Aden forced himself to concentrate before he worked himself into a rage he couldn’t hope to assuage. The vampire mansion rose behind the crowd, shadowed and eerie, like a haunted house melded with a Roman cathedral. Victoria had told him the house had been here, in Oklahoma, for hundreds of years, and her people had “borrowed” it from its owner when they first arrived. He’d taken that to mean the former owner had supplied the vampires with a nice lunch buffet—of his organs.

“He was powerful, you’re right about that,” a girl who looked to be Victoria’s age said. She had hair the color of newly fallen snow, eyes like a meadow and the face of an angel. She wore a black robe that bared one pale shoulder, traditional vampire garb, but somehow she seemed…out of place. Maybe because she’d just popped a Juicy Fruit bubble.

“A great king,” another girl added, placing her hand on Victoria’s other side. Another blonde. This one had crystalline eyes like Victoria and the face of a fallen angel. Unlike the other girls, she wore a black leather half-top and black leather pants. Weapons were strapped to her waist, and barbed wire circled her wrists. And no, the wire wasn’t a tattoo.

“Yes,” Victoria replied softly. Darling sisters.

Sisters? He’d known Victoria had them, yeah, but he’d never met them. They’d been locked in their rooms during the Vampire Ball meant to celebrate Vlad the Impaler’s official awakening from his century-long slumber. Aden wondered if Victoria’s mother was here, too. Apparently, she’d been imprisoned in Romania for spilling vampire secrets to humans. Vlad’s orders. A real nice guy, that Vlad.

Aden was human, and he knew way more than he should. Some vampires—like Victoria—could teleport, traveling from one location to another with only a thought. And if word had already reached Romania that the vampire king was dead, mommy vamp could have arrived in Crossroads seconds later.