Which shouldn’t be a problem.

Since she already knew I was here.

Viola looked down at her gown, the fine silk wet with blood. She could still taste it on her tongue, sliding hotly down her parched throat. It should have made her sick.

Instead, it made her feel invincible.

She understood everything now. Her father’s nighttime habits, her mother’s illness. Her own impossible lineage.

She could barely see the bodies at her feet, drained dry. Everything was too sharp, too bright.

Too red.

I clenched my jaw, my fangs aching against the stabbing thirst. She was making me believe I was starving, that I was turning into a papery husk. I hadn’t fed in nights and Viola was forcing me to relive the feast she had made of innocent bodies.

She wanted me to feel her madness, her confusion, her fear.

But I’d also felt something else from her.

Love.

I knew the key to luring her out. Constantine.

Chapter 18

Isabeau

Wednesday night

Running through the woods with a pack of dogs at my heels usually made me happy.

It made me feel free and wild and part of the mysteries, a true handmaiden to the Hounds. It was invigorating and grounding. Necessary. But too slow. Frustrated, I pushed harder. Pine boughs slapped at me. Magda ran beside me, slapping back at them. Snow shivered in the air behind us. The dogs lowered their heads and flattened their ears, streaking between the trees. Even as fast as we were, we’d never make it in time.

“I hate your boyfriend,” Magda snapped as more snow fell on her head.

“You didn’t have to come,” I reminded her, leaping over a fallen tree. Charlemagne sailed over it, tight at my side. His tongue lolled out in a happy canine smile. The pack on my back bounced against my shoulder blades, filled with ritual gear.

“Like I’m going to leave you alone with the Drakes,” Magda shot back. The moonlight caught on the daggers at her belt and the chainmail sewn into my tunic over my heart. “After what happened last time.”

And by that, she meant the time I’d brought one of them home with me. Logan had snuck under my defenses with his old-world courtesy and quick grin, and now he was an initiated member of our tribe. Something that never failed to infuriate Magda, on principle, if nothing else. She didn’t share well. It was another ten minutes before we broke out of the forest and along a deserted road. Headlights flashed as a Jeep sped up behind us.

Logan.

Magda called him something rude under her breath before yanking the back door open. Charlemagne leaped in after her. “Suivez,” I ordered the other dogs who had stopped running and were barking from the shadows.

Logan reached over to push my door open and I climbed in. His hair falling over his pale forehead and the lace at his cuffs did nothing to detract from his grim expression. His smile though, when he saw me, was gentle. I didn’t have time to smile back; he’d already slammed his foot on the pedal. I held tightly onto the door handle as the vehicle sped down the road. I knew it was faster than running, and more efficient than the carriages I remembered, but I still preferred the carriages. They didn’t make me feel trapped.

I held on tighter, my fangs poking out from under my top lip. Hounds didn’t generally bother retracting their fangs since we lived in secrecy and had no need or desire to blend into society, even vampire society. They feared our extra set of teeth. I’d caught more than one vampire sniffing me back at the camp, to make sure I wasn’t Hel-Blar.

Logan glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. They were grass green even in the dim glow from the lights on the dash. I still wasn’t sure how he could read me so well but he didn’t say anything, only pushed a button and the window slid open. Cold cedar-and-snow-scented air made the bone beads in my hair clatter. I could see the shadows of the dogs chasing us on either side. Charlemagne pushed his head out my window from the backseat.

“Are you sure about this?” Magda asked, as she’d asked me on the hour every hour since I’d made my offer. It didn’t matter that Logan was sitting right next to me.

“Oui,” I replied. “Bien sur.” I wasn’t acting as the handmaiden to Kala, the Hounds’ Shamanka in this; just as Magda wasn’t acting as my guard or ritual sister, but as my friend.

“Thank you,” Logan murmured. “We have to try.”

I reached out, interlacing my fingers through his. “There was too much magic unleashed the day Solange took the crown, and that is no coincidence. Else it would have happened when your mother was crowned too.”

We crested a hill and at the bottom another car was set off the road, the front dented around a fence post. The lights were still on and beyond them, Solange lay on the ground tied up with rope. Around her stood Kieran, Lucy, Quinn, and Connor. A tall man with black hair and a vicious smile broke out of the trees, flinging stakes. One of them narrowly avoided Lucy’s cheek, and only because Quinn kicked her feet out from under her, dropping her like a stone. She pushed to her hands and knees, scrambling to grab a crossbow before it was crushed under various boots.

“Constantine,” Logan spat, slamming on the brakes and screeching to a halt. I could hear the approach of the dogs on the other side of the hill.

“And Hel-Blar,” Magda added. “On your left.”

On the other side of the street, Hel-Blar shuffled in our direction, reeking of mushrooms and mildew. Charlemagne growled, despite his training. He knew danger and it made his hackles rise. “Non,” I told him sharply. It was too risky for any of the dogs to attack the Hel-Blar and they were all carefully trained to avoid them, by their smell and the sound of their clacking jaws. I whistled to forbid them from attacking. They were on the other side of the hill, but they’d still be able to hear me.