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  We went to the theater and Alec and Harris started taking out folding chairs in a circle on the stage. The vampires watched them in scrutinizing silence and I had the feeling that fifty years from now, Harris would be thinking back sourly on the day he unfolded a bunch of battered brown metal chairs while ancient vampires just stood there and didn’t help.

  “If you want to look even cooler you can sit in them backwards,” he said snarkily, and Jie actually did, crossing his arms over the back. Rayner slid into his chair with a freakish level of grace, emanating power. It was hard for anyone to take their eyes off him, it seemed, even when he wasn’t saying or doing anything much. I guess vampire charisma was cumulative over the centuries.

  “So.” Daisy crossed her arms. “Just so we’re all on the same page, it is my life’s goal to take this bastard out.”

  “Your grandmother is the great diviner,” Rayner said.

  “Yes.”

  “And when she dies, you become the great diviner.”

  “Um…yes.”

  “Well,” Rayner said. “It seems to me we should wait until your grandmother is out of the picture, to begin with.”

  The former unflappable Daisy, uh, flapped a little. “Dead? But—wait—she might—she’s only ninety.”

  “That’s quite a good old age,” Rayner said.

  “If you kill my grandmother—”

  He stopped and laughed. “Oh, no. No. I wasn’t thinking that. Can’t she be persuaded to retire? Murder, that’s very violent. I’m not as violent as I used to be, you can ask these gentlemen. But persuasion is very gentle.”

  “Uhh…” Daisy started breathing very fast. Harris urged her to a chair and gave her a concerned glance.

  “Daisy is already very competent with her visions,” Harris said. “I don’t think removing her grandmother is a good idea, because once that happens, Daisy will lose her freedom to travel.”

  I looked at Daisy and I could see her trying to tamp down panic. She’ll lose her freedom? No wonder she didn’t want to be the diviner. It sounded like an intense job.

  “How do we kill a demon?” I asked. “Does anyone actually know? Is there special stuff you have to do? A weak spot? Silver bullets or beheadings or something?”

  “All high demons start as low demons,” Silvus said. “So yes, they technically have a weak spot. It’s the pain and suffering that drove them to become a high demon. Anger and greed lead to a thirst for power. Some dictators are actually high demons who came to this world to draw power.”

  “Oh. Okay. That does make sense. But like how—”

  “If we were able to peel off his servants, like your mother—”

  “Well, that’s the tedious way of handling it, I suppose,” Rayner said. “The other way is just to go in there and take him out with a good spell.”

  “Can I just hear more about the other way first?” I asked.

  “Love weakens the demon,” Silvus said. “Every time someone sacrifices themselves to save a loved one from his clutches, the Withered Lord has to assimilate their energy into his own magic and corrupt them. It weakens him temporarily. Your mother didn’t become evil the first day she joined him. It took him time to do that. So we could weaken him sufficiently if we had a number of people willing to sacrifice something in order to save the people he has corrupted. Then, we kill him like any other demon. To simplify, love weakens demons. We need a powerful spell of love.”

  “This sounds very time-consuming and, as I said, tedious,” Rayner said. “And also, painfully sentimental.”

  Silvus lifted his hands. “But that is how you defeat a high demon. Definitively, at least. Feel free to ask any of the other warlocks around for a different opinion. You are very sentimental yourself, Rayner. I could call it something else besides love, but you know what it really is.”

  “What…do we sacrifice?” I asked.

  “It has to be something of great value,” Rayner said. “Your magic. Your first-born child. One of your senses or emotions. Your life. You know. Something like that.”

  “Oh…”

  “No one wants to give any of that up.” He looked at Silvus. “Find a better way.”

  “This demon has been killing and enslaving people for centuries,” Silvus said. “For every evil thing he has done, we have to match that power with the opposite.”

  “We’re bloody demons ourselves,” Rayner said. “What are we doing messing around with all this love magic? Let’s just gather our strength, go in there, and fight him like men. He’s called the ‘Withered’ Lord. How tough could he be?”

  “It seems like you have some issues to work out amongst yourselves,” Harris said.

  “Wait…I…I mean, this sacrifice could actually save my mom?” I asked. “Giving up my magic? Would it bring her back to my dad?”

  Daisy looked at me. “I would give up my magic to defeat him as well.”

  Harris’ eyes widened. “No. No. That is not happening. You are both far too talented to just throw it away for this.”

  “I agree,” Rayner said. “This is a pointless discussion.” He stood up and pointed at all of us. “Children, what I ask of you now is just that you strengthen your magic as much as you can and prepare for battle. If we fight, we could lose, but if we sacrifice, we are losing before we begin.”

  That was actually not a bad point.

  “Charlotte isn’t involved in this,” Harris said. “Just to make that clear. Alec isn’t either.”

  “Yes, I am!” I said. “It’s my mom!”

  “I’m in too,” Alec said.

  “No,” Rayner said, glancing at Alec. “I don’t know what you have to do with anything. A virginal incubus is about the most useless demon I can think of.”

  Alec, usually one of the most chill guys I knew, shoved himself out of his chair. “I’m not ‘virginal’. I’m just focusing on school right now.”

  Rayner snorted, unconvinced.

  “Damnit,” Alec muttered under his breath.

  “Alec, no. No way,” Montague said. “You have nothing to do with this demon. Think about your family. Your dad. It’s bad enough for Charlotte to be involved.”

  “So I’m just supposed to chill back here while the rest of you go fight a demon?”

  “Unless you want to start taking your identity seriously, yes,” Rayner said. “As for the rest of you, finish your training. We will return after your graduation. And if we succeed, I will release you, Montague…if you still want to be released.” Rayner’s hand waved in a subtle way and the rest of his clan left with him.

  “At least we have some time.” Montague looked frustrated. “This seems like, truly, the worst idea.”

  “I am glad to have some allies, personally,” Daisy said. “I’ve felt alone in this for a long time, when the council said they would drop the investigation.”

  “Yes,” Harris said. “It’s the right thing to do, for your life and for Daisy’s family’s peace of mind.” But Harris kept looking at me, clearly troubled that I was involved.

  I was feeling jittery. The vampires filled the room with this dark, heavy presence that reminded me of when I summoned my mom, and how serious the whole thing was.

  More than that, I felt guilty. Because when Rayner said we didn’t have to sacrifice our magic, my first thought was relief.

  If I really loved my mom, I should be happy to give up my magic to save her, right?

  Does that mean I’m power hungry too?

  “Miss Byrne.” Mr. Flores came walking up to me with a package. He was the head of admissions but seemed to do a lot administrative tasks all year. “This package just came for you. I thought you might be expecting it.”

  “Oh! From Italy!”

  I had almost forgotten, but we still had a ball to attend.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Charlotte

  “You look gorgeous,” Daisy said.

  “It’s…sort of see-through, isn’t it?” I turned around in front of the mirror. The dress was cut
e, very boho-chic, black and demure at first glance, with a high neck, bell sleeves and a skirt that hit just over the knee. It had stripes of colored embroidery in warm colors.

  But when I put it on, I realized that the back was sheer, and the sleeves were sheer, and strips of the bodice were also sheer.

  “Yeah.” She rubbed her chin, looking me over. “I have a stick-on bra. We are about the same size.” She whipped a brand new packaged bra out of her suitcase.

  “Don’t you need it?”

  “I’ll just wear a different dress. Let me do your makeup.”

  As soon as the dress arrived, Daisy whisked me off into her room and the situation got hardcore girly. She was packing in all the girly energy I missed the rest of the year and then some, considering I was the product of a single dad, and that didn’t usually lend itself to producing girls like Daisy.

  She opened this gigantic makeup case with colors to look good on anyone, and also colors that would look good on no one, and started applying some of both of those to my face.

  I hid my terror well, I think.

  She had a little frown developing as she went.

  “Does it look okay?” I asked. “You look…unsure.”

  She immediately whipped her hair back off her shoulders and the frown vanished. “No way. Girl, I know what I’m doing.”

  “Cool. Just checking.”

  She brushed my cheeks with something, with a soft sigh. That was when I noticed her hand shaking just a little.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. “The vampires shook me up too.”

  “Nah. Vampires. I’m not afraid of them. They’re useful. Hopefully. Good eye candy either way.”

  I could tell she was faking it by now. “Well,” I said, “I was intimidated. But what do I know, I’m not used to vampires.”

  “It’s not that I’ve met a lot of vampires,” she said. “Actually you should be more used to them than I am, with your vampire boyfriend and all.”

  “Montague hardly counts.”

  “Ohh, Monty. Yeah. He’s still decent, for now. More decent than Harris anyway!” She chuckled. “I’ll tell you, I’m doing what I have to do to get some more power, but if I don’t need to marry Harris to get it…” Now she dropped her makeup brush back in the case and put her hands on her hips. “Ugh. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Talk. Talk! What does that do? Rayner is right. My grandmother is ninety years old. She wants to retire and I haven’t been able to convince her that I’m not up to the job. And that’s it for me. That’s my life. Huge responsibility. No freedom and lots of solitary confinement. There’s nothing I hate more than being alone.” She looked away from me, her beautiful face wrestling with terror.

  “So…you have to be the diviner? You can’t just admit that you can’t handle it or don’t want it?”

  “Magic flows through generations,” she said. “I’ll be better at it than anyone else. The council won’t let me walk away.”

  “I mean…is there a way to do the job differently?”

  “I don’t know.” She heaved a breath. “Harris is such a stickler for the rules. I feel like—I mean, don’t get me wrong. I admire Harris for being a skilled warlock. Like, honest to god, he works hard. Ambition turns me on.” She pinched her nails together. “But then he reminds me that he is so controlling. And if I marry him, I’m going to have to put up with that overbearing shit every day for the next hundred years or something, but he’s planning to be on the council, and at that point it’ll get so much worse. Even if he wanted to back off, he really can’t, you know? I wonder if he’s going to be there for me when I come out of an intense session… And then—I mean, do you think he’s good in bed? I don’t.”

  I coughed and then laughed. “I—I don’t know. He could be good in bed.”

  “Naw.”

  “How do you know?”

  She looked sideways, scrunched her mouth to the other side, and then shook her head. “Uh-uh. Just—I know. Too stiff. Like marrying a European prince. Not the hot kind. The real kind, with like…mommy issues and a weird genetic disease.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I am right,” she said.

  Should I tell her not to marry him? But I was relieved at the idea. I wasn’t impartial enough.

  You are so lying to yourself, I thought.

  But maybe I don’t really care about Harris that much. I definitely don’t need him in bed. I have enough going on. I just…want to keep HAM together.

  Still lying!

  Truth was, whenever Harris hurled an insult at me, I thought about it with just as much excitement as when the other guys said sweet things to me.

  “So are witch and warlock marriages just more of a business arrangement?” I asked.

  “We are, at least, supposed to like each other,” Daisy said. She sounded a little sharper now. “Do you think Harris likes me?”

  “Do you like him?” I retorted. “You just said he was controlling and stiff.”

  She groaned, and then she started taking off her casual dress, showing off a body that was definitely more toned than mine, and with a better ass, although other than that I guess we were about the same size. She grabbed a dress out of the closet. She had at least three gowns in there even though there was only one ball. “The big thing is…” She shimmied into a gold halter dress with a low back and fastened the buttons at the back of her neck. “For a minute…”

  I helped her with the short zipper. The dress, although fairly simple, was silky and the fabric felt lustrous and expensive. I had forgotten for a second that Daisy was ridiculously gorgeous, and when she whirled around in the dress, I remembered all over again.

  But her face was pained. “For a minute I thought, it would be great if I had a reason to sacrifice my magic, and I never had to become the diviner at all. But to turn it down would be, you know. I would be an epic disappointment to everyone. Grandma. The council. And Harris. I mean, who wouldn’t I disappoint? Even my friends back home are like, so jealous, because my grandmother is the most powerful witch in Chicago, and she’s got like more money than Oprah. I mean, not really. But a lot. And I do like money.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess…people with money seem to like it.”

  “Be honest, Char. Do you think I am just the biggest douche?”

  “No! That’s Harris. Obviously.”

  She snickered. “So how can I be into Harris when I’m not into what I’m becoming? He’s not marrying Daisy, he’s marrying the great diviner of Chicago. Fuck. I just want to run away. I wish I could just go buy a cheap apartment in one of those parts of Chicago that’s just shitty enough and like, open a Puerto Rican restaurant. I mean, I’m not saying I know how to make Puerto Rican food, but I don’t know how to be a diviner either, so—we’re even.” Now she was moving sharply, noisily rummaging and tossing around the makeup as she spoke, and I could tell she was really upset about this.

  “Money isn’t that important,” I said. “I don’t have any.”

  She gave me the tiniest eye roll. “Not yet.”

  “Maybe you should try being broke sometime. It’s not so bad. You still have libraries…TV…clearance racks at Target. Then you don’t have to take on a job you hate.”

  “You know, if I could just watch TV all day, I think I would be in heaven,” she said. “After my parents died, my grandma bought me a TV and if you know my grandmother you would drop dead from shock. She just thought I needed to get out of my head and I exhausted her. Cash and I just watched Bravo like, all day, while she was working. It was so great and when I was ten she just got rid of it. Like, bam, gone, focus on your studies, Daisy. Right in the middle of a season of America’s Top Model. Anyway, it’s just not that simple. My grandma would boot me right out of the house, and then what? I’m on the street?”

  “You binge-watched Bravo when you weren’t even ten years old? I feel like I suddenly understand everything
about you.”

  She patted my hand. “I know, right?”

  “I do understand. Your whole life is tied up in that stuff. And it’s hard to take on a whole new life, in a new culture basically, with new people. Believe me, I know. I miss my dad every day, and the scary part is wondering if I’ll ever really fit in at home again.”

  “Yeah. That’s it.” She gave me a tight smile. “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Who?” Like I didn’t know what we were talking about…

  “Harris.”

  “I mean…I’m already with Monty. We’re all just in such close proximity. I think that’s what it is. Teen hormones raging. Though I’m almost in my twenties now, so I guess I’d better become composed.”

  “He likes you,” she said.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Girl, he is ready to make me work for a clan of vampires, but to you, he’s like—‘be careful, Charlotte, this isn’t your fight’. And if you might think it’s because he respects my magical abilities more than yours, I know that’s not true. He told me you have a ton of raw talent and he knows you have business with that demon. Normally he understands that. But he just doesn’t like the idea of you getting hurt.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I…suspected maybe that was true. I wanted to say something sooner but it’s not like he’s going to hook up with me instead of you.”

  “You’re fine,” Daisy said. “It’s not working out. None of my plans are working out. I think I know what I need to do…” She had a faraway look that worried me a little.

  “Nothing rash,” I said. “Or dangerous. I’m here for you if you want to talk about anything.”

  “No, no!” She uncapped lipstick and gave the mirror a look of death. “I’m going to break up with him tonight. He’s allowed to not like me, but I’m allowed to make him squirm.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Harris

  “So.” Daisy looked up at me as I led her in a fox trot, while Charlotte and Montague were dancing in each others’ arms and looked even more disgustingly into each other than last year. “If you became a vampire, Mr. Nicolescu, and I died…would you find me?”