Her expression softened when she said Cardinal’s name. The faerie had betrayed her to Janara’s loyalists, yes, but it had come from a place of fear, not a place of malice. They’d cut her throat, leaving her to bleed out in a snow drift. Her death still haunted Tally, and it had marked a shift in her priorities. She wasn’t sold on taking the throne, but she was more committed to protecting her people.

  “So they’re traveling in packs for a reason,” I said. “It has to be bad for winter and autumn to ignore their instincts and work cooperatively.”

  “Exactly. There’s safety in numbers. And... I overheard a group of them talking about something.”

  “Something?”

  Tally nodded. “I didn’t hear the entire conversation, but I heard snippets and was able to piece together the fact that fae students are going missing and no one knows why. From what I could tell, it sounds like quite a few of them have simply disappeared.” She took a breath. “And as soon as they noticed me listening, they immediately shut up which gave me the feeling that this isn’t something they’re supposed to be talking about.”

  “So, frightening enough to make them feel like they can’t talk about it either,” I said, a chill creeping up my spine. “Astrid probably figured out what the secret was and had to be shut up.” By the Grimsbanes? Potentially.

  “That was my thought,” Tally said, nodding. “The remedial classes thing is the most piss-poor lie I’ve ever heard. From what I can tell, there are no second chances here. If you fail, you’re expelled. That means Astrid should be home if she was flunking out.”

  “Yeah, the remedial school was just a cover. I was able to get that much out of Vivian.”

  “Then she admitted it was a cover?”

  I nodded. “She said they don’t know where Astrid is so they came up with that story so the students and the faculty wouldn’t get all freaked out.”

  “Hmm.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “There were two more things I noticed,” Tally said, ignoring my pensive silence. “I didn’t find anything in the main halls, but there’s a warded area just off the kitchen. I’m not sure where that hallway leads, but someone doesn’t want anyone intruding. The power rolling off the wards was so powerful, it made my skin crawl. I’m no expert, but I think there was a ward on every stone.”

  “Overkill,” I said. “A really powerful witch would only need a handful of stones to secure a warded area. Someone really doesn’t want people to discover what they’re hiding. It could be Astrid. They could be holding her hostage there.”

  But to what point and purpose? What did a witch gain from holding my sister hostage? They had to know they’d bring down the wrath of both the Crescent Circle and Scapegrace Covens by keeping her prisoner.

  “Or it could be whatever is scaring the faeries,” Tally pointed out.

  I was rooting for my theory. I wanted something to be simple. Tear apart the wards and find Astrid safe and sound, if not incredibly pissed. Of course, the universe hated me though so it would probably end up being Tally’s theory that was right. Something nasty lurking in the bowels of the castle, just waiting to rip my face off.

  “You said there was something else?”

  Taliyah twisted in her seat, pointing to a space between two trees. It didn’t look particularly impressive, just two bare trunks arching toward each other, not quite touching. The grass beneath it was a little overgrown, and no leaves had piled up between them, the only stretch of browning grass that was untouched.

  “There’s a concentration of faerie magic there. It’s thin, like a sheet on a clothesline, but it’s definitely present. I walked past it three times before I finally noticed the subtle hum. It’s very warm, and I can’t touch it, so it wasn’t placed there by a winter faerie. If I had to guess, a summer faerie was doing magic there, and it left a powerful trace.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea what the magic did or does but it’s there.”

  “You’re sure you can’t touch it?”

  Taliyah shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe? I’m worried it won’t be pretty though if I try.”

  Best to steer clear of it then, I wasn’t losing my only ally to something that was probably irrelevant, anyway.

  Isis nipped my finger affectionately, drawing my attention down to her. She looked sleepy, unused to flying around in daylight. As a familiar, she was better equipped to deal with the light than regular owls, but she was still largely nocturnal.

  “Something to add, girl?” I asked softly, stroking her head.

  I perched on the roof of the dorms and listened, Isis said inside my head—one of the connections we had which apparently, was a strange one. Astrid was mentioned often.

  My heart picked up again. Astrid’s friends had to be looking for her too, right? Maybe I could find the Morgana person Astrid had mentioned in her note and get answers from her. So far, I hadn’t seen any trace of Morgana on my roster, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in the castle, just that she’d completed potions training. She was probably an upperclassman pursuing a specialty.

  “Isis said she heard people talking about Astrid,” I filled Tally in.

  “What were they saying?” Taliyah asked. She didn’t sound hopeful.

  They were rude, Isis said primly. All of them believe she left due to her circumstances. According to Vivian Grimsbane, her scholarship was revoked shortly before she arrived, which left her with no supplies, no tuition, and only one place to stay. Her room was in the kitchen and she worked to pay for her schooling. They insinuated... Isis’ wings flared in agitation, and her beak snapped in the air, furious about whatever she had to say next. That she traded sexual favors to a vampire to pay for her things. It was common knowledge that the two of them... the vampire and Astrid... were dating.

  My hands clenched into fists at my sides. I’d told Wanda that Astrid would latch onto the first leech she saw. She had an unhealthy obsession with vampires because of Wanda’s ‘epic’ love story with the Irish vampire.

  “What did she say?” Tally asked.

  I was so overcome with my anger, that it took me a moment to tell her. But when I did, I could see the anger blossoming in Tally’s eyes, just like it must have been in my own.

  “The faerie drama might have nothing to do with Astrid’s disappearance,” I said. “The bloodsucker could have drained her dry and shoved her body somewhere out of the way to hide the evidence. Or maybe she’s in the night class, hand in hand with the creature who sired her.”

  “You think the witches know where she is or what happened to her?” Tally asked.

  I nodded. “Maybe. Either way, they know more than they’re letting on and whatever they do know, they’re covering up with stories of remedial school.”

  “Either way, she’s not here,” Tally said. Her expression was bleak. “Which means she’s been gone for more than a week. I hate to say it but...”

  “But?”

  She turned those winter sky eyes on me. My chest clenched tight. There was a look I’d never seen on her face before. Pity.

  “In a missing person case, the first two or three days are critical. If you don’t find any clues in that time period, the likelihood you’ll find them goes down drastically with each passing day. We passed that period four days ago, Maverick. The window of opportunity went by when we were still trying to cut through the red tape and get this position.”

  My stomach dropped down to my toes. I didn’t want to hear what she said next.

  “Don’t,” I said quietly. “Don’t say it.”

  Taliyah’s eyes were shiny with grief.

  Grief for me.

  .

  Chapter Six

  Astrid

  I wished I could say I’d gone to my grave with a level of stoicism, fading into the blackness with dignity.

  I hadn’t.

  I did not go gentle into that good night.

  I’d screamed.

  I’d cried.

  I’d tried to kick Professor Valserak in the nuts.

  But in the end, it hadn’t made a damned bit of difference.

  I’d died alone, scared, with absolutely no hope of being rescued.

  And then it had gotten worse.

  I’d woken up.

  Not in a new body, with a new life. That would have been the natural course. My soul should have flown apart to be reborn elsewhere, but I was still me. Still Astrid Depraysie, sans a pulse. The silence in my chest was now cavernous, an absence that was almost physically painful. I clutched at my chest, drawing my sweater over my shaking fingers, occasionally trying to rub some warmth back into them.

  At first, I thought I’d been turned into a Blood Witch, just like what had happened to Wanda and Maverick. But then I remembered the crucial difference—Wanda and Maverick had still retained the majority of their own blood so when they were blooded by vampires, their own blood had simply bonded with the vampire blood and they’d ended up becoming what they became.

  I was now the undead because Valserak had completely drained me—he’d left me with such a small amount of blood in my body that I couldn’t become a Blood Witch. I’d become a vampire. So now I was a creature that was dead but not all the way dead—something straddling the line.

  You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead. I’d heard that saying somewhere. Probably from one of those medical dramas Libby watched when she thought no one was home. Clearly, the screenwriters had never met a vampire. Lorcan could be almost the same temperature as an ordinary person if he drank enough blood.

  But I wasn’t warm.

  In all the talks I’d had with my father figure, he’d never mentioned that when you woke from a death sleep, you’d be freezing, or that it got worse the longer you waited to feed. A week without blood, and I felt like one of the frostbitten corpses stuck in the death zone on Mount Everest.

  The agony was bone-deep. It even hurt to breathe, which I couldn’t seem to stop doing, even though I no longer needed the air. I tried holding my breath, but it never worked for long.

  At least Valserak had removed the corpse days after I woke. If I’d thought the body was ripe before I’d turned, it was nothing to how it smelled after I woke up. I’d bent double and vomited what little blood remained in my stomach a minute after opening my eyes, adding another layer to the rust-colored stain on the floor. Valserak kept the man in that room with me, even after relocating Shasta, waiting to see if I’d get desperate enough to gnaw the other side of his throat open to slurp up what remained of his congealed blood. To my disgust, the thought had actually crossed my mind by day three.

  “Someone is coming for you,” I whispered to myself.

  That was the only thing that kept me from searching for something pointy to end all of this. The knowledge that they were all out there. Rook had to have found Morgana by now, and they’d be looking for me. Oleander was safe somewhere in Autumn, and he would find his way back, eventually. They’d all be turning the castle inside out trying to find the place where Valserak had hidden me. I just had to survive long enough for them to break down the door.

  I ran my tongue over my teeth. I found myself doing it every few minutes, trying to ease the building ache behind them. I’d chewed the sleeves of my sweater into tatters, which had helped some in the beginning. It wasn’t human skin and muscle but it was something thick enough that eventually parted beneath my fangs.

  Right—I had fangs, because I was a vampire now.

  One of the undead.

  Everything I’d been raised to fear and despise. When I finally died for good, it would be the end of me this time. No more lives. No more reincarnation.

  I’d been willing to give that up in the abstract if it meant a lifetime tied to someone I cared about. Someone who would teach me and treat me well. In some of my earliest silly daydreams, that person had been Lorcan—well, before Wanda had laid claim to him, anyway. When my cousins’ clan came to town, it had been one of their clan members, Vicente Velardi. Sometimes the brooding Wolfram. And then it had been Rook. I could have lived... or rather, unlived with any of those men. Now I was living a nightmare, tethered to a lunatic for all eternity.

  It was worse than what Maverick was going through as a Blood Warlock. He had a half-link to Janeth which meant he could sense her no matter where in the world he was. The difference with me? Valserak controlled me utterly. At least, he would until I grew strong enough to escape him. But me currently this cold, this weak? Well, he could demand I sit, roll over, and play dead and I’d do it. I’d have to do it because I’d be tied to his will.

  Goddess, Maverick. He’d been right all along. I knew he hadn’t wanted me to come to Blood Rose—for this exact reason. Coming here had gotten me killed. But... if I hadn’t come, would Rook and Morgana know what they knew now? Would anyone have half a prayer of stopping Valserak and his vampires from unleashing a hoard of half-vampire faeries onto the school to kill every living soul inside?

  The clocks above began to chime, and I cringed into the wall. If I heard the infernal chimes, it always meant one thing. A vampire was prowling around upstairs, setting the damn things off. I had a minute or two at most before one of them descended the stairs and found me perched like a stone gargoyle in one corner of the room, refusing to move. Sometimes even refusing to breathe. I wanted to sink into the wall and disappear from view. Anything to escape whatever was coming for me.

  As if on cue, the doors creaked open, allowing a shaft of lamplight to filter down the stairs, illuminating every creaking stair that led down to my makeshift prison. A dull throbbing began behind my eyes, like the budding headache that accompanied a bad flu. I squeezed them shut, but it didn’t make a lot of difference. It still tinted my eyelids red, and my new, acute eyesight could make out the veins in the thin skin. With even a little light, I could see everything with clarity. It was another stomach-turning reminder of what I’d become.

  It shouldn’t have been like this. I should have had Rook. If I turned, I was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to be my choice. Mine. No one else’s.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Like the chimes upstairs, even the small sound scraped at my too-sensitive ears. If I’d had a screwdriver, I’d have shoved it into my eardrums, turning them into only so much pulp if it would make the sound stop. The footsteps came closer, the rap of dress shoes on cement. Valserak. None of the others wore anything so formal. I preferred work boots. Rubber didn’t make a sharp sound on the floor.

  But more than that, I could feel him, every cell in my body aware of his sudden nearness. There was a visceral need to be near him and even though I hated that fact, it still made sense. He was my sire. My vampire half yearned for protection. Safety. Care. He was supposed to give it to me.

  My inner bloodsucker was very, very stupid.

  A light clicked on, searingly bright, even with my eyes closed. I bit the inside of my cheek to contain a whimper. There was no way in spell I’d give this monster the satisfaction of hearing me cry out. Still, I couldn’t help but bury my face in the wall in a vain attempt to get away from the light. The stone was blessedly cool against my cheek and forehead, soothing the headache, just a little.

  Professor Valserak chuckled, the sound too intimate in the confines of the cellar. I shivered again.

  “The sensitivity to light goes away after you feed,” he said conversationally, moving closer, until the tips of his dress shoes were touching the hem of my jeans. “That’s where the myth came from, you know. Stupid little fledglings who refused to feed properly cringed away from the light, and now Hollywood thinks we’re all phobic.”

  I didn’t dignify that comment with a response. I’d barely spoken a word to him since he’d drained me. He wasn’t angry with me. If anything, he seemed amused by my silence, like he was indulging a sulking child. And to him, I probably was. I was his child now. Damn it.

  I dared a peek when Valserak sank down onto his haunches, unwilling to kneel and sully his pristine trousers with the filth on the floor. He’d actually donned a red silk shirt today, instead of his usual black. He must have been feeling festive.

  He tilted his head, examining me. “You’re not doing yourself any favors by refusing blood, you know? The hunger will only get worse. I’m sure you think that if you hold on for long enough, you’re going to starve yourself to a real death. I have bad news for you on that front. It’s going to take much longer than a week. The earliest I’ve seen it happen was fifty-three days. Some can hold on even longer as vampire physiology is strong. In another week, you’ll start to go into rigor mortis, unable to move. After that, you’ll mummify. But you’ll still be alive and aware the entire time. And the cycle continues. If you were older, you could theoretically go years without feeding, but you’re a little thing. My little thing.”

  My swallow was painfully audible. Valserak smirked and continued when I said nothing.

  “But you won’t make it to that point. In a few days’ time, I’ll throw a little wolf pup in here, just for you, and you won’t be able to stop yourself.”

  “I won’t,” I said, voice thin and creaking from disuse. “I won’t hurt someone.”

  Valserak brushed a stringy hair from my face, laughing softly to himself when I cringed away from him. “Shasta said the same thing, and you saw what happened. If you feed now, I won’t allow you to kill your source. I’ll give you the same choice I gave your faerie friend. Feed now and save yourself some pain.”

  “No,” I snapped. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

  His face split into a wide, toothy grin. He continued fiddling with my hair with one hand, and cupped my cheek gingerly with the other, turning my face toward him.

  “Kill you? Oh, no, sweet girl. I’m enjoying you too much for that. I haven’t had a witch in ages. You tasted glorious. Spicy, like rum. And a red-headed witch to boot, perhaps that was the reason for the spice in your blood. I’ll have you again. The taste of witch doesn’t shift much, even after the change to vampire. And it will be interesting to observe how you react to the change. So few witches remain undead after the transition. Prideful little things.”