I sat in a brocade-cushioned chaise next to a huge copper urn filled with ferns.

Aunt Hyacinth loved ferns; they’d been the fashion when she had her coming- out ball on her eighteenth birthday. She’d worn a white silk gown and made her curtsy to the queen. She’d taught me to curtsy and I’d taught Lucy, who had practiced until she gave herself leg cramps. The parlour had lace tablecloths on every surface and silver candlesticks and painted oil lamps and silhouettes in gilded frames. There was a small dressing room filled with corsets and petticoats and pointy boots. Lucy and I had spent hours playing in there when we were little. Lucy would still play in there, if Aunt Hyacinth would let her.

Aunt Hyacinth reclined dramatically on a velvet fainting couch, drinking her cherry-flavored blood. Mrs. Brown hopped up to curl by her feet, accepting slivers of rare beef as a mid-afternoon snack.

I wondered, not for the first time, if it was possible to be a vegetarian vampire.

“If you keep worrying so much you’ll give yourself wrinkles,” Aunt Hyacinth scolded me gently.

“I can’t help it.”

“Darling, your brothers survived the change. As a Drake woman, you are far stronger than they are. Just think, you’ll wake up so refreshed. There’s no feeling like it.” She fanned herself with a silk fan decorated with white feathers. “And meanwhile, you ought to enjoy the courting.”

“Courting? Aunt Hyacinth, they’re drunk on my particular stink. And they don’t care about me, they just want me to give them little fanged babies or whatever. And they want the power of the Drake name. Not exactly romantic.” She fanned harder. “But it can be, if you use it to your advantage.”

“No thanks.” I loved my aunt but there were certain topics we would never, ever agree on. Case in point: boys. Also: boyfriends, husbands, flirting techniques, and the supposed comfort of steel-boned corsets.

Aunt Hyacinth leaned over to run a hand over my hair. “It amazes me how beautiful you are sometimes, even with that loose, messy hair.” Her expression was dark, fierce. I’d have been terrified if I didn’t love her so much. “No harm will come to you, Solange, not while any of us live.”

And that scared me most of all.

CHAPTER 6

Lucy

Saturday afternoon

I left a note on the fridge door and snuck out, keeping the car in neutral until I was clear of the driveway. I knew they would have wanted to send someone with me, but I was incidental and I didn’t want Solange to have one single minute of less protection because of me. Besides, I waited until the brightest and sunniest part of the day, and I only needed to make sure the cats had enough water and food. Everything else I needed was in town, in nice public crowded places or right on the Drake compound.

I knew Geoffrey would be in his lab now that he had a sample of the Hypnos powder. It really rankled that I’d been the weak link. Kieran had a lot to answer for, the jerk.

I drove to the last house on the compound and around to the barn set out back.

Geoffrey had been using it as a lab for decades. I knocked on the door before going in. It was a lesson I’d had drilled into me since I was old enough to know that it was okay to ignore certain explosions and black smoke out of this particular barn but that it was never okay not to knock. Geoffrey might hear my heartbeat approaching, but some of his experiments were delicate and dangerous and he wasn’t always able to step away from them or close them down for visitor safety. And though I usually preferred Hyacinth’s closet for my explorations, Geoffrey had helped me pass my biology exam last year and I was hoping he’d be as helpful today.

“Come in, Lucy,” he called out, already sounding distracted. I’d have to make my questions short. The barn was outfitted with the most modern equipment, acres of counters and refrigeration units and at least a dozen fire extinguishers. Geoffrey was standing over a tray of beakers, wearing a creased lab coat.

“Hi. I know you’re busy so I’ll be quick,” I said, wrinkling my nose at the familiar odor of formaldehyde and rubbing alcohol with a tinge of hay. There hadn’t been hay stored in this barn for nearly a hundred years, but apparently that dusty smell never really went away. “Any progress with the Hypnos?”

“These things take time, you know that.” He added a drop of blue liquid to a slide and slipped it under a microscope. “Just like I know that’s not why you’re really here.”

“I’m sorry I let him get away.”

He looked up. “It’s hardly your fault— even I would follow orders if I got a mouthful of Hypnos. It’s very potent, Lucy.”

“I know.”

“Now, what can I do for you?”

I bit my lip. “I want to know about the bloodchange.”

“You know about the bloodchange.”

“No, I don’t. I know it’s the big bad and everyone’s freaked out, but that’s it. And every time I ask Solange, she tells me not to worry.”

“And she’s right.”

“Please.” Apparently I wasn’t above begging. “I just want to understand it so I can help.”

He smiled gently. “Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do to help, my dear.

This is Solange’s battle.”

“Solange is my best friend,” I said stubbornly. “So it’s my battle too.” Something in my face must have convinced him I was going to make a nuisance of myself until I got what I wanted, because he finally sighed and said, “All right, Lucy.