CHAPTER 6

“So neither massive head injuries, nor finding out you’re a member of this family thirty freaking minutes ago—and therefore have very little experience handling weapons—gets you out of patrol?” I asked as I met Finley and Izzy by the backdoor.

After Aislinn had made her announcement, Mom had tried to argue on my behalf, saying that A) I was still processing the whole “being a Brannick” thing, and B) I had gone through a lot, so maybe I could use a nap. Or a snack.

Aislinn’s answer was to give me ten minutes to take a shower, some of Finley’s clothes, and a flask full of that Pine-Sol–tasting liquid. The shower had helped, even if it had been lukewarm; and while the clothes were both a little too long and a little too tight, I was happy to be out of my grimy, smoky stuff from Thorne Abbey. I slipped the silver stake into one of my belt loops and hoped it wouldn’t sever an artery. Then I’d taken a few sips of the green stuff before heading downstairs, and while it still tasted awful, I was feeling better.

I took another hesitant swallow now as Izzy snorted and said, “I’m pretty sure decapitation wouldn’t get us out of patrol.”

I smiled, which earned me a glare from Finley. “I know it must be an adjustment after having faeries, or whatever, do your dirty work for you, but this is how we do things here,” she said, shoving a black backpack at me.

“Please. You must never have met a faerie if you think they do anything dirty,” I replied.

“We’ve met plenty of faeries,” Finley snapped, but her shoulders were up around her ears, and Izzy shot her a curious look. Whatever. I had enough family drama of my own to deal with. But then I reminded myself that technically, Izzy and Finley were my family. Demons on one side, Prodigium hunters on the other. Was it any wonder I was so screwed up?

Finley turned to face the door, which was bolted with several different locks. I watched her spin the dial on two, open another with a key she wore around her neck, and unhook a latch at the top.

“Man, I bet it takes you forever to get into your locker,” I joked, but Izzy shook her head.

“We don’t go to school,” she said, and there was something so serious and mournful in her voice that I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d only been kidding.

Finley pressed her shoulder against the door, and it opened with an ominous creak. We stepped outside and into what appeared to be a playground designed by ninjas. There were two balance beams, both at least six feet above the ground. There was also a pull-up bar and a heavy iron cage at the very edge of the clearing. Near that, several targets were set up. I spotted arrows stuck in one, some gnarly knives in another, and throwing stars in the third.

Trees circled the clearing, and just beyond them, I could make out a few other structures. Following my gaze, Izzy nodded toward them and said, “Tents. They built this place back in the thirties, when there were still lots of Brannicks. They used to have gatherings here. That’s what we called the big Brannick meet—”

“Shut up, Iz,” Finley said, walking away from us. “She’s not a freaking Brannick, so don’t tell her all of our stuff, okay?”

For the record, she didn’t really say “stuff.” Or “freaking” for that matter. A few months ago I probably would’ve had a snotty comeback for her, but I decided to let this one go. I turned back to ask Izzy more about the Brannicks, and as I did, the setting sun glared off the small emerald pendant around her neck. Suddenly, the image of Jenna’s shattered bloodstone flashed in my mind, and I made myself shove it away. Still, something must’ve shown on my face, because Izzy said, “She’s normally not like that. Well, I mean, she is, but the bad words are a new thing.”

I kind of wanted to ruffle her hair, but something told me she wouldn’t take that very well. So instead, I just shrugged and said, “It wasn’t that. I was just thinking about…Forget it. Anyway, I get why Finley isn’t in the best of moods.”

The setting sun burned brightly off Finley’s copper hair as she stalked across the clearing and disappeared into the trees. Izzy and I followed, and I slung my backpack over my shoulder. It clanked, and I glanced at Izzy. “So what exactly does ‘patrolling’ entail?”

She shrugged. “Making sure the woods are clean of supes.”

“Why would there be soup in—oh, ‘supes’? Like for ‘supernaturals’? Is that what you guys call us?”

Izzy didn’t turn around, and it could have just been a trick of the light, but I thought the tips of her ears pinkened. “It’s just something I made up,” she mumbled, and I was very glad she had her back to me as a smile broke out over my face.

“I like that.”

She spun around then, and I made sure my expression was deadly serious. “I mean it,” I told her. “You know what we call ourselves, right? Prodigium.” I made a derisive snort. “The only thing lamer and more pretentious than Latin is made-up Latin.”

Izzy watched me for a moment and apparently decided I wasn’t making fun of her, because she gave a little nod. For the first time, I saw that she had a cluster of freckles across the bridge of her nose, just like I did.

I’d lost sight of Finley by now, but Izzy seemed to know where we were going. For a long time, we made our way through the trees and underbrush in silence. Even though the sun was nearly down, I was sweating, and I tugged at the neckline of my borrowed black T-shirt. “Do you guys actually get a lot of, um, supes around here? Because in my experience, they don’t really like to lurk around forests that surround the home of a bunch of people who want to kill them.”

I came to a stop as a memory resurfaced. I’d been so busy freaking out over finding the Brannicks that I’d totally forgotten about the werewolf Izzy and Finley had been chasing. “What happened to that Were last night?” I asked Izzy now.

Izzy turned to me with a grin that reminded me way too much of her mother. “What do you think we’re hunting tonight?”

I twisted and pulled at my backpack until it was in front of me, then opened it. More silver stakes. Little glass bottles of holy water. And, oh my God, was that a gun?

My knees were wobbling as I zipped up the Bag O’Death and gingerly dropped it in the grass.

“What’s wrong?” Izzy asked.

“Um, a lot? There is seriously so much wrongness going on right now. Namely, the fact that you people are teenagers with bags of guns.”

Izzy stiffened a little at that. “We’re not kids,” she spit out. “We’re Brannicks.”

Sighing, I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I get that, but look, Izzy, I can’t kill a werewolf. I know werewolves. I lived with some, and they’re…well, they’re gross and slobbery and super scary, but I can’t kill one.”

I waited for her to whip out a crossbow, or handheld cannon, or whatever other crazy killing implement she was no doubt packing. Instead, she tilted her head and asked, “You lived with werewolves?”

It was almost fully dark now, and I wished I could see her face better. “Yeah,” I answered. “At Hex Hall. There were a few of them there. This one girl, Beth, was actually pretty nice. And then there was this kid, Justin, who wasn’t much older than you are.”

I knelt down to scoop up the bag again, only to have her shock the heck out of me again by asking, “What other kind of supes did you live with?”

Looking up at her, I said, “All kinds. Like I said earlier, faeries—and there were witches and warlocks. My roommate was—” I broke off and gave myself a second to swallow the lump that had risen in my throat. “My roommate was a vampire. Jenna.”

“Holy crap,” Izzy said, and once again, she sounded like a kid. Especially when she added, “Mom and Finley faced off against a couple of vampires last year. I didn’t get to go because they said it was too dangerous. Weren’t you scared she was gonna like, drink your blood when you slept?”

My impulse was to immediately defend Jenna, but I remembered how I’d felt that first night in our dorm room, when I’d come in to find her chowing down on a bag of blood. “A little bit. Before I got to know her. But once I did, I was never afraid that she’d hurt me. She was—is—my best friend.” And then, before I could start crying again and risk death by dehydration, I stood up, holding the backpack out from my body. “Also, it’s kind of hard to be scared of a vampire who’s barely five feet tall and has pink hair, you know?”

Izzy was quiet for a moment before saying, “Pink hair?”

“Well, not over her whole head, but a stripe—” I said, before the way Izzy had said “pink hair” registered. I thought of all those papers, files, and boxes in the War Room. “Have you heard of her? Have you guys seen her?” I asked, my heart surging in my chest.

“No,” another voice snapped, and I turned to see Finley standing behind me. “We haven’t heard anything about a pink-haired vamp, and if we had, we’d be going over to England to stake her because that’s what we do. Now, let’s go.”

“You’re lying!” I hadn’t meant for my voice to be so loud, but it seemed to reverberate through the dark forest. “And if I ever hear the word ‘stake’ in reference to Jenna again, I will—”

“What?” Finley shouted back. “Push me down? Pull my hair? You don’t have powers. We lost everything because of you, and you’re useless.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry my lack of magic is inconvenient to you. And what do you mean you ‘lost everything’?”

Finley stepped closer to me, and in the soft glow of the moonlight, I could see that her eyes were bright with anger. “There weren’t always just three of us. In fact, about seventeen years ago, there were nearly fifty. It still wasn’t a lot, but it was something.” She stopped and rubbed at her nose. “Until the others found out that your mom got knocked up by a demon. My mom was supposed to be the next head of the family, but instead, they kicked her out. They elected some distant cousin to lead them, some chick who wasn’t even a direct descendant of Maeve Brannick.”

“Okay, well, I’m sorry if your mom didn’t get to be Head Brannick-In-Charge or whatever, but all of that happened before we were even born. So I really don’t see—”

“Three months after the new leader was elected, she led the entire Brannick family on a raid to the biggest vampire nest in North America. Do I need to spell out what happened next?”

Sick to my stomach, I shook my head.

“It was stupid and pointless, and Mom would’ve known that,” Finley said, nearly spitting her words. “If your mom hadn’t gotten my mom kicked out of the Brannicks, that raid never would’ve happened. But you know what? When Torin said you’d be the one to stop the Casnoffs, I thought, Hey, maybe there was a point in losing our entire family. At least this freak can do something for us. But you can’t. So all those Brannicks died for nothing.”

I didn’t know what to say to any of that. So in the end, I settled on what seemed like the easiest thing. “I’m sorry.”

She snorted, and reached down to fumble with something at her waist. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Now, let’s finish this circuit before—”

She didn’t finish her sentence. This time, there was no howl, no crashing through the bushes. There was just a large dark shape, leaping out of the night, and Finley’s scream as the werewolf landed on her.