Chapter 11

Despite all its efforts, the Fiesta’s engine was no match for what was under the hood in my sister’s Lexus, and every time we hit a straight patch of road she slid easily ahead of me. But I’d driven the route from Providence to Newport more times in the past few months than she probably had in the last decade, and I knew every passing zone, every banked turn, and every side road that I could slide down and make up a minute while she fumed at a light. She was also restricted by the apparent desire to not overly flout the speed limit and risk a ticket, which helped keep us close enough that fifty anxious, sweaty minutes later, she was less than a car length in front of me as we squealed down Ocean Drive and turned into our mother’s driveway.

She was out of the Lexus first and running toward the front door, and I didn’t even turn the Fiesta off as I stumbled out of the driver’s seat and chased her, ignoring the steam that was rising from under its hood as I raced across the white gravel drive and took the pretty marble steps in one bone-jarring jump. I could feel the throb of my mother’s presence upstairs, but Chivalry wasn’t there—a frightening thought, and my heart pounded even harder at the knowledge that I’d be arguing for Matt’s life without the help of my brother.

Inside the foyer, I caught sight of Prudence’s disappearing figure as she darted down the hallway that led to the back of the house. I hesitated for a moment, unsure why she was going in the wrong direction when the pull of my mother’s presence was clearly coming from upstairs. But I shook my head, thanking my own unusual good luck, and ran toward the marble staircase that swept elegantly to the second floor.

I’d just reached the landing halfway up the stairs when an enormous crash and a scream echoed from the direction that my sister had taken, and I turned around and was pounding down the steps and toward the sound before I even stopped to ponder what could possibly be happening. The truth was that I had no idea, so I simply let the instinctual knowledge that whatever side trip Prudence had chosen could not possibly bode well for me drive my decision-making process.

The sound led me to the small butler’s pantry that Madeline had constructed around the basement door that led to my host father, Henry’s, cell. A member of the staff was always on duty here, making a show of polishing my mother’s incredible assortment of silver while actually standing guard over the most closely guarded secret of the house. Now the door to the basement was hanging open and the staff member on guard, Patricia, an older woman who’d been in my mother’s employment since her teens, was rolling on the ground, her upper body hunched around her arm, which was bent at an unnatural angle. Her polishing rag and one of the largest soup tureens lay on the parquet floor beside her.

“Oh, Mr. Scott,” she gasped when she saw me, even in extremis being unable to call me by my first name. “Your sister—” And then she looked at the yawning door. Whoever was posted in the butler’s pantry had control of the key that unlocked the door to the basement—it was a position given to only the most trusted of Madeline’s staff members, the ones who had been with her the longest. If she said that someone wasn’t allowed downstairs—even one of her own children—then whoever was posted there would obey. The key was still sticking out of the lock—apparently Prudence had taken it from Patricia and let herself in.

I shouted loudly for help, and, already hearing the scattered footsteps of some of the other staff, hopped over Patricia’s recumbent form and ran down the basement steps as quickly as I could. There were plenty of people on hand at any hour who could hold Patricia’s hand and call an ambulance, but whatever was going on down there was something that could only be left to the family.

At the bottom of the steps was the kind of serious security door preferred by banks or secret military prisons on television. Normally it opened only after it had scanned an authorized thumbprint, but apparently my sister hadn’t been on the short list, because now the heavy metal door had been ripped half off its hinges and hung drunkenly from the ones that remained. I pushed my way past the remains and hurried into the sitting room of my host father’s caretaker, Mr. Albert.

Mr. Albert was built along the same lines as a Sherman tank, and in the years before he came to work for my mother he had earned a living as a professional wrestler. I’d known him since infancy, and even on my wiggliest days as a toddler, when he told me to be quiet, I’d obeyed. Now, like Patricia one floor above him, he was pulling himself off the ground. One full wall of his sitting room was made completely out of glass so that he could observe Henry’s behavior at all times, and through the glass I could see my sister walking quickly toward the enclosure where my host father lived.

I yelled my sister’s name, but she didn’t respond. I watched as she walked across the red line painted across the floor that no one except Mr. Albert or my mother were allowed to cross—largely for our own safety.

In his cage, Henry prowled as Prudence approached him. With his patrician features and dark hair with dignified wings of gray at his temples, Henry could’ve passed for any of the Boston Brahman politicians that my mother regularly entertained over dinner, except for the white surgical scrubs that he wore and the complete lack of sanity in his eyes. While Henry had fathered me in the traditional sense, every drop of blood that flowed through his veins belonged to my mother in a very literal way; he had been bled out and had her blood pumped into him, a process that had altered him physiologically right down to the DNA, leaving him changed enough to breed with my similarly changed host mother, but it had shattered his mind, leaving him pathologically homicidal. Over the years that he’d been imprisoned in Madeline’s basement, even as he lived in a plastic cube with every interaction monitored more closely than the moon landing, he had killed two people.

And he was my tie to humanity, his life the last barrier between me and the full transition. My host mother, Grace’s, suicide had begun the process, and Henry’s death would finish it.

A horrible suspicion filled me, and I ran past Mr. Albert, calling Prudence’s name again, but she didn’t even glance backward. Reaching out with both hands, she gripped the edges of the door that kept Henry contained, and with a visible effort ripped it open, peeling it back from its locks like the top of a sardine container.

Henry was loose the moment the door was wide enough for him to pass through. Prudence reached for him, her deadly intent clear, but the changes my mother’s blood had wrought on Henry’s body revealed themselves when he moved quickly out of the range of her hands, then drove one fist into her stomach with enough power to knock a vampire more than two centuries old back and against the wall. The sight of that froze me where I stood—I’d faced a host before and with Suze’s help I’d killed him, but this was Henry. Respect for his strange twilight part of my existence had always been thoroughly twined with the danger he posed to me. I’d never touched either of my host parents—they’d always been strange, piteous, yet frightening presences behind separating walls. And when Henry raced toward me with a speed that was not quite a vampire’s but all too close, I found myself unable to move.

But he wasn’t coming for me. I felt the breeze as he moved past me, close enough that I could’ve touched him had I not been as useful as Lot’s wife post-saltification, but his target was Mr. Albert. With the loyalty of twenty years, Mr. Albert had pulled himself off the floor where Prudence had thrown him, collected his stun gun, and come to do his duty and contain Henry.

There were medals on the walls of Mr. Albert’s sitting room from a grateful nation that attested to his courage, but there was fear on his face as Henry came toward him. I finally moved, realizing the danger, but too late. Mr. Albert’s stun gun did its job, administering a jolt of electricity that filled the room with the smell of burned ozone and singed hair, but even as Henry’s shoulders spasmed, his hands never stopped moving, ripping at Mr. Albert’s chest with unnatural strength, just as his mouth closed on Mr. Albert’s throat, then opened again as he began his best attempt to eat his jailor alive. And then Mr. Albert’s screams filled the room.

I wrapped my hands around Henry’s broad shoulders and yanked backward as hard as I could, but he gave a low growl and held on with all the stubborn strength of a dog with a bone.

I couldn’t move Henry, and the wet, masticating sounds he was making were a horrible complement to Mr. Albert’s screams. I threw all my weight into pulling Henry, managing only to shift both of them a few inches, as Henry was not loosening his grip.

“Prudence,” I screamed, desperate enough to appeal to her. “Help me!”

She was there then, her face unreadable as she responded to my plea, and somehow the two of us pulled Henry off, and with a grunt she flung him off Mr. Albert and a few feet away. Mr. Albert fell to the ground, and I dropped to my knees, desperately trying to decide where I should press my hands and administer pressure in the mass of blood that was now his throat and chest, even as his eyes rolled horribly and only small, strangled noises emerged from his throat.

“What are you doing?” I begged my sister, putting my hands over Mr. Albert’s heart almost at random. “Why are you doing this?”

Then I was suddenly lifted by the collar of my shirt and shaken with enough force to feel my brain slosh in my skull. My sister’s face thrust just an inch away from my own, and she glared into my eyes as I hung from her hand like a misbehaving puppy.

“This is for your own welfare, Fortitude,” she ground out as she glared at me, “and I will not have you continue to interfere!” With that she threw me hard, and for a second I was completely airborne before I slammed against the wall, my head giving a sickening thud. I slid down, dazed and blinking, all the breath knocked out of my lungs and unable to do anything except watch as my sister stalked forward toward where Henry was crouched.

Henry fought and even landed a few more blows, but with no further distractions my sister quickly emerged on top. Long cuts on Henry’s face and arms oozed unnaturally dark and viscous blood, and when my sister wrapped one hand around his throat and drew her other back for the killing blow, Henry actually seemed to relax in her grip and wait for the inevitable.

But the blow didn’t fall—Prudence’s hand was caught and held by Madeline, who had moved so quickly that in my rattled state I hadn’t even registered her approach. Now my tiny, ancient mother stood holding Prudence’s hand, and her rage was so deep that for the first time in my life I saw my mother’s glowing blue eyes change to black pools.

“My will was clear,” Madeline growled, and neither her Barbara Bush haircut nor her conservative pink housedress could conceal that this was an alpha predator. Those long, fixed fangs gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lights. “Why have you crossed me?”

Prudence didn’t loosen her grip on Henry’s neck, and her needlelike fangs were fully extended when she snarled back at my mother. “Whether it is sentimentality or ego that holds you back, it is enough. Fortitude’s transition has been held back for two decades, and I am saying enough. Perhaps it is too late; maybe he’s ruined—more human than vampire. But I am putting a stop to your games.”

With her free hand Madeline swiped at her daughter, and Prudence dropped Henry to block it. Henry lay on his side, not moving as far as I could see, but that dark blood was staining even more of his formerly white scrubs, and I was unable to see from my vantage point whether he stayed still out of passivity or because of injury.

Madeline and Prudence had now locked hands, each pushing against the other with enough effort to outline every muscle in their arms. Both women were sweating heavily enough that their hair looked like they’d just emerged from the shower, their hands shaking wildly with their effort. For an endless moment neither could move the other and they were locked in place, but then there was movement and it was from my mother. It was so slow that at first I thought I was imagining it, but then I realized what I was seeing—Prudence was pushing our mother’s arms backward. She was winning.

I saw the moment that Prudence realized it herself—the flare of triumph across her face. But then Madeline gave a low growl that seemed to emerge from the floor beneath her feet, and her black eyes began to glow. When she pushed again, it was with a strength that my sister couldn’t match, and Prudence was forced back and then down. First into a small crouch, then down until her knees touched the cement floor and she was kneeling before my mother, gasping with the effort. Madeline continued pushing, hard resolve on her face, until an awful cracking filled the room and Prudence’s hands flopped backward on identically broken wrists.

A howl of pain emerged from my sister’s throat and she seemed to fold inside herself. My mother stood still for several heartbeats, her chest heaving as she wobbled on her feet. Those gleaming black eyes bled down again to her natural blue, but somehow her eyes seemed duller than usual, as if the conflict had exhausted her on more than a physical level.

Madeline stared down at Prudence as if nothing in the room existed, from me crumpled against the wall, just barely able to lift myself to my elbows, to Mr. Albert’s mangled body, now horribly still, to Henry, still crouched where my sister had dropped him. Her rage was gone, and when she spoke to Prudence, our mother’s voice was actually tender. “My darling, my dove, my daughter,” she crooned, looking down at Prudence. “So strong, and almost ready to leave my nest. But not today, love.” And one of her hands flashed out and another crack filled the room, followed immediately by my sister’s agonized scream as Madeline broke her leg at the thigh, the bone protruding horribly from the wound. “And not tomorrow,” Madeline continued, her voice still gentle even as she kicked out with one foot and Prudence’s ribs snapped. “My will is still your law.” She looked down at my sister and then leaned down to run the tips of her fingers so lovingly over Prudence’s cheek. There was a strange, fierce pride written across my mother’s face. “But soon, dearest, very soon now,” she promised. Then she straightened up, or as straight as her age-slumped shoulders could achieve, and with a stern nod said, “Now go,” in a tone that brooked no dissent.

And Prudence went. There was no walking on her horribly broken leg, so my sister crawled, pulling herself one painful inch at a time across the floor. My mother didn’t say another word, simply watching my sister’s agonizing progression. I pulled myself into a sitting position as she passed, my head finally ceasing its spinning, and Prudence looked at me just once as she crawled out of the room, leaving a long, red trail behind her.

My sister had once joyfully sent me to what she had hoped would be my death. Over the past few days she had been my strangely willing ally. And now I had stopped her from killing Matt and then Henry. In that one look there had been rage, plus a venomous dollop of bitterness and betrayal, but there had also been something else in the way that she had looked at me, something that my mind shuddered back from even naming. Because what she’d done tonight in defying our mother, she had done, somehow, in my name and for my sake. I shivered at the sight of what I’d seen in that look, because part of it had been the same kind of love that I was used to seeing from Chivalry, and it terrified me. I watched in silence as she left.

Madeline came over to me, pressing her wrinkled hands against my face and cataloging every injury, clucking as she saw the long slashes that the skinwalker had left in my forearms an hour and a half and a lifetime ago. But apparently finding me in no truly concerning condition, she gave me a small pat on my head and went to where Henry lay.

Irritation crossed her face as she looked down at him, and she poked at the open wounds that Prudence had given him with one finger, testing how deep and serious they were. Henry didn’t blink even when her questing finger dipped to the second knuckle, instead just lying limply and staring at her. Madeline gave a grumpy huff when she finished assessing his injuries.

“Back to your cage, Henry,” she ordered flatly. “You’ll need my attention, but I’ll put you back together later.”

Like a puppet, he stood at her command and shuffled back into his cage, stepped around its ruined door, and crossed to its center, where he sat down heavily. His weird gaze found my mother again and watched her, unblinking. I’d never seen my mother interact with my host parents before, and it was disturbing, as if her presence had removed those last shreds of a personality that still clung like spiderwebs to the inside of his brain.

Ignoring her creature, Madeline finally crossed over to Mr. Albert’s body, leaning down and pressing her palm briefly to his forehead. “Ah, Albert,” she sighed, “faithful to the last.” The regret in her voice was real. I only wished that the regret had been more than that of the lady of the manor memorializing the death of a loyal hound.

“Tell me why this happened.” My voice sounded strange in my own ears. It was hoarse, as if I’d been screaming, but I knew that I hadn’t been. And there was no entreaty or request—it was a demand. I’d never used that tone with my mother. I hadn’t been aware that my voice was even capable of that tone in the same room as my mother.

Madeline swung her head toward me and slowly straightened up from Mr. Albert’s body. Whatever she saw in me was enough that when she answered, she didn’t bother to pretend to misunderstand me. “Your sister wished to complete your transition.”

“Now tell me the rest,” I said. “Tell me what she meant about my transition being held back. Tell me what she meant by it ruining me. Tell me how you made me different. Tell me everything.”

“Everything, my darling sparrow?” Her eyes narrowed and became speculative. “Perhaps, my son. Perhaps.” She held out one deceptively fragile hand, the skin pulled tight against the knuckles and age spots dotting it. “Give me your arm, Fortitude. Escort me back to my rooms, and we will have a conversation.”

I hauled myself painfully to my feet and the room spun around me at first, but it quickly steadied. I touched one hand tentatively to the back of my skull and could feel the blood matting my hair, but after a moment I felt better. Not good by any stretch of the imagination—every part of my body felt battered and various levels of painful or sore. But I could walk, and I went to my mother and offered my arm in the best gentlemanly manner that my brother had drilled into me. We walked out together, and it quickly became apparent that there was more than etiquette at play here—in sharp contrast to how she had come down to the basement, now my mother was distinctly weak and wobbly, more and more of her weight resting on me as we continued. The walk to her rooms was slow, and as we arrived back into the main house we were surrounded by a horde of the staff members, all quietly and efficiently descending with mops and scrubbing rags to remove all signs of the conflict that had taken place. I saw one woman down on her hands and knees, carefully wiping up the blood trail that my sister had left as she passed this same way. It ended at the top of the stairs, so I could assume that some of the staff had carried Prudence the rest of the way to her old rooms. A pair of grim-faced men armed with tranquilizer guns brushed past us and headed down the stairs into the basement, followed at a distance by a small fleet of outdoor staff members carrying sheets of plywood to serve as temporary doors. But there was no running or yelling, and every staff member we passed nodded their heads and greeted us respectfully.

Eventually we reached Madeline’s mother-of-pearl-gilded sitting room, and I gently assisted her into her favorite pink satin armchair. She relaxed into it with a grateful sigh, for once relaxing the excellent posture that had been drilled into her from centuries of corsets. There was a red light blinking from a small, innocuous device on her side table that I had never quite noticed before, and I realized that Mr. Albert must’ve hit the panic button in his room at some point, which was how she’d known to come downstairs and save the day.

I eased myself down onto the sofa, not worrying whether I might leave stains on it. People had died tonight. The sofa could be reupholstered. I watched my mother and waited.

For a moment Madeline paused, seeming to sink even farther into her armchair. She gestured to the table in front of us, where her favorite Sevres tea service was set up on a tray, the pot still steaming gently. Apparently this was the activity that she had interrupted to come downstairs. Without saying anything, I leaned over and poured a cup of tea, then passed it over to her. She nodded her thanks and took a long sip, then swallowed carefully and began speaking.

“Our kind has always been slow to mature, slow to reproduce.” Her voice was slow and almost academic, and I hung on every word. “When my grandfather was young, it was not uncommon for a vampire to boast four offspring over the course of a lifetime, but by the time I was ready to leave my own nest and establish a territory, two offspring was something to strive for. I came to this new land, where no other vampires lived, and when I was ready I brooded—and was rewarded with Prudence. I followed all the old traditions with her—when she was born, I killed both of her host parents, and their blood was her first meal when she was less than an hour old. And she is everything that I as a parent could’ve wished for, everything that our kind hold ideal—she is intelligent and vicious and a survivor.”

She paused and took another long drink from her teacup. I measured what she had told me and said, “But that’s not how you made me.”

Madeline set the teacup down carefully in its saucer. “No,” she agreed. “Because Prudence is my pride and my joy, but she is not what our species needs.” She put the saucer decisively down onto its tray and sat back in the chair, her posture perfect and elegant again, and steepled her fingers. “Humans have always vastly outnumbered our kind, but that is as natural and acceptable as deer outnumbering wolves. They were not a threat. This began to change when technology developed and the humans became more organized. Our kind slipped into the shadows, just as most other sentient or magical species did, and any who did not at once learned their lesson during the Inquisition or the witch burnings. To many we are a myth, and that is safe. But it has never been possible to hide our existence from all—some are useful, and when properly deployed can serve in their own way or maintain the secrets. But others know what we are, and seek to kill us. As technology passed from wooden clubs to steel swords, from swords to pistols, those who sought to kill our kind found success easier to attain, and there were those who died. When I was a child in my mother’s castle, our kind did not find this a cause for concern—many who died were young or stupid or weak. The strong remained, and we fought among ourselves for territory or prizes, not fearing a decline in our kind at first, for too many assumed that stronger offspring would be brooded to replace the dead. And there were so many that were foolishly squandered and lost . . . my own first fledgling, my little girl, killed at barely half a century over a squabble. I left England then. . . .”

She went silent for a long moment, frowning. I didn’t say anything. She almost never talked about Constance, my sister who had died in England before Rhode Island had even been granted the royal charter that brought it into existence. Then Madeline seemed to shake herself out of older thoughts, and continued. “I crossed an ocean, settled in a new land, had another daughter to replace what I’d lost, but I was paying attention. And even we who live as long as we do can stand to learn the lessons of a new age and join them with the lessons of history. There were wolves in the forests of England when I was a child—great wolves. But they were long gone at the dawn of the 1800s, hunted to extinction. Other extinctions were happening in this time, and I realized that our species was very precariously perched. We are long in maturing, longer in reproducing. As great as we are, we are vulnerable.”

This made sense to me. “An apex predator,” I suggested. “Like a great white shark.”

Madeline nodded. “Precisely. The words for what we needed would not come until Darwin’s studies, but I had already realized before the Beagle sailed that what we needed was to change. To adapt. So when your brother was born, I killed the host father at birth, but I left the host mother alive until he was twenty. I discovered that her life held his transition at bay—your sister, like me, transitioned naturally as she left childhood and passed through puberty. But for your brother it did not happen until the day his host mother died.”

I stared. I’d known for months that something about me was different from the average vampire, but I’d had no idea that my brother was also different. “Chivalry . . . ?”

“Yes. And you can see the differences. His lack of fixated self-interest, his devotion to his wives, the real love he feels for them. This is different. The bonds between vampires are always strong from parent to child, but less within the sibling nest—more from socialization than instinct—and beyond that there is rarely anything.”

I was confused. “So, by leaving both Henry and Grace alive . . . by having Jill and Brian raise me . . . you wanted me to be able to love?” The thought set my foundations, not to mention everything I’d ever thought of my mother, reeling.

Madeline chuckled softly, amused. “You make me sound like such a romantic, darling. No, love for your fellow man and the empathy that seems to hound you to the point of immobility were side effects that must be lived with.” The smile disappeared from her face, and she was entirely serious again. “No, my darling. I wanted you to have self-control, and an understanding of humans and their behavior that your sister and I, and even your brother, lack.”

“Did your experiment work?” I asked.

A slow smile that had nothing to do with humor and nothing particularly nice about it spread across my mother’s face. “Who can say for sure, my darling? Transition, despite your sister’s best efforts, has not been completed. Who can know what butterfly will emerge from your chrysalis?” I shuddered as the realization of how much I could lose, and how close I’d come to losing it tonight, filled me. Madeline’s sharp eyes caught it, and her smile widened. In deceptively gentle tones, she asked, “Now, why don’t you tell me what action you took that so enraged your sister that she would defy me in such a way? I find myself quite curious.”

There was no point trying to lie to her or to sugarcoat the situation. I knew that Prudence would be only too eager to fill in any gaps that I left, and in the worst way possible, so I forced myself to tell my mother the unvarnished truth about what had happened with Matt, what he had seen, and how I had stopped Prudence from killing him. The smile was long gone from Madeline’s face when I finished—she was grim, and her lip had curled back from those long fangs. Clearly she was very unhappy and the focus of that unhappiness was on me, not my sister. There was a long silence when I finished, broken only by the soft sound of my mother tapping a nail thoughtfully against one of those heavy fangs. It was a creepy sight and an even creepier sound. I waited, barely able to breathe, knowing that Matt’s life hung in the balance.

When Madeline finally spoke, it was slow and almost reluctant. “You are close to an adult,” she began, her blue eyes considering as she assessed me. “I will let you make this decision—but remember that he and his actions are your responsibility now. If Mr. McMahon is dangerous to us, you will have to kill him. Not me. Not your sister. Not even your brother. You.”

I nodded as a surge of relief filled me, followed almost immediately by an equally strong rush of dread. Everything rested now on whether I could convince Matt to keep quiet and hide the explosive truth that he’d seen in the clearing. I wasn’t sure if I could live with myself if I had to kill Matt—frankly, I wished I could be sure that I wouldn’t be able to—but at least this was a chance. Such a slim one, but if Matt could be persuaded not to talk . . . if, if, if. But it was a chance, and I grabbed at it with both hands, even if its edges were as sharp as knives.

“Okay,” I said simply.

All of the energy seemed to drain out of my mother, and she leaned completely back into the chair, almost sinking into the cushions. Her blue eyes were strangely drained, and the color looked almost gray. Exhaustion was suddenly clear in every part of her, as was her immense age. She waved one thin hand vaguely. “Off you go, then, my darling. Much to do. Your brother can handle everything else here.” A moment later I could feel the thump inside of myself that indicated that Chivalry had just entered the mansion, and I wondered how long my mother had been aware of his approach.

I left quietly. Madeline’s eyes were already drooping as I eased the door closed. I hurried down the hall, knowing that I needed to get back to Providence as soon as I could and see what was waiting for me on that side. I passed Chivalry on the staircase. From the expression on his face my brother clearly knew that something was very wrong, and he gave a wordless shout at the sight of me, but I shook my head and moved past him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not slowing down. “I can’t stop and talk. Mother will tell you everything.”

The Fiesta was still running in the driveway where I’d left it. Thankfully, the engine had stopped steaming, but when I put the car in gear and headed out the driveway there was a very new and deeply unhappy rattling sound from the engine, a clear sign that there would be many consequences for what had happened tonight. I pulled out onto Ocean Drive slowly, babying the car, and praying that it would get me all the way home. I couldn’t imagine what kind of figure I would present to a AAA tow driver.

I’d shoved the Colt under my seat for safekeeping, and now I retrieved it and dropped it on the passenger’s seat after checking to see that the safety was engaged. Then I picked up my phone and called Suzume, wondering what had been happening in Providence during my own adventures in Newport.

I could hear the question in her voice the moment she answered on her end, but she didn’t ask whether Matt was doomed or not. Instead she simply told me that they were both in my apartment, waiting for me. Lilah was gone, having had to take Felix and Iris home. I thanked her and let her know that I was on the road and that I’d be there as soon as I could.

“Oh, and one last thing,” Suze said just as I’d been about to hang up. “Apparently your Fiesta is hot.”

“What?” The Fiesta had been called many things, but never that.

“That’s how Matt knew where to find us. At some point he stuck a GPS tracker on the Fiesta. When you talked with him this morning he realized that you were still holding out on him, and he spent the rest of the day tailing us. So that’s how he was able to arrive like the cavalry.”

“Shit,” I said, but I was too tired to put any force behind it. I’d wondered briefly how Matt had somehow found us, but had frankly had far too many other pressing topics on my mind (primarily how to keep him alive) to fully explore the topic. “Okay, I’m coming back.” We exchanged good-byes, and I hung up.

The drive back was very slow, the Fiesta making progressively louder noises of protest as we went. I was exhausted, my head splitting from my trip against the wall, the slices on my arm throbbing, and a thousand other sore spots making themselves known in a general miasma of misery. And I would’ve gladly spent a year in this condition, with no hope of even a bottle of hydrogen peroxide to clean out my cuts, in exchange for not having to face Matt.

When I finally limped home, the Fiesta gave a sputtering rattle when I turned the key in the parking lot of my building. I gave the steering wheel a pat—it was very clear that the Fiesta would need a long visit with my mechanic before it drove me anywhere again. Matt’s big Buick was in the parking spot next to mine, so it was clear how Suzume had gotten everyone away from the park.

I climbed the three flights of stairs to my apartment very slowly, but finally there was no putting the moment off any longer, and I let myself into the apartment.

Matt was tied to a chair in the middle of my living room. Suzume’s creepy hostage kit was still riding in her duffel bag in the trunk of the Fiesta, but she had apparently been quite willing to MacGyver herself a solution, and Matt was tied up with several of my long tube socks and the two formal ties that usually lived in the back of my closet. It should’ve been funny, but the closed, hostile expression on Matt’s face when he looked at me kept any part of it from being humorous. The left sleeve of his shirt had been cut off, and there was a clean white bandage wrapped around the spot where the half-blood elf had cut him with the butcher knife.

Suze was sitting on the sofa, within easy grabbing distance if Matt showed any signs of wiggling out of his bonds, but she got up immediately when I came into the room, her face very carefully set in neutral lines.

I paused for a long moment at the door. I’d spent the entire drive over thinking about what I would do and what I could say, but all of my carefully prepared speeches flew out of my mind.

“Suze,” I said quietly. “Can you give us some privacy?”

Those dark eyes bored into me, trying to figure out what I had planned, but I knew that she failed, because I didn’t even know myself. Then she nodded and walked past me and out the door. I heard her footsteps going down the steps as I pushed the door closed behind her, and I realized that she was actually doing what I’d asked—going far enough away that she couldn’t hear what we said.

I pulled another chair away from my battered table and sat in front of Matt. He still said nothing, just studying me with those opaque cop eyes of his.

I took a deep breath and started talking.

It wasn’t what I’d planned, but at that moment I did what felt like the only right thing to do—I told the truth.

I told him the truth about the Grann murders. I told him the truth about how Jill and Brian had been killed. I told him the truth about what I was, and the things that lived in the world under a veneer of normalcy. I told him everything.

As I did it, I knew that it was probably the stupidest thing I could’ve done. I also knew that it was the only thing I could’ve done.

He didn’t say a word, simply listening stone-faced as I upended everything he’d woken up knowing this morning. And when I was done I leaned forward and untied him, then sat back and waited for his response.

At first he just looked at me, as if he’d never seen me before in his life. Then he leaned forward, very slowly and deliberately, and put his hand on my jaw. I knew what he was looking for, and I opened my mouth, forcing myself into passivity as I felt his thumb push my upper lip aside to reveal my teeth. I waited while he examined me, and when he finally took his hand away from my face, I said quietly, “I don’t have the fangs yet. But I will when I’m older.”

“Did Brian know what you are?” It was Matt’s first question, and it struck me hard. Unable to speak, I just shook my head.

“How many people know about . . . about all of this?” Now Matt got up from the chair and began pacing the room, and I could see the first edges of anger rolling in, like dark clouds before a storm.

“A few,” I said. Then, looking at him, I repeated urgently, “Matt, you can’t tell anyone.”

“Or what?” His voice was cold as he glared across the room at me. “Your sister will kill me?”

“No.” I swallowed, then said the words. “It would have to be me.” Matt froze in his steps and stared. “That was the deal I made tonight to keep you safe. But you have to be careful.”

His face was frozen. “Would you do that, Fort?” Matt asked slowly. “Would you kill me if I was a threat?”

The question hung in the air between us. I paused, then said, almost begging, “It’s not just my safety, Matt—” And I broke off because suddenly Matt’s cop mask broke and I saw what lay beneath—the hurt, the stricken betrayal—and I knew the mistake I’d just made. “Damnit, I can’t just act for myself!” I yelled.

“But that’s who I always acted for, Fort. For you.” Matt’s words fell between us like stones. His voice dropped, became very quiet, but I shivered at his expression. He meant every word. “Don’t call me,” he said. “I’m not a danger to you. But we’re done. Right now, this second. We’re done.”

I started to say something, anything, trying to deny what had just happened, but he wasn’t listening to me anymore. I reached for Matt when he crossed the room past me, but it was as if my hands didn’t even exist, like I wasn’t there anymore. Then he was out the door, closing it gently behind himself, and his footsteps echoed briefly from the hallway and were gone.

Matt was gone.