“What?” I answered it crossly. I frowned. “Kieran? Is that you?” I checked the call display, then nodded at Nicholas. We both sat up. “What’s going on?” I held the phone away from my ear slightly so Nicholas could hear.

“It’s Solange,” Kieran said.

“Is she okay? What happened?”

“She’s okay,” he assured me. Nicholas stood up, hauling me by my elbow so fast I got a little dizzy. “I think.”

“What’s happening?”

“We were supposed to meet up in the woods, near the swamp before you get to the Blood Moon fields we’re not supposed to know about.” Nicholas’s mouth thinned at that. “By the time I got here, she was already … um …”

“What?” I nearly shouted, then lowered my voice, glancing up at my parents’ bedroom window.

“She’s feeding.” His voice went even tighter. “On a bloodslave.”

Nicholas and I stared at each other.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I’m looking at her, aren’t I?” He sounded freaked out and definitely not like the usual arrogant vampire hunter with all the answers.

Nicholas took the phone from me. “I’m coming. Stay there. Don’t call my parents!”

He tossed the phone back to me and took off across the lawn toward the lilac bushes. I chased after him.

“Like hell you’re going without me, Drake,” I called after him. I shoved through the lilac branches. Nicholas was already tossing a motorcycle helmet at me. It nearly hit me in the nose. I pulled it onto my head, fiddling with the straps as Nicholas walked the bike out onto the road, away from the house so the noise wouldn’t wake my parents.

“Get on,” he said, already straddling the bike.

The fact that he wasn’t trying to leave me behind made me want to kiss him even more. I climbed on and wrapped my arms around his waist, holding on as tightly as I could. He’d barely notice anyway; it’s not like he needed to breathe. We hurtled down the street, past the pumpkin patches and the apple orchards and the struggling vineyard, toward the mountains and the forest. Violet Hill was a small collection of lights behind us.

I couldn’t believe Solange was drinking from a human. It was one thing to drink from blood banks and willing donors, but feasting in the woods off some bloodslave was … disconcerting.

“Can you go faster?” I shouted over the roaring wind.

“Hang on,” he shouted back.

The night was a blur of shadows and asphalt and cold wind. I was losing feeling in my fingers and my arms were cramping. We finally turned off the road and cut through a field. Purple loosestrife brushed my knees.

In the woods, the ground was even more treacherous. Nicholas did his best to maneuver around tree branches and rocks and fallen birch trunks bursting with moss and lichen. A pine bough slapped him in the face. It smelled like Christmas all of a sudden. He went over a bump and my helmet bounced off the back of his. The next bump made my teeth rattle. The next two made him stop altogether.

“We’ll have to go on foot from here,” he said, tossing his helmet aside. I clambered off, legs stiff. I hung mine on the backseat and jogged after him. We soon passed Kieran’s motorcycle under a hemlock. The trees this far into the forest grew taller, so tall I wouldn’t have been able to see their tops even in the daylight. Ferns feathered at our feet.

By the time we reached Solange, I was sweating and panting. She looked worse than me, sitting in a nest of mossy roots and leaning against an aspen, its yellowing leaves quivering above her. There was blood on her face and her shirt was torn. Nicholas swore and blurred, reaching her side in one blink. He crouched next to her and she smiled wearily at him.

“I’m good,” she said, sounding drunk.

Kieran was standing in the path, over the prone body of the bloodslave woman Solange and I had seen in the Blood Moon camp. She was nearly as pale as Solange but smiling. There was blood and teeth marks on the inside of her elbow. They weren’t as elegant as the scars on her neck.

“Is she sleeping?” I asked.

Kieran nodded. “Solange told her to go to sleep. So she did.” We exchanged a grim glance. I stepped over her hand, flung out like a fallen calla lily.

Solange had blood on the side of her mouth. Her tongue darted out to lick it. There was a deep gash on her arm and scratches on her face. Her sunglasses were broken, lying in a clump of primrose.

“Oh, Sol.” I reached out to brush her hair off her face where it was stuck to a cut already scabbing over. She jerked back, moaning.

“No! Get away!”

I snatched my hand back, stunned. “What? Sol, it’s me.”

Her eyes went wild, veined with red all around irises the delicate blue of Wedgwood china. All three sets of her fangs were extended, but that wasn’t a shock anymore. The way she was looking at me was—as if I was hurting her, as if I was food. I could have been naked, with blood pouring out of my wrists, and Nicholas still wouldn’t have looked at me like that. I froze, confused.

Nicholas swore and tilted Solange’s head back so he could see into her eyes. “How much did you drink?”

She smiled lazily. “Don’t know. She was nice.” She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Like chocolate-covered strawberries.”

“Great,” I muttered. “I’ll never be able to eat those again now.”

Nicholas glanced at me. He hadn’t looked this worried since Solange’s bloodchange, when we weren’t even sure if she’d survive. His gaze shifted to Kieran. “What the hell happened?”