Jane said, “The vamps have a request. By today’s laws, now that Romona has attacked a human, she’ll be brought to true death. By my hand. And they want you to agree not to talk about what you learned here tonight. They’re willing to pay for your silence. Vamps are always willing to pay,” she said, her tone grim and tired.

“Like we said,” Cia said, drawing on her power. “If they save Evelyn, we’ll agree to keep quiet. If they don’t . . . well, we’ll have to see.”

Liz smiled in the night. “And if they think they can make us, remember that blood magic doesn’t just go away. I’ve had my hands in the soil tonight.”

“And I’ve had my face in the moonlight,” Cia added.

As one, the line of vamps stepped back. Jane relaxed and laughed, her laughter flowing down the hillside, through the fog. “Good to hear.”

Liz realized that the tension she had felt in Jane was gone, replaced by something that was nearly jovial. “You’ve been worried,” Liz said, “that you were going to have to figure out a way to protect us if the vamps decided we might talk.” Liz looked at the blond vamp, standing beside her maker and master in the moonlight. “We’d have fried you to a crisp, lady.”

Both of the vampires looked nonplussed, and Jane laughed again. “Vamps and witches go back a long way. Vamps seem to have a . . . let’s call it a fascination with witches. Sometimes that makes ’em stupid.” Dacy frowned at that, but Jane indicated that the twins should lead the way. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

—

The vampires stood in an arc outside the unpowered outer circle, their faces white, still, pale as marble statues. The mayor was unchained and stood with them, Dacy’s hand on his shoulder. He was holding a Neiman Marcus bag, and tears ran down his face. “Do it,” Dacy said, applying pressure to his shoulder. “Do it or I will.”

The vamp walked to the hedge, where Romona sat, watching them, her eyes vamped out, blood on her face. Beside her, Evelyn lay in a boneless tangle of limbs. She was breathing, fast—far too fast.

Mayhew opened the shopping bag and lifted out a shoe box. The vamp in the circle was suddenly standing, her hands behind her back, leaning forward in that odd birdlike, snakelike motion that just looked so wrong. Her face took on an expression of sharp avarice. “For me, my darling?”

“For you, my love.” He opened the box and pulled out a pair of gorgeous shoes. Cia sucked in a breath of desire. “Those are ruby-toned Giuseppe Zanotti five-inch stilettos, encrusted with Swarovski crystals and beads. They sell for nineteen hundred dollars. Oh. My. God.”

Mayhew went on. “I’ll trade for them.”

Romona tilted her head. “Trade?”

“Shoes for the human.”

Romona glanced at the woman and said, “She’s nearly gone anyway. Yes.” She held out her hands. “Shoes. Mine.” Then she pointed at the black boot on the ground. “Mine too.”

“Yes,” Mayhew said, bloody tears on both cheeks. “Yours too.”

“Acceptable to me.” And Romona smiled, a nearly human expression, full of delight and a winsome mischievousness.

Jane pulled two silver stakes from her hair and nodded at Liz. She and Cia sat on the cold ground just outside the hedge of thorns. They buried their hands in the chilled soil and Cia said, “From blood and death and moon above, release.” Everything happened so fast, like photos that overlaid one another, shuffled in a strong hand. The hedge fell.

Romona leaped. Jane whirled the stakes out in dual backswings. Cia and Liz rolled out of the way. Romona landed on Mayhew, thrusting him back. Jane stepped across the falling bodies, her hands coming together and down, like a scissors closing. The stakes slammed through Romona. A shriek sounded, so piercing it was deafening. A death keening. Cia and Liz covered their ears in shock. Blood fountained up over Jane’s hands.

The keening shut off. Jane pulled the dead vampire away from her husband. He was sobbing, his anguish human and pitiable. Two other vamps reattached his shackles as Jane hefted the dead vampire to her shoulder and carried the body into the dark. Mayhew raised his face to the night sky and screamed his grief. The sound of a blade chopping echoed. Once. Twice.

Dacy knelt over the limp body of Evelyn McMann, a small knife in her hand. With an economical motion and no flinching at all, she sliced her own wrist and placed it at Evelyn’s mouth. The blood trickled in, and Dacy held Evelyn’s jaw until the human woman swallowed. Liz and Cia stood in the cold wind, arms around each other for warmth and comfort, watching the second-most-powerful vampire in Asheville healing their enemy’s mother. Evelyn reached up with two skeletal hands and gripped Dacy’s wrist. The vampire looked at them and said, “She will live. Your word, if you please.”

“We’ll never speak of this to anyone without your permission,” Cia said.

“We’ll never speak of this to anyone unless it means the life of another,” Liz amended.

“Acceptable,” Lincoln Shaddock said. Dacy picked Evelyn up like she was a baby and started for the cars.

Moments later Jane came back, from a different direction. There was blood on her white shirt. “We’re done,” she said. “The policing of Lincoln Shaddock for his clan is acceptable to Leo Pellissier, the Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the Southeast United States, including the Appalachian Mountains where we stand. Pay the Everharts.” She pointed to Cia and Liz.

Lincoln Shaddock removed an envelope from his pocket and extended it. Cia accepted it. The twins gathered up their belongings and raced to their car to find Evelyn asleep in the backseat. They were halfway down the mountain before they caught their breath. “That was wicked weird,” Cia said.

“Yeah. Let’s get Evelyn back to Layla and start studying up on how to get purified before the blood magics sink too deep.”

“Yeah. Good plan.” Cia tore open Lincoln Shaddock’s envelope and drew in a slow breath.

“How much?”

“A hundred thousand dollars. Combined with Evie’s estate, I think we just made enough money to put a huge down payment on a house, sister mine.” They started to giggle. Neither of them said anything about the hysterical edge to their laughter, or what it hid. Not yet.

—

When the twins left the elegant house in the Montford Historic District, Layla—sans makeup and wearing old jeans—was crying and hugging her mother, having wrapped her in a blanket in the middle of her bed. She was force-feeding her water and Gatorade and cucumber sandwiches.

“Like, who keeps cucumber sandwiches on hand?” Cia said as they walked out of the house.

“People who don’t know the value of leftover homemade soup and yeast bread from Seven Sassy Sisters.”

Cia said, “Oh, yeah. We eat, and then we figure out how to get the blood magics off us.”

“Done.” Liz took a slow breath. Her lungs and ribs didn’t hurt, not at all. She didn’t want to say the words, but couldn’t keep them in. “Jane Yellowrock might have saved our lives. If Romona had gotten free and drawn on the blood magic of the mountain . . .”

“Yeah.” Cia’s tone was grudging. “We’d have been her dinner.”

The silence after her words stretched, as the sisters got in the car and drove away. Cia finally said, “When you had the rock on you, the rock Evangelina threw at you when she was trying to kill us all? I tried to push it off. I couldn’t. It was too heavy. You weren’t breathing. Like, at all. Jane—in her cat form—pushed it off. She saved you. I think she saved Carmen that day, too. And she did what we couldn’t when she . . . ” Cia heaved a breath that seemed to hurt. “When she took care of Evie, too.”

Liz knew that “took care of” meant “killed.”

“Not because we didn’t have the power or the skills to handle Evangelina, but because Jane thinks, instead of being frozen by fear.”

Liz blinked away tears and said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Now we have to forgive her for killing Evangelina.”

“Which is why I didn’t tell you. I’m not . . . I wasn’t ready to forgive.” Cia turned away, looking out into the night. “Maybe I’m ready now.”

“Yeah. Well.” Liz took a deeper breath than any she had been able to manage in months. “The blood magic? I think it healed me.” She took another breath. “No pain.”

“Crap. We used blood magic, just like Evie did.” Cia’s mouth pulled down. “And it felt good.”

“Addictive good,” Liz whispered. “I can feel the pull of the mountain even now. We are in so much trouble.”

“Yeah. But there is a silver lining. The totally cool Christian Louboutins Layla gave me—once I get the blood off them.”

Liz erupted with laughter, which was what her twin intended. “Us. She gave them to us.”

“Fine,” Cia said. “And the cash. Share and share alike.”

“Yeah. Like always. Even a blood curse we don’t know how to get rid of.”

“We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

HIGH STAKES

A Luc and Lindsey Story

BY CHLOE NEILL

It was the curls that killed me. Those dirty-blond, tousled curls. They practically screamed to be run through by manicured fingers.

The manicure wasn’t the problem. Tonight I was sporting a complicated matte black and charcoal pattern that varied from nail to nail. It probably would have been more appropriate on a socialite than on a veteran guard of a House of vampires, but I’d decided a long time ago not to give up style for fangs. It was part of my credo, my firm belief that immortality should be dressed up and flaunted like a deb at her debut. I’d been a vampire for more than a century, and I was proud of my genetics. And from my blond hair to my favorite stilettos, I tried to show it.

But that was neither here nor there.

The problem was the curls, and the vampire they belonged to. Luc, the Captain of the guards of Cadogan House. I was a guard, which meant he’d been my boss for years. My colleague. My friend.