Ted looks down at what I've shoved into his hands. "Wait. That's it?" he wants to know. "We're just going to let him kill her?"

"Not kill," Lila corrects him cheerfully. "Turn me. Into one of his kind."

"We aren't going to do anything," I say. "You guys are going to go home and leave this to me. I've got it under control. Just make sure Lila gets back safely. She should be all right until the dance. Evil spirits cannot enter an inhabited house unless invited!" I narrow my eyes at Lila. "You didn't invite him inside, did you?"

"Whatever," Lila says, tossing her head. "Like my dad wouldn't go too ballistic if he found a guy in my room."

"See? Go home. You, too," I add, to Adam.

Ted takes Lila by the arm and begins to lead her away.

But Adam, to my surprise, stays where he is, his hands buried deep in his pockets.

"Um," I say to him. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"Yes," Adam says calmly. "You can start at the beginning. I want to know everything. Because if what you're telling me is true, if it weren't for me, you'd be a speck on the wall in the club back there. So start talking."

If you had told me just an hour or two ago that I'd be ending my evening with a trip to Mary-from-U.S.-History-class's penthouse apartment over in the East Seventies… well, I'd have told you that you were high.

But that's exactly where I find myself, following Mary past her sleepy doorman (who doesn't raise so much as an eyebrow at her crossbow), and then up the elevator to her place, which is decorated in mid-nineteenth-century Victorian chic-at least as near as I can judge, considering all the furniture looks like it came out of one of those boring miniseries my mom likes to watch on PBS, featuring girls named Violet or Hortense or whatever.

There are books everywhere-and not Dan Brown paperbacks, either, but big, heavy books, with titles like Demonology in Seventh-century Greece and A Guide to Necromancy. I look around, but I don't see a plasma screen or an LCD. Not even a regular TV.