Sloane Briallen

I was in the woods. It was always these fucking woods. Redwoods and pine trees stretched into the sky, the tops swallowed by darkness. The ground around me was covered in moss and ferns, all blanketed by a layer of pine needles.

“Why is it always here?” I growled. One of the worst days of my life on fucking repeat. What was the nightmare this time? Would I spend the whole dream searching for Mickey and Bell? Would I find them dead? Worse, would I find them alive?

“What the hell?”

My heart dropped into my stomach at the sound of that voice.

It was an alive dream. I turned slowly, dreading what I would find.

Two dead men. My brothers.

Mickey was so much bigger than I remembered. The last time I had seen him, he had been so scrawny and tall. So hunched into himself, trying to make himself as small as possible. So intimidated by everything around him.

But now, he stood with confidence and strength. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt, baggy but still very poor cover for the cords of muscle on his biceps and shoulders that stretched out the fabric. The sweatpants lay almost flat against his stomach, a slight curve of muscle beneath it.

He held himself differently, but his face was the same. A little gaunter than it had been, his cheekbones standing out in stark contrast to his sunken eyes. But his hazel green eyes were bright, if tired. His hair, past his ears now, was a bright reddish-brown. It made me want to run my fingers through it; it looked so soft.

Bell had changed, too, but not as much as Mickey. He had always been more confident and bulkier. He played soccer in high school, so he hadn’t been a hulk of a man, but he had been muscular.

Now he was bit more like a barrel, his chest wide across and his thighs the size of tree trunks. He looked like he belonged in a powerlifting competition. He wore looser T-shirt and sweatpants, but on him the sweatpants looked more like yoga pants—leaving nothing to the imagination. He was a brick shithouse of a man.

His chestnut hair curled around his ears and across his forehead. He was shorter than me, maybe by a couple inches. The height difference had never stopped him from knocking me out and he looked even more capable of that now.

They both looked so tired. It was a familiar look. I couldn’t place it at first until I realized their exhaustion was what I saw in my own eyes every time I looked in a mirror.

It was probably why I avoided mirrors so much.

“Sloane?” Bell croaked. He had been the one to speak originally.

I knew it wasn’t a good idea. I knew this was a dream. I knew I would wake up and they wouldn’t be there.

But I missed them so fucking much.

I barreled into them, pulling them as close as I could. Elation swelled in my chest, but my throat tightened. I smelled wood smoke and their unique combination of lemongrass and cedar as I held them.

They returned the embrace. Compared to them, my body was tiny and slender. They enveloped me in their arms, smothering me. The height differences between the three of us were awkward, but we made it work.

“We miss you,” Mickey whispered into my ear.

“So much,” Bell murmured into my shoulder.

A lump formed in my throat, and I pressed my lips together as hard as I could to keep them from trembling. After a moment, when I trusted myself to speak, I pulled away to meet their eyes and asked, “Can you miss people if you’re dead?”

I felt them both freeze against me. Bell met my gaze with warm brown eyes, biting his lip. “I guess that would be what you thought.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. I only ever saw them in my dreams, but this felt so different. They didn’t usually talk to me about After they disappeared.

“You’ve been gone almost two years. They’ll find your bones behind our house one day.”

Something dark flashed across Bell’s face, his forearms straining against skin as he balled his hands into fists against my shoulders.

Mickey put a hand on Bell’s shoulder and looked at me, taking a small step back but leaving a hand on my waist. The look of heartbreak on his face made me feel sick. “Fuck, I hate this.” His voice was tight.

I looked down, biting my lip. “Me, too. But if it meant I could see you . . . I would sleep forever.”

There was no answer to that.

I looked up at the trees. “It’s always this fucking place. Where we found your clothes after you disappeared.” Said clothes weren’t in the dream, for once. Usually they were, and they were bloody.

“Yeah, we hate coming back here, too,” Bell muttered.

“What—”

A new voice spoke. “This is a place where your dreams overlap. It’s the only place I could find all three of you.”

It had been almost eleven years, but I still recognized that voice as if I had just heard it minutes before. I turned wildly, searching for the source.

She was just as beautiful as I remembered.

She was a few inches shorter than me, and she was curvy. I hadn’t gotten my body type from her. Nor had I gotten my dark hair or pale skin from her. Hers was auburn blonde, and she was tanner than me. In fact, we hardly looked anything alike.

Except the eyes. Those were bright green and almond.

I had always had my mother’s eyes.

“Mom?” I breathed.

Mickey and Bell gasped.

“Hi, honey,” she said, smiling at me. She looked at Mickey and Bell. “Boys.”

I rarely had dreams about my mom. Usually if she was there, it was a memory. Though I guess this was still par for the course since those dreams usually also involved Mickey and Bell.

But I had never had a dream like this. I hadn’t dreamt new dreams about my mother in years. Or new dreams about Mickey and Bell. They were always the same recurring horrors—losing my mother, losing Mickey and Bell, finding any one of them dead.

She hugged me. “Honey, I’ve missed you so much.”

I hugged her back. “Mom . . .” Any other words were lost to the ache in my throat and the sting behind my eyes. I couldn’t convey the way my heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest. Or how, even though I didn’t need to breathe, it felt like there wasn’t enough air.

I clung to her, tears falling.

She pulled away gently, putting her hand to my face. It was so warm. “Sloanie,” she smiled, kissing me gently on the forehead. “We don’t have much time. I must do this now or never. I have something to give you.”

“What?”

She glanced behind her, as if she was looking at someone. She looked back at me. “Quick. Honey, I love you so much and am so proud of you. You’ve pulled through so much. And I don’t care that you’re a vampire.”

With two hands, she traced a circle around my neck. What was left when she pulled her hands away was a thin glowing ring made of bright white light that ended just below my collarbones. She traced something else on the glowing ring. When she pulled her hand away, it left five ovals radiating from the same center constructed of thin white light.

She stepped away, pulling my arms off of her as she did. My heart ached at the loss of contact.

“I leave you with this. Soulsilver. It will help protect you.”

The light around my neck solidified into a silver necklace with a flower on it. It was cold against my skin and prickled uncomfortably. I touched it and it zapped my finger like static electricity. I winced.

She turned to Mickey.

“You did the best you could,” my mom said to Mickey. She hugged him. “I love you.” She took his biceps and traced a thick ring of that white light around them. When she pulled away, they solidified into silver cuffs. On each cuff was etched the same flower as the one around my neck.

She turned to Bell. “You, too. You’re a good boy. I love you, too.” She took his wrists and traced bands like Mickey’s around them. They solidified into silver bands that covered his wrist. The flower was carved into these, too.

My thoughts had become muddled and murky. I kept opening my mouth to speak, but the words would disappear just as I tried to say them.

“These will help you in the coming years.” She kissed each of us on the forehead. “You will need them. You’ll face the same danger I faced, and you’ll need all the help you can get. I love the three of you and wish you well.

“What danger?” I asked. The question came out slowly, like cold molasses. My brain couldn’t move any faster to get more out. Everything was getting so hazy.

She backed away, smiling. Suddenly I couldn’t see her clearly anymore, entire limbs behind a foggy miasma. “Honey. I love you. Be good.”

I reached out for her, but she was too far, fading into fog.

“Mom,” I choked. I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes. You weren’t supposed to feel pain in dreams, right? Why did my eyes sting?

“I love you all,” she murmured. Her eyes were soft.

And then she was gone. She faded into smoke. I realized the whole forest was being consumed by the smokey haze. A heavy buzzing sound filled the air. I turned wildly to see the haze was consuming Mickey and Bell, too.

“No!” I croaked, reaching out to them.

They both jolted, as if just realizing what was happening around them.

Ghosts. They were all ghosts.

Mickey disappeared, leaving just Bell.

“No,” I screamed. I grabbed Bell. “Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me.”

His arms went around me. “Not this time,” he said. “Not—”

And then he was gone.

The buzzing rose to consume the room, smoke filling my eyes. I closed them to clear it.

I opened my eyes to see the ceiling of my bedroom.

The buzzing continued and I turned groggily, tears leaking from my eyes as I did.

I finally saw the source of the buzzing. My cell phone. It was ringing.

Tears still stung at the corner of my eyes, but I fumbled for it anyway. Anything to distract from whatever the fuck I had just seen. Even if it was Karhi or Onyx calling about something stupid.

I flipped open my phone. It was a restricted number. Karhi, then. He was probably at a shareholder’s meeting or something. He rarely called from a number that wasn’t his own.

“Why are you calling?” I answered gruffly, trying to hide the way my voice hitched as I answered.

“Sloane?”

That voice. It was like bells. A flurry of emotions rose in my stomach, and I swallowed, trying to push it down. Everything already ached and this made it so much worse.

“Hello? Sloane?”

“Mira?” I croaked. All the air had left my lungs.

“Sloane,” she said. There was relief in her voice. “Hey.”

“Mira,” I whispered. I couldn’t believe it. “How . . .”

“Tracked the payments you’d been making to my account. You fucking bitch.”

I winced. I deserved that. “I’m sorry.”

“If you were sorry, you’d have fucking come back,” she snarled. “I called Mauve and Leah. You haven’t lived there in two years. You disappeared off the face of the fucking earth. Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”

I clenched the fist not holding the phone. The heat in her voice was like electricity against me—prickly and hair-raising. Goosebumps rippled across my arms, clearing away the agony of the dream.

“I can’t believe—” She cut off.

“Mira?” Had we been disconnected?

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah.” She sounded like she was reorienting herself.

“Is something wrong?”

“Mikko is missing. He never came back after a fight night.”

The air around me stilled. I flexed my free hand.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes.” I had heard her loud and clear. Mikko was missing?

“And?”

“And where are Amos and—”

“Amos and his whole group left out of town yesterday. They have some big kidnapping case over in California.”

I nodded even though she couldn’t see it.

“I can’t find him, Sloane.” Her voice trembled. “I don’t know where he is. And Frankie and Genie are back with us.”

I breathed in so fast, it was almost like a hiccup. “What?” I whispered.

“They found their parents dead. Shirley and Rolly—dead. Sloane, I don’t know what’s going on.” Her voice rose hysterically as she spoke, going faster and faster. “I can’t—”

“Okay,” I interrupted. “Okay, okay, okay.” It wasn’t a placating “okay”. It was an I’m-thinking “okay.” And it was meant to make her stop freaking out. It worked and she calmed for the moment.

After a moment, I had an idea. It wasn’t fully fleshed out, but it would be soon.

I checked the clock on my phone, for the first time realizing it was light out. It was close to nine AM. I had my next shift at Swanskin’s starting in four hours. “I’ll be there tomorrow, okay? I’m leaving now.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Maybe early morning the next day. Depends.”

“Okay,” she said. “Is this your number?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s my cell. Call it when you need. I’m going to leave right now. God, Mira, I’m so sorry—”

“Save it,” she interrupted. “Just get here.” She hung up.

I had so much more to be sorry for and she didn’t even know it yet.

I had come home and passed out after work. I was still in my jeans and a long-sleeved fleece pullover. Being dead meant you didn’t really sweat or anything, so I wasn’t going to bother showering.

I grabbed the duffel bag I always kept under my bed. I hadn’t needed it in years, but I still always kept a rotating array of clean clothes in it. As well as some cash that wouldn’t be nearly enough for my trip.

I could tell Karhi wasn’t in the house. It was past eight, so he may have been at a board meeting for one of the companies he had his fingers in. That was usually what he was up to this early in the morning.

I left the room and put the bag down by the front door on my way to Karhi’s room.

It was a simple room. A huge four-poster bed with hand carved wooden posts, covered in a staggering number of pillows, sat in the center of the room. The walls were just bookshelves except for the one that had a pair of French doors in it and an area where there was a door into his walk-in closet.

My focus was his closet.

One side of his closet was lined with suits, dress shirts, dress pants, and shoes. The other side was T-shirts, V-necks, and jeans.

But what I wanted was the safe hidden in the wall in the back corner behind all the suits. It was where he kept some fake IDs and passports for me if I ever needed them. He had given me the combination in case I ever needed to put something in it.

He never thought I would know what to take out of it.

I reached past the IDs and maybe $200 in cash for the false wall at the back of the safe that was actually built into the wall of the closet. I had noticed it when he showed me the safe.

I pulled out the back wall of the safe. There were two guns and his own identity papers. I didn’t want those.

I wanted the rest of the cash he kept up there.

I grabbed the bills and put the guns and documents back, leaving the two hundred in small bills in the main part of the safe. I put the false wall back in and looked at how much cash I had. Someone had taught me what the colors meant for the different straps on bill bundles. Thirty-four thousand. That was more than enough.

I went back into the living room and jammed the money in the bag.

If Karhi wasn’t home, and he was at a stockholder meeting like I thought, it meant the car was here. There was usually a car sent for him for those meetings because that’s what rich fucks did, I guess.

I looked up at the mail holder by the door and his car key was indeed still on a hook. But taking that key wasn’t the right idea. I didn’t want him to notice it was missing.

I went into the kitchen and reached to the basket on top of the fridge. There were a few nuts and bolts and his spare car key up there. He wouldn’t notice that missing for a while.

I locked up the house and took the elevator downstairs.

Karhi’s building was the type of wealthy that I had never imagined I would even be allowed inside of. The floors in the lobby were marble with veins of gold. A water fountain to one side of the lobby took up the full first two stories of the building. The wealth on display in the lobby alone made me uncomfortable.

But I never had to be in it again. I could go back to what I was used to.

I dialed Swanskin’s on my phone as I left the elevators.

“Hello?”

“Niqui,” I said.

“Sloane, what’s up?”

“I know this is super short notice, but I have to go somewhere. And I highly doubt I’m going to be back any time soon, if ever.”

“Does this have to do with that Apache girl from yesterday?”

She meant Corvine. “No. Remember I told you about the family I left behind?”

“Yeah.”

“They need me. I’m really sorry that I’m doing this to you, but I have to go. I—”

“You suck,” she sighed. “But I get it. You need to go to your family. It’s okay. But let me know you’re okay when all is said and done, alright? Even if you’re my now-fired employee, I like you enough.”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

We hung up.

I exited the lobby into the parking garage.

Karhi’s black Jetta was parked at the top of the garage. Opening the door, I knelt to the ground and ducked my head underneath the steering wheel.

It took me a minute to disable the GPS because it had been so long since the last time I’d done it. I got off my knees and climbed into the seat, hitting the push-to-start button.

“I’m sorry,” an automated voice said from the car speakers. “We cannot find your location. Please call—”

I turned it off. I put the car in gear and backed out of the space. Unfortunately, disabling the GPS meant no Sirius XM, but I was sure I’d find a way to fill the time. I had a lot of anxiety about going home. I could definitely think about that for the twenty-five-plus hours it would take me to drive to Phoenix.

This was not going to be fun.

Karhi Emelyn

“I don’t understand how a fledgling refuses to drink blood,” Karhi complained, slamming down his mug on the countertop.

“Hey,” Carry snapped, putting a cloth coaster down and moving his mug to it. “Don’t chip my counters.”

Karhi scowled but he ran his fingers over the granite to make sure he hadn’t damaged the countertop. It was fine.

He had gone over to Carry and Onyx’s place after his argument with Sloane. Their apartment was much larger and more open than his. A penthouse suite on the top floor, it was primarily an open rose marble floor plan with a spare bedroom and master bedroom off of the sides.

The kitchen separated the foyer from the living room, just a hexagon of counters and appliances enclosing the kitchen space. Low-backed stools were spaced evenly around the kitchen, allowing for people to sit while others worked in the kitchen.

Karhi sat at one of the stools, Onyx next to him. Carry stood cutting up strawberries to make a daiquiri. Karhi didn’t get the point of making drinks for the sake of making drinks if there was no blood. He had asked for blood instead.

“It is weird though, isn’t it?” Onyx asked. She was sketching on a pad of paper. “But also, maybe it’s not? Ilona starved all of us our first year. We were always thirsty.”

“Lunette didn’t starve her children,” Karhi replied, picking up his mug to drink. “They still drank anything and everything.”

“I wouldn’t use Luna as an example because too many of her fledglings went into frenzy,” Carry replied. “But . . . I would still agree because our fledglings also drank anything and everything.”

“The other day, she collapsed from not eating.”

“Yeah, you told us.”

“Did I tell you I had to open up a vein and feed her directly?” Karhi ran his hand through his hair in frustration.

Carry grimaced. “It was that bad?” She tossed the remaining strawberries in the blender and moved to grab the rum from her liquor cabinet.

“Yes!”

“Did you make sure she drank when she got home?” Onyx asked.

He rolled his eyes, but he nodded. “She didn’t give me shit about it. For once.”

“Maybe use a lighter touch,” she said, shading in something in her drawing. “Did you make her feel bad for eating?”

He scowled. “No.” He paused for a second. “I did point out that she always has to do something while drinking. Asked if it was so she didn’t have to focus on the blood.”

“If you think she hates drinking blood,” Onyx said, “don’t. Point. It. Out.” She rapped his shoulder with her pencil to emphasize each word.

He swatted at her to make her stop. “What the hell, Onyx?”

“Don’t punish the behaviour you want to see! You want to open another vein because she doesn’t drink again for a week?”

He sneered at her, but she was right. “Fine,” he grumbled.

“If you two just finally dealt with all that sexual tension, maybe you’d get along,” Carry said, putting the lid on her blender and starting it.

“Carry!”

She smirked at him, leaving the blender running to drown him out.

He seethed. Onyx and Carry always sided with Sloane. They told him that he was the one who decided to sire her into a vampire. He was the one who had chosen the most stubborn, childish human as his first fledgling ever. He was the one who had to act like an adult and take responsibility because he was over five hundred, and she was nineteen.

Oh, he hadn’t told them.

When Carry finally stopped blending, Karhi said, “She’s nineteen, Carry.”

Carry stopped in the middle of lifting the pitcher off the blender motor, staring at him slack-jawed. “What?”

Onyx looked up from her drawing, eyes wide. “I thought she was at least twenty-five.”

He rubbed his face. “I did, too, when I turned her. But recently she pulled that out when she was angry at me, and I do not know what to do about that.”

“Ooooh, you’re going to have to go on trial,” Onyx said. Her tone was far more amused than it should have been.

“How close is she to twenty?” Carry asked. She paused. “Wait, is that even illegal?”

He threw up his hands in uncertainty. “I have no idea. Twenty is the age of adulthood for us, but eighteen is the age for humans. Age of consent for humans is lower than eighteen, so, is the age of consent for us lower, too? But usually, consent means sex, and that’s not even what I mean.”

“Isn’t it?” Carry asked, raising an eyebrow.

He glared at her. “No. The power dynamic between a sire and fledgling makes everything imbalanced.”

“Ilona—” Onyx started.

“I don’t care what Ilona does,” he growled. “I wouldn’t ever use her as an example for anything except how to not treat your fucking children.”

Onyx looked away, going back to sketching. Carry, on the other hand, eyed him for a moment before smiling. “I’m glad to see your general rule of sleeping with anything that can consent doesn’t extend to your fledgling.”

He rolled his eyes. “She can’t consent. Things could be different if the fledgling-sire connection didn’t mean you could literally control your fledgling to do whatever you wanted. But as it is, no. The minute she hits her year mark and is a full-fledged vampire, she gets to live her life and get the hell out of mine.”

“If you can get that far.”

He made a noise of irritation in the back of his throat, clicking the ball of his tongue piercing against his teeth. “I’ve never heard of this. If the courts find out, will I get arrested for turning an underage-overage human?”

“That would be a question for Luna,” Carry replied.

He gave the ceiling a long-suffering look. “She’s going to be pissed when she finds out.”

“You cleaned up plenty of her fledgling messes. She can buck up.”

His phone beeped. He checked it to see a text message confirming that his order was ready.

He drained the rest of the blood from his mug and stood up. “I’ll talk to her. But right now, I have to go pick up more blood.”

“Don’t you usually get it delivered?”

“Yeah, but someone went through my whole stash this past week because she has no concept of maintaining her blood levels. She keeps starving herself, which means we went through almost my entire supply for the month to stabilize her. I had to order again so soon that Azlea told me I had to go pick it up myself.”

“Oooh, fun,” Onyx said.

Karhi grimaced, leaving.

Azlea and Thirn only lived a few buildings away from Carry and Onyx, but he still drove to avoid having to carry the blood bags back to his car.

They lived in the tallest residential building in Minneapolis, the Carlyle, on the top two floors. It was a long way up on a single elevator that only went to their apartment.

He stepped out of the elevator into a hallway painted a minty green. The carpet was plush, and he sunk into it when he stepped out.

The door in front of him looked like it belonged to a different time. The hallway was modern, with carpeting and paint and small, polished wood end tables on either side of the elevator doors.

The door was constructed of wood, lines of dark russet and pale cream circling to meet in the centre. Where the different colours met sat an old, burnished iron knocker polished to a dark shine.

He hit the knocker against the door three times. As always, the sound that emanated was far too deep and resonant for iron on wood.

“Come in!”

Karhi pushed open the door and entered into the dead of winter.

The room stretched out before him. Stalactites of ice gripped the cavernous ceiling menacingly with sharp tips. From their thick bases, big, fat snowflakes fell, blanketing the floor before him with snow. The snow drifts rose and fell as if wind had whipped them around the room. Some drifts came up to his waist.

He had known to expect it before coming in, but it was still a marvel. He hadn’t felt even a draft coming from under the door. Magic cloaked the room.

Every wall except the one he’d walked through was made of glass. From the outside, the windows were mirrored, but from the inside Karhi could see the Mississippi a block away.

Ice columns as wide as he would be with outstretched arms grew from the floor. Some were as low as Karhi’s knees, others twice as tall as him.

A small woman stood barefoot on one of those columns. Azlea.

She was as pale as the snow that surrounded her, her crimson lips standing out in stark contrast. Her hair fell to her waist, all the pale blues and greens of glaciers. She wore a white dress that looked like cloth, but Karhi suspected it was made of woven ice.

“Karhi!” she cried out, jumping down and running to meet him. Her dress moved just stiffly enough to give credence to his theory.

She stopped short just before she reached him, eyes wide. She peered up at him, almost two heads shorter than he was.

An uneasy feeling crept up his spine. “What?”

“You . . .” She tilted her head and sniffed. “What is that smell? It’s milky.”

His brow furrowed. “What smell?”

She leaned forward until her face was against his chest. She inhaled. “You smell like sandalwood . . . but the milk. And the lavender.”

A light went on in his head. “The lavender is probably my fledgling.”

Azlea stepped back, her eyebrows high on her forehead in surprise. “Tuhkanharmaa? A fledgling? Since when?”

He took a step back from Azlea. “Do not call me that,” he said coldly.

She put her hand over her mouth in chagrin. “I’m sorry. Old habits.”

He nodded stiffly and chose to move on. “Answering your question, since this past December.”

“Is that why I haven’t seen you?”

“I was busy.”

She looked to the back of the room. where a spiral staircase made of shards of ice the size of him rose to the ceiling. “Thirn!” she called. “Come down here!”

“No! If Karhi wants to see me, he can come up himself!” The voice sounded congested and huffy.

“He’s grouchy. This really isn’t his season. Come.”

She took Karhi’s arm and pulled him with force she shouldn’t have had for how tiny she was. They started up the stairs. Halfway up, the ice turned to stone.

If downstairs was what happened when winter was allowed to ravage a room, upstairs was what happened after winter passed and summer was well underway.

All of the colours of the season gripped the room. Pale green spruce and sweeping fire orange beech skirted the walls and windows. The paw-like leaves of oak swooped down from above over maples burning with red and tangerine. Flame maples, red twig dogwood, and boxwood hugged the ground between the trees creating a thick, brush-like forest.

Anywhere that was bare, creeping thyme grew, sprouted with purple flowers. A gentle breeze blew through the trees. The roof was open straight to the night sky here.

A colourful brick walkway from the stairs led to boulders the size of wrecking balls embedded into the ground. A man as tall as Karhi sat against one of these rocks. Shoulder-length blonde hair reflected strange green and red highlights, and vermillion eyes shone with white and yellow glints. He wore a business suit that normally looked like a second skin on him, he was so comfortable in it.

Today was abnormal because he didn’t look like he could be comfortable anywhere or in anything. His nose was red, his red eyes blood shot. His entire visage created a nightmare of blood staring at Karhi.

“Hello, Karhi,” Thirn said, voice flat and nasal. He sneezed, grabbing a tissue from the box on the ground next to him. A pile of crumpled tissues sat on his other side.

“Hello, Thirn.”

“Thirn!” Azlea cried out excitedly, letting go of Karhi to flutter over to her . . . husband? Karhi had never been entirely sure what their relationship was. “Karhi has a fledgling!”

Thirn’s eyebrows rose from behind the tissue he’d brought to his face. “You?”

Karhi nodded.

Thirn blew his nose. “I want to move to Hawaii,” he said, giving Azlea an unpleasant look.

Azlea waved a dismissive hand at him. “Tell us about your fledgling, Karhi. When will we meet her?”

“I doubt you will,” he said. “She hates vampires.”

Thirn grimaced. “One of those self-loathers?”

He threw up his hands in frustration. “I guess? Not like the religious, self-righteous types. You know why I’m picking up blood so soon after getting it from you? She keeps starving herself.”

Thirn’s eyebrows went up. “A vampire starving herself?”

“I don’t know if it’s because she hates that she drinks blood, or if it’s because she genuinely forgets—”

Thirn scoffed but the sound quickly devolved into a coughing fit. “Fledglings do not forget to drink blood,” he said when he could breathe again.

Karhi shrugged. “I have to monitor her intake. And, you know, I’ve heard that’s normal for a fledgling, because you have to make sure they don’t gorge themselves or kill too many people or whatever. But I don’t think this is normal. I have to monitor her intake to make sure she drinks enough.”

“Did she go into frenzy from not drinking?” Thirn asked, blowing his nose again.

“No. She passed out. I had to open a vein and feed her.”

Thirn and Azlea exchanged glances.

“I’ve never heard of that,” Thirn said. “A starved vampire not going into frenzy?”

“And you’re restocking on blood because she consumes more than she should after starving herself?” Azlea asked.

Karhi nodded slowly. “Yes . . . why?”

“You should talk to your sister, Lunette,” Thirn said. “You clearly know starved vampires need to be given blood directly from another vampire when they get too weak.”

Karhi knew first-hand, and he didn’t want to think about it. His first year as a vampire had been torture. Literally. “Yes,” he said stiffly.

“Of course you do. Ilona is your sire. But the second part, which you may not know since this second half was likely lost on you early in your second life—when they’re back to drinking blood, they can’t drink too much. It’s a shock to their system and can actually kill them.”

“She . . . drank two bags of blood in one go right after I revived her last week.”

They stared at him.

“That isn’t normal?”

“No,” Thirn said. “It is not.”

Karhi stared at them. He had definitely not known that. He had never been interested in siring anyone before. His siblings had sired their fair share, but Onyx, Carry, and Zeren hadn’t sired any in decades, maybe even centuries. And Lunette had put a soft ban on herself from siring anyone since the last incident with her fledglings about thirty years ago. That had put a damper on the campaign for the vampire courts trying to recruit her to make new vampires for them as a Producer.

“What’s her name?” Azlea asked.

“Sloane Briallen.”

Everything in the room stilled. The breeze stopped and an uncomfortable silence fell over them.

“Briallen . . .” Thirn said, looking at Azlea.

“That’s what the smell is,” Azlea murmured, looking to Thirn. “You’re stuffy, but I can smell it. It’s like . . .”

Thirn looked at Karhi. “The irony,” he said. “And you have no idea what you’ve done, do you? The danger you’ve put yourself in?”

“I doubt she has any idea, either,” Azlea shook her head.

“Mmm. True.”

Karhi bristled. Years of listening to his sire talk about him as if he wasn’t even there had left a bad taste in his mouth when anyone else did it. “What are you talking about?”

They glanced at each other before Azlea said, “All we can tell you is to be careful. Both you and she need to be careful.”

“Why?”

“It is not our place to get involved,” Thirn said.

Azlea waved a hand in front of Karhi. His stomach and vision lurched.

When they settled, he realized he had been transported out of the building. He spun around and saw his car parked on the street where he had left it. The back seat was filled with packets of blood.

The muscle in his jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth. What the hell had that been?

Looking up at the building, the top floors looked normal with walls and windows. There was no indication that the roof opened up to the sky.

It was quiet, and nothing stirred.

Frustrated thoughts ran through Karhi’s mind as he arrived in front of the door to his apartment, carrying the boxes of blood Azlea and Thirn had teleported into his car. He set the boxes down, fumbling for his keyring in his pocket.

He hooked them onto his finger and pulled them out, immediately dropping them. He cursed, stooping down to retrieve them.

As he did, he saw a white envelope set neatly against his door. He hadn’t been able to see it behind the boxes.

Curiosity blunted his anger. There was nothing written on the front, just a white, crisp envelope.

He picked it up off the ground and set it on top of the boxes.

He unlocked the door and hauled the boxes back into his arms, making sure the envelope stayed on top. Walking into the house, he found Sloane asleep on the couch, the credits for Top Gun playing in the background.

He almost tripped when he saw her, just barely keeping the boxes in his grasp.

He had never seen her asleep out here before. She always locked the door to her bedroom and tended to sleep when he wasn’t home. She preferred going out during the day.

He fumbled the boxes but kept them all squarely in his grasp, biting his tongue before he could swear. He knew that awake-Sloane was generally unpleasant. Just-woken-up-Sloane probably wasn’t much better.

He glided to the kitchen and set the boxes down. He doubled back to close the door.

As he started to close the door, he heard Sloane sigh. He looked over to see her readjusting herself. She was leaned against one side of the couch, a fleece blanket pulled around her. Her long dark brown hair covered her face, stark against how pale her skin was. Even for a vampire, she was pale.

Absently, he pulled at the ball of his tongue piercing with his teeth. Asleep, she looked almost . . . pleasant. Like she wouldn’t punch him in the mouth for being annoying.

Her eyes opened and she sat up, scrubbing her hair away from her face.

Karhi shut the door behind him, and she started, looking over at him. Her green eyes were alert, as always. If not for her messy hair, she wouldn’t have even looked like she had just woken up.

He felt her uncertainty when she looked at him. She wasn’t sure if he was still angry at her or not.

Right. She had punched him in the mouth. And then two people of unknown magical origins had told him she was dangerous. And then they teleported him downstairs without his permission and didn’t give him a single explanation.

He looked away, stalking to the kitchen. “You should sleep in a bed,” he muttered.

He had expected her to say something along the lines of, “Well then, don’t be a fucking creep and watch me sleep”, but she didn’t say that. Instead, he heard her stand up, murmuring, “Yeah, he’s right.”

She went to her room and shut the door. He heard the lock click into place and then he heard her climb into bed.

He shook his head and started to unload the bags, setting the envelope to the side.

“Dangerous, my ass,” he muttered.

That couldn’t be her.

I looked back down, focusing on the dark wood of the countertop. Dishcloth in hand, I continued my 11 PM round of wiping down the counter.

As I moved, I picked up empty glasses from the bar and set them into the sink. My next move would be to load the dishwasher next to one of the sinks.

I felt eyes on me as I went through the motions. The same cold gaze I had noticed earlier.

No. What would Corvine be doing here? It had been two years since I had last seen her, and almost a full year since I had died. How could she have found me? Supposedly my tracks were well hidden.

Though I didn’t have much faith in the man who had supposedly hidden my tracks. He could have botched it up. He botched most things up.

No, but I hid my own tracks well, too. I had always been good at disappearing. It was one of my magic tricks.

I finished up the counter and moved back to load the dishwasher with glasses.

“Sloane.”

I looked up at the sound of my name. It was said in the tone of voice that said this wasn’t the first time I was being called.

Two women sat on the other side of the bar from me.

One had light brown skin and shoulder-length thick brown hair streaked with purple. She wore a forest green dress that set off her hazel eyes. She looked to be in her late twenties, but if I remembered correctly, she was originally from Turkey circa the Ottoman Empire.

The second had skin so pale it was almost a blue-white. Her hair was white, the top half plaited behind her head, the bottom half left to fall down her back. Red eyes watched me from behind white lashes. It was hard to guess how old she looked, but she was from some northern European country circa some revolution. American or French, I couldn’t remember.

I sighed when I saw them, going back to loading the dishwasher. “What?”

“You know, you’d be less grouchy all the time if you just slept at normal times for a vampire instead of trying to keep useless human hours and going out during the day,” the albino woman said.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I’m just grouchy when it’s you, Onyx?” I replied, closing up the dishwasher and setting it to run.

“Well, you also get grouchy with me,” the other woman said.

I looked up at her. She rested her chin on the back of her knuckles, a slight pout on her dark lips. “There seems to be a theme, Carry,” I said.

Her pout turned into a scowl. “We’re only ever nice to you.”

“Because you also want to get into my pants.”

It was Onyx’s turn to scowl. “You already said no, we’re not going to keep trying. You’re just mean because you and Karhi got into a fight again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, turning to the wall of alcohol behind the bar. I reached for the vodka and set it down before fishing out the Bloody Mary mix from the fridge under the bar. This one was formulated for vampires. Real blood.

“What, did he chew you out again for not drinking enough blood?” Carry asked.

They were right, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. I was already pissed enough that I had collapsed in front of him after not drinking enough blood. I didn’t need his sisters knowing how that fucker had to give me his own blood directly, because bagged blood wasn’t enough at that point.

I gave them irritated looks. “If you stop talking about it, I’ll put two doubles in your Bloody Marys.”

“Ooh, must’ve been bad this time,” Onyx giggled.

“No doubles, then,” I said. “And you get the Skol vodka for that.” I turned back to the bar to grab the bottom shelf vodka.

“Fiiiiine, we’ll stop,” Carry sighed dramatically. “But only if you put Ciroc in.”

I rolled my eyes but set the Skol back and reached for the Ciroc.

As I poured out the vodka, I found my eyes wandering out past the bar top again.

The floors, bar, and booths were a dark wood that gave the room a slick, clean look. The tables were pale wood accented with the same dark wood in the floors. It broke up the monochrome while tying the room together nicely. The walls were painted a muted sage green. Paintings and prints for purchase by local Indigenous artists adorned the walls. I had bought one to hang over my bed.

The coolest thing, though, was the pillars that held up the room. The owner of the bar came from a family that had both O’odham roots as well as Tlingit. She had had artists carve into the pillars and had lacquered over them to preserve them. My favorite was a school of salmon running up one pillar as a bear looked over them hungrily.

My eyes drifted to the woman that had caught my attention before Carry and Onyx arrived.

She was nondescript, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties. Inky black hair fell down her back, covering most of her face. She looked like any other mage or shifter who came into the bar.

She drank a seltzer. I hadn’t served her when she came in. It had been the owner, Niqui Swanskin.

She put a hand around her glass and brought it up to her lips to sip. As she did, for a second, I thought I saw her shimmer, like a bad TV signal. With the shimmer, I saw something black on the edge of the back of her hand, an inch or so below her pinky. It was a tattoo.

It happened so fast, but it was enough.

Why was she here?

“Sloane?” Carry said.

I looked up at Carry, setting their drinks in front of them. “Yeah?”

“Do you have any more of the curly straws?”

“Yeah!” Onyx grinned. “The ones with the bright colors!”

I paused for a moment, glancing at the strange woman. “No,” I said. “We don’t. We won’t, either. Nevermore shall we have those straws.”

As I turned and spoke, I saw what I was expecting. At the word “Nevermore”, the woman shimmered again, this time more noticeably and violently.

I knew it.

“Why not?” Carry asked, pouting.

I shrugged. “We got a messed-up shipment for that Tiki Bar down the street and Niqui kept the straws. She didn’t plan on ordering them again. Ask her.”

I turned from them and headed to the kitchen at the back of the room.

The kitchen was long, one half dedicated to cooking and baking, the other to prepping ingredients. The floors were tiled linoleum in here for easier clean-up, the walls painted a pale cream color, reflecting the overhead lights.

A dark-haired man in his late twenties worked at the grill, while a woman with her hair tied up in a bandana worked at the prep station. We didn’t get a lot of orders for food here since at least a third of our clientele didn’t subsist off of normal food; and the rest normally didn’t order out because their appetites were so large that it was too expensive. One cook and one prep were enough to tide over the customers who did eat.

“Hey, Gracie.”

“Hey, Sloane,” Gracie said, glancing up from where she was cutting bell peppers. She wiped her hands off on her apron.

Gracie was a small woman with short brown hair, a tuft of white at the base of her skull. She shapeshifted into a pony, I was pretty sure.

The chef, Nino, glanced up. When he saw me, he waved.

“Where’s Niqui?” I signed.

“Downstairs,” he replied with one hand, keeping his other on the steak and peppers he was cooking.

“Thanks. Do you need anything while I’m down there?”

“Can you ask Niqui for more oil when she’s counted that off on inventory?”

“Sure.”

I crossed to the stairs descending into the basement.

Niqui had hired Gracie and Nino after I had become a vampire. They had taken some time to warm up to me. Both being shapeshifters left a lot of prejudices.

Gracie had been actively hostile for a while after she started before slowly warming up to me. Nino hadn’t had the chance to be hostile for very long. I was fluent in American Sign Language and had been the one to interview him when he applied for the job. It had thrown him for a loop, not needing to request an interpreter, not needing to rely on his hearing aids, and being interviewed by a vampire. Language barriers made fast friends when you could transcend them.

The basement was one large room divided in two. One half was a freezer, the other half just shelves of food, booze, and consumables.

Niqui was not in the warm half of the basement, meaning her inventory had taken her to the freezer. I found her in there, holding a clipboard with blue fingers. She was shivering.

Niqui was average height, coming up to just under my chin. She kept her dark brown hair short and clipped back, baring razor-sharp cheekbones.

“If I still had them, I’d be freezing my balls off.”

“Then get out. Should’ve had me do the inventory. Air temperature don’t bother me.”

She grumbled a wordless response.

“Hey, Rachel is coming in about ten minutes. Would you hate me if I asked to get off early?”

She eyed me. “Why?”

“I have a visitor,” I said. “I’d rather catch her before she disappears.”

“Who?”

“I think you served her. Seltzer water at one of the tables?”

She looked up at the frozen meat on the shelves before us, considering my request. “Yeah,” she finally agreed. “Alright.”

I grinned. “You’re the best.”

“I know,” she replied. “I need a break anyway, so I’ll work the bar until Rachel gets in.”

“Nino needs oil.”

“Sure.”

I left the freezer, grabbing a ginger ale as I passed by the canned drinks.

I went back upstairs, updating Nino as I went into the bar.

The woman still sat at the same table. I let myself out through the back of the bar and skirted the edge of the room until I came up behind her.

A moment before I reached her, the woman suddenly sat up straight, as if someone had poured ice water down her back.

I thumped the can down on the table.

The woman looked up at me, surprised.

“It took me five years,” I told her. “But you can finally try ginger ale.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You were real good,” I said. “You would’ve kept me guessing. But then you shimmered.” I tapped the area on my hand where I had seen the tattoo on hers. “Your giveaway.”

The look on her face was surprised, eyes wide, eyebrows up, mouth slightly parted—as if she didn’t know who I was and didn’t know why I was talking. But I waited.

Then she smiled. “So, you did do that on purpose.”

“What? The ‘nevermore’?”

Her shoulders went up and she shuddered. “Quit.”

“Quit the act,” I said. “Let’s see you.”

She motioned for me to sit down.

I sat down and little bits of her skin started to turn over, starting from her head and going down. It was like she had scales that flipped and morphed to change the shape of her body. I felt the static discharge of magic in the air around her.

The woman disappeared and, in her place, sat a teenager. Her eyes and hair had darkened almost to black. Her hair was longer and duller, and her skin had darkened to a dull tawny beige. She wore a long-sleeved black shirt and black pants now.

Her fingers grew longer, and the tattoo that I expected appeared. However, there were now identical marks on both of her hands, which I didn’t remember. It looked like a candy cane with the short part curving upwards at the end. The longer ends were facing her thumbs.

I smiled when I saw her. “There you are.”

“And there you are,” she said. She looked me up and down. “You’re a vampire now,” she said. She shook her head. “Of all the stupid things you’ve done . . .”

“I’m the victim,” I argued.

She tilted her head to the side and regarded me with steady eyes. “You have never been the victim.”

I pressed my lips together in a line and felt eyes on the back of my head. Glancing back, I saw Onyx and Carry watching us. They didn’t bother trying to pretend they weren’t.

“But I digress,” Corvine said. I heard the pop and fizz of a can of soda opening. She took a sip of the soda.

Pulling the can away from her mouth, she said, “So, this is what Annie loves so much.”

“Annie loves ginger beer,” I corrected her. “Ginger ale isn’t spicy enough for her. But I figured I’d ease you into it.”

She nodded, drinking more. “This spiciness suffices. The ginger and the carbonation are enough.”

We were quiet for a minute. When I realized she wasn’t going to talk, I broke the silence. “Okay. I’ve waited long enough, Corvine. Why are you here?” I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms.

She set the can next to her seltzer and looked down. She drew the water left from the condensation rings of her glass with one finger.

“It . . . has been rough the past few weeks.”

I uncrossed my arms, relaxing slowly. “Worse than usual?”

She held up her hands, showing me the backs. “I have two now.”

“I noticed. I thought maybe I’d forgotten two marks.”

She shook her head, smiling.

Her smile fell when she glanced at Onyx and Carry. She shook her head. “I don’t like that.”

She waved her hand, and the noise around us muffled. I saw Onyx and Carry’s eyes widen. Corvine had put a spell around us so no one, especially not the vampires with super senses, could hear us. “Vampires are so rude,” she said.

“Seriously. They spy on you and all they do is listen to your business.”

She nodded.

“So how did that happen?” I asked, pointing to her hands.

“Infighting,” she said. “King Rok attacked me.”

I looked up at the ceiling, thinking. Of the animalia, I only knew a few names. “He’s a bird king, right? That’s the only way you got the other tattoo.”

“Crows,” she said. “And he was.”

I had to think about what she meant for a minute before understanding she was correcting my “is” to “was”. “When did you kill him?”

“A few weeks ago,” she said. “And now I have the new mark.” She tapped her left hand.

“So, you get two now. How is it?”

“He had begun to lose their loyalty decades ago. He did not protect them as he should. Pestilence and plague had overcome parts of his kingdom due to his lapses in judgment and there was much death and disease. His attack was the best thing that had happened to his kingdom in a long time. They are better.” She smiled a sad smile. I had never known Corvine to be one to enjoy a fight.

“But I never answered your question,” she said. “You asked why I was here.”

I nodded.

“Things have been difficult. I lost my war general, Catrina, in the fighting and I gained a new kingdom to rule. You can imagine the strain it put,” she said, tapping her temple.

“Yeah.”

“So, I sought you out,” she said. “I knew you left Phoenix four years ago. And I found out where you lived after that. But then, it turned out you left Washington, as well. It was hard finding you, but I did. Few ravens venture south in Minnesota. Crows, on the other hand, are everywhere. I found you almost immediately once I began looking through crows.

“And I came here. Obviously.”

“Yeah,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

She surprised me by reaching out and grabbing my hands. Hers were warm and soft. I froze, uncertain of what the physical contact meant.

“They’re gone.” A wide smile took over her face. It made me uncomfortable, but I was never truly comfortable around Corvine anyway. “Sloane. They disappeared the minute I walked into the room.”

I blinked, eyes wide. “What?”

“That’s how I knew you were different,” she said. “That something had changed about you. And how I knew you were in here. I am completely free,” she said, a bubble of laughter escaping with the words. “There’s nothing here.”

I grinned back at her. “Corvine, that’s fantastic!”

She nodded so hard I thought she might hurt herself. “It’s euphoric.” Her voice was breathy with excitement. “I can hardly believe it. I mean, before, the din would dull with your presence. But now? They’re gone. Everything is gone.”

“But how?” I asked. “How is that possible?”

“Vampires who had abilities before they were turned—”

“They’re amplified,” I realized. “Right. Telekinetics can knock down buildings, velocikinetics can break the sound barrier running.” I pointed at Carry. “She was a velocikinetic as a human.”

Corvine glanced at Carry. I saw Carry and Onyx didn’t like that I was pointing them out. And I’m sure they liked it even less that they couldn’t hear our conversation.

“Yes,” Corvine agreed. “You have something special.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’re a cursebreaker,” she said.

“Is what even happens to you a curse?”

She shrugged. “If you can take it away, who knows?”

“But they don’t go away entirely—”

“But I think,” she interrupted, “that one day you could. If you were ever powerful enough.”

I fell silent. I could break curses? What did that even mean?

“I’m glad I sought you out,” she smiled. She drained her ginger ale. “I was surprised, though, when I tried to find out by listening in at the house in Phoenix, that a word was never uttered of you.”

“Good,” I murmured, looking down.

She looked me up and down, her gaze piercing. Then she said, “They don’t know.” It wasn’t a question.

“The only thing they know about me now is that every two weeks, a mysterious deposit of money appears in Mira’s account. I give her three-quarters of my paycheck and that’s the only contact I have. My boss does it anonymously.”

“I don’t think they would have a problem—”

I stood up, cutting her off. “Of course, they would. There is nothing worse that I could have become.”

“You could be dead.”

“They’d prefer it,” I replied. I felt the magic bubble around us pop and everything became louder. It was distracting for a second, but I reoriented myself. “Any of us would prefer the other dead than a bloodsucker.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” she argued.

“No,” I said. “I know what they would say. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

She sighed. “Sloane. You are too hard on yourself. But I digress.” She liked that word.

I headed for the front door.

“You haven’t asked about—”

“I don’t want to know,” I said before she could finish the sentence. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“She’s okay,” Corvine said anyway. She followed me through the door. “Still angry. But her kingdom doesn’t suffer.”

I had mixed feelings about that. “That’s good, at least,” I finally said. My failed relationship shouldn’t have bearing on an entire kingdom.

“It is.”

We had emerged onto the street across from the Mississippi river. It was a crisp fall night.

Corvine put a hand on my shoulder. “See you, Sloane. Thank you. And remember—”

“I know,” I said before she could finish what she would say.

“—I owe you a debt,” she said anyway.

She said that every time. I still had never cashed in that debt and I doubted I ever would.

“Later, Corvine.”

She rippled again, pieces of her skin turning over on her. She put her arms up above her head and a raven the size of a beach ball took her place. It pushed its wings down and shot up into the air. The night swallowed her up.

Just as she disappeared, I heard the door to Swanskin’s open. I glanced back and saw Onyx and Carry there.

“Who was that?” Carry asked.

“A friend,” I replied. I turned my back to them and left.

I heard the TV before I opened the door to my apartment.

The lights were off, only the glow of the wall-mounted TV illuminating the room. A silhouette sat on a blue fabric couch, legs stretched out onto a matching ottoman.

Karhi looked up as I entered. I could feel when he considered saying something smart to me before looking back at the screen. It was Kitchen Nightmares, and Gordon Ramsay was yelling at a woman about her cold food.

“Blood’s on the stove,” he said.

I didn’t reply, pulling off my boots and setting them on the shoe rack next to the front door. I hung my car keys up on the hooks under the mail organizer.

The dining room was across from the front door, open to the living room. A round dining table took up most of the room. Karhi hosted a lot of dinner parties with his siblings at that table. Or whatever you called dinner parties where the food was just blood.

I passed into the kitchen through the dining room and headed for where a stainless saucepan sat on a burner set to low. Normally we used a glorified formula dispenser called a blood warmer. I had broken it the last time I tried to use it.

The blood was warm but not hot. I drank directly from the pan, tipping it into my mouth. The thirst, normally quiet, flared suddenly as the coppery liquid hit my tongue. I had to stop myself from guzzling it and making a mess as the tremors from the thirst shook my hands.

“You work at a bar that serves blood. If you just drank on the job, you wouldn’t need so much blood when you came home.”

I almost jumped out of my skin at the sound of Karhi’s voice. I hadn’t heard him come in. I never fucking heard him move.

I shot him the finger as I turned to face him, but I didn’t stop. I needed to finish.

Karhi stood in the archway of the kitchen, leaning against the wall, long arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t what I imagined when I thought of a five-century-old vampire. I had always expected someone who only wore suits and carried himself with refined elegance. Maybe longish hair and tall, with a lot of muscles—a lion filled to the brim with barely-contained sexual energy.

He was tall, sure. He carried himself with feline grace, too. But he reminded me more of a serval than a lion. He had long legs and arms with broad shoulders and a slim waist. His hair was wavy ash brown that reached his ears, parted over far on one side of his forehead. He only wore black, including his T-shirt, jeans, and the half-inch plugs in his ears.

He looked more like what a goth teenager imagined a five-century-old vampire to look like. If Edward Cullen had more of a personality, I guess.

I finished my drink, the tremors finally passing. “It already makes patrons uncomfortable that I’m a vampire. I’m not going to make it even more obvious by drinking blood on my shifts.”

“Get a stainless-steel thermos and suck it up,” he replied. He opened the fridge and handed me a fresh bag of blood. It had the Red Cross emblem on it.

He had a point, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I just begrudgingly took the bag and cut open the tube at the top with my thumbnail. I stuck the line in my mouth and drank it like a Capri-Sun, squeezing the bag.

“I still don’t understand how you can drink it cold,” he shook his head, sticking out his tongue in distaste. A silver ball sat in the center of his tongue. I heard the bottom of the piercing clack against his teeth as he did.

“Food is food, whether it’s hot or cold,” I shrugged, turning from him to stick the pan in the dishwasher.

The kitchen wasn’t as big as I would have expected for a luxury apartment. The two of us could fit and cook in it at the same time comfortably (not that that would have ever happened). But it didn’t have an island, or two sinks, or copious amounts of counter space. The appliances were high end, all stainless steel, and the counter tops were pink granite, but there was only enough space to work at the stove and maybe have out one cutting board.

Karhi had left out a mess of tomatoes, celery, and salt. He had probably had one of his sisters over earlier and made Bloody Marys. It was the only thing they drank.

I stuck the remnants of the vegetables in the sink and ran the water and disposal, leaving the blood bag to hang from my mouth as I cleaned up.

“You know, you always have to be doing something when you’re eating.”

I shrugged, sticking the cutting board and knife next to the pan in the dishwasher.

“Is it to keep from focusing on the fact that you’re drinking blood?”

I shut the dishwasher harder than I needed to, turning to face Karhi. “Karhi, you’re on a one-way bus to getting punched in the mouth. What do you want?” I drained the rest of the bag and threw it out.

“Carry called me while you were on your way home.”

There it was. Karhi didn’t hover like this unless there was something he wanted to say. “And?”

“And who was your friend?”

“None of your damned business,” I replied, moving past him into the living room.

He followed me. “You’re my fledgling,” he said, extending his hands out in an over-exaggerated gesture of concern. It made me itch to punch him. “I’m here to teach you about the world of magic and how to be a vampire. It’s my job to take care of you until your year mark! I’m just making sure you’re not involved in anything dangerous.”

I spun around and hauled off, punching him square in the jaw. I had been aiming at his nose, but he moved too quickly. And his jaw was so fucking hard, I pulled away, shaking my hand out.

He glared at me, rubbing where I hit his jaw. Blood trickled down his lip where a tooth had cut it from my punch. “Did you just try to fucking sucker punch me?”

I could feel that he was irritated with my punch. But I could also feel the thing he wouldn’t say—he was impressed that I’d even succeeded in hitting him. Normally when I threatened violence, he saw it coming long before I ever acted on it. He could feel my emotions just as much as I could feel his.

I rubbed my hand. “I would think a vampire with supposed centuries of experience with hand-to-hand combat and war and strife at the direction of his own sire would be able to dodge a punch from me.”

That quenched any pride he felt towards me for landing a hit on him. He licked the blood off his lip (not as sexy as so many movies and books make it out to be, by the way) and gave me the finger.

“She was an old friend I grew up with,” I said, turning from him. This time he didn’t follow me.

“You don’t have any friends!” he called after me.

“Neither do you, asshole,” I shouted back.

“More than you!”

“Siblings are built-in friends, and therefore, they don’t fucking count!” I slammed the door to my bedroom shut.

I fell face down on my bed and growled into the comforter.

My irritation at Karhi had superseded my surprise at seeing Corvine. But as Karhi stomped back to the living room, and his own frustration faded from my consciousness, I found my mind back on her.

She had said she sought me out because she needed help. She had always had issues with hearing voices. There was something about ravens that made their monarchs hear voices. It was why ravens could talk—it was an outlet for those voices. I knew crows could talk, too. The crow monarchs probably had the same issue. And now Corvine dealt with both.

I didn’t envy her.

Now that she knew I could cancel them out completely, this probably wouldn’t be the last time I saw her. I used to be able to dull them at least a little when I was human. She would use me as a reverse form of talk therapy.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that when a little bit of your past comes back to haunt you, oftentimes a lot more of that past comes to join the haunting.

My mouth was dry, tongue like sandpaper. “What?” I said. “What did you say?” Vaguely, I could hear the heart monitor picking up speed next to me.

The deputy looked uncomfortable. He stood in the doorway of my hospital room, in his blue pants and his blue shirt and his stupid blue hat, a gun and taser holstered at his side. He was barely a couple years older than me. I remembered him dully as a senior when I started high school. Kyle Dunphy.

His forehead was slick with sweat, and he licked his lips nervously. The lights in the room made him look like a ghost. But then again, hospital lights made everyone look like a ghost. Foreshadowing, some would call it.

To my right, Leah was taking her turn to sit with me, attention rapt on the deputy. Her hands were knotted anxiously in her lap, frizzed blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“We have to call off the search,” Kyle said again.

“Call off the search?” I echoed quietly. As if I hadn’t heard him the first time. “Why?”

“We can’t keep our resources on this,” he said, looking between me and Leah. “We’ve already gone far past the usual amount of time for search and rescue. It’s been over a week, and we haven’t found a trace of Mickey and Bell.”

Anger washed over me, hot and bright against my skin as I sat up. I fought back another wave of dizziness that threatened to overtake me, leveling a glare at the man in front of me. “You just want to give up?” I demanded. “Mickey and Bell are a part of this community, Kyle. Mickey used to babysit your baby sister.” Next to me, I saw tears rolling down Leah’s cheeks.

“I know, Sloane,” he replied. There was an edge to his voice. Whether it was guilt or annoyance, I couldn’t tell. “And the community will continue to organize search parties. But we are all exhausted.” He motioned towards me. “You’re exhausted.”

He meant me, in this room, sitting in my hospital bed, having collapsed from dehydration and malnutrition two days before. A banana bag and a saline bag flowed down a tube into my elbow, a blood pressure cuff on my arm to monitor my blood pressure every two hours, and a pulse-ox on my finger to monitor my heart rate. I was supposed to be let out today, with strict orders for bed rest for three more days.

“Exhaustion doesn’t mean you give up,” I hissed. “I’m not going to give up on my brothers, Kyle.”

“We’re not asking you to.”

“But you’re asking me to accept that you, our proud boys in blue, won’t help me anymore. You are asking me that.”

He didn’t respond.

“Sloane,” Leah said softly.

I ignored her. “I fucking knew I couldn’t trust you. The minute it gets hard, you give up. Just like cops always fucking do. Fucking lazy pigs,” I spat.

“Sloane!”

“It’s okay, Leah,” he said. I could see the heat in his eyes; I had made him angry. Good. “She’s just having a hard time.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” I shouted, throwing the blanket off my legs and leaping out of bed. My head pounded, and I fought back another wavy of dizziness.

“Sloane!” Leah stood up, grabbing my arm.

I saw Kyle put his hand towards his taser.

“Oh, big man going to tase an eighteen-year-old girl in a hospital? Is that what we’re going to do?” I screamed. I wrenched myself from Leah’s grip, yanking out the IVs from my arm. “Fuck you, Kyle.” I grabbed the IV cart and launched it at him.

Even with how dizzy I was, and how my head hurt, and how dehydrated I’d become, I was still strong.

Kyle dodged the cart, but the bag of saline still hit him in the head, and he shouted out in pain. The cart clattered to the floor. I could hear the drone of the heartbeat monitor from where I had pulled the pulse-ox off.

Leah shouted, trying to pull me back. “You can’t throw things at him!”

“Why not?” I shouted, lunging at Kyle. Leah’s grip was tight this time and I drew up short, wrenching my arm in its socket. My vision lurched, my stomach rolling with it.

Two nurses pushed past Kyle to see what was happening. When they saw the IV on the ground, they glanced at each other.

“Sloane, I’m going to have to charge you with assaulting an officer,” Kyle said tightly, reaching for the cuffs on his hip.

“Oh,” I said, black spots filling my vision. “Are you gonna . . . cuff . . . a sick person . . .”

I heard Leah scream my name before everything went black.