“Don’t fight me, little witch,” she purred. “Even your mother couldn’t defeat me. It’s why we struck our bargain. She points me toward strong prey and I leave her little coven alone.”

  I tried to summon sparks. There were only a few ways to permanently end a vampire, and fire was one of them. There was a reason peasant hordes of yore brought torches when hunting monsters—not much could survive fire.

  Before I could shove a fistful of the sparks into Janeth’s face, she jammed something sharp into both of my hands, making it hard to move them, let alone curl my fingers well enough to cast. Then she wrapped a rope around them in a split second, and I couldn’t move my hands at all.

  “Ah, ah, none of that,” she said, slinging a leg over my waist, straddling me. “No casting here. No casting for much longer, actually.”

  “What do you want?” I demanded, glaring up at her.

  She smiled in that knowing and annoying way of hers. “I was promised a witch, and though you weren’t what I was expecting, I suppose you’ll do.”

  She bent over me, cool breath fanning across my neck, and I fought every instinct I had to fight her. I could make this work to my advantage if I played my cards right. I just needed my hands free. Of course, that was no easy feat. Whatever she’d jammed between them felt like a group of knitting needles that had been sharpened to deadly points.

  I couldn’t help but tense when her tongue flicked out to test the pulse in my neck.

  “Say goodbye to your magic,” she purred.

  I didn’t have to fake a scream when her fangs pierced my neck.

  She wasn’t aiming to be delicate or make the experience pleasurable. Some vampires took pride in being able to make the experience almost sexual. Not Janeth. She tore into me like I was a particularly juicy donut and she wanted to get at the jelly inside.

  I thrashed and beat my hands across her back, driving the very tips of the needles into her, even as it hurt me like all hell to do so. She barely noticed. She was too busy gnawing at my neck, slurping every drop that poured out of me. I pressed my bound hands against her back and, little by little, edged the needles out between my palms until all of them clattered against the cement floor below. She didn’t glance up.

  When she drew back from me, her chin was smeared with blood.

  She lifted her wrist to her mouth and tore into her own skin with undisguised glee. I knew what this meant. She was going to attempt to turn me. But if she turned me—after I’d already been partially turned by Lorcan, I’d end up a ravenous, lunatic. At least, that’s what Lorcan had told me would happen when another vampire completed a blooding. But at this point—it didn’t look as if that mattered because I was at Janeth’s mercy.

  She pressed her wrist to my mouth as I worked at the rope binding my hands together. Meanwhile, I fought to keep my mouth closed, and her blood bubbled over my lips. A second later, she rammed her fist into my side and I immediately screamed at the sudden pain and her blood filled my mouth, pouring down my throat.

  And then it was as if I was on autopilot as I felt myself freeing my hands from the ropes that bound them (ropes which were loose once I managed to free the needles between them) Pulling her closer, I couldn’t stop myself from pulling as much of her blood from her veins as I could. It was as though I were suddenly ravenous, unable to stop myself.

  I didn’t know what would happen to the blood bond between Lorcan and me—what would happen to me. Maybe I’d become a wild and unthinking beast but I figured if that was what was about to happen, then it was going to happen. As long as I could take Janeth out, it would be worth it.

  “So bloodthirsty. You’ll do well as one of us. I think you....” but then the words dried up on her lips and she faced me with a quizzical expression. “Why are you laughing?”

  “Because you’re an idiot,” I answered, breathless with laughter, as I pulled away from her. “Clearly you and Mother don’t communicate well, or she’d have told you not to ever attack me.”

  Janeth raised a hand, probably aiming to slap me into silence, but when her hand came down, it hit only empty floor. She yelped and spun around, finding me a few paces back.

  “You should be too dizzy to stand!” she snarled.

  “Tell me, Janeth, what happens when you blood a human?”

  In answer, she stalked forward, trying to take another swipe at me. I dodged the blows, taking a few steps closer to the safety of the sunshine, unsure of what it would do to me now that… now that I was blooded fully? Or was I? I didn’t feel any different—other than much stronger and the vitality within me hadn’t been there mere seconds ago.

  “They get greater health and stamina,” I answered for her. “Probably what you offered your goons, aside from immortality. If you blood a human on the edge of death, you can save their lives.”

  “So what?”

  “So, tell me, what happens when a vampire bloods a witch who’s already been half-turned by another vampire?”

  Janeth realized her mistake at almost the same instant I hit the sunlit portion of the warehouse. I ran my arm through the bright rays and didn’t feel or see any damage. Apparently, I could withstand the sunshine.

  Janeth’s eyes went round and she started sprinting for the opposite end of the building.

  “You’ve only made me stronger, given me the gift of the vampire,” I said, crooking my fingers as I wondered over the fact that I didn’t exactly feel like I was turning into a ravenous beast. In fact, I felt pretty good. “Thanks for everything, Janeth.”

  I wasn’t sure if I now could, but I opened my palms and held them together as I prayed my magic still existed somewhere inside me. In response, the blood bolt immediately created itself between my hands and after a second, I unloaded it into one of the warehouse walls and opened at least a few of the coffins propped against it. Flames licked along the wreckage, and by the time we’d piled into the car, the whole place was up in flames.

  We were gone before the first responders arrived.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Was I imagining it, or did you just say Celestine has been purging warlocks from witch lines?” Maverick asked.

  Now that we were safely away from the scene and in the car, I was having trouble keeping my head up. The exertion combined with the sheer weight of the discovery of what Mother had been doing was threatening to drag me under. Unconsciousness was less complicated.

  I leaned against the window, idly stroking Astrid’s hair as I fought to catch my breath. I’d been trying to catch it for the last thirty minutes.

  As to Astrid, Tabitha wanted to take her back to the Sanctuary, but Astrid had flatly refused. So we’d compromised. Maverick, Astrid, and I would stay at the penthouse suite that Guy rented out to his supernatural clients and would meet up with everyone once we’d had a chance to calm down. Now we were headed to the suite in one squad car while Tabitha, Betanya and Olga were headed to the Sanctuary in another. As soon as we’d stepped into the car, I magicked it so the driver wouldn’t be able to overhear our conversation. Instead, it would just appear like we all were silent and absorbed in our own thoughts.

  “You weren’t imagining it,” I said, twirling a copper strand of hair around my finger. I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew I’d miss Astrid when she returned to her mother. She was a pain in the ass, yes, but she was my pain in the ass and I’d grown pretty attached to her. The thought of coming home and Astrid not being there? It was almost as painful as the thought of driving past Haven High and seeing a pickup or dropoff line of cars I’d never enter or exit again.

  “That’s the secret Scarlett and William’s clan were trying to expose,” I explained, trying to push the depressing thoughts from my mind. “Mother put a binding spell on anyone who knew the truth so they couldn’t speak it outright, but they knew if they gave us enough hints, we’d eventually figure it out.”

  “Because they knew we were the only coven who’d give a damn about a few warlocks,” Maverick said bitterly. “So, all the vampires...”

  “Were warlocks at one point or the other but once turned into vampires, they lost their magic,” I finished for him. “Vicente is Scarlett’s son. I’m not sure whose lines Wolfram and Erasmus come from, but William and Amos Dwimmer used to be William and Amos Depraysie.”

  “Depraysie?” Maverick repeated.

  I had to swallow before I could continue. It was too strange. Part of me didn’t want to believe it was real. “They’re my older brothers.” I sighed, long and hard. “It’s like you said, Mother condemned both her sons to death because they were men who dared to have real magic. She would have tried to have you quietly bumped off sooner, if your mother hadn’t been interceding for you at every turn.”

  “Mother,” he started, but then didn’t seem able to continue the rest of his sentence.

  I nodded. “You didn’t know all of this because she did it in the background—always making sure you and Astrid were okay.” I looked up from Astrid’s hair and faced him with a serious expression. “Your mother didn’t send you away because she didn’t love you, Maverick. She turned you out because she loved you. It was the only thing she could do to keep you safe.”

  He was quiet for long enough that I thought he might have nodded off with the info. But then he shook his head and when he faced me again, his eyes were full of something I’d never seen in them before—an emotion I couldn’t quite put my finger on, no doubt because I was a stranger to the language of feelings and emotions. I was still learning about them, myself.

  “How could she do it?” he asked, and his voice dropped an octave. “How could your mother have been heartless enough to turn her own sons over to that sadistic bitch?”

  I sighed. “The sad thing is, I think she cares about her children in her own twisted way.”

  He looked up at me then, and his eyes were suddenly angry. “How can you say that, knowing what you know?”

  I shrugged. “Celestine’s known I would be her downfall for a very long time, and she didn’t kill me when she had plenty of opportunities—before I ever moved to Haven Hollow. Well, and even after that too. No one would have blamed her for killing a Blood Witch.”

  “Yet she eventually did attack you?” Maverick asked.

  I nodded. “The attacks didn’t come until I started getting closer to the truth. Then she probably figured there were two outcomes: I’d either find Olga and expose Mother, or I’d turn and run the risk of crossing paths with my brothers. I guess in the end, Celestine just couldn’t allow either to happen and so she came after me.”

  He shuddered and lifted a hand to his throat. He’d at least allowed Tabitha to apply bandages to his wounds which had slowed the bleeding immediately, seeing as they were enchanted. The bites wouldn’t be gone by morning, but they’d have undergone enough healing by then that he wouldn’t scar. That was something, at least.

  “How can you stand the thought of it?” he asked.

  “Of what?”

  “You came so close to turning—when Janeth forced you to drink from her, you knew you’d turn fully, yet you allowed her to do it.”

  “Right,” I answered on a shrug. “But I didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter.”

  He studied me and appeared a bit puzzled. “Yet you aren’t full vampire? You still have your magic?”

  “Yes,” I answered on an inhale, because it was a development I didn’t know what to make of. I was still wondering if at any moment I was about to lose all my wits and go completely feral.

  “If you’d turned, you’d have lost your magic. You would have become one of them. Just a bloodsucker.”

  “And Lorcan would be sane,” I answered, frowning. “I wouldn’t have to worry about him eventually ripping my throat out someday. I’d be alive—well, sort of.”

  “And yet that’s not what happened at all.” He looked at me with renewed interest. “You still have your witch powers.” It was almost as though he was just double checking.

  “Yep.”

  “Just witch powers or… Blood Witch powers?”

  I smiled up at him. “I’m exactly the same as I was before Janeth fed me her blood.” Then I breathed out deeply. “Though I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

  “Explain.”

  “Without my blood magic, I’m not a risk to the Hollow or my coven. I’d turn a dozen times over if it meant keeping Astrid safe.” And that reminded me of something. I offered him a smile. “And I know you feel the same, Maverick. You did everything you could to protect Astrid, even drawing Janeth’s attention to yourself to make sure we had time to find you both. You’d have rather become one of the undead than let that awful bitch sink her fangs into Astrid.”

  “She’s my sister,” he said, as if it was obvious.

  “I know, but… I’m just… proud of you, that’s all I’m saying.”

  He nodded and appeared lost in his thoughts for a few seconds, staring down at his hands. When he looked back up at me, that odd emotion I couldn’t put a finger on was back in his gaze. “I’d have done the same for you too, just so you know. I don’t give a rat’s tail about most of my family, but I care about you both.”

  “And let’s not forget you also wanted into my pants.” I attempted levity because the situation was growing a little too serious for my tastes. There was only so much I could take of talking about feelings.

  Maverick smiled faintly. “That too. And you seem to like vampires so...”

  I snorted a laugh. “In your dreams, Charmin.”

  For once he didn’t correct me, too absorbed in this recent revelation to complain about his former name. It was a lot for me to take in, but it had to be doubly so for Maverick.

  What must it be like to know he’d been robbed of the opportunity to have peers and mentors? If not for Mother, he’d have two male cousins to look up to and learn from. He wouldn’t have felt alone or lived with the lie that he was some sort of freak, the first warlock in seven centuries. He’d still be rare, to be sure, but at least he wouldn’t feel like an island. I imagined there was only one or two warlocks per century, but still, Maverick should have had support, and Mother had stolen that from him.

  More than that, the truth upended everything Maverick thought he knew about his family. His mother wasn’t the unfeeling woman she’d made herself out to be. She’d defied the will of one of the most powerful witches on the west coast, and she’d won. She’d kept her son alive and placed her daughter in the safest place she could think of—with me. And that was a huge vote of confidence.

  “Janeth is still alive,” Maverick said, rubbing at the pulse in his wrist. “Undead, I mean.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can feel her inside me. It’s like this… level of understanding or awareness I didn’t have before.” He swallowed hard. “And I hate it.”

  And that was when it hit me—Maverick had a connection to Janeth—the same sort of connection I’d felt to Lorcan when he’d saved me after the accident.

  I swallowed hard. “I felt the same way—after Lorcan turned me into a Blood Witch.”

  “Then?” Maverick started, as he inhaled deeply. “I’ve become… the same as you?”

  I nodded and reached out to touch his shoulder. “I think… I think so.” I took another deep breath. “You took enough of her blood for it to affect you, but not enough for it to fully turn you.”

  He looked at me directly, and there was a strange expression on his face. “I... I don’t know how to deal with this, Wanda, how to deal with becoming a Blood Warlock. It’s going to change me.”

  “Yes, it is,” I agreed. “But I’m here to help you, and you’ve got family in the form of our coven who will band together to protect you if Janeth tries to finish the job. You’ll get through this.”

  We all would.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  To my great disappointment, someone had thought to bring our familiars to the penthouse suite.

  Hellcat had parked his furry backside on the white couch, seeming to take great pleasure in spreading his inky fur all over it. I’d probably be paying to have the stupid thing cleaned after we left. Then again, Hellcat’s antics might have had less to do with inconveniencing me and more to do with avoiding the beagle who was dancing merrily in front of the coffee table looking like he might piddle on the carpet out of pure joy at the sight of us.

  “Hi, Yule,” I said, bending down to scratch behind his ears. His tail thumped happily, and his tongue lolled out in a doggy grin. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a goofy vampire to guard?”

  “The undead creature of which you speak insisted on sending him,” Hellcat said sourly, glaring at the happy dog with unmasked dislike. “I believe his exact words were ‘I’m trapped inside a magical fortress. No one is going to gank me here, so send the bloody dog to protect her, you fecking gobshites’.”

  I couldn’t help a laugh.

  That sounded like Lorcan alright. He tried to pretend he was worldly and above such things, but when push came to shove, the sailor’s son came out. When angry, he was foul-mouthed and prone to brawling. And I loved that about him.

  “That will make Astrid happy,” I answered. “She adores Yule, and she’s going to need the pick-me up.”

  “And why is that?” the cat asked in an uninterested way.

  This was the moment of reckoning—the moment when Hellcat’s true feelings towards all of us would come out. I paused for a second or two. “Janeth’s vampires attacked her.”

  There was no visible reaction from Hellcat immediately. And then a few seconds later, he stood up and his fur bristled as he arched into a fighting stance. “Let me at them!” he half spoke, half screeched.

  “Relax,” I answered, giving him a little smile because he’d passed my test and, to be honest, I was actually proud of him. “She’s fine now.” Then I sighed. “But… you don’t just shrug that kind of thing off and go to school the next day.” I sighed again. “I’m not sure if we should take her to the Assembly tonight.”