subjects still roamed the Earth—alive or undead.
At the very bottom stair, Lexi stopped and pulled a portrait off the wall. It was newer than the others, with a gold frame and the glass polished to a gleam. A young, serious-looking blond boy stared out at me. His blue eyes contained a hint of sadness, and his cleft chin jutted in defiance. He looked incredibly familiar.
My eyes widened. “Is that your—”
“—brother,” Lexi said. “Yes.”
“Is he . . .” I trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.
“No, he’s not with us anymore,” she said, tracing the cleft of the boy’s chin with her index finger.
“How did he die?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” she said, her voice sharp.
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” I touched the edge of the photo. “Why do you keep it?”
She sighed. “It’s a connection to the past—to who I used to be before I was”—she gestured down the length of her body—“before I became this . It’s important not to lose that final thread of attachment to humanity.” Her gaze grew serious.
I knew what she meant: Remaining connected to her humanity was how she maintained control and why she made the choice to feed only from animals.
“So, are you ready to save him?”
As usual, Lexi didn’t wait for an answer, and I had to hustle out the door behind her. Together, we walked in silence toward Gallagher’s place under the cover of the inky night.
Fifteen minutes later we turned the corner onto Laurel Street and the house came into view. A tall man with salt-and-pepper hair was climbing the stairs of the white structure, tapping each step with a gold-tipped cane. Behind him were two black-suited men. The three were engaged in intense conversation.
Lexi put her hand on mine. “Gallagher.”
The men paused on the porch. “I’m telling you, the vampire I have is the real thing. I could have him killed and sell you his blood. You’d make a fortune marketing it as the fountain of youth or an elixir of life,” Gallagher said roughly.
My stomach plummeted. Damon’s body was being divided before he was even dead.
“Blood,” a stocky man mused, rubbing his bald head as if it were a crystal ball. “I’m just not sure people would try that. But how much would you sell the fangs for?”
The men entered the home, shutting the wooden door with a definitive thud.
I sniffed the air. The cloying scent of vervain burned my nose, but I didn’t sense Damon anywhere.
Lexi pushed the gates open and stepped onto the lawn.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “I don’t think Damon’s here anymore.”
“Yes, but you need to know exactly who and what you’re up against. The more you know, the better you can gauge what the best course of action will be,” she said.
I nodded, and together we stole in the shadows toward the main house. We ducked under a window ledge and knelt in order to escape notice; we could just make out the scene unfolding in the parlor at the back of the house. Gallagher’s voice drifted through the open window as he took a seat in a maroon leather club chair, his feet up and a glass of port already in his hands. He wore a large gold ring on his finger.
In the far corner, Callie Gallagher sat in a pair of weathered overalls and a white linen shirt. Her red hair fell down her back in a vervain-laced braid, and her head was bent as she pored over a ledger book. A garland of vervain was strung along the marble mantle, and I noticed a few vampire muzzles—the same sort that my father had used to subdue Katherine—tossed carelessly on an end table.
“I have something else that might interest you,” Gallagher said, locking eyes with the elderly man while the other sat, silently. “I didn’t want to bring it up out on the street.”
“Yes?” The man leaned forward. His voice sounded disinterested, but he rubbed his stubby fingers together eagerly.
“The monster wears a ring. It’s an unusual one. Silver with a blue stone, but it seems to give him additional power. None of my men have been able to get it off his finger, but when he’s dead . . .”
“Father!” Callie interjected. The two men stared at her.
“Yes, girl?” Gallagher asked, his voice dangerously low.
“I’ve been looking over the books, and we’ll make a fortune if he’s kept alive. It’s the best for the show.” Though her expression was all business, her tone didn’t actually sound mercenary.
“My boss.” Gallagher laughed ruefully, but from the way the vein in his temple throbbed, I could tell he didn’t appreciate Callie’s interjection. “Girl, can you get us some brandy?”
Callie stood up and stalked out of the room. I was surprised to feel a sliver of sympathy—and kinship—with her. I knew what it was like to have a headstrong father. I’d wanted nothing more than to please him, but Giuseppe Salvatore always thought he knew best. I dared to disagree only once, and he killed me for it.
“As I was saying, the ring . . .” Gallagher said. I snapped back to attention.
“You kill that monster and I’ll buy it all. The fangs, the blood, the ring. Everything. And I’ll give you a very good price,” the elderly man said in a trembling voice, barely concealing his excitement.
Before I could pounce, shattering the glass that separated me from the man who was trying to sell my brother in bits and pieces, an iron-firm grip clasped my arms behind me and dragged me back out to the street.
“Get a hold of yourself, Stefan!” Lexi hissed as she pulled me along the sidewalk. When she reached the corner of Laurel Street, she let me go.
“That man . . . is a sadist!” I fumed.
“He’s a businessman. He wants to kill your brother, and if they find out about you, they’ll certainly want to kill you too,” Lexi said, pushing her blond braid over her shoulder.
My mind spun. “What about the girl?” I asked.
Lexi snorted derisively. “What about her?”
“She thinks Damon should be kept alive. Maybe she can convince her father of that,” I said desperately.
“Don’t even think about it. She’s a human, and she will follow her father’s orders until the end of her days,” Lexi said, dropping her voice to lower than a whisper as another couple walked toward us.
As they passed, the man tipped his top hat, and Lexi curtseyed back. To anyone else, we were a young couple, out to romance each other in the moonlight.
“Damon’s life is at stake,” I said in frustration. Lexi had offered to help, but everything she’d done so far had seemed designed only to dissuade me. “We have to do something!”
“I know you will find a way to save him,” she said firmly.
We turned another corner and the spire of the church across from Lexi’s house came into view. “But Stefan, you must remember that controlling yourself around humans is much more than simply not attacking them.” When we reached the back porch, she stopped and put her hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look into her clear amber eyes. “Do you know the real reason why we don’t drink human blood?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because if we don’t drink human blood, we don’t need humans,” she said in a tight voice. She pushed open the door. Buxton, Hugo, and Percy were sitting around the coffee table, playing poker. They looked up when we entered, and Buxton narrowed his eyes at me.
“Boys, we’re going dancing tonight. We need some lightness,” Lexi announced, pouring herself a glass of blood from the decanter on the side table. She glanced around the room. The three nodded. “Will you come, Stefan?”
I shook my head. I was not in the mood for lightness. “No,” I said, then headed upstairs to plan Damon’s rescue alone.
I searched in vain for peaceful sleep but never found it. Instead when I closed my eyes I saw Damon, his legs curled around a hard wooden chair, his arms bound in ropes. His skin bled, the droplets a dark maroon where the vervain-soaked ropes bit into his flesh.
Next came the images of Callie, her flame-colored hair flowing behind her, her eyes lit with a frightening passion. She and her father danced around Damon, my brother’s form prone on the ground. They threw their hands
