“Oh, Lucy,” Aunt Hyacinth said. “You know—”
“That’s not Solange.” I waved away the rest of her comforting speech.
“She’s gone darkside, Lucy,” Connor said. “She’s blood-drunk.”
I shook my head. “Look, I know Solange better than anyone.” Even if I’d spent the last few weeks wondering what had happened to my best friend. She’d changed, there was no denying it. “That wasn’t her. So we have to help her!”
“We will,” Uncle Geoffrey assured me, glancing up from his notebooks. “I’m sure there’s something here that I’m missing. Her bloodwork has been unique.”
“What, she has the vampire flu or something?” Duncan asked. He rubbed his jaw. I remembered Nicholas telling me Solange took him out just last week. “Hell of a flu.”
“I know this is difficult,” Uncle Geoffrey said. “But you have to accept that Solange has changed, Lucy.”
“No one changes that much, that fast.” I crossed my arms stubbornly. “And I know what I know. This isn’t her. I mean, I thought I caught a glimpse of the old Solange, but then she was . . . gone. She doesn’t even move like herself anymore, did you notice? She was all haughty and predatory.”
Logan pushed away from the wall, lace cuffs fluttering. “Isabeau said there was magic,” he said. “That’s what knocked us on our asses when she crowned herself.”
“Language.” Aunt Hyacinth clicked her tongue.
“Sorry. It’s why the Hounds took off so quickly,” he continued. “They were all muttering and whispering.”
“Find out what you can,” Liam ordered. “You’re our best link to the tribe.” The Hounds were decidedly reclusive and still might not help us. But Logan had been initiated as one of them, and, more importantly, Isabeau loved him. And Isabeau kicked all kinds of magic ass. “How did you find Nicholas?” he continued.
“He found me,” I said. “Well, us. Solange had dragged me out into the woods.” I shuddered. “I . . . it’s not her,” I repeated.
Logan put his arm around me comfortingly. “How did you get away?”
“Kieran found me.”
They finally noticed him, all at once. Helios-Ra training had his hand hovering over the stake at his belt. “Nicholas tagged her shirt,” he explained. “Probably while he was biting her. We had it worked out weeks ago so when the chip activated, I followed the coordinates.”
Helena looked impressed. “That’s my boy.” She almost smirked. “He’ll be okay.” She glanced at me. “We’ve had our own little plan, Lucy. Nicholas knew to ally himself with Solange if it came to a choice.”
“What?”
“We knew we might need someone to keep an eye on her,” Liam elaborated. “Though I admit, I could never have imagined it would go quite like this. He’s our best chance though. She’d believe he’d stay by her before anyone else.”
“Except for me,” I pointed out.
“Yes,” he admitted gently. “But the camp isn’t safe for you.”
My knees felt soft with relief. “Do you really think Nicholas will be all right?”
“Of course,” Helena replied. “He’s a Drake.”
She hadn’t seen him. I wasn’t so sure even the legendary Drake blood was enough to save him from whatever had happened to him while he was missing.
“We’ll have to kill her,” a woman said coldly. I couldn’t see her over all the people between me and the door. I didn’t have to see her. I could hear her just fine. “I won’t have Solange undoing the honor of our name. Tomorrow night, though tonight would be better. She’s become a risk to us.”
“Kill her?” I exclaimed, pushing through a wall of Drake brothers. “Who the hell— Whoa.”
The vampire could only be Madame Veronique, currently the oldest Drake vampire alive and the matriarch of the line. I’d never met her before, had only heard the stories the others whispered about how scary she was. I’d assumed they were exaggerating.
They totally weren’t.
Despite her words, she didn’t do anything outwardly aggressive. Still, all the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stuck straight up. I felt like a threatened porcupine, every quill bristling painfully. Her brown hair was in braids that reached her hips, under an embroidered wimple. Gold glinted off her circlet and the ribbons on her long, medieval-style dress. Her eyes were such a light gray they were practically clear. Not to mention glacial.
She was pale, small, and strange. She radiated otherness in a way the Drakes didn’t, not even Aunt Hyacinth—and she was almost two hundred years old. Madame Veronique was eight hundred years old, and everything about her was deadly. She was the silent poison to Helena’s blade. I shivered.