Kicking It

landed on Mayhew, thrusting him back. Jane stepped across the falling bodies, her hands coming together and down, like a scissors closing. The stakes slammed through Romona. A shriek sounded, so piercing it was deafening. A death keening. Cia and Liz covered their ears in shock. Blood fountained up over Jane’s hands.

The keening shut off. Jane pulled the dead vampire away from her husband. He was sobbing, his anguish human and pitiable. Two other vamps reattached his shackles as Jane hefted the dead vampire to her shoulder and carried the body into the dark. Mayhew raised his face to the night sky and screamed his grief. The sound of a blade chopping echoed. Once. Twice.

Dacy knelt over the limp body of Evelyn McMann, a small knife in her hand. With an economical motion and no flinching at all, she sliced her own wrist and placed it at Evelyn’s mouth. The blood trickled in, and Dacy held Evelyn’s jaw until the human woman swallowed. Liz and Cia stood in the cold wind, arms around each other for warmth and comfort, watching the second-most-powerful vampire in Asheville healing their enemy’s mother. Evelyn reached up with two skeletal hands and gripped Dacy’s wrist. The vampire looked at them and said, “She will live. Your word, if you please.”

“We’ll never speak of this to anyone without your permission,” Cia said.

“We’ll never speak of this to anyone unless it means the life of another,” Liz amended.

“Acceptable,” Lincoln Shaddock said. Dacy picked Evelyn up like she was a baby and started for the cars.

Moments later Jane came back, from a different direction. There was blood on her white shirt. “We’re done,” she said. “The policing of Lincoln Shaddock for his clan is acceptable to Leo Pellissier, the Master of the City of New Orleans and most of the Southeast United States, including the Appalachian Mountains where we stand. Pay the Everharts.” She pointed to Cia and Liz.

Lincoln Shaddock removed an envelope from his pocket and extended it. Cia accepted it. The twins gathered up their belongings and raced to their car to find Evelyn asleep in the backseat. They were halfway down the mountain before they caught their breath. “That was wicked weird,” Cia said.

“Yeah. Let’s get Evelyn back to Layla and start studying up on how to get purified before the blood magics sink too deep.”

“Yeah. Good plan.” Cia tore open Lincoln Shaddock’s envelope and drew in a slow breath.

“How much?”

“A hundred thousand dollars. Combined with Evie’s estate, I think we just made enough money to put a huge down payment on a house, sister mine.” They started to giggle. Neither of them said anything about the hysterical edge to their laughter, or what it hid. Not yet.

* * *

When the twins left the elegant house in the Montford Historic District, Layla—sans makeup and wearing old jeans—was crying and hugging her mother, having wrapped her in a blanket in the middle of her bed. She was force-feeding her water and Gatorade and cucumber sandwiches.

“Like, who keeps cucumber sandwiches on hand?” Cia said as they walked out of the house.

“People who don’t know the value of leftover homemade soup and yeast bread from Seven Sassy Sisters.”

Cia said, “Oh, yeah. We eat, and then we figure out how to get the blood magics off us.”

“Done.” Liz took a slow breath. Her lungs and ribs didn’t hurt, not at all. She didn’t want to say the words, but couldn’t keep them in. “Jane Yellowrock might have saved our lives. If Romona had gotten free and drawn on the blood magic of the mountain . . .”

“Yeah.” Cia’s tone was grudging. “We’d have been her dinner.”

The silence after her words stretched, as the sisters got in the car and drove away. Cia finally said, “When you had the rock on you, the rock Evangelina threw at you when she was trying to kill us all? I tried to push it off. I couldn’t. It was too heavy. You weren’t breathing. Like, at all. Jane—in her cat form—pushed it off. She saved you. I think she saved Carmen that day, too. And she did what we couldn’t when she . . . ” Cia heaved a breath that seemed to hurt. “When she took care of Evie, too.”

Liz knew that “took care of” meant “killed.”

“Not because we didn’t have the power or the skills to handle Evangelina, but because Jane thinks, instead of being frozen by fear.”

Liz blinked away tears and said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Now we have to forgive her for killing Evangelina.”

“Which is why I didn’t tell you. I’m not . . . I wasn’t ready to forgive.” Cia turned away, looking out into the night. “Maybe I’m ready now.”

“Yeah. Well.” Liz took a deeper breath than any she had been able to manage in months. “The blood magic? I think it healed me.” She took another breath. “No pain.”

“Crap. We used blood magic, just like Evie did.” Cia’s mouth pulled down. “And it felt good.”

“Addictive good,” Liz whispered. “I can feel the pull of the mountain even now. We are in so much trouble.”

“Yeah. But there is a silver lining. The totally cool Christian Louboutins Layla gave me—once I get the blood off them.”

Liz erupted with laughter, which was what her twin intended. “Us. She gave them to us.”

“Fine,” Cia said. “And the cash. Share and share alike.”

“Yeah. Like always. Even a blood curse we don’t know how to get rid of.”

“We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

HIGH STAKES A Luc and Lindsey Story BY CHLOE NEILL

It was the curls that killed me. Those dirty-blond, tousled curls. They practically screamed to be run through by manicured fingers.

The manicure wasn’t the problem. Tonight I was sporting a complicated matte black and charcoal pattern that varied from nail to nail. It probably would have been more appropriate on a socialite than on a veteran guard of a House of vampires, but I’d decided a long time ago not to give up style for fangs. It was part of my credo, my firm belief that immortality should be dressed up and flaunted like a deb at her debut. I’d been a vampire for more than a century, and I was proud of my genetics. And from my blond hair to my favorite stilettos, I tried to show it.

But that was neither here nor there.

The problem was the curls, and the vampire they belonged to. Luc, the Captain of the guards of Cadogan House. I was a guard, which meant he’d been my boss for years. My colleague. My friend.

Now he was my something-more-than-that.

I was still trying to put a name to what “that” was.

Luc wasn’t having the same trouble, which was why he stood in front of me in my smallish dorm room in Cadogan House holding a glossy black shoe box and a pair of the sexiest boots I’d ever seen. Buttery black leather, nearly knee-high, with pointy toes and stiletto heels long and thin enough to be weapons on their own.

I stared down at them with obvious lust, but kept my arms crossed and my fingers away from leather I knew would be as smooth as silk. “You bought me boots,” I said for the fourth time.

“If the shoe fits . . . ,” Luc said with a crooked grin, which was just as effective as the curls.

“I don’t need boots.”

He gave me a flat look. “Since when did that stop you from buying anything? You have five pairs of black heels.”

“And I’ve explained this a hundred times.” I counted them off on my fingers. “Stilettos, kitten heels, patent, round toe, open toe. A girl needs options.”

“The point is,” he said, “I don’t care if you need the boots. I just want to see you in them. And clothes are completely optional.”