“I made a happy noise,” I said, embarrassed and yet also touched. “Leotie’s information is a dream come true.”

Leotie looked at the broken glass everywhere and her front door now lying next to her coffee table. “You owe me two new windows and a door,” she said to the guys. Then she glanced at a crushed metal pile near Maximus’s feet. “And a new walker.”

“Wait, you shape-shifted into an old woman,” Gretchen said, gesturing at the ruined walker. “How could you do that if giving away your legacy magic took all your other magic out of you?”

Leotie’s mouth curled downward. “That wasn’t my former shape-shifting ability; it was glamour. Such a painstaking process by comparison, but learning a spell doesn’t take inborn magic. It only takes basic intelligence.”

“See, guys, when Leotie transferred her legacy magic to her daughter, it stripped out all the other magic in her. All of it,” I repeated, just in case they didn’t get the implications.

Both of Ian’s brows went up. “Seems Ashael made a very bad decision telling you to verify your heritage.”

“Who is this Ashael?” Leotie asked again, more sharply this time.

I waved. “A demon that’s going to be kicking himself for being too greedy, but forget him. He couldn’t know that one of my ancient Ani-kutani ancestors was still alive. You said yourself that you carefully covered your tracks.” Then, because this was too important to be left to assumption, I asked Leotie outright, “If I gave the legacy magic to someone else, would a hex that’s on me transfer over to that other person, too?”

Gretchen gasped. Okay, I hadn’t told her about that, but in my defense, today was the first time I’d seen her in months.

Leotie gave me one of her shrewd, probing looks. “How deeply is this spell bound to you?”

“Flesh to flesh and blood to blood,” I replied. “If I get cut, the person on the other end of this spell has the same injury and vice versa, right down to if he dies, I die, too.”

“What the fuck?” Gretchen breathed.

Leotie whistled through her teeth. “That’s not a regular spell. Binding that magic to a vampire is necromancy.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said impatiently. “Well? If I give the legacy to someone else, would that spell transfer, too?”

“Without a doubt,” Leotie said, and I almost cried from joy.

“I need to call Vlad,” Maximus said, spinning around. “There’s no signal here, but there is back at the hotel.”

It was all I could do to keep from jumping up and down like a kid on Christmas morning. “Yes, call him and tell him not to touch Samir. All we need to get this spell off me is to find some nasty schmuck to transfer this legacy to!”

This world sadly didn’t lack for murderers, child rapists, or other horrible people. Once I’d transferred the legacy magic, we would put that person out of their misery. It would mean the end of the magic legacy in my family, but oh well—

“You can’t transfer it to just anyone,” Leotie said, slashing through my happy inner narrative. “It can only be transferred to a close matrilineal blood relative.”

I frowned. “What’s that?”

“Matrilineal means a direct descendant of your mother’s bloodline,” Gretchen supplied.

My joy deflated like a popped balloon. “But Leotie just confirmed that we have no other living family on our mother’s side.” And at over eight hundred years old, Leotie was several centuries removed from being a “close” relation to my mother’s direct bloodline.

Gretchen’s expression changed. Suddenly, I had her attention in a way I’d never had it before. “Yeah, so the only person you can transfer the magic legacy to is me.”

She wanted it, I realized in shock. “Did you miss the part about the deadly hex that came along with it?”

“I didn’t miss it,” Gretchen said, shrugging as if we weren’t talking about life or death. “But I’ll take the risk.”

Of course she would, but as usual, Gretchen wasn’t thinking things through. Well, I knew what she refused to admit: that she wouldn’t live long enough to find out what cool magic ability the legacy would give her. I couldn’t sign my sister’s death warrant that way. Not even if it meant losing my best chance at freeing myself.

I drew in a deep breath. Then I looked at Maximus, Ian, and Marty. “You will not mention this to Vlad. I’ll decide when and if and what he knows. If one of you goes behind my back and tells him, I will cut your heart out.”

“Leila!” Gretchen snapped. “You don’t get to make up their minds or mine about this!”

“This time I do,” I said, and unleashed the light in my gaze. “You remember nothing of this conversation,” I told Gretchen, my voice vibrating from vampire power. “You only know that Leotie is our distant relative and we are direct descendants of the Ani-kutani line. That is all.”

A glazed look replaced Gretchen’s angry expression, and I didn’t miss how Leotie looked at me with a sort of pity. Yes, I might once again be following in my mother’s footsteps by hiding things from my little sister for her own protection, but I didn’t care. I also didn’t care if this made me a total hypocrite for ever saying that I didn’t like to mind-manipulate people. Gretchen wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut otherwise, and transferring the legacy power to her would kill her as surely as if I shot her in the head. She was human; she wouldn’t survive a gutting like Mircea’s captors’ had just given me, and Gretchen really wouldn’t survive what would happen when those same captors realized that Vlad wouldn’t do their bidding.