I grabbed a plastic lighter from a nearby windowsill. “Lucas, what are you doing?”

“You didn’t get to this part of the training, huh?” He knotted the bandanna around the neck of the bottle and dipped the long end of the cloth into the vodka.

Shepherd slammed into the door. The chair rocked, and it clearly wouldn’t hold the door shut much longer. “Lucas, he’s here!”

“Good.” Lucas flicked the lighter. As Shepherd burst into the room, smiling evilly at us, Lucas set the rag on fire and tossed the bottle at Shepherd.

Alcohol is flammable—when the fire gets to the liquid—

Lucas tackled me to the ground just as the fireball exploded outward. I heard Shepherd scream, and possibly he was dying; fire was one of the few things that could kill a vampire. Before I could see what was happening, Lucas yelled, “Cover your head!”

I did. He got up and threw a chair through the window. Glass sprayed everywhere, and I could feel shards of it prickling into my scalp. Lucas then grabbed my hand.

“Let’s get out of here,” he cried. The fire behind us was blazing brightly now. Shepherd’s screaming had stopped. Either he had escaped or he was dead.

I leaped through the window, avoiding the jagged glass that still jutted out from the edges. To my relief, I saw the car the vampires had used to bring us here. It was parked only a couple dozen feet away, and nobody was inside. They’d come for it soon, which meant we had to take it first. It would speed our escape and slow their pursuit. We could actually get away.

The door wasn’t locked. I slid behind the driver’s seat as Lucas jumped in the passenger side. Breathing hard, he said, “Tell me they left the keys in this thing.”

“They didn’t,” I said as I fumbled with the wires beneath the dashboard. “Good thing I got through some parts of the training.”

Black Cross taught everyone how to hot-wire an old-fashioned car. They said you’d never know when you needed to get away in a hurry. Well, they were right about that.

The wires sparked, and the engine rumbled to life. I put the car in drive and stamped down on the gas. We spun out of the parking lot, back into safety and freedom.

Thanks to Black Cross, I thought. And thanks to the wraith. My life couldn’t get any stranger.

When I started to laugh, Lucas glanced at me in concern. Probably I sounded a little hysterical. “Bianca, take it easy, okay? We made it. Don’t freak out.”

I simply focused on the road and muttered, “Happy birthday to me.”

Chapter Eighteen

“WE SHOULD DUMP THE CAR,” I SAID.

“Slow down, okay?” Lucas kept his hands braced against the dashboard, like he was scared I was going to steer us into a ditch at any second. He might not have been wrong. I’d gotten an A in driver’s ed, but between not knowing where I was going and shaking from adrenaline, I wasn’t really in control of the vehicle.

“I don’t think the vampires can track this thing. We’ll park it in back where it can’t be seen from the street. For now we need to get home as fast as possible.”

“This isn’t the vampires’ car! You know they stole this. Which means if we’re found with it, the police will think we stole it.”

“We won’t be found with it if you just slow down and stop driving like a crazy person.” Lucas put a hand on my shoulder.

“Deep breaths. Come on. Oh, hey—turn left here.”

I turned left and realized I recognized this street from one of the bus routes; we were getting closer to Vic’s neighborhood and our temporary home. That helped me calm myself a little bit. We’d have to get rid of the car eventually, but for now, we were all right.

We drove to the end of Vic’s driveway and across that perfect lawn. I hoped the tires wouldn’t gouge too deeply into the soil. Once the car was more or less hidden behind the house, we stopped.

Somehow it felt strange, walking back inside the dark, quiet wine cellar. It hadn’t changed in any way, but I felt that I had. I stepped out of my sandals and unfastened my hair with trembling hands.

Lucas put his hands against the wall and bowed his head, as if he lacked the strength to go any farther. His wrists were still red from the duct tape that had bound them. The silhouette of his broad shoulders made me shiver.

I looked down at my own wrists, at the delicate bracelet Lucas had given me. A present for my birthday—a happy symbol of a day that seemed to have taken place a lifetime ago, not only a few hours in the past.

“Charity’s not going to stop looking for you,” he said. “She’s obsessed now. She’s decided you’re the barrier between her and Balthazar.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered.

“Bianca, we can’t stay in Philadelphia. We’ll have to go farther away. Where, I don’t know—”

“It doesn’t matter tonight,” I repeated.

Lucas turned to argue with me, but then our eyes met and he fell silent. I lay one hand on his chest, so that I could feel the rise and fall of his breath and the beating of his heart.

We’re alive, I thought. This is what it means to be alive.

“Bianca—”

“Shhh.”

I traced his lips, the strong column of his neck, the swell of his Adam’s apple. I could feel his breath against my fingers, coming faster as I touched him. Still he was too far away. My hands shook as I pulled his T-shirt over his head. Then I could wrap my arms around his waist and lay my head against his chest. I could hear his pulse rushing against my ear, the way the sea does in a shell. It wasn’t enough.

“Closer,” I whispered, pulling him down for a kiss. Lucas’s mouth captured mine, and his hands began tearing at my dress the way I’d torn at his clothes. I helped him push away the straps of my sundress, without ever breaking the kiss, because I didn’t want to stop touching him.

My clothes crumpled to the floor. His skin was against my skin, the cedary scent of him the only air I could breathe. All I wore now was the red coral bracelet, and it shone against his bare skin as he pulled me toward our bed.

In the morning, I felt terrible. Probably that was because I’d been chased by vampires and pounded by sleet, not to mention chilled to the bone, but Lucas freaked out about it.

“You said you’ve been really sick.” He pressed his palm to my forehead, which was silly, because his body temperature was almost always warmer than mine. “Any more dizzy spells?”

“You haven’t even let me get out of bed yet. How would I know if I’m dizzy?” I gestured at the quilt that covered me and the pillows beneath my head. “Usually you have to stand up to tell.”

“I’m just concerned.”

“Well, that makes two of us. But I don’t want you to have to worry.”

Lucas sat heavily on the corner of the bed and rested his forehead in his hand. “I love you, Bianca. That means I have to worry. Something’s wrong with you that neither one of us understands. We need to talk to some vampires—and not the kind we dealt with last night.”

I confessed, “I’ve thought about talking to Mom and Dad. Not because I wanted to—though I do, so much—”

He took my hand, to show that he understood.

“—but I don’t think they’d hear us out.” As much as I hated this knowledge, I felt that it was true. My parents would respond to my call in only one way: They’d come get me. They would do whatever it took to separate me from Lucas, and they’d probably try to force me to become a vampire like them.

Lucas considered that for a second. He seemed to have some trouble getting the next words out. “Well, what about Balthazar?”

It had cost him a lot to admit that Balthazar might be the one to help me, I knew. But that, too, was a dead end. “I already asked him, at school last year. He doesn’t know what happens to born vampires if they don’t complete the transition.”

“Damn.” Rising from the bed, Lucas paced. I watched him from my tangle of covers. Forget about it, I wanted to say. Maybe it’s nothing. We got away from Charity; we should be celebrating!

That was me trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. I’d told Lucas the truth in part so that I couldn’t pretend any longer. It was time to face this.

Lucas stopped in his tracks. “We’re assuming that this has something to do with your vampire side. But what if it isn’t? I mean, you could just be sick. With walking pneumonia or something like that.”

“It’s possible. I’ve thought about it.” Full vampires never caught viruses or got appendicitis or anything like that, but growing up, I’d had the sniffles and stomachaches like any other child. In the past few years, I’d been very healthy, and my parents had said that was my vampire strength buoying my immune system. But maybe it was still possible for me to get sick like anybody else.

“Dana had walking pneumonia a couple of years ago. It messed with her appetite, her strength, that kind of stuff. That might be all this is.”

“Maybe so.” I liked the idea a lot. Too much, really—nobody should want to have walking pneumonia—but it beat the alternative.

Lucas sat back down on the bed, more cheerful than he’d been since the planetarium. “So, we’ll get you to the doctor. He can check you out, figure out what’s wrong.”

It sounded like a good idea, save one thing. Hesitantly, I said, “Can we pay for the doctor?”

“We’ve got enough money for a visit to the clinic. It sets us back, but—we can manage.”

“If I need antibiotics—Lucas, that stuff can be really expensive—”

“If you need antibiotics, we’ll sell the car.”

“The stolen car?”

“What other car would I be talking about?” Lucas wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Lucas, that would be wrong! That belongs to somebody who probably wants it back.” I couldn’t believe he’d said such a thing. “Besides, how would you even do it? The car is stolen. It’s not so easy to sell a stolen car. I’ve seen it on TV; there are serial numbers and all kinds of things to track it down.”

He sighed heavily. “Bianca, I work at a chop shop.”

I was confused. What was a chop shop? The first thing that made me think about was chop suey, and I imagined a Chinese restaurant. But Lucas worked at a garage. “I don’t understand.”

“A chop shop is a garage that deals in stolen cars.” Lucas stared down at his hands as he said this, rubbing absently at the raw skin on his wrists. “We scrape off the VINs, break ’em down for parts, repaint them, doctor license plates, whatever people need. I’m not proud of it. But I can do it.”

“Why would you work at a place like that?”

“Bianca, get real. I’m shy of my twenty-first birthday, and I don’t even have a high school diploma, much less any certifications as a mechanic. Who else do you think would hire me? I hate working with crooks. I hate it so much, some mornings it makes me sick. But I have to do something so we can survive, and a place like this—that’s pretty much the only place that would hire me.”

My cheeks burned. I felt so stupid, for not having realized the situation we were in. Lucas’s pride must have tormented him every single day; he believed strongly in right and wrong. He did this job only because he thought he had to for us.

Gently I laid my hand on his. “I understand.”

“Wish I did, sometimes.” Lucas shook it off. “Listen, I know the rightful owner of that car deserves to have it back. But I’d bet a million bucks that he doesn’t need it back because he needs the cash to get medicine for someone he loves. If he knew that—if he knew how badly you need it—you think he might not be so angry?”