Balthazar drove us back toward the nicer neighborhood in Philadelphia where Vic lived. Lucas and l sat together in the backseat, his hand gripping mine tightly, his gaze focused in the distance beyond the windshield. Sometimes he frowned and closed his eyes like a person in the throes of a migraine; his feet moved restlessly against the floorboards, as though he were pushing back, or attempting to push through. He didn’t want to be here, to be contained — everything around him now was just one more thing between him and the blood he needed. I knew better than to try to get him to talk. After he’d had something to drink, then he would be okay. He had to be.

Balthazar broke the wretched silence by turning on the radio, classic jazz, the kind of thing my dad used to listen to around the house. As Billie Holiday crooned about foolish things, I wondered what my parents would say now, and whether there was any advice they could have given us. We’d parted badly before I ran off with Lucas at the beginning of the summer; at the moment, I missed them so much it hurt. What would they think of everything that had happened in the past couple of days?

I glanced at Lucas — the pale cool stillness of his flesh, the way that death had brightened his eyes and carved out his cheekbones — and thought bleakly, Well, they always wanted me to end up with a nice vampire boy.

The car turned onto the road where Vic lived, an upscale area with broad yards separating the palatial homes. As every house had a four — car garage, we rarely saw other cars out on the street, but there were three right in front of Vic’s house. Not the usual kinds of Mercedes or Jaguars that drove around here either — these were beat — up trucks and station wagons. Something about this began to feel familiar.

Then I realized nearly a dozen people were standing in the street and in Vic’s yard. When I glimpsed a stake in one man’s hands, I realized at least that some of them were armed.