Lee grimaced. “You didn’t see my car? It was pulled off by the side of the road just before the driveway to Twilight Manor.”

Bethany gave him a sharp look—well, as sharp as possible with swollen eyelids—and bared her fangs.

“Sorry.” He coughed. “The House of Shadows.”

“How did you even know this was going down?” I asked. “I didn’t say anything about it.”

“Are you kidding?” Lee nodded toward Mrs. Cassopolis. “They got a freaking invitation. It was the talk of the town. Everyone knew.”

“Tell your mother I said to thank her for the Bundt cake recipe,” Mrs. Cassopolis said in a distant voice.

“Right,” I said to Lee. “So you decided to . . . what, exactly?”

He sighed and rested his head against the wall. “I just thought I’d drive out and lurk around the outskirts. Just in case.” He patted the busted light box with his good hand. “I wanted to know if it would work. When I saw the squad car hit the lights and fly out after Jen’s old beater, I figured something was wrong, and I followed as fast as I could.” He lowered his voice. “Cody Fairfax is in the database, isn’t he?”

I glanced in Cody’s direction. “Shh.”

“Sorry.”

“He’s a werewolf, duh.” Bethany dusted herself off. A flaky flurry of burned skin settled around her. “I should have figured that out in high school. Oh, but you’re not allowed to gossip about any of this.” She pointed at her mother. “Or I’ll be back. And the next time, I’ll be angry.”

Lee gave a dry laugh. “This wasn’t angry?”

“Everyone’s still breathing, aren’t they?” She jerked her chin at her father. “Including him. Is he gonna be okay?”

Cody straightened. “Yeah. No thanks to you.” He ran one hand through his hair and looked soberly at her. “Listen, I’m not your enemy. And you’ve got to realize things are different now. For the rest of your existence, you’re just one slipup away from villagers with pitchforks and torches. Okay?”

Bethany shrugged. “Whatever.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know. But this had to be done.” Ignoring Cody, she pinned her father with a flat stare. “You do understand me, don’t you, old man?”

He gritted his teeth. “Yes.”

“Good.”

At Cody’s suggestion, I got Lee onto his feet and into the living room while Cody went to retrieve the first-aid kit from the cruiser. Jen was in the kitchen making coffee because that’s the sort of thing you do when you’re trying to reestablish a sense of normalcy and you have no idea what else to do, and Brandon was playing some kind of first-person shooter military video game with a twelve-year-old’s determined intensity, blocking out the reality of the world around him in which his newly risen vampire sister had very nearly killed his father.

“Korengal Valley Mission?” Lee asked, settling onto the couch beside him with a wince, still cradling his arm.

Brandon glanced at him. “Yeah.”

He smiled. “I might have a few tips for you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Brandon had the mother lode of insider advice on how to advance in Korengal Valley Mission, Cody had Lee’s broken forearm splinted and taped to his body, and Bethany was ready to go back to the House of Shadows.

“Give me a lift?” she asked her sister. “You don’t have to come in, but I’d really rather not call Geoffrey. Or steal your car.”

Hands wrapped around a mug of coffee, Jen gave her a slow, measuring look. “Beth, do you really expect me to believe you’ve been planning this for eight years?”

Her sister shrugged. “Well, not exactly.”

Jen said nothing.

The television emitted staccato bursts of gunfire. Lee and Brandon bent their heads together, murmuring. Cody’s portable police radio crackled and he stepped outside to handle the call.

“I was and I wasn’t,” Bethany said softly. “I mean . . . that’s what I meant to happen at the beginning. That’s how it started, that’s what I went looking for. I got lost along the way. A lot lost. And I’m sorry. I never meant to abandon you. I didn’t. I never meant to leave you alone to deal with all their shit and take care of Brandon. But I’m back now. I was weak for a while, okay? Maybe for a long while, but now I’m strong. You can move out, get a life. Quit worrying about Brandon. I’ll make sure nothing bad ever happens to him.”

Damn. If you’d told me that after eight years of being a sniveling, clingy blood-slut, Bethany Cassopolis would turn out to be one badass vampire, I wouldn’t have believed it. Aside from a few flakes of charred skin clinging to her glossy black hair, she even looked good, already healed from the blast of artificial sunlight.

“What do you think, Bran?” Jen asked her brother.

“About Bethany?” He looked up from his video game console, his face stony. “Are you kidding? I think it’s straight up epic.”

Okay, so apparently I was wrong about the blocking-out thing, and Brandon was just fine with his new vampire sister. I couldn’t blame him.

“Yeah?” Jen tousled his hair. “Okay, then. Are you going to be okay on your own while I run Bethany back out to the House of Shadows?” she asked him reluctantly. “Daisy and Officer Fairfax have to take Skelet—” She caught herself. “Lee, I mean Lee, to the emergency room.”

“It’s all right,” Lee said ruefully. “I don’t mind. People I work with in Seattle think it’s cool. They call me Skel all the time.”

“I mind,” Jen said in a firm tone. “Lee, you’re kind of the big hero of the night. I think that deserves a proper name.”

He blushed. Hmm, interesting. “I can stay with Brandon until you get back,” he offered. “It doesn’t hurt that bad.”

Jen eyed him. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Your hand’s starting to look kinda puffy.”

“Brandon can ride with us,” Bethany suggested, a little too languidly for her sister’s liking. “I bet he’d love to visit the House of Shadows.”

Jen shut that one down fast. “Um . . . no.”

“I’m okay staying by myself,” Brandon said, not sounding entirely convinced of it. “It’s not like I need a babysitter.”

Cody reentered the room. “Ready to go?” he asked Lee. “I’ve got the go-ahead to run you up to the ER in Appeldoorn. Daise, can you pick him up? I’ll drop you off to get your car.”

Gah! In the movies, no one ever has to deal with the logistics of transportation in the aftermath of a fight. They just cut away to the next good scene. “Why don’t you go ahead?” I said. “It’s going to take a while to get Lee patched up. Jen can give me a lift to pick up my car after she drops Bethany off, and Brandon can ride along with us.”

Thankfully, that settled it. Everyone took off on their respective errands, and I plunked down on the couch next to Brandon to watch him play Korengal Valley Mission. I couldn’t help but be uncomfortably aware of his parents in the bedroom nearby, his mother in a state of shock, his father with bruises darkening around his throat. I didn’t have a whole lot of pity for them—I’d known the family for too long, and Mrs. Cassopolis had run into far too many doorways, if you know what I mean—but under the circumstances, it was hard not to feel something for them. After all, I was only human.

Well, half, anyway. I wondered if I’d feel differently if I invoked my birthright, if I’d undergo a complete personality transformation like Bethany.

The thought made me shiver a little. Since her original personality— at least since I’d known her—hadn’t been all that great, it had worked out okay for her, but the thought of losing my human compassion and decency was pretty creepy.

So was the fact that I was even contemplating it, come to think of it. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I’d choked . . . again. That made it twice that I’d failed to take out a vampire in mid-throttle. And I wasn’t ready to make the argument that aside from Lee’s broken arm, it had turned out for the best. I mean, sure, I was glad I hadn’t had to kill my best friend’s newly undead sister, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that unleashing patricidal vampire Bethany on the world was a great outcome.

And always in the back of my mind was the awareness that the date of Emmeline Palmer’s return was creeping closer and closer.

I hadn’t lost too much face in our first encounter, but that was due to dumb luck and Jojo the joe-pye weed fairy’s jealousy. The truth is that dear Emmy totally got the drop on me, and I’d panicked.

I couldn’t let that happen again. This time, there would be witnesses. Casimir’s coven was on standby, and I had every intention of calling in whatever additional backup I thought would be useful, whether it was taking the chief up on his offer of mundane assistance from the department, calling in a marker with Stefan to have an army of Outcast escort Emmeline out of town, or hell, even brand-new badass vampire Bethany if it happened to go down after sunset. But ultimately, I was Hel’s liaison. No one else. However I did it, whatever it took to get the job done, protecting Sinclair and upholding Hel’s order was my responsibility. If I wanted to maintain any shred of authority in this town, I had to be tough, a hell of a lot tougher than I’d been so far.

I had to be strong. Ruthless.

Unhesitating.

Thirty-two

When I was a kid, it was the days of summer that slipped away too quickly, one lazy sunlit idyll blurring into the next, punctuated by the occasional excitement of a thunderstorm rolling across Lake Michigan.

September was the time when all of summer’s indolence ground to a screeching halt with the return to school, to being trapped behind a desk on a hard seat that bruised my tail no matter how much I tucked or squirmed, breathing in the scent of chalk dust, listening to teachers drone, flies buzzing against classroom windows, the minute hand on the clock inching along with agonizing slowness.