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  Emmie rolled her eyes.

  “I just think there can’t be a good reason why a werewolf is interested in you.” Elle took a sip of milk; right now though, she could have done with something harder.

  “Not me,” Emmie said. “Us.”

  “Great.”

  Emmie giggled. “He’s very pretty.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Elle lied. She stood and took her glass to the sink, leaving it there. As she walked back to the table, she rubbed her shoulder.

  “Does your shoulder still hurt?” Emmie was frowning.

  “Bjorn dislocated it.”

  As Elle sat down again, Emmie reached out and touched her hand. It should have been a simple gesture; a physical expression of sympathy. But it wasn’t simple. A frisson of something zapped up Elle’s arm and she froze. Within a heartbeat, her shoulder felt like it had been dipped in ice cold water, needles of pain shooting through the joint before it suddenly went numb.

  Then, no soreness.

  Elle stared at Emmie in shock.

  Her sister was looking pale, her eyes shadowed.

  “What happened?” Elle asked, but she had a feeling she knew.

  “Don’t tell,” Emmie whispered. “Please.” Her grip tightened on Elle’s hand. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

  *

  “You knew about this—this ability?” Elle asked.

  She rotated her shoulder and it felt good. Better than it ever had, really. In fact, overall, she felt fantastic. Like she could run a marathon. Emmie, however, was not looking so well. Elle tucked her sister into her bed and plied her with food and hot chocolate. Emmie’s hair looked plain brown again, and it was tied back in two plaits running behind each ear. Her caramel-colored skin had recuperated some of its normal glow, but she was still pale. Emmie was holding a steaming mug between two somewhat shaky hands.

  Elle was pacing the length of Emmie’s bedroom. She ran a hand through her short hair as she did so, muttering to herself as she waited for Emmie’s answer. Elle reached the small wooden bookshelf and turned back. Pink wallpaper decorated with flowers ran along the walls, making it feel like an army of petals was closing in on her. No toys scattered the floor. Emmie couldn’t sleep with mess, she said. The small room was almost too neat for a child, Elle thought.

  “I did it once before, but I thought it was an accident,” Emmie replied. She was peeping out over the top of her pink blanket, which she’d pulled right up. It wasn’t cold, but then, Elle didn’t know what the effects of healing a person might do to someone.

  Healing.

  By the blood.

  Healing.

  “Who? When?” Elle was trying to think of who she would have to shut up—permanently, if necessary. She couldn’t allow for anyone else to know about Emmie’s ability, if that was what this really was. She couldn’t let it be talked about.

  Emmie mumbled something.

  “Sorry?”

  “A cat!”

  Elle stopped pacing. Turning, she looked at her sister, who still had the blankets drawn to her chin. Protectively, Elle finally grasped. Feeling like a total bitch, and berating herself for being one, Elle walked over to her sister’s bed and sat down.

  “You healed a cat?” she asked, her voice softer. She met her sister’s troubled gaze and kicked herself mentally again.

  “It got run over by a cart,” Emmie explained, “and it was hurt. I knew I wasn’t meant to touch it, but something inside made me. So I touched it, and then it got better.”

  That simple. One life-changing event and all it had taken was a touch. And she hadn’t told Elle about it. Hadn’t even thought of saying something, Elle could tell.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me?” Elle asked as she plucked at the little pieces of lint that stuck to Emmie’s blanket.

  “I didn’t want to upset you. And I didn’t know if it would work on people.”

  Elle stared at her sister, trying to gauge the honesty of her words. It hurt to think that they were true. Elle had worked hard to build the relationship she had with Emmie, one that had hopefully meant that Emmie could be comfortable with her; that she could tell her anything. It was the relationship Elle didn’t have with their mother and certainly not with their grandmother. She’d wanted different for Emmie, and it looked like she’d failed.

  “I’m sorry, Emmie. You must think me a bear.” Elle found her sister’s leg and gave it a squeeze.

  “I didn’t know if I could do it again. And I knew you would worry.” Emmie lowered the blanket.

  “Of course I’m going to worry,” Elle said and tried to smile. “But I will worry about you anyway, no matter what.”

  “Promise me you won’t tell anyone about what I can do?” Emmie reached down and grabbed Elle’s hand in a pincer-like grip.

  “I promise.”

  Chapter 16

  To say that Olive hated vampires would be an understatement. She smiled a tight-lipped smile at the one in front of her, to hide her unease about being in an estate. The stone walls and roof felt like it would envelop her, swallow her whole. And then there were the mental voices, from the hundred or so servants and slaves who lived and worked here. Her shields were struggling to keep their errant thoughts out.

  It reminded her of her childhood, where she’d spent five years of her life living in an estate, her mother a slave. Her mother had been Graced, a Gray, but she’d also been a gambler. Olive had gotten her mother out of trouble more times than she could count; making people forget Garnet Martell had owed them any money at all. But she hadn’t been there the last time; the time that a vampire had won so much that Garnet had been forced into slavery, taking a ten-year-old Olive with her.

  And then, after five years of being beaten and bitten and touched in a way a child shouldn’t be touched, Olive had walked in on her mother with a vampire. She was a slave; they were there to be food. But instead of the proud figure Olive had fantasized about in her mind, her mother had been nothing more than a moaning, panting whore, begging for the vampire to fuck her. For all four of the vampires in the room to use her.

  Olive had suffered for her mother; been exposed to the bombardment of others’ voices, to the point where sometimes she didn’t know who she was. She’d had no childhood; knowing things far beyond her years. And all she had wanted to do was protect the woman who had failed her so many times. Hiding in the shadows, Olive had heard the vampires’ and her mother’s thoughts. Had seen how her mother had really just been a bit-ridden slut. Graceds couldn’t get physically addicted, but they could still mentally crave the bite. Her mother had loved being bitten, loved the high. And she had suspected that one of the vampires was interfering with her daughter, but hadn’t wanted it stopped, because it might have meant that she could get sent to a wolf estate where there would be no bite.

  So Olive had watched. And when all four vampires had strangely lost control, draining her mother to death, ripping her apart in a frenzy, Olive hadn’t shed a tear. Instead, she’d packed her bags and left. After all, you couldn’t track a child who had a new surname and a face no one could ever remember.

  “How are you, Olive?” Viktor Kipling asked, drawing her from her memories.

  Viktor was an ally of sorts—she ran an employment agency for servants and sold slaves at horrendously expensive rates to vampire estates. But then again, slaves were never cheap. And Viktor was a somewhat prolific customer. He had a taste for death that was unusual for a city vampire. They normally tried to pretend they were more than just bloodsuckers, with their fancy clothes and social rules and regulations. They played at being human. At being humane.

  Step outside the city and it was a completely different story.

  “Well,” Olive replied. “How may I help?”

  “I need a personal servant for my son,” Viktor said.

  His desk was made of a dark, shiny wood that was clearly expensive. As were all the fixtures and fittings in this room. But the thing Olive coveted the most were the skulls on
one of the bookshelves. They would not have been easy to come by—at least, not the vampire or were examples.

  “I thought he was averse to having a personal servant,” Olive replied. She had tried to hire out a Graced servant to Viktor for his son two times previously. As yet, she hadn’t managed to secure a spy in the Wintermere household.

  It wasn’t for lack of trying.

  “I have been thinking about your last proposition. All your servants are extremely well-trained. I think his protests will subside when he sees how much a personal servant can…assist in one’s life.”

  Olive tried to not appear as pleased as she was. Viktor had asked for something she had been prepared to force on him.

  She now had even more reason to want a spy living in this estate. Two Graced women were dead; both from being Chosen. One only just discovered yesterday. She knew without any doubt that Annabel had been killed by Dante Kipling, but the second girl had been dumped in the Thyme. She suspected he was behind that death, too. She wanted him watched. His fascination for Graced women could simply be a fetish, or something worse. After all, some vampires knew about Graceds, but not Viktor. He suspected she was more than she appeared, but there were only a handful of records that actually spoke of Graceds. And he wasn’t powerful enough to own them.

  “I have the perfect servant. However, I don’t want them to become bit-ridden, so I would appreciate it if your son does not bite her. Or offer to Choose her—she has family obligations that she cannot shirk,” Olive said.

  “We could have a trial period. Can you guarantee she will work out?” Viktor asked.

  “I will send a family member to attend to this. Say two weeks?” Olive suggested.

  Chapter 17

  “Your grandmother isn’t very happy at the moment.”

  Elle looked up from the kitchen table and the sandwich she’d been eating. Her mother, Melissande Brown, was standing just inside the stone doorway. She was one of the most beautiful women Elle had ever seen. Naturally, Elle looked nothing like her. Oh, you could see the resemblance when they stood in exactly the same pose wearing the same expressions, but that was where it ended. Melissande’s pale blonde hair was upswept in a bun, accentuating high cheekbones and a straight nose. Classic, Elle thought, that was what you would call her mother’s appearance.

  “Gran is rarely happy,” Elle said in response. She took another bite of her cold meat and cheese concoction.

  “That is true.” Her mother cracked a thin smile.

  Melissande was broken, Elle knew. Gran had long ago beaten and bent her spirit and no one could fix her.

  Her mother took a few steps into the kitchen before she seemed to shake herself. Grabbing the kettle, she added some coals to the stove, filled the metal boiler with water and set it to heat.

  “What is she unhappy about this time?” Elle asked.

  Her mother sat down at the table with a sigh and the scent of roses. It reminded Elle of Clay, the asshole. According to him, Elle smelled like violets. So her whole family stank like flowers, did they?

  “Graceds are being murdered.”

  Elle jerked in her seat and nearly dropped her sandwich. “What?”

  She’d only heard about one Graced death. She’d seen the body herself.

  People—humans—were always being murdered. They killed each other or vampires and weres killed them. Sometimes Graceds got caught in the crossfire, but normally the victims were just humans. Nons. There weren’t any strict laws about murder—but there were huge death penalties to pay to the family, if the culprit was found. Most vampires thought they’d get away with it, and they did. For the humans who were stupid enough to kill, they generally ended up in the clink because they couldn’t afford the death pension. And then they were sold off as slaves. Elle had only escaped the same fate because they hadn’t known who had dealt the final death blow, when the vampire had tried to abduct Emmie.

  The kettle let out a shrill whistle and Melissande stood. She made herself a cup of tea, the lemon scent strong in the still kitchen air. Sitting back down, her mother held the chipped mug between both hands. Elle found herself staring at the cup. They had plenty of mugs and cups that weren’t chipped, but none of those had been made by a five-year-old Elle who had thought that bright colors meant better quality work. It touched her to see that her mother still used it; that she chose it in preference to all the others they had.

  “Two women so far,” Melissande said.

  The heart-pounding worry subsided. “Just two?”

  Her mother nodded, her face impassive. “Both by vampires.”

  “Really?” Graceds had hidden from vampires in plain sight for thousands of years. The two deaths were probably just coincidence. Although Elle had had her suspicions about the body from the river.

  Anyway, it had to be coincidence. Their survival depended on it. Emmie’s survival did.

  Melissande nodded.

  “How did they kill them? Who died?” Elle realized that she hadn’t finished her sandwich, but she wasn’t feeling hungry anymore.

  “Annabel White and Mala Kite.”

  Elle frowned. “Annabel was a vampire whore.”

  She’d never liked Annabel, but she hadn’t wished her dead. She might have hoped that the woman’s hair might fall out or that she’d suddenly get ugly, sure, but never dead. Emotional blackmail had been a hobby for Annabel; being a full-time bitch had been normal. Elle figured the world was probably better off without her. She was guessing that Mala was the woman Elle had found at the Thyme.

  “Annabel died during the Change.”

  Elle blinked. “She asked to be Chosen?”

  “Your gran doesn’t think so. That’s why she thinks it was murder,” Melissande said.

  Elle shook her head. “Murder implies that the vampire would know that Annabel or Mala wouldn’t make it.”

  Dreamy Blue eyes focused on Elle sharply and it made her wonder what her mother would have been capable of, had she not been born to Gran. “That’s true.”

  “And if they knew Annabel or Mala couldn’t survive the Change, then it means they might know that there’s something different about Graceds.” Elle began picking at her bread.

  “That’s what your gran is worried about.”

  “Do they think it was the same vampire who tried both Choosings?” Elle asked.

  “Yes, and your gran thinks she knows who it was.”

  Elle winced. She wouldn’t want to be on Gran’s bad side—being on her good side was uncomfortable enough—and she almost felt sorry for the vampire who’d decided that Graceds were attractive potential friends.

  “And,” her mother said, “she wants you to look into it.”

  “Huh?”

  “She says you’re perfect for the job.”

  “Perfect? She thinks I’m useless.”

  Melissande shrugged.

  Chapter 18

  Dante pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. He was the same as he was yesterday, and all the yesterdays before that, so why was it happening?

  “So, you’re coming to the ball?” Misty asked.

  Why did his father suddenly like him?

  Dante looked over at his sister, who was dressed in a white ball gown covered with yards and yards of handmade lace and little sparkling stones. He mentally shook his head at the sheer cost of the dress, then realized he’d temporarily forgotten about his plight.

  “No, I’m not going. I just thought I’d dress up like a fool for the sake of it.”

  “What did Father threaten you with?” Misty chuckled and ran her hands over her gown. She seemed to be admiring the way the material felt, but she could just be doing it to see if she looked fat. He didn’t know.

  Dante turned toward the mirror on his dressing chamber’s wall and examined his reflection. Everything was in place; his cravat was suitably snowy and his jacket was a deep black without a hint of lint; ready to attend the Baron of Gloster’s annual ball. He looked moronic.
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  “Nothing,” Dante admitted. He turned away from the mirror and then strode toward the door.

  “Nothing?” Misty’s face was a comical mask of confusion.

  “Father asked me to go,” Dante said.

  Her hand went to flick her hair over her shoulder, but froze when she remembered that her hair was swept up in a pile of curls. “He just asked?”

  “Yes.” Dante opened the door.

  “And you said yes?”

  Dante held out his hand for her to follow. She took his arm, which wasn’t his intention, but he shrugged to himself and shut the door behind them. The stone hallway was free of slaves, but plenty of servants quietly moved about their tasks.

  “Was there another response to give?” Dante asked.

  He led Misty down the hall and into the “family area,” where the rough stone walls gave way to polished red marble floors, and white marble walls. Dante paused when they reached the top of the central staircase, and then led Misty down.

  “Well?”

  Misty started. “Sorry?”

  “Was there another response to give Father when he asked if I was going to the ball?”

  Ignoring the servants staring at them—as if they’d never seen Dante dressed for a ball before, which they probably hadn’t—Dante continued down the stairs and toward his fate. Thinking back to his earlier annoyance, he sighed to himself. Why had his father suddenly taken an interest in him? Why? He was the same today as two years ago, when his father had declared that Dante was a waste of space and should have been strangled at birth. Either way, Dante was suddenly as popular as the skulls in his father’s study and it was uncomfortable.

  “I would have thought you’d try to come up with some excuse,” Misty said.

  Normally, he would have. But he was suspicious of his father’s sudden interest in him—in his apparent acceptance of his eccentricities. It was true that Dante was trying harder than usual to be more satisfactory to his parent, but in times past when he’d done the same, he had received a cool response. Now it was adequate? He somewhat doubted that.