over ferns and fallen trunks. Startled and sleepy squirrels chittered angrily over our heads. We ducked into the woods proper, on the other side of a copse of birch trees. It was another few minutes to the bushes where Quinn had stashed two motorcycles. The engines shattered the forest quiet, rolling out plumes of exhaust. I clutched the back of Connor’s jacket with two hands and we rattled and bumped over the uneven ground. It wasn’t a trail so much as a way in unencumbered by broken trees or large boulders. When the thick undergrowth gave way to sparse red pine, we stopped the bikes and hopped off.