The two remaining vampires fell into place behind us as we were escorted out of the airport to a waiting limousine.

“Your vampire friends sure know how to travel,” Ray said in a hushed voice as we filed in to occupy the backseat of the limo. Andreas and Rowan sat facing us, while Julian and Sebastian took up positions in the front of the car. “This is very nice. Are we going to the hotel first? I’d like to get my camera out of my bag so I can get some pictures for my travel album.”

“I assume so,” I said, puzzling over Andreas’s comment. I leaned forward a smidgen. “Is Kristoff here? In Vienna?”

Andreas ignored me, turning to look out of the tinted windows.

I switched my attention to Rowan. “I realize there’s no love lost between us, but I would appreciate it if you could overcome your natural aversion to me and answer my question.”

Rowan had reddish brown hair and grey-green eyes. His face was not as angular as his cousin’s, and had hints of laugh lines around the mouth and eyes. There was no evidence of any form of amusement on his face now, however. He simply looked at me as if I were a bug before answering, “He is here.”

I sat back, my heart beating wildly all of a sudden. Kristoff was here, in Vienna. I was going to see him.

Magda touched my hand and mouthed, I told you so.

I shook my head at that-if Kristoff had suddenly been possessed by a change of heart regarding me, he would have told me, not had the council summon me with grim faces and a pronounced air of suffering. Still, he was in Vienna. That meant something. Didn’t it?

To my surprise, we weren’t taken to a hotel. Instead, we stopped at a large pale pink stone house that sat at the end of a row of connected tall, narrow cream-and-yellow houses in the fringes of Josefstadt, a section of downtown Vienna.

“This house belongs to the Moravian Council,” Julian said, showing us into a room on the top floor. “The administrative offices are below us. The top three floors are set aside for residents and guests.”