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“I found three dead grouse down by the back pasture a couple of weeks ago.” He wipes his forehead with the hem of his shirt. “Didn’t think much of it.”

Ten minutes up the road, every person I care most about was sitting around the table, guard down, doors unlocked, and I was outside splitting wood. Two hours of turkey and gravy in a room with Ellery while she pretended I didn’t exist, and I shut it all out. Didn’t want her scent or her heartbeat in my head because it hurt. Didn’t take a breath until I was in Dustin’s car.

I’m already dialing.

“We’re home.” Luca doesn’t wait for me to ask. “She’s inside. Door’s locked. I watched the light come on.”

Mom knows how to deal with a vampire, and she’ll have Dustin and Tess there tonight. Ellery is alone.

“Stay there.”

“Already planned on it.”

I hang up and turn to Dustin. “Can you take me to the cafe?”

Chapter 28

Nick

It’s close to midnight when Dustin lets me out in the alley behind the cafe. Luca’s sitting on a stack of compacted cardboard, swinging his legs, wrapped in two puffer jackets. There’s snow banked up in the gutter, and a single set of footprints going up the stairs to Ellery’s apartment. The light’s still on.

“Thanks for waiting.”

“Of course.” He wrinkles his nose. “You need a shower.”

“I will later. You go home, get some sleep.”

He jumps down. “She’s got a lot of questions, Nick. I think you have to tell her and ask the council for forgiveness.”

I almost did. Some version of it, enough to help her understand, but there’s no halfway. You’re in, or you’re out.

And she’s still out. This intruder is getting bolder, and what she doesn’t know puts her in danger.

I rake a hand through my dirty hair. “I know. I will.”

“If they remove you, we’ll figure it out.” He stretches and yawns. “Don’t worry about me. I’m serious, Nick. That’s not yours to carry.”

First, she has to be willing to hear me out.

I text Kendall to ask her to take my bookings for the next few days and find a spot to wait out the night.

The lights flicker on inside the cafe when Mom arrives to open up at five a.m. She finds me sitting on a dumpster and brings me a bottle of blood. I’m hungrier than I thought. She doesn’t ask what I’m doing here.

“Tell me about last night,” she says, grabbing the shovel and scraping the snow off the back step.

“An intruder, for sure. Its scent was all over Monroe’s property. The way it tore into those goats…” I rub at my tired eyes, blinking away the images of those poor animals. “Recently turned and out of control.”

“Constantin still being difficult about it?” she asks.

I’ve tried to keep her out of council politics because I didn’t want her to have to worry about all that after Dad, but of course, she knows.

“Yeah, but I’ve got it handled.”

“Be careful, Nick. Your father had more than one argument with him over the years. Pick your battles.”

I jump down off the dumpster and toss the empty bottle inside.

“He asked about her.” I tip my chin to Ellery’s dark apartment. There’s no hiding my feelings from Mom. She sees everything. “Maybe she should go back to New York. She’d be safer there.”