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“I want to help.”

“Not with this.” I wrap her up. “There’s two of them out there.”

“I can handle it.”

“But I can’t handle losing you,” I say against her temple.

She doesn’t say okay. Goes quiet instead, which I’m learning to be more wary of. She pulls me down to her. It isn’t a goodbye kiss, and she makes sure I know it. “Don’t be a hero, okay?”

I’ve taken down exactly one vampire before today, and I don’t want to hurt Dominic unless there’s no other way.

In Anna’s car, I give her a minute before I start. “Which areas of the forest do they usually hunt in? How close to town?”

She keeps her eyes on the road, tight-lipped, then she stops pretending. She knows what I’ve suspected for months. “Sometimes in the woods behind Ravenscrest Lodge. Father doesn’t like to stray too far for his food these days.”

Sigrid’s black Bentley is in the lot near Constantin’s SUV. Angelo, his driver, leans against the chassis, bored. The three other cars belong to vampires who could go anywhere and have chosen to sit in a lodge for the next several hundred years.

We follow a path around the side of the old stone building to the woods that make up most of the grounds. Anna’s already moving toward the trees, and I reach for her elbow.

“He faces the council. None of this vampire justice shit, okay?”

“I agree.” She vanishes between the slender birch trunks.

I take off at speed in the other direction, trying to find Dominic or a fresh kill on the air. I cover it twice. Neither he nor Constantin has been in these woods today. The area isn’t that big. They must be hunting elsewhere. I’m about to call Anna when a breeze ruffles my hair, and she’s at my side.

“They’re not here.”

“What about Dominic’s house? Or Constantin’s estate?” We get back into her Jeep.

“Father wouldn’t leave without Angelo.” She nods at his driver still waiting patiently.

“Maybe he didn’t have a choice?” I suggest. “We had a theory that someone might be turning these people to bolster the Renard clan’s numbers. Maybe Dominic wants to insert himself as clan leader by building a little army and overthrowing your father?”

“You give him too much credit, Nick.” She starts the car. “Dominic only cares about bedding every hot young thing that passes through Fairbanks. He has zero interest in politics.”

“Maybe you don’t give him enough credit. He could be playing all of us.”

She hasn’t laughed at anything I’ve said in a long time but this does it. “Let’s try the estate first.”

We arrive at the palatial Renard property, set on a hill overlooking Ravenslight Creek and surrounded by dense forest. White columns run two stories high across the front, a portico at the center. Magnolias that can’t possibly survive here somehow thrive in the garden.

Anna hasn’t lived here in years, yet she walks through the ornate front door without so much as a knock. A grand dual staircase fashioned from dark wood swoops up to the second floor, hugging either side of the marble entry parlor like a vine. Oil paintings of the Renard clan through the ages hang from the walls. Arches to the left and right lead to rooms I’ve never seen. Anna strides toward a pair of stained-glass French doors set between the stairs. Behind them is a long passage, sparsely decorated, that I’d guess is only used by the staff.

A maid comes bustling down the hall. “Miss Anna. You should not be here⁠—”

“Where are they?” She walks straight around her without a break in her stride.

“Uncle, please.” Dominic’s voice is muffled through stone walls three feet thick, with no way to tell which direction. “Don’t do this.”

“Anna…”

“I need more…” Constantin this time.

She’s gone, searching the house floor by floor.

I stop and listen properly. Three vampires on the second floor, talking, not moving. The maid in the passage behind us with an elevated rhythm. And one heart beating hard and fast, under my feet.

“There’s a human,” I say. “Below.”