How could I make him understand? I cast around for an example I could use. “You like hamburgers, right?”

“We have seriously got to go over the right and wrong times for small talk. Dinner party, yes. Five minutes from a vampire ambush, no.”

“Hear me out. Would you eat a hamburger if there was any chance it could punch you in the face?”

“How is a hamburger supposed to punch me in the face?”

“Just say that it can.” This was no time to bicker about metaphors. “Would you bother? Or would you eat something else?”

Lucas considered this for a couple of seconds. “Leaving aside the weirdness of a hamburger that can attack—which is a lot of weirdness to leave aside—no, I guess I wouldn’t.”

“And this is why most vampires don’t attack humans. Humans hit back. They scream. They throw up. They call nine-one-one on their cell phones. One way or another, humans cause more trouble than they’re worth. It’s a lot easier to buy blood from butcher shops or eat small animals. Most people always take the easy way, Lucas. I know you’re cynical enough to understand that much at least.”

“Nice and practical. I bet you told me just the way your parents told you. But you never said that killing people is wrong.”

I hated that he’d recognized the explanation as my parents’ and not my own. I hated that I only had their word to go on. “That goes without saying.”

“Not for a lot of vampires, no, it doesn’t. What you say makes sense, but it’s not as reassuring as you think. One of us is wrong about how many vampires kill people, but I know that a lot of people get killed. I’ve seen it happen. Have you?”

“No, never. My parents—they’re not like that. They’d never hurt anyone.”

“Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

“Have you seen it?” I challenged him.

My stomach sank as he nodded. Then he said the worst thing he could’ve said. “They got my father.”

“Oh, my God.”

Lucas stared at the window, even more tense than he had been before. We had to be very close to the overpass now. “I wasn’t there for that. I was just a little kid. Hardly even remember him. But I’ve seen vampires attack other people, and I’ve seen the bodies they’ve left behind. It’s horrible, Bianca. More horrible than I think you realize, maybe even more than you can imagine. Your parents only ever showed you the pretty side. There’s an ugly side, too.”

“Maybe you’ve only seen the ugly side. Maybe you’re the one who doesn’t understand the real balance.” My stomach was churning, and my fingers tightened on the back of the empty bus seat in front of me. Were we about to have to fight for our lives? “If my parents hid the full truth from me, maybe your mother hid the full truth from you.”

“Mom doesn’t pretty things up. Trust me on this.” Lucas breathed out. “Get ready.”

The bus took a sharp turn, shaking the few passengers from side to side. Through the blur of rain, I could see the overpass lights coming up. I squinted at the darkness, trying to make out shapes or movement, some hint that Mrs. Bethany might be waiting there for us.

Lucas took a deep breath. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Two more seconds, and the bus rumbled beneath the overpass. Nothing happened. Mrs. Bethany had led the group into town after all.

“We made it,” I whispered.

He folded me in his embrace. As Lucas sagged against my shoulder, I realized for the first time how exhausted he was and how frightened he had really been. I combed through his wet hair with my fingers to soothe him. There was time to have arguments later, to talk about Evernight and Black Cross and everything else that divided us. For now, all that mattered was that we were safe.

I hadn’t been to Boston since I was very small. Dimly I remembered what it was like to be in a city rather than the countryside—noise and trash, asphalt and traffic signs instead of earth and trees, and lights everywhere, bright enough to hide the stars forever. Though I braced myself for a seemingly inevitable panic attack, by the time we got to our destination—an area on the outskirts of town, and so far as I could tell one of the skeevy neighborhoods—it was late, and we were exhausted. I wasn’t scared; I was only numb.

“We should figure out what we’re going to do tonight.” Those were the first words Lucas had spoken to me since we got off the bus. Our hands still tightly clasped, we wove our way through the shifty-looking characters. They wore clothes that were too large, laughed too loud, and stared sharply at every car that rounded the street corners. “It’s going to be morning before anybody picks us up.”

“Picks us up? Who’s picking us up?”

“Somebody from Black Cross will come. Once I broke in the antique store, I used their phone, left a message that I was headed here. I’ll call back and tell them where to pick us up, once we know ourselves.”

“I don’t want to walk around this neighborhood for too long.” I cast a suspicious glance at a broken-out window.

“Bianca, think.” Lucas stopped in his tracks and, for the first time all night, looked like his old snarky self. “Who should be afraid here? Us or them?”

Why would these people be scared of me? Then it hit me, the punch line to the joke of my life: I’m a vampire.

I started to giggle, and Lucas joined in. When I lost control, tears welling in my eyes, he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight.