This photo was different.
It was the girl from Conspiracy Theory, with blood on her throat, running down her collarbone and into the snow. There were puncture marks from fangs.
Cal’s fangs.
She’d actually believed him when he said he wasn’t feeding on her. He’d almost had her. A small treacherous part of her had started to believe that Cal might be different. Snow piled at the windows while she berated herself for being such an idiot. She knew better. Her dead sister knew better.
Aggie’s heart rate suddenly increased, thumping like the hooves of a startled deer.
Cal was home.
She barreled out of her room, just as he exploded into the hallway, ripping off the T-shirt he slept in. Judging by the welts on his bare chest and shoulders, it was soaked with UV holy water. His skin was seared raw and bloody over the tattoo of crows flying over his left shoulder. His fangs were sharp and the whites of his eyes were veined with red. Pain and fury mixed a cocktail that looked a lot like bloodlust. Two out of those three emotions, Aggie could understand. Intimately.
“What’s going on?” Paige mumbled sleepily from the doorway. “Om!” she added suddenly, as if meditation would stop Aggie propelling herself at Cal.
This time he was ready. Eager, in fact.
They were a summer tornado, cold vampiric fury and hot human rage crashing together. Magic ignited between them. Blue sparks exploded, leaving scorch marks on the ceiling.
“Om, Om, Om!” Paige shouted.
The house shook right down to its foundations as Aggie and Cal fought the magic and each other with equally intensity. Doors slammed open all along the hallway. Fletcher tried to intervene and Aggie broke his nose. The world had narrowed to Cal’s burning blue eyes, to the thump of her heartbeat almost loud enough to drown out the memory of her sister’s voice.
He blocked her strikes with maddening ease, faster and stronger than she was. She’d learned to fight dirty for that very reason. He had her pinned to the wall, his cold fingers clamped around her throat. Aggie’s breaths were ragged and dry in her lungs, scraping like rusty needles. She released the stake in her sleeve and it grazed his ribs, leaving a bloody trail.
She managed to get a punch in, slamming his head back. He stumbled against the opposite wall. Catelyn leaped into the fight in her plaid flannel pajamas. Noah grabbed her by the hair and tossed her aside. She crashed into a lamp. The dogs barreled through, growling and barking. Teeth clamped around Cal’s leg. Blood stung the air, further maddening the vampires.
Nicholas was a pale blade cutting through the complicated web that had caught them up. He knocked Cal into the wall, cracking the plaster. With his other arm, he gripped Aggie’s sweater, holding her off the ground.
Pink light touched the windowsills in the living room.
Kali and Noah went limp and slid down the wall. Cal pushed through, refusing to give into the dawn. Nicholas dropped Aggie, but only because Lucy wedged a broom between her and Cal. Cal finally slumped to the ground at Aggie’s feet. He was vulnerable. Wounded. The welts on his chest were raw and wouldn’t heal properly until he fed again.
“Go ahead,” Lucy said to her quietly. “He’s unconscious. Now’s your chance.”
Aggie hesitated, knowing Lucy didn’t mean it. Yen wouldn’t have hesitated. “He attacked a girl. That’s where he got all those cuts and bruises.”
“Not unless he can be in two places at once,” Nicholas said, forcing the words out as he fought the heavy drug of morning. “I found Cal fighting a gang of yahoos at the side of the road. They took off, but judging by his broken wrist and shoulder and the amount of blood on him, they were winning.”
“That’s convenient, don’t you think?”
“Not as convenient as the fact that you were the last one seen with him at the coffeehouse. Fighting again, of course,” Nicholas added.
Aggie scowled. “Did he tell you that?”
Lucy shook her head. “No. He very specifically didn’t mention you, actually.”
“Oh.” Her fury turned to confusion. It was just as uncomfortable. “Well, I saw this photo,” she said, grabbing her laptop. “And this is the girl he was flirting with.”
Lucy pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket. “I’ll call it in to Hunter.” She touched Nicholas’s cheek when he wove slightly on his feet. “Go to bed,” she murmured. “I’ve got this.”
“Be . . . careful,” he slurred.
“I’m always careful.”
Even on the brink of being catatonic he could snort disbelievingly. He shuffled toward the tiny room beside Lucy’s bedroom, where he slept. There were locks on the inside of the door, barred and shuttered windows, and a bar fridge filled with blood like all the vampire’s rooms. Paige and Fletcher helped drag Cal, Noah, and Kali to their respective beds.
Aggie didn’t know what to feel. This should have been simple. She was the good guy saving the idiots from monsters.
“Aggie, come with me,” Lucy said, after hanging up with Hunter. She went straight to the stove to boil water for hot chocolate.
Aggie sat down. She’d be expelled from the academy. She had nowhere to go. She’d have to steal money for bus fare back to New York. And then what? Dumpster diving and vampire staking while dodging the cops and the teen shelters. “Are you kicking me out?”
“I guess that’s up to you, isn’t it?” She leaned against the counter as the water boiled. “Whitethorn posted that photo, didn’t they?”
Aggie blinked. “Um.”
“Any idea who they are?”
“No.”
“Not that you’d tell me even if you did,” Lucy said wryly. “Just be careful with them. Being anti-vampire isn’t the same as being pro-human.”
“Cal was with that girl at the coffeehouse,” Aggie felt compelled to point out. She didn’t mention that Whitethorn had sent her an e-mail to recruit her. If she passed their test. They hadn’t mentioned what that was yet. “It was a reasonable assumption on my part.”
“Your assumptions stop being reasonable when they come from fear instead of facts,” Lucy pointed out, joining her at the table with the mugs of hot chocolate. “You attacked before asking any questions. Just because it was Cal. And that much holy water would have killed him anywhere else. He was lucky the house magic gave him those extra seconds to react.”
“I didn’t dose him!” Mostly because she’d never thought of it. “My heart speeds up whenever he’s around,” Aggie grumbled. “My body knows he’s a monster, even if you choose not to see it.”
“Are you sure that’s what your body is telling you?”
“What else could it be? How was I supposed to know someone jumped him? This is Violet Hill.”
“True. But the thing about Violet Hill is that nothing is ever exactly as it seems. There are hundreds of ways we all misunderstand one another.”
“I can’t just forget.” She didn’t mention the stake she’d found. What was the point?
“I’m not asking you to. Cal has suffered as much as you have. You have no idea what he’s been through. His file is thicker than the last Harry Potter book. So I’m asking you to act in the present instead of reacting to the past.” Lucy rubbed her face with both hands. “Because, dude, I really can’t stand giving these old-lady psych lectures anymore. It’s totally lame. But since the garden hose won’t reach this far it’s all I’ve got.”
* * *
“What are you doing now?” Paige mumbled, sitting up in her bed. She squinted at Aggie, who’d frozen while reaching for the doorknob.
“I’m going to pee, what do you think?”
“In your parka?”
“It’s cold.”
“You are such a bad liar.” Paige pushed aside her blankets and scrambled out of bed. “What are you really doing?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”
Aggie sighed and counted to ten. The counselor at the academy had been trying to ge
t her to count to ten when she was annoyed, to help her keep her temper in check. So far, it wasn’t entirely successful. Paige just crossed her arms and waited. She’d been on the receiving end of Aggie’s temper often enough that she was used to it. And since she was human, Aggie hardly ever tried to stab her anymore.
“I’m breaking into the office,” Aggie finally said.
“Cool.” Paige grabbed her sweater, another flashlight, and slipped on a pair of reindeer slippers. “Let’s go.”
Aggie smirked at the slippers. “You’re going to sneak around in those.”
“Stealthier than your combat boots,” Paige snorted. “Now are we going or what?”
There was a very small window of time in which to be even remotely stealthy at the farmhouse. Vampires came and went all night and humans all day. There was about an hour after dawn where a true peaceful quiet fell. It was Aggie’s best chance.
Paige followed her out the back door to the wooden garden shed that had been converted into an office. The sky was thick with pink clouds. It would snow again today. Aggie wished she had time to take photos. The light on the birch tree bent over with snow was perfect.
They skirted the fire pit and the herb garden and Paige elbowed Aggie aside. “I’m better with locks,” she said, crouching down. “I assume you brought tools?” Aggie handed her a picklock kit.
The room smelled strongly of cedar and there was a jar of candy on the desk, next to a laptop and a handmade pot filled with decorated stakes. Aggie briefly coveted the silver one with the dragon’s head handle. The walls on either side of the desk were lined with file cabinets and bookshelves.
“So why are we here exactly?” Paige asked.
“I want to see the files.”
“Anyone in particular?” She waggled an eyebrow.
“It’s not like that,” Aggie mumbled, but her voice sounded weird, even to her. Her cheeks were faintly warm. “Let’s just hurry,” she said while Paige chortled. “And no more sugar for you. You even laugh like a Christmas cartoon now.”
Paige used a bobby pin to fiddle and fuss at the lock of the file cabinet. It finally clicked open and Paige went straight to her own file and Aggie’s. Aggie flipped through the folders, trying to remember if she even knew Cal’s last name.
Paige whistled through her teeth. “You beat up an old lady?”
“She was a vampire.”
“Still.”
“She tried to bite me!” Aggie protested.
“And you gave a teacher a black eye?”
“That was an accident. Mostly. It was Mr. York.”
“Oh, well he’s a jerk.”
“See, it wasn’t my fault. I was provoked.”
“Yeah, because you’re so warm and fuzzy, usually. The first thing you ever said to me was, ‘If you ask me to help you with your math homework because I’m Asian, I will stab you.’”
“Two people had already asked me that and it was my first day!’”
“All I said was hello.”
“Well.”
“It was like befriending a porcupine.” She glanced back at the file and grimaced. “Your sister wore fangs as a necklace? No offense, but that’s gross. Not to mention unhygienic.”
Momentarily distracted, Aggie tuned away from the cabinet. “They have stuff about my sister in there? Let me see.”
“Killed at the Battle of Violet Hill. Age 16. Homeless.”
“We had a home,” Aggie muttered. “New York.” It rankled to see it written so starkly, without any mention of how hard Yen fought to keep them alive and together. “Renegade. Fang trophies, suspected agitator.”
Aggie tossed the file aside. “Fletcher has PTSD,” Paige said. “And Noah has anger issues. Tell me something I don’t know.”
The beam of Aggie’s flashlight caught the edge of a folder on the desk. She checked the name, just in case.
Callahan Lewis.
“Lucy wanted me to find this,” she said, eager for the distraction and reluctantly impressed. “She totally played me.” She skimmed the summary at the top of the first page. “He lived alone in the woods for a full year before someone named Isabeau found him.” She swallowed, imagining how alone and hungry he would have been, feeding off animals and avoiding all contact, even with other vampires. Something inside her softened, something she didn’t fully understand. She’d wanted to do the same when she found about Yen, only there was nowhere in New York to be alone. That’s why she’d come here as soon as she was able. She’d lived in a tent in the woods until Hunter stumbled over her while patrolling and brought her in to the school.
“He had a girlfriend too,” Paige said. “Jane Corbeau.”
“Corbeau is French for crow,’” Aggie murmured. Mrs. Boneta had spoken more Spanish and French than English. “That’s why he has that crow tattoo on his shoulder.”
“She was obsessed with vampires,” Paige read on. “She wanted to be one, but she didn’t survive the bite.”
“Cal obviously did,” Aggie said. “Do you think he bit her?”
“It doesn’t say.”
“Wouldn’t it—“
“Girls,” Lucy interrupted from the doorway. She wasn’t smiling.
“Busted,” Paige groaned.
Aggie tossed the file away. “I just—”
“This isn’t about the files,” Lucy said quietly. “It’s about what the dogs just found under your pillow.” She opened her palm to reveal half a dozen vampire fangs, drilled and hanging off a chain.
Just like Yen used to wear.
“Dude,” Paige said faintly. “Even Mary Walker didn’t collect fangs.”
* * *
Kali went missing the same night.
Aggie sat at the kitchen table, unable to stop staring at Yen’s fang trophy necklace.
It made no sense.
Lucy bustled around the room, talking to various Drake brothers on the phone, and then, when they weren’t moving fast enough for her, Hunter. Somehow, Hunter managed to be everywhere at once, even being human.
Paige made hot chocolate and comforting noises. Cal and Noah went tracking and then came back, pearly gray with dawn fatigue. Nicholas found footprints and a splintered stake, but no ashes, no blood. No body.
Through it all, Aggie stared at the necklace. She stopped to check the Whitethorn website but there were no photos or mentions of Kali, so she went back to staring.
She didn’t touch it, though part of her wanted to, and fiercely. The rest of her knew she was being watched and also knew how easily her desperation for her sister could look like guilt.
The fangs were glossy and nearly elegant in their frozen, polished violence. They were harsh and horrible and they reminded her of home.
Paige touched her shoulder and she jumped, knocking over her forgotten cup of hot chocolate. The porcelain shattered, skittering like pale insects across the floor.
“Let’s go to bed,” Paige said quietly. “There’s nothing else we can do right now.”
But Aggie was still thinking about Yen. She wondered how bad a person it made her that she’d already stopped worrying about Kali.
* * *
“Lucy’s almost as bad as you are with the whole Christmas thing,” Aggie said, watching Lucy string lanterns through the trees. She’d already shoveled the snow out of the back fire pit and baked three dozen jam cookies, only half of which were burned.
“It’s a Solstice thing with her,” Paige corrected. “The longest night of the year and all that.”
“I just don’t get her.”
“Well, she’s saving your butt from being sent back to New York, so play nice.”
“I am playing nice,” Aggie insisted.
“For someone raised by wolves.”
“Why does everyone keep saying stuff like that?” Aggie grumbled. She couldn’t stand the glares from Noah and the approving thumbs-up from Cateyln, both of whom thought Aggie collected fangs and dosed Cal’s pajamas with holy water. Even Paige kept giving her little lectures.
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Do you really think that’s such a good—”
“Yes.” Aggie cut her off, and let the back door slam behind her. The house was too small, too crowded, too full of Christmas cheer and magic and violence and impossible questions. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t remember the exact sound of Yen’s voice. That scared her most of all.
She took the farm truck and drove until her fingers no longer clenched the steering wheel. She got out, strapped on her snowshoes, and started to walk. For the first time in months, she didn’t miss the sounds of city traffic and the flash of neon lights.
“Yen, what do you want from me?” she asked the cold stars. At least there was no one around to hear her talking to her dead sister. The others assumed she was searching for Kali too. No one had found any more clues and Aggie had no idea how to go about looking for a missing vampire. It wasn’t exactly in her training.
Still, she kept an eye out as she paced along the frozen road.
During the weeks she’d spent camping and trying not to get eaten by a bear—never mind vampires—she’d walked for hours through the forests around the Violet Hill mountains. She’d become intimately familiar with blisters, mosquitoes, and poison ivy. She’d walked until her calf muscles cramped. And still, she’d never found any remnant of the battle.
Aggie hadn’t made the circuit in a few weeks. There’d been training exercises, drills, and midterms. She felt vaguely guilty, as if she was letting Yen down. She was getting soft, letting the farm and the school change what her sister had trained her to be. That had to be why the stake had been left on her pillow, and the fang necklace. A reminder.
Paige would have told her it was suicide to go out into the winter woods. Of course, Paige thought it was suicide to go down the driveway if there was more than an inch of snow on it. Aggie just kept walking until she struggled to stay steady on her snowshoes. She was so lost to the search and her own whirling thoughts that she barely noticed the dimming of the sun in the white winter sky until it was too late.
She was alone after sunset, clumsy in her parka, and slow in her snowshoes.