If my heart still beat, it would have been throbbing in my chest. Instead of the usual adrenal response, my world kind of narrowed down. Everything fell away except for the twitching leather of my bag. The dark material stood out on the bedspread like an ink blot and it felt like my vision was doing a zoom focus on a camera. I had to wonder: was that a predator thing?

  All I could say was that I was glad Lorcan had bullied me into drinking something before he’d retreated back to his room to work on something that had come up at the office. I didn’t know what was in the bag, but I had zero desire to get a mouthful of it.

  My limbs felt stiff, like my body was trying to bend a particular way, but I was fighting against it and making it much harder than it needed to be. At least my fingers only shook a tiny bit as I reached for the bag. I was a vampire, for spells sakes, why would I be afraid of something that could fit comfortably in a bread box?

  Not that size meant power when dealing with the supernatural.

  Tension yanked higher, and my head buzzed with it. Sick of waiting for whatever the thing was to unveil itself, I grabbed up my bag and dumped the entire contents onto the bed before stepping back. Mocha yelped and jerked towards the windows, looking like he was ready to flee.

  I brought my hands up, fingers crooked into claws. I might still not have a handle on my Faerie magic, but I still knew enough that anyone trying to start something would have a very, very bad time coming to them.

  Socks and shirts and toiletries spilled across the comforter in a heap, and I held my breath, waiting. Finally, a pair of jeans twitched, and something brown, furry, and about the size of a small cat slithered out to land on top of the pile.

  My jaw dropped open as my fight or flight reaction calmed noticeably. “Yew?”

  The overly large rat sat back and glared at me with his big, black button eyes as he chittered. “What’s the big idea? What did you do that for?”

  I flung my hands out at my sides. “What are you doing in my bag? You’re supposed to be in Haven Hollow!”

  Yew, the rat, had once been a witch’s familiar, until his witch had met an untimely death. Then he’d sculked around Blood Rose Academy and the local village, desperately wanting to be a familiar again, but with no luck.

  I’d met him at what was probably the worst moment of my life, and also the end of it. When Valserak had turned me and locked me up in his creepy murder basement, it had been Yew that had helped me get out of there. In return, he wanted another witch partner.

  I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t a witch anymore, and as far as I knew, Fae didn’t take familiars. But I was in a school where fifty percent of the population was witches, and I had contacts through the coven, and other covens too, and Wanda had way more, so I figured it wouldn’t be hard to find Yew a new mistress.

  So, why the heck was he stowing away in my luggage?

  “Wait, are you the one nibbling on my stuff?” I snatched the shirt back up off the bed and shook it in the rat’s direction.

  “I was bored and got a little hungry, okay?” He squeaked at me, his little pink feet stomping the bed. “And what’s the big idea, trying to ditch me? We had a deal!”

  Could vampires get headaches? Because it sure felt like I had a headache coming on. I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying not to grit my teeth. I didn’t want to hear another lecture from Lorcan about my enamel and the damage I was doing to it. Especially not the part about how my teeth had to last me to eternity.

  “I know we had a deal,” I said, trying to sound patient and not homicidal. “That was why I took you to Haven Hollow in the first place. Where there are witches who don’t have familiars. And a coven that could reach out to other covens. Remember?”

  Yew grumbled, and started aggressively grooming his tail. “No one there worked out. And you left me! I didn’t leave you.”

  Mocha clicked his tongue from where he was still hovering close to the ceiling, looking down his nose at me like contempt was a sport and he was going for the gold.

  “A Princess of the blood must keep her word,” the little pipsqueak commented snidely. “It is unbefitting to do otherwise, and could bring great embarrassment to the throne.”

  “Yeah,” Yew squeaked. I doubted very much that he actually knew what Mocha was talking about, though. He couldn’t have even known who Mocha was.

  The not quite a headache throbbing in my skull ramped up another notch, until it felt like pressure on the back of my eyes. With everything else I was dealing with: becoming Prince Reynard’s heir, dealing with my new existence, stuck in the most unwelcome town in the continental United States, and with my sire acting like I was made of actual glass, I just couldn’t deal with getting tag-teamed in miniature. One more snotty comment, one more high-pitched whine, and someone was going out the window, possibly me.

  “I’ll find you a witch, Yew,” I snapped, cutting through both of their diatribes. “I’m going out now, because I can’t deal with either one of you.” I turned and faced the door before I thought better of it and turned back to face them. “Both of you, stay here.”

  Then I glared at them, and something in my face must have warned them that it wasn’t the moment to press me, not if they wanted to stay unbitten at least, because they clammed up like they’d been hexed.

  I jabbed a finger at Mocha, and the fairy actually flinched like he’d felt it. “Keep him out of my stuff. If I come home to anything with chew marks on it, you’re the one I’m coming after.”

  Mocha was still sputtering as I slammed the door behind me.

  Chapter Eleven

  The one benefit of being so annoyed was that I stalked out of The Outlaw Hotel and barely even noticed all the witches in the front room staring at my back as I went.

  No one tried to curse me, at least, but owing to the fact that it was just one more layer of anxiety and unfairness, I had to deliberately hold back from slamming the front door off its hinges. And I really didn’t want to know what the owner would do if I wrecked the property.

  As soon as I stepped out onto the wooden walkway that ran through the Hollow, three separate tumbleweeds veered out of their way to slam into my legs, the prickly brown vegetation managing to scratch me right through my jeans. I kicked them away, then hopped over them when they tried to change course.

  Something very close to a growl lingered at the back of my throat. And while it might have felt really, really good to sink my teeth into something, I had to fight the urge. Not only was it a super bad idea to pick a fight with a town full of witches that were all trained extensively with dark magic, but the prison was right there! I’d have happily gone sun tanning before I ever walked through those doors.

  At least my shoes made a satisfying thump against the wooden walkway as I stalked through the town. I didn’t even have any destination in mind. I just wanted to get away from both of my tiny burdens—if only for a few minutes. It wasn’t that I thought they were wrong, necessarily. I didn’t. I just had so much on my plate that harassing me about it was a step too far.

  Jinx Junction was the exact same pit it had been the day before, filled with the same buildings, the same hostile people, and the same businesses that didn’t have any interest in catering to a vampire. I couldn’t wait to leave a review. What a vacation spot, truly memorable. I made a mental note to ask Henner, Haven Hollow’s very own technomancer, if there was a supernatural version of Yelp.

  Though it probably wouldn’t be smart to post a review until I was far away from the place.

  I steered clear from the edge of town where the Jenny Greenteeth had set up shop. She’d been one of the few people who hadn’t treated me like crap, and that was nice, but seeing her again was going to bring back all the stress of the vision she’d revealed to me, and that wasn’t something I needed on top of everything else that was going on.

  It took me a while to notice that I was being watched.

  Like, an embarrassingly long time. In my defense, though, everyone was kind of watching me. I couldn’t twitch in the town without a half a dozen witches glaring at me like they were daring me to try something. But as I wandered the town, I realized that the hairs on the back of my neck were prickling, and I kept catching little shimmers of movement out of the corner of my eye.

  It wasn’t the glare of the town’s people showing their disdain and warning me off. No, the feeling I was getting was that someone was deliberately stalking me, but not wanting to alert me to the fact that they were watching. This was worse than the stink eye I’d been getting. It felt vaguely predatory.

  Why would someone be following me? The problem was, I had too many answers to that question. Was it for vampire reasons? Witch reasons? Or maybe, just to switch things up, it could be for Fae reasons? Really, there were so many options to choose from, it was hard to narrow them down.

  But now that I wasn’t caught up inside my own head and railing about all the crap that had been going down since… well, since Aunt Celestine decided to kick Wanda out of the coven for the crime of being blooded by a vampire who was trying to save her life, I was more and more aware that I’d acquired a shadow.

  Too big to be Mocha. Too fast to be Yew. Definitely person shaped, but I wasn’t getting much more than that. If I hadn’t known for a fact that Lorcan was tied up with work stuff back in the hotel, I might have thought it was some kind of vampire game, or situational awareness lesson, but he was currently up to his eyeballs in spreadsheets and X-rays, with no time for training. Uncle Fox? No, skulking in shadows wasn’t really his style. And the chance that it was a friendly someone following me was pretty much zero, at least in Jinx Junction.

  It was a struggle, but I forced myself to keep my steps even. I didn’t know why whoever this was was following me, but I didn’t want them to realize that I was on to them. There weren’t any hexes flying my way, so they were probably waiting for me to go somewhere. But where? They had to know I was staying at the hotel. Where else would a visitor go?

  A touch of ice frosted down my spine, one that had absolutely nothing to do with magic. Could my mystery stalker be trying to get me to lead them to Uncle Fox? That made a certain amount of sense, way more than someone bothering to put me under surveillance. The Autum Court was at war, after all. What if the Winter Court had somehow found out about Fox coming to Jinx Junction to meet with his spy ally? Taking out the current monarch was usually a pretty solid plan for defeating an enemy kingdom…

  But Lorcan and I were travelling under assumed identities, and no one knew about me being named Fox’s heir outside of a very select few, so how would someone unrelated have figured out that some nobody vampire would be the one to lead them back to Prince Reynard of Autumn?

  Unless there was a traitor in the Autumn Court. Someone feeding information to Janara and the Winter Court. Just how well did Uncle Fox know this Cattleya woman?

  Or… I was just allowing my imagination to run away with me and none of this was the case at all. Maybe it was simply the case of someone being lost and being too intimidated by the fact that I was a vampire to ask me for directions.

  Yeah, I’d go with that.

  I wanted to rake my hands back through my hair, but I kept my arms relaxed at my sides. I didn’t want to tip whoever it was behind me that I was on to them before I figured out exactly what I was going to do about it.

  I wished Wanda was with me. Or, spell, even Maverick. Both of them had dealt with navigating coven life, and really, court politics couldn’t be that different from the coven’s—that is, if this was Uncle Fox related (and I wasn’t sure why I was so convinced that it was). Aunt Celestine had certainly acted like a Queen on high. I just wished I had someone’s advice right about now—some hint as to what I should do about this mystery stalker. Maverick might have made fun of me first, but he still would have fried anyone who even attempted to hurt me. Yep, my big brother would have fried them with a crap ton of lightning.

  Just keep walking, I told myself. And the answer will come to you.

  The night was warm. The kind of night where the heat of the day gets trapped under the clouds and everything is sticky with it, pressing in close. One thing I could be grateful for was that vampires didn’t get sweaty. The lower body temperature made sure I wasn’t overheating, either. It did mean that the streets were emptying out faster than they might normally, everyone heading inside to escape the heat. I didn’t want to know what happened once whoever it was got me alone.

  The best bet, I finally decided, was to try and shake them and then circle back around to try and come up behind them. I was faster than most people, and it would make me feel better to get a glimpse of whoever was tailing me. At least then I could narrow down my doomsday scenarios.

  Right.

  I ducked my head and took the next corner that came up. The trick was walking fast, like I was still annoyed, but making my path random, dodging down alleys, doubling back, doing whatever I could to shake the tail I’d picked up.

  For some reason, it all made me think of Darla. Ever since she’d started working at Spook Society, the former ghost had discovered a love of old-time detective movies. Though, they probably wouldn’t have been ‘old time’ to her, since she was older than they were. Still, I could almost hear her voice in my ear, that slightly nasal accent saying something like, “C’mon, doll. Move those gams and get a wiggle on.”

  It was almost enough to make me smile.

  Another sharp turn down a side street, and I actually ran, sure I wasn’t going to be spotted. The night whizzed by, wind running its fingers through my hair as I covered the distance in a couple of seconds. Then I turned up another street—Buckspur Lane. And the feeling of being watched was now gone. No more prickles sliding up the back of my neck, at least. Now, all I had to do was circle back around, and try to come up behind the person, instead.

  It was like a hunt, and something inside me purred as it stretched out its limbs. My heart didn’t pound any longer, but there was a kind of fizzing in my veins, an anticipation snaking through me. To run after someone, to catch them and bring them down…

  Okay, that was enough of that line of thought. I wasn’t going to eat whoever it was, geez. Maybe I needed to talk to Lorcan about increasing my intake from two to three bags of blood. Did baby vampires need to eat more, or something?

  Still, that little hint of a voice inside me that had told me to run, to hunt, to feed, that voice stayed with me. It put a little bit of bounce into my step, a certain sway to my stride that I couldn’t seem to do anything about.

  Which was right when I swung around another corner, and almost crashed headfirst into a squad of witches who were, if the dark uniforms and visible weapons were anything to go by, just getting off their shifts from the local prison.

  Well, crud.

  It was almost funny, how fast I could go from feeling like an apex predator, to feeling like a mouse caught out in the open with no escape hole in sight. It really didn’t help that I’d taken the corner so fast that I’d had to skid not to crash headlong into someone. And the way all of their heads snapped in my direction at the same time was frankly chilling.

  “Sorry, sorry.” I held my hands out at my sides, trying to look harmless. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  One of the witches, her dark hair cut short to her scalp, curled her lip in a sneer. “You sure are comfortable wandering around town, aren’t you?”

  Well, that didn’t sound promising. I fought not to wince. Showing fear would be like bleeding into a shark infested ocean; not great for survival chances.

  Another laughed at the comment, a short, mean sound.

  A third, her hair pulled back into a severe braid, gave me a look like she’d just scraped me off the underside of a bar stool. “Are we really just letting any and everybody wander around these days?”

  A murmur ran through the group.

  Witches were dangerous. Witches in a group to egg each other on was basically an extinction level event.

  I did what I could to keep my smile from tugging down into a grimace. “Okay, well, I’m just going to go. Sorry again.”

  It was only because of nifty vampire hearing that I caught the mutter as I turned my back, and I threw myself out of the way so the hex burned across my shoulders and one side of my face instead of hitting me straight on.

  Yowch! That was a nasty one, too. Way beyond even the worst that had been flung at me at Blood Rose Academy. Dark magic had teeth to it, and from the feel of that hex, it would have done something extremely nasty to me if it had actually hit me. As it was, I could feel the prickle and burn of magic over my cheekbones that made me extremely happy I’d gotten so good at dodging.

  I wasn’t about to give them a second shot at me, so I ducked and spun back around the corner, and took off down the street. I heard the sizzle of magic behind me, and the cruel laughter.

  I ducked my head and ran, and didn’t once look back.

  Chapter Twelve

  I’d never been a really sporty person.

  I’d been more into making potions and learning magic from Wanda, not kicking a ball around, or going to the gym. And running for the fun of it? Why run for no reason? Becoming a vampire had changed all that. And let me tell you, vampires could haul it when they were properly motivated.

  It felt like I’d been running for less than five minutes, but by the time I stopped, I was right out of town and part way into the woods surrounding it. The trees closed around me, and for a second, I just leaned back against the closest trunk and closed my eyes. I didn’t need to breathe, and my heart didn’t pound, so calming down was more of a mind thing than a hyperventilating adrenal system thing.

  I’d managed to shake my stalker before everything had gone so sideways, so there was that small mercy. Because out here in the dark woods and being all alone sounded like a really excellent ambush spot. The crickets started up their melody again, and birds muttered sleepily in the canopy overhead, so with any luck that meant that no one had decided to follow me.

  I let my head thump back against the rough bark and felt it scratch against my scalp. Running had been the right thing to do, I knew that. Getting into a fight with local law enforcement, or whatever the prison guards counted as (maybe they were Hexus Rangers too?), was a very, very stupid thing to do. Not to mention, I was a baby vampire, not even a year out of the coffin, so the chances of me being able to take down five witches that were trained extensively in dark magic were hilariously low.