At midnight, I stood in front of a massive house in the French Quarter, which all the ghost tours claimed, accurately, had once been owned by a vampire. It sat on a corner lot in a mostly quiet area, if any part of the French Quarter could be called quiet, and rose three stories into the sky.

I smoothed my lilac dress down my stomach and contemplated walking away.

As the power holder, that was in my power, right? I could turn around (hopefully not as stiffly as I was standing there) and trudge back the way I’d come.

But that ultimately wouldn’t solve my problem of freezing up in battle. Whether I liked it or not, I needed someone other than the Bankses to teach me, and at the moment, everyone thought Darius had the answer. He was all I had.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward to knock as a strange awareness washed over me. Goosebumps coated my body, hinting of a presence lurking close by. Not long after, an itch between my shoulder blades flared to life, my body’s way of telling me someone was watching.

I spun, half expecting to find a vampire on the other side of the street, watching to see that I actually approached the house. Dark shadows coated the walls of the houses and spilled onto the sidewalk. The leaves of the few small trees rustled in the cool night air.

The itch grew stronger and I took a step backward, toward the door. The soft scuff of a shoe on cement interrupted the still night. Another footfall, someone slowly sneaking my way from the other side of the street, obscured by the corner.

Heart in my throat, my failure the night before rode heavy in my thoughts. Was a vampire about to attack me? Had the Mages’ Guild finally stepped up their game?

I turned quickly to knock, but the creator of the footfalls staggered into view before my fist could land.

All the breath left my lungs as the man noticed me.

“What’s up, pretty lady?” the trendy guy in his mid-twenties slurred from across the street. He held up a tall plastic cup, half-full, with a long bendy straw sticking out of it. Noticing that I didn’t immediately turn away, he staggered to a stop, his body tilted to the side.

We stared at each other for a moment.

He straightened, bent in an arc the other way, and leaned in the opposite direction again, fighting gravity.

“It’s not a great idea to pass out on the street in this area,” I said. Delivering a fair warning seemed the neighborly thing to do. “Or…any area, I guess, but especially this one.”

His lean came around to the front before he started—or burped, I couldn’t really tell. “You care about me?” He’d barely formed the words before bringing up the drink hand to tap himself in the chest. He snorted and bent backward, at odds with gravity no matter what position he was in, and staggered back. His head hit the wall of the house behind him and he ducked like the sky was falling.

“What was that?” he muttered, looking upward at a very strange angle. A moment later, he finally lost the battle for balance. He staggered forward, but his feet couldn’t catch up with his increasing momentum and he fell, face first, onto the sidewalk. His hands caught up a moment later, and he scraped the edge of his cup against the cement.

“Ugh,” I heard in a long moan, his cup dramatically tilted but not spilling. “Noooo,” he groaned, looking like a guy after a bad hit-and-run accident. “Didn’t spill.”

Small miracles.

I turned back to the door, finding a black maw in place of the wood. A shape loomed in the darkness, tall and wide and full of muscle.

“Hah!” I flung out my hand, and a shot of red zapped from my palm. The ol’ zapper never let me down. Except when I was trying to kill rodents. Those buggers were fast.

The shape in the doorway dove to the side.

“I will save you,” came a collection of grunts from across the street. The man was fighting gravity again.

As I backed up, knowing the reflex attack was almost certainly my bad, Darius’s assistant, Moss, who I’d briefly met in Seattle and had been one of the vampires at the training the night before, reappeared in the doorway with a surly expression, a ruined suit jacket, and a burned arm beneath. How bad the wound was, I couldn’t say because of the shadows draping him, but it was more than a skim.

“Miss Bristol,” he said in a less-than-enthusiastic voice. “How good of you to come. Please, come in.”

The man across the street was braced on his forearms, staring my way. “Isn’t that place haunted?” he asked, apparently to himself.

Inside, gorgeous furniture graced the well-appointed and spacious rooms. Fresh flowers sweetened the air and oil paintings hung on freshly painted walls.

“Wow,” I said, taking it all in. Callie and Dizzy’s house was really nice, but this took luxury to a whole new level.

Moss led the way up a winding staircase with strings of flowers draping down from the banister.

“Are those flowers magic, or…?”

Moss didn’t so much as glance to the side. “We are not in the Realm.”

“Is that a no, or…?”

“Those are real flowers.”

“Right.” I nodded, breathing in their fragrance. “Is it to mask the smell of death in here, or…?”

This time he did glance back at me. With a frown.

“I mean, you know”—I waved my finger at him and then around—“vampires. You smell good with cologne, but in your other form… Does that form smell as swampy as it looks, by the way? I’m usually too caught up in the moment to notice.”

At the second-story landing, Moss paused and turned to me, his face expressionless in the low light.

“Is this a taboo subject?” I asked, suddenly unsure. “It probably is, isn’t it? Sorry.”

“This way.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a vampire stiffen, despite the whole “being dead” mythos, but Moss came awfully close.

“Do you get the flowers delivered fresh every day?” I couldn’t let go of the flower situation. Why Darius, or whoever arranged it, wanted them draped on the banisters, I didn’t know. Vases would do just fine for overall appeal, and the flowers wouldn’t die nearly as fast. What a waste of money and plant life. “Oh!” I snapped, the light bulb clicking on. “The flowers lost their lives, just like you, but they’re still beautiful. It’s symbolic, right?”

Without a word, Moss stopped in front of a pair of double doors. He stared down at me with a clenched jaw and his magic, seething, pulsed around us.

“Get in,” he said, not moving in any way to indicate the door beside us.

“Sure. Yup.” Hunching reflexively under that hard, dangerous stare, I scurried into a formal dining room.

A huge table occupied the middle of the room, surrounded by four chairs, one at the head of the table, and the others close by down the sides. Each place setting held my worst nightmare: multiple fine china plates stacked on top of each other ending in a bowl, forks and spoons for days, two knives, and three crystal glasses in front. A crystal chandelier hung in the middle of the table, bedecked with electric candles. Big, draped curtains closed off the windows, blocking out all light, and a large cream rug stretched beneath all of this.

“What a nightmare,” I murmured.

Heavy footsteps sounded just outside the door, like someone was standing in one place and stomping their feet rhythmically. After a short pause, Moss followed me into the room, his body tense. His suit coat had been changed and his injured arm hung down by his side, the hand clenched.

“Miss Bristol,” he said. “Please. Shall we sit?”

“Um, yup. Sure.” I stepped backward, and he paused, eyeing me. I kept my hands down to ease his mind. “There’s no magic around me. I mean, I haven’t collected any of it…at present. There’s magic around us all the time. You, for example, count as magic.” His blank stare was off-putting. “What I mean is, I won’t accidentally zap you.” I figured I should cover my bases so I didn’t turn into a liar. “At present.”

“Yes. Fine.” He held out his hand, gesturing toward the table. “Would you like to sit down?”

“Sure, yup.” I took another step back to allow him plenty of room to cross in front of me—he didn’t seem nervous per se, but he didn’t seem at ease, either—and waited patiently.

His brow furrowed.

“Sorry, am I supposed to be doing something?” I asked.

“Pardon me. I wondered why you were backing away. Would you prefer drinks in the lounge, first?”

“You have a lounge? No, this is fine. I don’t even really know what a lounge is, to be honest. Where, uh…do you want me?”

“Oh. Of course.” He pulled out the chair at the head of the table.

“Right.” I unslung my small handbag from over my shoulder and briefly thought about looping it over the back of the chair. Realizing it would look gauche in this fine establishment, I quickly dropped it by my feet so no one would notice it. I considered taking the napkin off the table and draping it in my lap, but that seemed a little premature, given there was no one else at the table.

Moss took the seat to my left, one of the two chairs on that side. Darius and Marie entered a moment later, each looking beautiful and glamorous and dressed to the nines.

I smoothed my dress over my lap, wishing I could sink back into my chair. I really should’ve bought a new dress. Or even borrowed one of Veronica’s.

“Miss Bristol,” Darius said with an earth-shattering smile. The man was a looker, no two ways about it. When he was in this form, of course. The other form would crack glass. “How has your evening been?”

“Great. Going well.” I bobbed my head and crossed my ankles, as if that would somehow bring me on par with these gorgeous folks.

Moss stood as the others approached, moving a seat farther away from me. He was probably all too happy to do so.

“You remember Miss Beauchene, of course.” Darius held out the newly vacated chair for Marie.

“Of course, yes. Hi.” I gave her a little wave.

“It seems Mr. LaRay startled you earlier.” Darius took the empty seat on my other side.

Another silent cue must’ve gone out—as if by bat sonar—because a lovely woman wearing a black wraparound dress and carrying a bottle of wine entered the room with a smooth glide. A faint tickle of her magic crawled across my skin like a cloud of insects, hinting of hunger and hunting, now a familiar warning.

I stiffened, watching her closely. After the failed training session, Reagan had given me some markers on how to tell a vampire’s age, going over the level of danger for each. Newbies, like the one I had killed, were totally unpredictable and wild. They’d lose themselves to bloodlust at the drop of a hat, and even though they weren’t incredibly strong or fast for vampires, they were plenty stronger and faster than me. But while the young ones were unpredictable, the elders—calculated, strategic, and wickedly strong and fast—were more dangerous in the long term. The other vamps ranked in the middle somewhere on a sliding scale according to age.

This woman’s gait, though smooth, had little hiccups that wouldn’t seem out of place for a human, something I’d never noticed with the other three vampires in the room. Her jaw clenched and unclenched, and her nostrils flared more than once. Her hand shook just a bit when she poured my wine, and her fingers bent in a flexed sort of way, like they were ready to spring claws.

Given that she did retain some level of smoothness, it was clear the struggle wasn’t too difficult for her. New, but not incredibly so.

I relaxed silently, only then realizing the rest of the vampires were watching me placidly. Probably waiting for me to answer a question I’d been too distracted to hear.

“Sorry, what?” I said.

“Not at all,” Darius answered politely, his posture all ease. “Please, take your time.”

“Oh, I was just… Um.” Would it be rude to say I was sussing out the danger? Probably. Although everything I did would probably be deemed rude in this highbrow setup.

“You were just taking in your surroundings.” Darius smiled in a disarming sort of way. It didn’t disarm anything. “On that topic, I noted your reaction to Mr. LaRay earlier this evening.”

“Right, yes. Yeah, sorry about that. He startled me.”

“Yes, so I gathered. And you reacted quickly and immediately. As you did with Clyde in the Edgewater.”

The Edgewater was a plush hotel in Seattle owned by Darius’s child—someone he’d made into a vampire. Someone I’d zapped a couple of times on impulse. I’d stayed there a few nights with some guy I didn’t want to keep thinking about.

“Yes.” I leaned back so the waitress could drape my napkin into my lap.

“You struggled to react to the various bombardments last night. Why is that, do you think?”

I barely stopped myself from nervously dabbing my forehead with the napkin. “If I knew the answer to that, I probably wouldn’t be sitting at this huge table with vampires.”

Speaking of the huge table…

“Where are all the other chairs?”

“I had them removed,” Darius said, not at all impatient or cross that I had changed the subject instead of answering his question. “Reagan doesn’t enjoy extra chairs around the table. You two are so similar, I thought you might have a similar issue.”

“Us? Similar?” I frowned at him. “We’re complete opposites.”

“I think Darius is confusing life with battle,” Marie said. “You and Reagan are similar in battle. Which is why we are perplexed that the training session didn’t go well. You froze up. Why?”

It seemed I wouldn’t be wiggling out of that topic of conversation.

I sipped my wine, thinking back to the night before. “My mind just went blank. I was trying to remember all the spells I’ve learned, and nothing would come.”

“Yet, when you are not thinking at all, spells come easily, as Mr. LaRay can attest,” Darius said.

The waitress and a couple of helpers wheeled in a tray before visiting each place setting and moving the plates around. My small plate received a piece of bread and my bowl was filled with soup. She paused next to Darius and the helpers waited by their tray.

“Would it make you more comfortable if we ate?” Darius asked me as if it were a normal question. Why else would someone invite guests over for a midnight dinner if not to actually eat dinner?

“I don’t mind,” I said, locating the large soup spoon and picking it up gingerly.

“She feels awkward. We would do best to eat,” Marie said.

“I agree.” Darius gave a little wave, and the helpers sprang into action, arranging the rest of the plates like they had mine.

“Do vampires not generally eat?” I asked. There were plenty of other things to do besides sharing a meal in close quarters. Like sitting idly with a cup of tea. In public.

“Not generally, no.” Darius took up his soup spoon. “It makes us hungry for our true sustenance, which is not always on hand.”

I wrinkled my nose, knowing he meant blood. His comment about hunger made the memory of the newbie flash through my mind. Almost immediately, a wave of goosebumps covered my body and magic rose around me, ready for action.

Marie lifted the spoon to her lips, and without warning, the magic started to churn, wild and feral.