“It was a relief not to have to hide my nature from him,” Ranulf said.

Lucas completely ignored his corned beef hash. “You never told me about it.”

“Didn’t want to freak you out. Guess you learned to deal, though, huh?” Vic grinned. “Amazing how convincing a pretty lady can be.”

“I can’t believe you discovered the secret,” I said.

“So, my duller roommate,” Vic said to Lucas, “how did you find out about the fanged types?”

“I’ve always known about vampires,” Lucas said, finally noticing that he had food in front of him.

Vic said, “No, no, I don’t mean, like, in Dracula and stuff. When did you find out for real?”

“He’s always known for real,” I said. “Lucas was raised in Black Cross.”

Ranulf set his fork down with a clatter. He hung onto his knife. His eyes were wide as he stared at Lucas, and I could tell that he was this close to leaping over the table—either to escape or to attack.

“I’m ex–Black Cross,” Lucas said heavily. “I’m not going to hurt you. Take it easy.”

As Ranulf relaxed slightly, Vic said, “Whoa, what’s Black Cross?”

“A centuries-old group of vampire hunters,” I said. “The Evernight vampires are harmless—well, mostly—but there are dangerous ones out there.”

“They do not only attack the dangerous,” Ranulf said. His eyes were dark.

“I realize that now,” Lucas said. “Because when they discovered what Bianca was, they went after her, too. Now you know why we’re on the run.”

Vic nodded, already at ease with the new information. “You know, if this weren’t so dangerous, it would be really cool.”

When we finished our food, Vic suggested we drive out to his house with him. “You should see the place. I can show you where the nearest bus stop is, because you’ll need to know how to get into the city for these jobs you’re going to have. Hey, what can you guys do?”

“I’ve had to patch up cars and trucks as long as I can remember,” Lucas said while we walked out the door. Bells on the handle jingled. “There’s probably a garage that would take me.”

I didn’t answer, because I had no idea. What could I do? The only subject I knew anything special about was astronomy, and high-school dropouts didn’t get jobs at NASA.

“Here we are.” Vic pointed to his car, a sunshine-yellow convertible. Ranulf chivalrously motioned for me to take the front passenger seat, even though this meant he and Lucas would be sort of squeezed tight in the back. Given how tense—and angry—Lucas still was, I thought our being separated for a little while might not be the worst idea. On one hand, I felt proud that Lucas had finally mastered his temper enough to hold it in check. On the other hand, I’d never realized how ominous it could be, knowing somebody was furious with you but biding his time to speak.

Then Vic distracted me completely when he said, “Oh, and there’s definitely one more thing we should do at the house.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You guys should meet the ghost.”

Chapter Fourteen

“DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER LAST YEAR?” I SAID, AS we sat in the car on the long gravel driveway of Vic’s house. It was an imposing brick mansion, and I would’ve felt intimidated, if I weren’t so busy being scared out of my wits. “How the wraiths kept coming after me?”

Vic scrunched his forehead in confusion. “Wraiths?”

“That is the more common vampire term for ghosts,” Ranulf said. “May I please exit the backseat? I can no longer feel my legs below the knees.”

“Hold your horses,” Lucas said. He leaned forward, between the two front seats, so that he could talk more directly to Vic.

“There’s no way this is safe.”

“You weren’t even there last year,” Vic scoffed.

I interjected, “I was there, and I remember the attacks—blue-green light and cold and all that ice falling from the ceiling. So I’m not going into a house with a wraith. A ghost. Whatever.”

What Vic didn’t know—what very few in the world knew, even vampires—was that any child born to vampires was the result of a bargain struck between vampires and wraiths, and that the wraiths ultimately intended to claim me as their own.

During several terrifying incidents at Evernight, including one that nearly killed me, that was precisely what the wraiths had tried to do.

Vic sighed. At this point, we’d been parked in front of his house for more than five minutes, and we’d been arguing about this ever since we’d left the diner. The water sprinklers on the broad green lawn had cycled through three different speeds. He said, “We appear to be at something known as an impasse.”

“I wish to make an observation,” Ranulf said.

Exasperated, Lucas said, “You’re not the only one cramping up in this backseat, okay?”

Ranulf replied, “That was not the observation.”

“Go ahead,” I said. Nobody would change my mind.

But then Ranulf said, “Are you not wearing an obsidian pendant?”

I put my hand around the antique pendant my parents had given me this past Christmas. An obsidian teardrop dangled from an ornate chain of copper that had gone green. At the time I’d thought the necklace simply a thoughtful gift, a reflection of my interest in vintage clothes. However, Mrs. Bethany had informed me later that obsidian was one of the many minerals and metals that repelled wraiths.