“Are you okay?” Solange practically leaped on me.

“I’m fine.”

She was heading out after her brothers when her father’s voice cut through the foyer.

“Solange.”

She stopped, looked over her shoulder. “They might need help.”

“No.”

“Dad.”

“No. They’re here for you. If you go out there, it will only make things worse.” I knew that look on her face. She was biting her tongue. I knew how much she hated this. Helena was the warrior in the family, had been even when she was winning martial arts competitions as a human, and she’d trained her children well.

Even I’d gotten the benefit of a few tricks, but none of it would do us any good tonight. Still, I was really glad I knew how to break someone’s kneecap and three ways to incapacitate using only my thumb. And to think I used to worry about midterms.

The foyer was warm and civilized, lit by warmly glowing Tiffany lamps. Liam stood between us and the battle raging in the bedraggled garden. He was nearly tall enough to obscure our vision, but we leaned sideways around him. Part of me didn’t want to see what was happening; the rest of me absolutely couldn’t handle not knowing. The shadows coalesced, and I watched fangs gleam and bodies jump higher than they should have been able to. The snarls lifted the hair on the back of my neck.

Nicholas was fast and clever but I’d never seen him like this before. His face was hard as he leaped and dodged, sent his boot into the midsection of a vampire not much older than us, with long blond hair. They both tumbled, but only Nicholas landed on his feet. I felt inordinately proud about that.

All of Solange’s brothers held their own, but only Quinn appeared to be enjoying himself. He grinned even as a fist, moving so fast it was a flesh-colored blur, broke his nose. Blood trickled down to his lip and he licked it. Helena laughed behind him, somersaulting out of the way of a stake and landing behind her attacker. He disintegrated in a cloud of dust at her feet.

“I want one alive and able to speak,” Liam called out. He shook his head at Solange. “Honestly, your mother’s worse than the boys. Helena”— he raised his voice slightly—“leave me one, damn it.”

“Spoilsport,” she muttered before reining herself in. Her flying kick only knocked the vampire into a tree instead of shattering his ribs. Hyacinth made a small sound behind us. The jet beads around her neck caught the light, glimmered.

“That’s hardly ladylike,” she said disapprovingly. Which was amusing since I’d heard the stories of what she did in her spare time— and it wasn’t taking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches.

A vampire fled, disappearing into the woods. One of them shuddered, turned to ash, and drifted into the hedges. The stake tumbled to the ground. Solange’s second-oldest brother, Sebastian, wiped his hands off dispassionately and then turned to help his mother drag the half-conscious vampire she’d thrown into the tree toward the house. Connor was speaking quietly into his cell phone to Bruno.

I pressed my back against the wall as a parade of teeth and feral smiles passed me. When they were all gathered in the parlor, I followed. I went to my favorite purple velvet armchair by the fireplace. Solange stood next to me, her eyes never leaving that of the young man currently being tied up. His shirt was torn, his dark reddish brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. His eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. I wouldn’t have opened them either if all seven Drake brothers were standing around me, glaring. Never mind Helena, who waved them aside with barely a flick of her wrist.

She sniffed once, delicately.

“He smells like kith.” She whispered but shook her head. “Kind of.” Liam frowned, sniffed as well.

“Something’s not right.” His gaze narrowed, sharpened. “Left arm.” We all looked even though I didn’t know what I was looking at. The tip of a tattoo poked out from under his pushed-up sleeve. It looked like a stylized tribal- style sun but I couldn’t be sure.

“Damn,” Nicholas muttered. “Helios-Ra.”

Everyone looked totally bummed out over such a comic- book name. He stirred.

There was a gentle waft of lilies and chocolate, almost right, but not quite. Everyone else was still scenting the air like hunting hounds, nostrils flared.

“What?” I whispered to Solange. “What’s with all the sniffing? It’s creeping me out.”

She didn’t have time to answer because he opened his eyes, suddenly, as if he’d been poked with something sharp. His eyes weren’t pale, not like every other vampire’s I’d ever seen.

They were very black and very hostile.

CHAPTER 3

Solange

“You’re . . . m-mortal,” I finally stammered. I knew Lucy liked to think all vampires had this suave quality, but I so didn’t, and not just because I wasn’t technically a vampire yet. She was the one with the beaded velvet scarves, and I was the one with the pottery clay dried on my pants. Plus, I was totally gaping at him. He was a hunter, and he worked for an organization devoted to wiping us out. The sun tattoo was proof enough of that, underscored by his expression: righteous anger.

Great.

“I don’t get it,” Lucy whispered to me. “Who is he?”

“Not one of us,” I whispered back, my gaze never leaving his. I didn’t know what I was reading there, but it was complicated, what ever it was. I’d heard of the cologne some hunters wore; it mimicked vampire pheromones, to take a potential enemy off guard. We’d believed it completely out in the garden, until he’d had to fight my mother, who would have killed him if my dad hadn’t been so adamant about having someone to question.