The vampires laughed and grinned. The mood of the room was still pretty grim and tense, but they clearly found joy in subverting the others’ plans.

I pressed my lips together more tightly and stared at my teacup.

I could actually sympathize with the vampires—possibly for the first time in my life.

House Medeis holds life as precious, and while we’re somewhat infamous for banning killing—even in self-defense—I understood the horror of what was going on. Someone was picking off innocent people—and vampires. It wasn’t during battle; it wasn’t even in an official fight. It was on Family land—a place that should be safe. (Well…safe for them.) No matter what politics were going on, killing innocents was never okay.

But I didn’t like Killian’s plan to get rid of the park. Not because I felt strongly about the park—though I did recall it was something the werewolves had been excited about for a while—but because it wasn’t right to use his position on the Regional Committee as a way to extract revenge.

I couldn’t argue, though, that no one else cared about the murders. But cooperation between the races wasn’t common. Too much blood had been spilled, and too many wars had been fought for us to really cooperate.

I moodily picked up my teacup.

Nothing seemed fair or right. Killian’s vengeful tendencies were too much. But I couldn’t say the peace-loving ways of House Medeis were totally right either, or I wouldn’t have been sitting here with sealed magic, hiding from my own House.

But it didn’t matter for now. All I could do was hang on and try to survive—both the vampires and whoever was committing all these murders.

Which is why I didn’t dare breathe a word that, given how easily the murderer/serial killer seemed to slip Drake Hall’s defenses, there was a possibility it was an inside job. Because even if it was a valid thought, I was pretty sure the vampires would take offense and possibly react with violence.

Chapter Eleven

Hazel

A week passed, and there were no new murders.

My life mostly revolved around exercising and taking Epsom-salt soaks in the giant bathtub of my private bedroom. (That was, perhaps, the only major positive in this: the huge room upgrade. My bathroom was the size of my bedroom back in House Medeis, and if I had a death wish I could ransack it for serious money between the soap dispenser that was leafed with real gold and what I suspected were real rubies welded into the giant mirror frame.)

I wasn’t seeing much improvement in the physical fitness area, but Celestina assured me I would soon. I was able to hold my sword in the sword forms now without my arms shaking. But that meant giving credit to Rupert for the weightlifting, something I was morally opposed to.

“Switch to a defensive stance next,” Josh instructed. He circled, keeping a critical eye on my movements. “For as inevitable as the final kiss of death is, I imagine you desire to fend it off for as long as possible.”

Josh had taken over my sword training for the past two days, during which I’d come to learn a lot about him. For instance, he wasn’t judging my lack of fighting abilities—though I wish he was—but rather just being…Josh. I’d never met a vampire as morose and fixated on death as Josh before. (I mean, vampires are immortal. If anyone thumbed their nose at death it was vampires. Josh, however, didn’t seem to agree.)

I maneuvered my body so my sword pointed down, but was positioned in a way that would protect my stomach.

“An excellent choice,” Josh said. “This stance in particular is helpful against werewolves, who are prone to going for the guts of their victim—though the smarter ones will focus on your neck.”

“Fabulous,” I said. “Something to look forward to.”

“When you add magic to your sword stances, you’ll find you are much more capable of fighting than you imagined.” Josh stopped in front of me with his hands clasped behind his back. “Magic is something of a cheat code when fighting.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Totally. That’s why everyone is scared of wizards.”

Josh tilted his head as he studied me, his forehead wrinkled. (I think I confused him about as much as he confused me.) “Very well, it seems you require a demonstration. Take up a kata—overhead cut.”

A kata is a Japanese sword form—sort of. It’s really a set of choreographed movements, but since I was a total newbie to the art form the only kata I had learned were pretty limited in length. They all have fancy Japanese names, but Celestina had decided it wasn’t worth trying to teach me when she laughed so hard at my initial attempts she almost impaled herself on a wrought-iron fence.

The stance Josh ordered me to use was actually super difficult. You hold the sword above your head, then cut down directly in front of you. There’s way more to it—balance and pressure play a huge role in it—but it was tough for me to do with as many repetitions as the vampires liked to give me because it required holding my sword steady and lifting it above my head, things my chicken arms had a difficult time doing.

Josh waited until I had completed the motion twice before interrupting. “Hold,” he said when my sword was shoulder height. He drifted closer and tapped the blade of my sword with a finger. “Put a spark of your magic there.”

I blinked. “Not my hands?”

“Correct. It might take some practice, but try to isolate your magic to the sword blade—not the hilt.”

I pulled at the magic that freely floated around the air, channeling it through my blood and into a usable state. Since I had so little this was pretty hard, and I was grimacing before I’d even managed to produce a spark. But it was even harder to make the magic manifest on the blade, not my hands. It took about five minutes, then a tiny spark of blue magic flickered on the edge of the blade.

Josh waited a minute before the magic stabilized, then nodded. “Good. Now continue.”

I gritted my teeth as I continued with the kata, raising my sword above my head and then swinging it down. It was hard to keep my magic flowing and wrapped around the sword like tiny sparks of electricity.

“I believe your lack of magic will be a boon as you learn finesse.” Josh folded his arms across his chest and nodded in satisfaction. “It should be easier to maintain control over your spark of magic and learn how to control it with your movements as opposed to struggling with a great deal of magic and spending most of your concentration on keeping the amount right. Here, try on this dummy.”

“Celestina said I shouldn’t practice on dummies—I’m so weak I might hurt my arms on impact,” I gloomily said.

Josh forcibly made the dummy—a creation of hardwood lined with cut lengths of tire rubber—bow its box-shaped head at me, then stepped back. “It won’t be a problem this time.”

I approached it—moving slowly so I could more easily keep the spark of my magic going. I adjusted my feet into the proper stance, then raised my sword above my head and dropped it down in the practiced cut.

The spark of my magic flared on impact, burning through the layer of rubber as if I was cutting through butter and digging into the dummy’s wooden shoulder. The smell of burnt tire filled the sword studio, but I stared at the mutilated dummy, shocked at my own success.

“You’ll get better as you expand your sword stances,” Josh said. “I’ve been researching the possibilities, and it seems to me that you could use a sword to point and direct your magic. I don’t understand why fighting with weapons fell out of fashion with your kind. It’s much more efficient.”

“That’s amazing.” I stared at my sword with new eyes. “It’s that powerful, even with magic as small as mine.”

Josh shrugged. “You are layering your magic—however thin it may be at the moment—over a deadly weapon with an edge that is fearsome on its own. It’s expected.”

“Josh!”

We turned around to see my “favorite” vampire—Rupert—standing at the other side of the sword practice studio, his jaw clenched.

“Must you teach the wizard here and stink up the rooms?” he growled.

Josh blinked. “The burnt rubber smell should fade soon.”

Rupert rolled his eyes and pointed to me. “I meant her! Her rat-blood reeks.”

Josh shrugged. “That seems like a personal problem. You should meditate on it—lest the void will take you.”

Rupert curled his lips back in an almost werewolf-like snarl. (Vampires usually liked to be much more refined.) “Your bizarre words have been tolerated long enough. I’ll—”

Before he could utter his threat, another vampire smacked him on the back of the head. “Enough with that—or haven’t you learned your lesson? You don’t want to tangle with Josh.”

I wasn’t certain I heard the other vampire right, so I glanced at Josh.

He looked especially benign today in his black workout pants and bright orange t-shirt that had a video game logo on it.

But he was apparently stronger than Rupert? Interesting…

“Don’t touch me.” Rupert ran a hand through his short red hair. “You might be too frightened to challenge him, but I will.”

I adjusted my grasp on my sword, but I didn’t dare lower it yet. Last time I let the tip touch the ground Celestina made me carry my sword on a pillow for half a day. “Challenge?”

“He means to fight me for my position in the Drake Family,” Josh said in the same tone of voice he used to announce the kitchen’s dinner menu.

“Oh. What’s your rank?”

Josh adjusted the dummy. “Second Knight.”

“For real?”

“Yes. I don’t have a hope of ever achieving First Knight,” Josh said. “No one does. Celestina is a beast to fight. I lose more weapons to her brutish fists in our friendly matches than I ever do in field combat.” He sighed. “So many delightful weapons forever broken…”

I slightly shook my head. “Wow. Staying here is definitely going to make me deal with all of the stereotyping I apparently do.”