“Right,” Derek swallowed carefully, and turned his face towards Taliyah. “My sister’s friends wouldn’t stop dragging me through the house. And they wouldn’t stop… flirting with me. I’m pretty sure Maddie got them to do it.”

  “Why would your sister, Maddie, want her friends to flirt with you?” Taliyah asked.

  Derek took in a deep breath and stared at the ground. “She didn’t like Viviana.”

  “Did she know what Viviana was?” I asked, worried that we were going to wipe a few more minds. I was sure Fox wasn’t going to allow Derek to continue on with the knowledge of monsters in the Hollow. And owing to Derek’s pain, I was glad to know he soon wouldn’t remember any of this.

  Derek looked up at me. “No, I’m the only one who knew.” Then Derek looked down, blinking back tears. “If I’d managed to shake those stupid girls off me, if I’d gone to the safe room to meet Viviana when I was supposed to, maybe I could have helped her, stopped what… what happened to her. Maybe she’d still be here.”

  Derek raised his hand over his eyes, like he could keep the tears in by pressure alone. His guilt and grief was hard to witness.

  “Then you didn’t kill her?” Taliyah said, eyes narrowed.

  Derek looked up at her and anger overcame his. “I already told you I didn’t. I would never have hurt her. She… she meant too much to me.” He took a breath. “I just wish I could have stopped… whoever did this to her—I should have gotten there when I was supposed to.”

  The guilt that suddenly overcame him wasn’t warranted. Anyone who could take on a fully fledged vampire like Viviana wouldn’t have seen a lanky teenage human as anything more than a speedbump simply slowing him down. If Derek had been there when Viviana was killed, Roy and I probably would have found two bodies instead of one.

  Taliyah gave Derek a moment to compose himself before she continued. “Did Viviana ever mention arguing with anyone? Did she ever talk about any confrontations she might have had? Did she ever mention feeling like she was being watched or followed?”

  “No.” Derek shook his head. “Viviana was so sweet. She got along well with everyone. And the days before… before this happened, she was happy, excited. We were going to be together. She never said anything about even an argument with anyone else. I just… I just don’t understand how anyone would hurt her. I don’t understand why they’d want to.”

  “But your sister didn’t like her?” Fox asked.

  Derek nodded. “I don’t know why Maddie didn’t like her, but my sister can be… difficult.”

  Someone scoffed. There wasn’t another word for it, just this little huff of air absolutely chock full of bitterness. I flinched, not realizing there was anyone else here. But as I turned around, there she was. She was young, standing hidden in the shadows of the storage building behind us. When our eyes met, hers went wide. It was clear she hadn’t expected to be overheard, but then, most supernatural species have better hearing than humans expect.

  I had a split second for the little shiver of recognition to hit me.

  I knew that face. I’d seen it before.

  She was the girl I’d seen while I was standing in line with Roy at the haunted house. She was the budding succubus who’d been liplocked with some guy the entirety of the time we were standing in line. And I’d seen her again, the second time when she was arguing with a man who was probably her father at Stompers Creamery when I’d met Fox.

  “Zis doesn’t concern you,” Mihaela said as she turned on the girl and tried to overpower her with vampire glamour. But the girl just stood there, making no motion to leave as the other mundanes had when confronted with Mihaela’s power. Mihaela turned to face the rest of us with shock in her gaze because the girl had clearly just ignored her vampire powers. And it took me a second more to figure out why.

  I didn’t think I would have been able to place her, if she wasn’t like me. But our power resonated, like we were both on the same frequency of a radio. But while my power was a full-bodied jazz, hers was just starting out, more like picking out a tune on an acoustic guitar.

  I barely had the chance to whisper, “You,” before she spun around and took off, running as fast as she could.

  Fox released Stefan to give chase, even I started after the girl, but it was Taliyah who flung out a hand and looking at the girls’ back, called, “Stop!”

  I didn’t know if she meant to do it, or if she was just doing the normal police thing of telling a suspicious character not to flee, but when Taliyah spoke, the air around her shivered, and her magic went screaming out into the night.

  Winter’s magic ghosted over the lawn, silvering the grass and gusting snowflakes through the air. Ice formed in a long swath, and when the fleeing girl’s heel came down, her feet came flying out from under her and she landed on her back, hard enough to knock the breath out of her.

  The sudden fall stunned her long enough for all of us to catch up to her, and Stefan grabbed the young woman’s arms as she was still struggling to catch her breath. She did manage to put up a bit of a fight, but he held her easily while Taliyah gave her a brief pat down. Taliyah’s face went cold and blank when she pulled back, the dark shape of a gun resting in her hands. She quickly pointed the weapon towards the ground as she glanced over at me and I walked to her side.

  Derek had hurried after us, and he gaped open-mouthed at the sudden patch of ice and the localized snow flurries that were still floating through the air. He glanced over at Taliyah, still in shock, because she’d just revealed she most assuredly wasn’t human. Derek’s surprise was momentarily forgotten when he faced the young woman and then his brow furrowed.

  “Maddie? What are you doing here?” His gaze flicked to the weapon in Taliyah’s hand, and his eyes flared wide. “Is that Dad’s gun? How did you even get it out of the safe?”

  Maddie thrashed again in Stefan’s hold, her face twisted up in disgust as she looked at her younger brother. “God, Derek, I can’t believe what an idiot you are.” At her brother’s blank, wounded expression, she laughed. The sound was cold, cutting. “The combination to Dad’s safe is Mom’s birthday. It has been for years.”

  Derek flinched like he’d been slapped. “Maddie…”

  “Shut up, just shut up! You’re just as bad as Dad is. No, you’re even worse because you knew what Viviana was and you were still going to go through with it!”

  “You knew what she was?” Derek repeated, shocked.

  Maddie’s eyes were wild. Her chest rose and fell with the force of her heaving breaths as she glared at her brother and I could sense the power inside her coming to the fore, ready to burst. “Of course I knew what she was!”

  “Did you…” Derek started but then shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the truth that was now dawning before his eyes. “It was you,” he answered, shock registering all over his face. A second later, his eyes filled with tears again. “How could you do that, Maddie?”

  Maddie laughed again, shaking her head as anger poured out of her. “She was a bloodsucking monster, Derek, you were just too stupid to see it.”

  “She wasn’t a monster,” Derek answered as Mihaela gasped. Stefan snarled and yanked back on Maddie’s arms until she cried out. Taliyah’s eyes were narrowed, but she didn’t intervene, so I kept my mouth shut. It was hard though, like standing back and watching a train crash in slow motion.

  Derek’s face was chalk pale under the smeared blood and tears. He swallowed hard. Tears started leaking down Derek’s face again, but it seemed he didn’t even notice them as he stared at his sister. “Maddie, you didn’t… please tell me you didn’t hurt Viviana. Please, Maddie.”

  Other than her lips tightening into a flat line, and giving another useless yank on her arms, Maddie didn’t respond.

  “Oh my God,” Derek gasped, weeping openly. “Why would you… Maddie how could you do that?”

  “I had to, you moron,” she snapped. “Before she turned you into what she was—a monster.”

  “I loved her!” Derek screamed at his sister, his pain palpable.

  A hysterical sounding laugh slipped out of Maddie’s mouth and the glare she gave him was something he should have been able to feel all the way to his toes. “She was a corpse that fed on people and I didn’t want her feeding on you or turning you into one of her own kind.”

  Derek flinched, clutching his chest with a wounded little sound. “I can’t believe you… my own sister…” It was as if he couldn’t even compute his thoughts, as if he couldn’t accept that his sister had killed his girlfriend.

  “I did it for you!” Maddie continued, seemingly angry to be made out as the bad guy here when she clearly believed she was in the right, that she had rescued her brother from a fate worse than death. And in some ways, I could see her point—I wouldn’t have wished for a vampire life for Derek, not until he was old enough to fully understand what that meant and make the decision for himself, after weighing all the consequences.

  “Dad got his heart broken and his whole life destroyed when he fell in love with one of those things.” Maddie gave a contemptuous little toss of her head that managed to indicate the vampires, the Faeries, and me all at once, even though I was fairly sure she just assumed we were all vampires. “There was no way I was going to let my little brother turn himself into a freak for some school crush he’d known for all of three weeks.”

  Derek kept shaking his head numbly, over and over, looking at his sister like she was a stranger.

  Something between sympathy and loathing twisted up Maddie’s face as she spoke, her eyes on her brother all the while. “You would’ve fallen out of love with her by the end of the year, at the most, and then where would you have been? A scrawny teenager with acne for the rest of eternity? And all over a high school fling with a monster?” She breathed in deeply, shaking her head the entire time. “I had to do it. I’m not losing any more of my family, no matter how stupid they are.”

  There was barely a second of warning. Maddie’s eyes flared red and gold in the shadows, like embers blazing up from a dying campfire. I had barely a breath to realize what was about to happen, and opened my mouth to shout a warning, but before the first syllable came out, Stefan doubled over with a gasp like he’d been knifed in the gut, and let go of Maddie’s arms.

  Without an ounce of hesitation, she snatched the gun from Taliyah’s hand and took a step back, falling into a practiced shooting stance. She trained the barrel on Stefan where he stood, doubled over from whatever she’d done to him.

  “Back up,” she snarled. “And get over there with the other freaks.”

  Stefan inched back and was pulled into the protective circle of Marius and Mihaela’s arms.

  Derek lurched forward, only stopping when the barrel of the gun rose. “Maddie, no, you can’t. You can’t hurt these people. They haven’t done anything to either one of us.” He took a breath and the expression on his face was yearning. “They aren’t the monsters you think they are.”

  She stared at her brother like someone might look at a particularly ugly bug that had just squirmed out from underneath a rock. “They eat people, Derek.”

  He shook his head, a frantic note in his voice. “They don’t hurt people, not like you think they do. They’re… they’re a family, Maddie. I won’t let you hurt them!”

  “You won’t let me,” Maddie said in a quiet, dangerous voice.

  And it was at that point that I decided I couldn’t stay out of the situation any longer. Taliyah might kill me later, but I’d just have to take that risk. I took a step forward, putting myself between Maddie and Derek, and the vampires. I kept my hands up, but did my best to block Maddie’s view of them.

  If anything, Maddie looked even angrier than she had before. Her arms lifted, until the gun was pointed at my head. As she faced me though, something in her eyes changed—something that melted into what appeared to be surprise.

  She recognized my inner succubus just as I’d recognized hers.

  My heart slammed against the inside of my ribs, blood roaring through my ears. I’d never realized just how big a gun barrel was before that moment, but it was huge, gaping wide, and ready to spit out fire and destruction. My chest was heaving like I’d just run a marathon, and my mouth tasted like what I can only term fear.

  But I didn’t move out of the way.

  “I know what you are,” Maddie said, her eyes glittering. “My mom was just like you, a stupid, slutty demon who destroys people’s lives and then laughs at their pain.”

  “Maddie,” I started.

  “Don’t say my name,” she managed, eyes narrowed and flaming. “I should just shoot all of you and save the human race a lot of pain.”

  Her voice shook on the way out, but her aim stayed steady.

  I swallowed carefully, trying to work some saliva back into my bone-dry mouth.

  “Maddie, I need you to listen to me, okay?” It was only years and years of training that allowed me to keep my voice steady and calm. “If your mother was a succubus, then you probably are too. Your brother might be an incubus, but that would take longer to show up, if it ever does. Magic runs deeper in women than it does in men, so he’s still up in the air. But you, your succubus is already emerging which is why you’re feeling all of this out of control anger.”

  Maddie took a threatening half step forward, rattling the gun at me, and for a heart stopping moment I waited to see if her finger would slip on the trigger, if she’d actually shoot.

  “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that. I’m nothing like you. I’m not a monster.” Her teeth were barred, eyes wild. “I don’t go around ruining people’s lives!”

  “You ruined our lives!” Stefan yelled out.

  She glared at him. “You’re all dead so you don’t count.”

  “Maddie,” I said, grabbing her attention again. “You don’t have to do this. Put the gun down.”

  “I’m not listening to you!” she yelled at me, eyes wide and frantic.

  “You aren’t in your right mind—the succubus inside you is making you feel and think things you wouldn’t ordinarily feel and think. You need to be helped through the change, you need to prepare for it or the succubus can completely take over and that’s not what you want.”

  There were some deep wounds there, that much was obvious. But there wasn’t much I could do about them, especially not when she was armed and extremely on edge. Succubi might be tougher than humans, but that didn’t mean I wanted to risk it all by taking a bullet that could most definitely kill me.

  Still, some things needed to be said. So, I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Maddie,” I said, as gently as I could. “You killed Viviana. You’ve ruined Marius and Mihaela’s lives. You took away their daughter. And what about Stefan? You took his sister away. Do you really think if they were true uncaring monsters they’d be hurting as much as they are?”

  I wasn’t fully sure if Maddie had killed Viviana but I suspected enough that I figured I’d go with it and if we got her to admit as much, all the better.

  A fine tremble started in her hands, the wobble of the gun making it more obvious. Maddie stared at me, her eyes glassy with tears that began to slide down her cheeks, streaking her make up. She shook her head, dark hair flaring with the movement.

  “No. Monsters don’t have families.”

  The gun barrel came up again, and I knew in that instant, that she was going to shoot. My whole body locked up, mind whirling as I tried to decide which direction to throw myself in, even as I knew I wouldn’t be fast enough.

  But the bullet never hit me. I never even heard it fire from the gun.

  In a split second, the gun was gone, and Maddie stood there with a double handful of autumn leaves in her hands. She stared at them blankly, before opening her fingers and letting them drop, red, orange and gold spiraling towards the ground.

  “What...?”

  Taliyah slammed into her from the side, taking her to the ground and plowing her, face first, into the grass. I was still frozen in shock, my body trying to decide if we were maybe still about to be shot and going a little haywire about it, when Fox stepped up beside me. With swift, efficient movements, he took the magazine from the gun before popping it open and ejecting the bullet that was loaded into the chamber. Then he slipped the empty weapon into one pocket, and all the ammunition into a different pocket.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. And then another second for me to wrench my head away from watching Taliyah yank Maddie’s hands behind her back and slap a pair of handcuffs on her with a practiced motion.

  Was I okay? I honestly didn’t know how to answer that, so I just nodded, and that seemed like a good enough answer, because Fox turned back to watching Taliyah.

  “I do love to watch her work,” he said in a quiet murmur that I was pretty sure wasn’t meant to be overheard.

  I just shook my head. Taliyah seemed to have everything more than in hand. She was maybe enjoying handcuffing someone and telling them their rights a little more than was normal, but it must have felt good to be back in action as the Chief of Police after all the Faerie nonsense she’d been putting up with lately.

  Derek stood frozen in place, watching his sister getting arrested like he couldn’t understand what was going on. I felt for him. Marius had his arms around both Mihaela and Stefan, and was speaking quietly to them in Romanian. It hurt my heart to see it.

  I didn’t want to intrude, so I stood apart, my arms wrapped around myself, and tried not to think of blazing through people’s lives like a comet, leaving nothing but devastation in my wake.

  I wanted nothing more than to walk through Roy’s door and feel his big arms around while I cried against his chest.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Poppy slid a tall glass full of amber and scarlet liquid in front of me.

  The drink had little glimmers of light in it, like someone had raked the coals of a banked fire and sent embers shooting up into the air. It tasted like cinnamon, clove and nutmeg, and was at least fifty percent alcohol because she was beautiful and kind and one of my favorite people.