I couldn’t tell Adrian how I’d found my sister Carly a few years ago, after a date with Keith. It was when he’d still been living with us and just before she went off to college. She hadn’t wanted to go out with him, but our father loved Keith and had insisted. Keith was his golden boy and could do no wrong. Keith believed that too, which was why he hadn’t been able to take no for an answer when he and Carly were alone. She’d come to me afterward, creeping into my bedroom late at night and sobbing while I’d held her.
My instant reaction was to tell our parents, but Carly had been too afraid—especially of our father. I was young and nearly as scared as she was, ready to agree with whatever she wanted. Carly had made me promise I wouldn’t tell our parents, so I sank my efforts into assuring her that it wasn’t her fault. The whole time, she told me, Keith had kept telling her how beautiful she was and how she’d left him no choice, that it was impossible for him to take his eyes off of her. I finally convinced her that she’d done nothing wrong, that she hadn’t led him on— but she still held me to my promise to stay silent.
It was one of the biggest regrets of my life. I’d hated my silence but not nearly as much as I hated Keith for thinking he could rape someone as sweet and gentle as Carly and get away with it. It wasn’t until much later, when I had my first assignment and met Abe Mazur, that I’d realized there were other ways Keith might pay that would allow me to keep my promise to her. So, I’d made my deal with the devil, not caring that it bound me—or that I was stooping to barbaric levels of revenge. Abe had staged a fake Strigoi attack and cut out one of Keith’s eyes earlier this year. In return, I’d become Abe’s sort-of “retainer Alchemist.” It was part of what had driven me to help Rose with her jail break. I was in his debt.
In some ways, I reflected bitterly, maybe I’d done Keith a favor. With only one eye left, maybe he wouldn’t find it so “impossible” to keep it off uninterested young women in the future.
No, I certainly couldn’t tell Adrian any of that, but he was still looking at me, a million questions on his face as he tried to figure out what in the world would have reduced me to hiring Abe as a hit man.
Laurel’s words suddenly rang back to me.
I swallowed. “Remember when you asked me to trust you?”
“Yes . . .” said Adrian.
“I need you to do the same for me.”
Long moments followed. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Abe because I knew he’d be smirking.
“‘Spunky’ was kind of an understatement,” Adrian said. After what felt like forever, he slowly nodded. “Okay. I do trust you, Sage. I trust that you have good reasons for the things you do.”
There was no snark, no sarcasm. He was deadly earnest, and for a moment, I wondered how I could have earned his trust so intently. I had a weird flash to the moments just before Abe had arrived, when Adrian had spoken of painting me and my feelings had been a jumble.
“Thank you,” I said.
“What,” demanded Angeline, “are you guys talking about?”
“Nothing of interest, I assure you,” said Abe, who was really enjoying this all too much. “Life lessons, character development, unpaid debts. That sort of thing.”
“Unpaid?” I surprised myself by taking a step forward and fixing him with a glare. “I’ve paid that debt a hundred times over. I don’t owe you anything anymore. My loyalty is only to the Alchemists now. Not you. We’re finished.”
Abe was still smiling, but he wavered slightly. I think my standing up for myself had caught him off-guard. “Well, that remains to be—ah.” More knocking. “Here’s the rest of our party.” He hurried to the door.
Adrian took a few steps toward me. “Not bad, Sage. I think you just scared old man Mazur.”
I felt a smile of my own begin to form. “I don’t know about that, but it felt kind of good.”
“You should backtalk people more often,” he said. We grinned at each other, and as he regarded me fondly, I felt that same queasy feeling return. He probably wasn’t experiencing that exact sensation, but there was an easy, bright mood about him. Rare—and very appealing. He nodded toward where Abe was opening the door. “It’s Sonya.”
Spirit users could sense each other when they were close enough, even behind closed doors. And sure enough, when the door opened, Sonya Karp strode in like a queen, tall and elegant. With her red hair swept into a bun, the Moroi woman could have been Angeline’s older sister. Sonya smiled at us all, though I couldn’t help a shiver as I thought back to the first time I’d met her. She hadn’t been nearly so pretty or charming then. She’d been red-eyed and trying to kill us.
Sonya was a Strigoi who’d been restored back to a Moroi, which really made her the ideal choice to work with Adrian on figuring out how to use spirit to prevent people from being turned.
Sonya hugged Adrian and was walking over to me when someone else appeared in the doorway. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised at who it was. After all, if we wanted to figure out what special spirit magic in Lee had stopped him from being turned again, then we needed all the data possible. And if one restored Strigoi was good, then two were better.
Adrian paled and went perfectly still as he stared at the newcomer, and in that moment, all my high hopes for him came crashing down. Earlier, I’d been certain that if Adrian could just stay away from his past and any traumatic events, he’d be able to find a purpose and steady himself. Well, it looked like his past had found him, and if this didn’t qualify as a traumatic event, I didn’t know what did.
Adrian’s new research partner stepped through the door, and I knew the uneasy peace we’d just established in Palm Springs was about to shatter.
Dimitri Belikov had arrived.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
STARTING MY FIRST NEW SERIES in four years—even one set in a familiar world—has been one of the most difficult tasks of my writing career. I couldn’t have done it without the help and support of many, many people. First, thank you to Jesse McGatha, who initially gave me the idea to create the Alchemists. Little did I know what would become of them! Many thanks also to Jay, for constantly giving me “make it work!” encouragement on those days when everything seemed lost. Your support helped me find my way.
On the publishing side of things, I’m indebted to my amazing agent, Jim McCarthy, who always makes sure everything works out in the end. Thanks for helping get these books out! Thank you also to editors Jocelyn Davies and Ben Schrank for their constant vigilance and guidance in this new venture. And finally, much gratitude goes out to all of the many Vampire Academy fans around the world who inspired me to keep writing about Moroi and Strigoi.
