“I have a six-foot-four shadow. I’m just glad it’s Troy. I like Griffin well enough but … you know.”

“Not exactly a sociable guy.” He hesitated. “But I’m glad you have someone. It makes me feel better.”

I could tell it didn’t really make him feel better. If Lucas was Benicio’s right-hand man, Troy was his left. To give me his most trusted guard when trouble was brewing? It said I was in more danger than I thought.

“I just hope he’s not going to follow me too closely after you get back,” I said.

“We’ll make sure he doesn’t.”

“About that. Us. The others … I don’t know how you want to … handle it. Should I talk to Paige? You talk to Lucas? Or are we going to see how things go first … ?”

“I should be the one to tell them. If they have a problem with it, they’ll want to talk to me. Their biggest concern will be you—that you’ll get hurt …” He trailed off and my heart started to thump.

“Adam?”

“Still here. Just thinking that maybe we should hold off telling them.”

It thumped harder.

“Just for now,” he continued. “Until we’ve had a chance to talk.”

Really thumping now. “Okay.”

Sean popped his head in the door. “Anytime you’re ready.”

I said good-bye to Adam, and tried to push the call from my mind as I followed Sean into the hospital room.

When I saw Bryce, my gaze shot to Sean to gauge his reaction. All I saw was relief, meaning Bryce must not look any worse than he did last night.

Dead. He looked dead.

I’ve only been to a few funerals in my life. I avoided them growing up. It brought back too much; not just my mother’s death, but the thought that she’d never had one, that she didn’t even have a grave, that I had no idea where her body was.

As I got older, I went when my presence meant something to someone else. Like when Adam’s grandmother passed on. Or when Paige lost a childhood friend to cancer. Or when a cousin of Lucas’s died in a car crash.

This was like seeing my brother laid out in a casket. His tanned skin was sallow. His blond hair was combed wrong. His hands were folded on his stomach. His lips were unnaturally red, as if a mortician had applied lipstick.

Was he breathing? It didn’t look like it.

The first thing Sean did was fix Bryce’s hair.

“Hey, Bryce,” he said. “I’m back. I brought Savannah with me.”

I moved up alongside him and said hello. Sean talked a bit more to him, somehow managing to relate the last twenty-four hours with no mention of dungeons and sham trials, the death of our grandfather, and the utter devastation that had befallen the Nast Cabal.

When Sean stopped talking, we sat with Bryce for a minute. Then the doctor poked his head through the door, and instead of waving him in, Sean motioned him out of the room.

“But I’d like to hear—” I began.

“Out there,” he said.

We followed the doctor to the office where I’d called Adam. Sean explained to me that he’d insisted no one discuss Bryce’s condition in the room. Comatose patients sometimes could hear what was going on around them, and he wasn’t taking that chance.

“His condition is stable,” the doctor said. “At this point—”

“That’s all we can hope for,” Sean cut in, uncharacteristically impatient. “Yes, yes. I know. Until you know what it is, you can’t treat it.”

“We are making inroads,” the doctor said. “We’ve finally been able to analyze his DNA and pinpoint the modifications that were made.”

“Modifications?” I said. “To his DNA?”

Sean’s nod to me was curt, just short of “shut up and listen.” Then he caught himself and squeezed my arm. “Sorry. This is all new to you, isn’t it? Bryce’s genetic code has been altered. It sounds scary—it is scary—but we presume the changes are supernatural in nature. That’s what happens, for example, when a vampire is reborn or a werewolf is bitten. A makeover at the genetic level.”

“That’s what it is, isn’t it?” I said. “Vampire.”

“In part,” the doctor said. “It’s a hybrid, which is why it was so difficult to analyze. There’s also werewolf.”

“Werewolf and vampire?” Sean said.

“Yes, and a third strand, too. We’re … we’re still running tests on that. We have preliminary results, but I’m reluctant to say anything yet. Even if we are correct, we’ve seen no signs that it’s had any negative effect, despite what one might think—”

“Zombie,” I said. “That’s the third type, isn’t it?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

It wasn’t a lucky guess. We had known from Cassandra’s WWII run-in with Giles that his immortality experiments combined vampires with zombies.

The doctor hurried on, “But we’ve seen no signs of deterioration. The Boyd Cabal has been experimenting with zombie DNA for years, in hopes that it might unlock the secrets to immortality, and they’ve made some advances. We think some of their researchers were involved in this. It seems—”

He stopped and cleared his throat. “Mr. Cortez will want to explain all that. It isn’t my place. But I can assure you that your brother’s condition is stable. We are, however, going to keep him in the coma, while the DNA transformation continues. That seems … best.”

“What happened?” I asked.

The doctor looked over sharply. “I didn’t say—”

“Something happened when he woke up, didn’t it?”

The doctor looked at Sean with anxious eyes.

“Please answer my sister,” Sean said.

He hesitated, then said, “We are unfamiliar with the transformation process of a bitten werewolf. Fortunately we have someone here who has taken one through the Change successfully.”

“Jeremy Danvers,” I said. “With Elena.”

He hesitated. “Yes, sorry, I forgot you are acquainted with them. We are also fortunate that Mr. Danvers was in the building when your brother woke and with his assistance—”

“What happened?” Sean said.