“Yeah,” Lucas said, drawing a stake from his belt. Then he slammed it into Balthazar’s chest.

I heard Raquel stifle a small cry. Balthazar gasped in pain, but he immediately slumped forward, unconscious and paralyzed.

Lucas said, “I want to burn this trash myself. Bianca can come with. I think it’ll help her get over what he did, torching him.”

Eliza nodded. Kate put her hands on my shoulders as I wiped my eyes. “Just remember,” she said, “you’re free now.”

The others helped us load Balthazar’s inert body into the van. I couldn’t get over how, well, dead he looked, with the stake poking out of his chest. Milos gave Lucas a few hints about good spots for burning vampire corpses, which made me think he’d done this several times before. That gave me the shivers.

I slammed the van doors shut. Lucas started the engine and pulled onto the road. Once we were a few blocks away, I slipped into the back where Balthazar lay and said, “Now?”

Lucas nodded, never taking his eyes from the road. “Now.”

With both hands, I grabbed the stake and pulled it out of Balthazar’s chest.

As soon as the wood slipped free, Balthazar jerked, then writhed beneath me in pain. His bloodied hands sought the gaping wound in his chest. “What the—”

“Shhhhhh.” I put one hand on his forehead. “You’re okay. We had to pretend we were going to kill you. There was no other way to get you out of there.”

“Bianca?”

“Yeah, it’s me. You remember what happened?”

“I think so.” Balthazar grimaced, but he forced his eyes open to look at me. “You and Lucas—”

“We broke you out,” Lucas called. “Listen, we’re on a tight schedule here. Is there a place we can drop you? Where you’ll be safe while you heal up?”

Balthazar had to think a couple seconds before he nodded. “Chinatown. A shop—I know the owner—he’ll hide me.”

“We’ll get you there,” Lucas said.

“Thank you,” Balthazar said. One of his hands found mine. Normally he was so strong, but now the pressure he put on my fingers was weaker than a child’s. “Black Cross—They aren’t—”

“They don’t know about me,” I said. “Lucas is taking care of me. I’m safe.”

Balthazar nodded. His handsome face was twisted and swollen, and I wished I at least could’ve brought some bandages. Even a vampire might require weeks to recover from injuries this serious. I tried to smile for him as I wiped blood from the corner of his mouth, but it was difficult.

At last we reached Chinatown. The street Balthazar told us to turn onto was small and unbelievably crowded. Almost every single store sign was in Chinese; it really felt like we’d driven to another country altogether.

Lucas double-parked and glanced over his shoulder. “You sure you can get where you’re going?”

“Maybe Bianca could walk with me.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. It was too easy to imagine Balthazar passing out in the gutter and being dragged to a hospital, where he’d promptly be declared dead. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’m going to circle the block.” Lucas glanced at our passenger. “Good luck, Balthazar.”

“Thanks. I mean it.”

I got out first and accepted Balthazar’s heavy arm across my shoulders. He could stand but just barely. Once the van doors were shut, Lucas drove away. Although several people stared at Balthazar, bloody wreck that he was, nobody said anything. That was New York for you.

As soon as we started walking, Balthazar said, “Come with me.”

“I am coming with you. We’re going to find the shop. I think it’s right along here—”

“No, I mean—don’t go back with Lucas. I can hide you here.”

Shocked, I said, “Balthazar, we talked about this. You know how I feel.”

“This isn’t about romance.” He limped beside me, and a few drops of blood trickled down from his wrist, along his hands, onto the sidewalk. “You see now what Black Cross is. What they’re capable of. Bianca, if they learned the truth—if one tenth of what happened to me happened to you—”

“It won’t,” I said. “Lucas and I are leaving soon. I promise.”

Balthazar didn’t look convinced, but he nodded.

When we reached the shop, an older lady behind the counter began shouting something in Chinese. At first I wondered if she wasn’t suggesting that somebody call 911. Then an even older man, almost entirely bald, emerged from the back of the store. He saw Balthazar and hurried forward; though I didn’t understand a word he said—or of Balthazar’s response, which was also in Chinese—I could tell he was expressing concern.

“You guys are friends,” I said.

“Since 1964.” Balthazar stroked my cheek with one hand.

“Please be careful.”

“I will. Balthazar—if I don’t see you again—”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I know.”

He leaned forward, as if to kiss me, then grimaced. His lips were too torn for that. I took his less-mangled hand in mine and kissed his palm. Then I ran into the clamor of Chinatown, back toward Lucas and the danger that awaited us when we returned to Black Cross.

Chapter Ten

“CAN I ASK YOU A PERSONAL QUESTION?” RAQUEL said.

I glanced over at her warily. We were partnered with Milos and Dana on patrol in Grand Central Terminal. Bustling crowds surrounded us, and the walls were lined with as many stores as any shopping mall. For a train station, it was incredibly beautiful—lots of white marble, a golden clock, and, my favorite part, a high cerulean ceiling painted with the constellations in gold. Despite all this, it wasn’t really the place for a heart-to-heart chat, which made me wonder why Raquel had waited until now. But I said, “Sure, go ahead.”

My guess about her intentions was borne out when she said, “You and Balthazar—how close did you two get?”

“I wasn’t ever in love with him, if that’s what you mean.”

“But what Lucas said two nights ago, when he—when Balthazar—” Raquel struggled for a way to describe what she had thought had happened without the word “murder,” and failed. “He suggested that Balthazar tried to force you to have sex with him. I thought the two of you were—well, I didn’t think he had to force you.”

Raquel was the one person who might be able to see through the ruse Lucas and I had constructed to save Balthazar. Eventually I hoped to be able to tell her the truth about that much of it, but not now. “Lucas got angry. He took some stuff I said out of context and—blew up, I guess. You know about his temper.”

“Oh. Okay.” Still disquieted, Raquel shifted from one foot to the other.

A station employee nearby shot us a dirty look, assuming we were loitering teenagers. I mean, we were teenagers, plus we were loitering, but we were also watching out for a vampire that was rumored to be stalking prey here. In my opinion that was justification enough, but it wasn’t the kind of thing we could explain. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s stroll for a bit.”

She fell into step beside me. “So, getting seriously into the TMI zone here—did you and Balthazar ever have sex?”

“No, we didn’t.” When Raquel shot me a skeptical look, I added, “One time we got really close. But we were interrupted. You remember the whole thing with the ghosts, in the A/V room?”

“Yeah. Wow, that turned out to be a major save, didn’t it? I mean, sex with a vampire—ewww.” Raquel kept scanning the crowds in front of us, always on the lookout; she was better at this than I was. “If we didn’t know better, you could almost think the ghosts were trying to help you out there.”

I remembered the blue-green chill of the air that night, when the wraiths had attempted to kill me and claim me for their own. “We definitely know better, though.”

We stepped out of the main rush of people into a slightly less busy corridor. Long lines of tired commuters wandered up and down, either focused on making their trains or slightly dreamy as they listened to their iPods. Everything looked pretty ordinary to me.

“It’s weird that you couldn’t tell,” Raquel said.

“What do you mean?”

“That Balthazar was a vampire. I mean—you never noticed he didn’t have a heartbeat? Or that his body was cooler than ours?”

Caught off guard, I grasped for a reply. “Well—I never—I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you usually watch out for. Most girls don’t have to ask themselves, ‘Gosh, I wonder if the guy I’m dating is alive.’ Right?”

“I guess.” Raquel didn’t seem convinced, but then something else caught her attention. She pointed. “Hey, check out the parka.”

I knew what she meant. Vampires, who often felt cold in surroundings where humans were warm, occasionally wore winter clothing in the middle of summer. That was a clue Black Cross had told us to watch for. (My parents had always simply made sure to wear layers.) Sure enough, a guy in front of us was wearing a heavy white parka as he sauntered through the station, in the opposite direction from the usual flow of traffic at this time of day.

“Could just be a weirdo,” Raquel said.

“Probably. This is New York, after all.”

But I knew better. I couldn’t say how I knew—maybe because of that vampire sense Balthazar had told me I’d develop in time, the sense that another was near. I knew this guy, with his white parka and his long, reddish-brown dreadlocks, was a vampire like me.

My heart sank. Ever since I’d been with Black Cross, I’d dreaded a moment like this. This was about to turn into a vampire hunt—and I had to find a way to save this guy, or else I’d become a murderer.

The most logical thing to do was talk Raquel out of her suspicions, but it was already too late. Raquel’s gaze remained fixed on him, her eyes bright and avid. “Look how pale he is. And he’s just got—I can’t describe it, but when I try to picture him at Evernight Academy, I know he’d fit right in.”

“You can’t be sure,” I said.

“Yes, I can.” Raquel peered past me, quickening her steps to stay on the vampire’s trail. “We’ve finally got one.”

Oh, crap.

Raquel’s voice was tense with anticipation. “Think we can grab Dana and Milos?”

If more experienced hunters joined us, I’d have a lot more trouble protecting this guy. “Right now I think we can handle it.”

We followed the dreadlocked vampire down the white corridor that led out of Grand Central. Although it was still daytime, the rainy weather kept the sun at bay. Neither Raquel nor I had an umbrella, so we stuck close to the edge of the buildings to keep from getting soaked. Luckily, the vampire seemed to have the same idea.

Raquel pointed. “He’s turning the corner.”

“I see him.”

We followed the vampire a few blocks north. This area was congested and busy even by New York standards; tourists in goofy T-shirts held newspapers or shopping bags over their heads as they ran, and cabs honked angrily in the streets, their wipers beating staccato thumps against the downpour. Mostly I saw office buildings, hotels, and stores. This meant the vampire might duck in any place at any second.

What am I going to do? I thought. Pretending to lose him in the crowd was no use. Raquel’s sharp eyes never left him.

The dreadlocked vampire turned onto a crosstown street and went into a building whose doorway was tucked almost surreptitiously between two huge storefronts.

Raquel pulled out her cell phone. “I’m calling Dana.”