“Anyway, look, I have a question for you,” I said, not wanting to give her another opportunity to upset me. “I was just talking to my uncle. He was mentioning all of these weird things happening.”

  “You’re going to have to be a little more specific,” Jacquelyn said.

  “Crimes,” I said, trying to not let my thoughts get ahead of themselves. “Theft. Arson. Stuff like that.”

  She gave me a quizzical look.

  “It just sounds … out of the ordinary for home,” I said. “I know there’s always been minor stuff. But I just wanted to know if it’s gotten worse. If people have noticed.”

  “This is what you call me about after months of no contact?” she asked, but I knew her well enough to recognize the edge in her voice.

  “Something is going on, isn’t it?” I asked.

  Jacquelyn licked her lips. She looked down. “Yeah. Some stuff has been happening.”

  A thrill of terror filled me, and I homed in on her, turning up the call volume to make sure I didn’t miss anything that she said.

  “A couple of weeks ago, there were reports of a break-in at the bank in town. In the middle of the night. And they managed to steal not money, but documents. Banking records. It was all over the news.” She frowned. “Then a few days later, there was a report of Kabold’s bar getting set on fire.”

  Her face darkened. “A couple of people who were there that night were killed.”

  The skin on the back of my neck stood up. “It’s hard to believe that anything that level of awful could happen in Onondoga Springs.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jacquelyn replied, her air of arrogance gone for the moment. “What’s really weird is that the victims were all found in the woods, not the bar – and killed the same way.”

  “How did it happen?” I asked, really not wanting to know the answer—and acutely aware that I could probably take a really good guess.

  “The police won’t release the information to the public,” she said, shrugging.

  “Who was it that was killed?”

  “That’s the other odd thing,” she said. “There’s no connection between them. They aren’t related, they are all different ages, men and women.” She paused. “People at school think it’s a serial killer.”

  How screwed up was the world that I now lived in that I seriously wished it was a serial killer doing this?

  “That’s pretty scary,” I said before I could stop myself.

  “I’m sure they’ll catch whoever it is soon,” Jacquelyn said dismissively.

  Silence again.

  Jacquelyn kept glancing away from the camera.

  “Look, Cassie, let’s not try and pretend that everything’s good between us, okay? You have your life, I have mine. I think we’ve been fine without each other, you know?” She couldn’t look at the camera as she said it.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  She forced a sympathetic smirk. “Bye, Cassie.”

  And she clicked off the call before I had even said goodbye.

  I lay back on my bed, my stomach clenching in a way that had become all too familiar.

  Things had been too quiet. Life had been too easy. I had been waiting for something like this to happen ever since that night with Roxy and her crew.

  But I’d expected it here. In Tampa.

  Not back home.

  It was vampires. It had to be. And the reason why the police weren’t telling anyone about how the people had died was because they had been drained of all their blood. That sort of information was the stuff of nightmares, and not suitable for the six o’clock news.

  I felt sick. It couldn’t be a coincidence that it was happening in my hometown. Too much had happened, and I had pissed off too many vampires to not recognize the signs.

  “Well, this is bad,” I muttered to the ceiling.

  I knew I had better get my phone back to its designated jail cell before Mom realized what was going on.

  But before I went back downstairs, I made sure to type out a text—

  I need help. Meet me here at midnight—and sent it off to both Mill and Iona.

  Chapter 5

  I feigned exhaustion around eleven while watching a movie with Mom and Dad, and retired to my room. I had no interest in hanging around them when I knew Mill and Iona were coming. I also knew that Mom would check on me at least once before she went to bed, and sure enough, fifteen minutes to midnight, she stuck her head through my door.

  I was prepared. I was lying in bed, my blankets pulled up to my shoulders, reading one of my favorite books by the light of a small LED cat nightlight that she had gotten me for Christmas the year before.

  “Still awake?”

  I didn’t look at her. “Just finishing this chapter.”

  “All right.” But she didn’t leave. “It’s sort of strange, all of that stuff happening back home, isn’t it?”

  I looked over the top of my book at her. She wasn’t looking at me; she was staring into the distance, like when she was talking to Uncle Mike. Arms folded, she chewed her bottom lip.

  She was really worried about it. Mom might’ve gone a little hardline lately in her approach to me, but I still wanted to make her feel better.

  But how could I? After all of the lies that I had told her, saying that everything was going to be all right seemed … cruel. Because it really wasn’t okay. Something was going on in the vampire community up there—something that could very well have started right here. With me.

  I also couldn’t tell her that I spoke with Jacquelyn. Aside from murdering me for taking my phone when I wasn’t allowed to have it, she’d ask way too many questions about our little talk. I didn’t need that, and I didn’t want it, especially when I was already sad about my frayed relationship with Jacquelyn.

  “So, they have no idea what’s causing … it?” I asked.

  “Uncle Mike’s friend is a police officer,” Mom said. “Says it’s the most bizarre string of occurrences the town has ever seen. And I can’t say I remember anything like this … ever.”

  She seemed to come to her senses, forcing the worry off of her face, replacing it with a small smile. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  “Sure,” I said. She believed it about as much as I did.

  “See you in the morning, kiddo.”

  I tried to stifle a yawn, real this time. “Yeah.”

  “Love you,” Mom said.

  “Love you, too.”

  And she closed the door.

  I tossed the covers back with a whoosh and stood, still fully dressed.

  I looked out the window onto the small outcropping of roof beneath the windowsill, and saw Iona’s silvery blonde hair before she could rap on the glass with a perfectly filed fingernail. I slid open the window—which I had taken to greasing with WD-40 to keep it from squeaking—and slipped out.

  Iona stood off to the side, the wind catching her long, perfectly straight tresses, sending them swirling around her face. She looked like a supermodel in her white silk blouse that tied up the back and her skin-tight black denim pants with tears in the thighs.

  Mill lingered on the opposite side of the roof from her, dressed in all black and his leather jacket, glowering at Iona.

  “What’s she doing here?” he asked.

  A breeze wafted the scent of his cologne at me, a subtle but oh so heady mix of leather and bergamot.

  “I could ask the same thing of you,” Iona said, jutting her chin in his direction. Her expression was perfectly forbidding, cold and pointed.

  I glanced between the two of them and realized that while I had been relying on them both for my survival, I didn’t know how much they knew about each another.

  I also realized that I was playing with fire. I had never considered if they would get along. Just because they’d both helped me with Roxy didn’t mean that they would choose to do so again—together.

  “Look, whatever this is between you two, I need you to put it aside for a second and listen to me,” I said. “My mom got a call from my uncle back in my hometown in New York. There’s been weird stuff happening. Crimes. And they’ve found bodies.”

  “You suspect vampires,” Mill said. He slid his hands in his pocket.

  “I do,” I said, and explained what Uncle Mike had said about them being pale and foreign.

  “Foreign is interesting,” Iona said. “What did he mean?”

  “You’ve got to understand that the town I’m from is really small,” I said. “Anyone who isn’t from there is ‘foreign.’”

  “Must have been a shock moving to Tampa,” Mill said wryly.

  I ignored him.

  “I’m guessing that it’s also got to do with how they dress. He called them ‘Eurotrash.’”

  “Ah,” Iona said. Apparently she got it.

  “Well dressed, snobbish,” Mill said. “Act like they’re better than anyone else. Sounds familiar.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Roxy and her gang are dead. Are you telling me that most vamps are like her group?”

  “No,” Mill said, trading a knowing look with Iona. “But a lot of vampires do have money, since they have centuries to accumulate it.”

  “And, as you know, most vampires are not in the same camp as we are, believing that we should embrace our humanity instead of fight against it,” Iona said. “People are cattle to them. You don’t trouble yourself worrying if a cow doesn’t like your attitude.”

  “I understand all of that,” I said, and then a lump formed in my throat. “But why are they showing up in my hometown? And now?”

  Mill looked down at his boots.

  Iona stared at me, unblinking. “You called us here to run your theory by us? You already know it’s no coincidence.”

  “That was my guess,” I said. “Draven’s hunting me. Based on where I told him I was from.”

  Mill looked back up at me, concern evident even when half his face was lost in shadow.

  “Remember?” I nodded at Mill. “He asked me at the party.”

  “He did, but you weren’t very specific,” Mill said.

  Iona looked skeptical. “Draven has connections literally everywhere. And we still don’t know how much he actually knows about Cassie.”

  “Not very much,” Mill said.

  “From what my source tells me, he’s still looking for ‘Elizabeth,’ not Cassie. So he hasn’t discovered your real name yet,” Iona said.

  “Then how did he find the right town?” I asked. “I mean, it has to be him; why else would vampires all of the sudden start causing havoc right there? Of all the small towns in New York State?”

  “Murders, arson … it’s as if they mean to draw attention,” Mill said. “Stir the pot enough to get you to notice.”

  “Okay, so what?” Iona said. “Draven sends hunters to your hometown to shake things up, and you want to … what? Feed yourself to them? Make it easier for Draven to find you?”

  “I agree,” Mill said. “This is a trap, Cassie. It has ‘dangerous’ written all over it.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Let them destroy my town?”

  Iona scoffed. “Why not? It doesn’t affect you.”

  “The hell it doesn’t,” I said. “What if they find my uncle? My mom’s sisters, my cousins?”

  Iona sighed, shaking her head. Mill just furrowed his brow.

  “I get that the decision would be easy for you both,” I said, “But I can’t just turn my back.”

  “You’d be playing right into his hands, Cassie,” Iona said, hair blowing over her eyes.

  “Cassie,” Mill said, far more gently, “This is like a chess game, with players who are of a higher power than you can imagine. So please …”

  I glared at him.

  “I understand. Truly, I do. Trust me. But you’re going to have to hope he gives up and moves on. And he will—eventually.”

  I glanced out over the backyard. It was easy to feel safe halfway across the country. Easy to feel empowered with my resume of vampire slayings behind me. But those meant nothing. I had been lucky. I should have been killed. Or turned. It was only because of these two that I hadn’t.

  So why was I so willing to ignore the advice of my vampire mentors when I knew that they were right?

  “Fine,” I said, feeling like I was choking, and I caught the look of relief from Mill, and triumph from Iona. “You win. I’ll stay out of it.”

  For now, I didn’t add … to anyone but myself.

  Chapter 6

  I had fitful dreams after Mill and Iona left, disappearing into the night. Their warning stayed with me. But I didn’t know if it was possible to think objectively about this. It was one thing to get involved with the vampires in Tampa. It was an entirely different story to open myself up to those in a different state.

  In one dream I was racing through a dense forest, with nothing to light my way except the moon. Everything was eerily silent; I couldn’t even hear the sound of my own footsteps as my feet pounded against the hardened dirt. It was as if I was watching it all through someone else’s eyes.

  There was no end to the woods. No wind rushed past me as I ran, no bite of cold or burn of heat. It was a void, pressing in on me from all sides.

  Mill appeared from behind a tree, trying to bar my way. He was all shadows and darkness, his eyes the only brightness about him. I turned away and kept running.

  Iona stepped out from behind another tree, her hair like liquid moonlight spilling over her shoulders. Still I did not stop.

  The first sound reached me. It was a distant ringing, almost like a bell. It echoed all around, filling me as it swelled to a crescendo.

  I gasped, sputtering, my hair in my mouth.

  The ringing continued, broken by several seconds of silence in between chimes, echoing the thundering of my heartbeat.

  I opened my eyes. It was dark, and I was lying in bed.

  The ringing was not from my phone, I realized, but my mom’s, muted through the walls and doors.

  Squinting, I checked the time on my clock. Three thirty.

  I heard Mom open their bedroom door and step out into the hall to avoid waking Dad. So much for that, though. If the phone’s ring had woken me, it definitely would have woken him.

  “Hello?” Her voice croaked with tiredness.

  I lay as still as I could. I wanted to be able to hear whatever she was going to say.

  “What?” Mom said, her voice suddenly more awake.

  I closed my eyes, gripping my blankets tight. Not good news.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  My mind started to race. Who could it be? Was it Grandpa Paul? Great Aunt Edna? Was it Kyle, who was serving in the military in Iraq?

  “Okay,” Mom said, putting on her lawyer voice. She was shutting the emotion out.

  It was really bad, whatever it was.

  “He’s in the hospital?”

  I heard my heart pounding in my ears, could feel my pulse thudding against my neck as I stared up at the ceiling.

  “Is he stable?”

  A moment of tension.

  “That’s good,” she said.

  Faint relief came over me at that. At least someone wasn’t dead.

  “I can call Kathleen,” Mom said. “Yeah, I’ll call her right now.” She said a short goodbye. Then there was quiet, for a long time. I waited, my breath held, staring up to the ceiling with unseeing eyes in the night. My heart thudded. If not for the vampires I kept crossing paths with, I’d have cursed its betrayal, threatening to drown out Mom’s whispered words when they came.

  Finally, someone answered.

  “Hi, Kathleen? I’m sorry to bother you this early, but I just wanted you to know that Mike was in an accident.”

  No.

  My heart sank. I closed my eyes, bidding back tears. I’d spoken to him just a few hours ago.

  “He’s okay, in the hospital in stable condition.” Another pause as Kathleen asked the question I, too, wanted answered: What happened?

  “Becky said that he was in town with some of his friends on his way to play poker when he was attacked by someone out on the street. One of his buddies found him and rushed him to the hospital. He didn’t lose too much blood, but …” Mom took a shaky breath.

  “He was just telling me earlier tonight that there have been all of these strange new people in town, and he thinks they’re the ones causing all of these problems in town. There have even been a couple of murders. Becky was terrified that this was another attempt.”

  My poor Aunt Becky. She was having to deal with way more than she should ever have to, watching her brother go through something like this.

  “No, he didn’t get a good look at his attacker. He wished he had. He wants to press charges.” Mom let out a small laugh. “He can’t be too hurt if he’s that angry, you know?”

  Hand clenched into a tight fist, I punched the mattress.

  Enough was enough. I couldn’t sit back and let more people get hurt. My fears were rightly placed.

  If Draven was trying to sniff me out, then he was going to face the full wrath that was Cassie Howell.

  I was going to New York.

  Chapter 7

  Mom was in court all day, and Dad had a twelve-hour shift. Good: it allowed me to use my brand-new Florida’s driver’s license and drive the car to school long enough to be counted for home room. Then I headed out through a side door before first period.

  Xandra caught me before I slipped away.

  I gave her a brief run-down. That was all I had time for though. The rest, I promised to tell her later, as I tried to extricate myself from her presence.

  “No way,” she said. “You aren’t seriously going to go all the way to New York?” She stared, incredulous. I shrugged, turned—

  “Cassie, you're crazy!” she called after me. But she didn’t try to stop me, instead finishing, “Call me later!”

  I made a mental note to thank her for being the best bestie I could’ve hoped for, then I ducked out of the doors into the bright Florida sunshine, threw my sunglasses on my face, and jumped in the car.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22