“Except for me,” I pointed out.

“Yes,” he admitted gently. “But the camp isn’t safe for you.”

My knees felt soft with relief. “Do you really think Nicholas will be all right?”

“Of course,” Helena replied. “He’s a Drake.”

She hadn’t seen him. I wasn’t so sure even the legendary Drake blood was enough to save him from whatever had happened to him while he was missing.

“We’ll have to kill her,” a woman said coldly. I couldn’t see her over all the people between me and the door. I didn’t have to see her. I could hear her just fine. “I won’t have Solange undoing the honor of our name. Tomorrow night, though tonight would be better. She’s become a risk to us.”

“Kill her?” I exclaimed, pushing through a wall of Drake brothers. “Who the hell— Whoa.”

The vampire could only be Madame Veronique, currently the oldest Drake vampire alive and the matriarch of the line. I’d never met her before, had only heard the stories the others whispered about how scary she was. I’d assumed they were exaggerating.

They totally weren’t.

Despite her words, she didn’t do anything outwardly aggressive. Still, all the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stuck straight up. I felt like a threatened porcupine, every quill bristling painfully. Her brown hair was in braids that reached her hips, under an embroidered wimple. Gold glinted off her circlet and the ribbons on her long, medieval-style dress. Her eyes were such a light gray they were practically clear. Not to mention glacial.

She was pale, small, and strange. She radiated otherness in a way the Drakes didn’t, not even Aunt Hyacinth—and she was almost two hundred years old. Madame Veronique was eight hundred years old, and everything about her was deadly. She was the silent poison to Helena’s blade. I shivered.

“Humans?” she inquired with faint disdain. Her gaze flicked over me, dismissing me as unimportant. Quinn and Connor stood in front of me regardless, shifting casually so that I was hidden. Sebastian blocked Kieran. “Haven’t we enough trouble without your unruly pets?” Madame Veronique inquired calmly, after a terrifying pause.

Logan’s hand clamped on my arm, and he dragged me out the sliding glass doors, Kieran at our heels. I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye to Christabel. “Come on, before Madame Veronique sics one of her handmaidens on you.”

“She has handmaidens?”

“Yes, and they look like scary undead librarians.”

“She really wants to kill your sister?” I asked as we hurried through the dark gardens. They were slightly overgrown, mostly roses and fields. My parents’ gardens were crowded with vegetables for canning and herbs for Mom’s health tonics. Not to mention the crystals planted everywhere to help everything grow. “Can she do that?”

“Yes,” Logan answered grimly.

“But . . . your mom can stop her, right?”

“I hope so,” he said, his charming smile gone. “I really hope so.”

“We’ll stop her,” Kieran said, walking silently beside us. With his Helios-Ra training he was nearly as noiseless as Logan. I was learning, but I still cracked the odd twig under my boots. “Somehow.”

“I’m going to see what Isabeau knows,” Logan said, leading us down the driveway to Kieran’s car. “Be careful.”

“You too, Logan.” I hugged him tightly. “I don’t want to lose any more Drakes tonight.” I got into the passenger side. Logan closed the door and stood there glaring at me until I locked it. “I should call Jenna,” I said, grabbing my bag from the backseat. I’d taken her and Tyson to a bonfire party with friends from my old school. A vampire snuck in and one of the girls got bitten but, luckily, she was too drunk to remember details. Tyson brought her to the school infirmary, and Jenna and I tried to track the vampire. That was when Solange’s guard had grabbed me and left Jenna unconscious in the forest.

“She’s fine,” Kieran reminded me. “Spencer got your message and called Chloe and she got help. Jenna’s back in her dorm room with a few stitches and a mild concussion.”

I couldn’t even argue; I was too busy yawning so hugely my cheeks tingled. Despite everything that was going on, I fell asleep on the way back to the academy. The adrenaline crash made me feel as if I were made of wet cement. When Kieran nudged me awake, I tried to punch him.

“Lucy—shit!” He ducked, smacking his head on the window.

I blinked blearily. “Sorry, Kier. Habit.”

He rubbed the back of his head. “Between you and Hunter, it’s a wonder I have all of my limbs still intact.”

I snorted, rubbing my eyes. “You dosed me with Hypnos.”

“Three months ago. Let it go, Hamilton.”

I just grinned sleepily. “You have so much to learn.”

Chapter 2

Solange

I landed on a spiraling stone stairway. I was in some kind of a castle, with dust in the air and dried flowers and hay under my bare feet. I wore a burgundy, medieval-style dress, the kind Madame Veronique favored, with a jeweled belt. She’d been turned in 1162, so my brothers and I studied the twelfth century thoroughly enough that I knew the window in front of me was actually a murder hole, through which archers shot arrows at advancing knights. Sunlight pierced through it, landing on the back of my hand. I snatched it away, as if it were an arrow being sent back at the castle.