One of the doctor-vampires grabbed Vienna, stopping her progress. Minhi sprang into action. Hung Gar kung fu always delivered powerful blows that could, in Sangster's terms, "take your head off."

Minhi jumped, bringing her leg up and down, coiling and uncoiling straight into the knee of the vampire on the right, who had grabbed Vienna. The knee folded back with a solid crunch and the vampire howled in anger, dropping Vienna and turning his attention to Minhi.

Alex reached for the stake hidden in his jacket and raised it, plunging it into the chest of the wounded vampire. An explosion of dust hit the air. The doors of the elevator closed.

Now the other two vampires broke off their guard duty, hurtling through the door into Steven's room.

Alex heard a burst of reinforced gla.s.s and they looked to see Steven's window busted out, cheap aluminum blinds swinging in the wind.

"Come on," Alex said. They raced for the stairs.

Less than a minute to reach the lobby, and another few seconds to the front entrance.

But they were too late. In the front bay, an ambulance was already pulling away, a plain white van that roared and sped into the distance. In its back window Alex saw Bill, staring.

"Just get back here" was all Sangster had to say on the phone as they pedaled furiously from the village. Alex could barely look at the others, until finally he burst out with, "Is this my fault?"

"What?" Minhi asked, next to him.

"I can't-Steven was injured because of me-Minhi, the Scholomance just took the Merrill brothers. Not just Steven but both of them."

"That was not the same as when Paul and I were taken," Minhi said. He looked at her face and saw that she wasn't trying to go easy on him. She shook her head defiantly. "You saw Bill. He was helping them."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because," Sid said darkly, "he was headed that way. Don't you think?"

"You think just because he was a jerk he was waiting for the right moment to become a vampire?" Alex spat out the words, distraught. "It can't work that way. We all know jerks, Sid. I know how to deal with the Merrills; I have a sister just like them back home. A twin."

Sid had no response to that.

Vienna pulled ahead of them. "All of you, stop. You don't know them."

"You tell us, then," Alex said. "From what we know of the vampires, they offer a-it's a powerful life, or afterlife. But it lacks all the things that make us what we are. Elle told us the process, whatever it is, burns out whatever empathy, whatever love you have left. So you tell us: Do you think that's something the Merrills would sign up for?"

"Years ago I would have said no," said Vienna. "But they've changed."

Alex swore inwardly. So much to clean up; there was a dead doctor back there and they were racing away without talking to a soul.

When they reached LaLaurie, it was getting dark. Alex saw Sangster waiting on the front steps as they chained up their bikes and he immediately broke ahead of his friends. "You've got to do whatever you can," he said to Sangster, approaching the steps at a trot.

"Alex-"

"We found our way into the Scholomance once before, we can step it up again," Alex said. "There's no way they know what they're getting into. We can do it tonight."

"Alex!" Sangster said again.

"What?" Alex shot back, and then he heard a second voice.

"Alex."

Alex turned around. Waiting patiently in the foyer next to a framed LaLaurie crest were two Americans: the woman blond and trim in a cashmere wrap, the man goateed, with dark wavy hair and a midnight blue topcoat.

"Mom? Dad?"

Chapter 14.

They weren't the only parents. As Alex accompanied them to a place where they could talk in private, he noticed other adults throughout the school. It had been bound to happen. The parents were descending on LaLaurie and the Kingdom of Cots, and they wanted answers.

As he walked up the stairs Alex turned to them and said, "I'd show you my room, but-"

"No, no, apparently it burned up," said his mother. "We were talking to your Mr. Sangster about it."

Silence after that until Alex found a chemistry lab upstairs and shut the door. Like all such s.p.a.ces it looked like a junior mad scientist's lab, Bunsen burners and microscopes under leatherette coverlets. The room was lined with gla.s.s windows, half of which were open even in the fall, ready to vent noxious fumes. Outside, he could see the tree-lined parking lot and many rented vehicles. He dragged a couple of chairs from behind the first row of black countertops.

The three of them stared at the chairs.

"Oh, Alex," Mom said, and then she hugged him again. She held him out, surveying him. "My G.o.d, you look gaunt."

"He always looks gaunt," said Dad.

"Sorry, I guess," said Alex. He ran his fingers through his hair. Where to start? There wasn't time for this now. "Look, I-I wish I could spend more time, but there's an emergency."

"I should say so," Mom said. "Alex, what are you thinking? Your school is destroyed, you're at an entirely new place, and you can't see fit to fill us in?"

"I know, that's really . . . terrible, but I mean, right now I need to follow up on something." What was he going to say? He looked at his father, and a million things raced through his mind. Your father knows. The greatest enemy knows. Your mother is proud of you. Was any of that true? Now it felt like a dream. But at this moment, right this instant, there were two students who had just been lost to the Scholomance, and he had no idea how much his father actually knew, no idea what his mother knew, and no time. "There's a rehearsal I'm supposed to be in," he said, remembering that he had agreed to take Sid's place for the ball.

"We brought you some clothes, some new gla.s.ses, some school supplies. That nice Mr. Sangster had someone take them to your dormitory," Mom said. "But we have to make some decisions. Your sister was very worried about you."

"What did-" Alex tried to look down the chessboard and choose his words like moves. What did she tell you wouldn't do. "I mean, I want to- Where are you staying? We could have breakfast."

Alex touched her sleeve. Instantly he felt the warmth of her, the safety of her presence. His mother and father had raised him to look after himself and his sisters. It was a house, he had thought, of adventure and honesty. But that was before he had learned of all the secrets his father harbored. And so far his father hadn't really said a word.

"I gotta hurry," Alex said, walking toward the door. "I'll bet there's some kind of reception for you guys; there has to be."

"We have to decide, Alex," Mom said.

"I don't know what that means, but I'm sure we can decide over breakfast." He reached for the door and pulled it open.

There was a whisper, words he didn't understand, and the door was pulled from his hands and slammed shut. A crackle of energy shot through the room, fizzing his hair as the lights flickered. Alex froze as every window slapped closed at once. He slowly turned as the wind from the closing windows lifted the coverlets and sent papers shuffling.

His parents stood side by side. His mom's long hair was floating slightly off her coat.

His father was the one who spoke this time.

"We have to decide if you're going to stay with the Polidorium."

Chapter 15.

Alex stared in shock. "Holy-what the heck was that?" He looked at the windows and the papers still settling around the room. "Oh my G.o.d, who are you?"

The being that surely did look like his mother rolled her eyes, adjusting her wrap. "Alex, settle down, I'm your mother."

"Oh, no!" Alex exclaimed. "No, no, Mom, I've known you my whole life and you've never slammed a door with your mind, and we slam a lot of doors."

"I didn't slam it with my mind," she said simply, taking a seat.

"I just watched you; one minute I'm leaving and the next minute you're going all Carrie with the doors and the windows."

Dad scoffed lightly, smiling some. "She did it with a spell."

"A spell?" This was too much. Alex ran his fingers through his hair again, pacing. "Since when, I mean-I mean, we don't do these things. These things don't happen! When did you start using spells?"

"When I was about your age, actually," she said.

In the back of his mind, a snippet of a conversation played, something Director Carreras had said: We allknow about Amanda.

What does that mean?

It means that if not for your mother, your father would probably still be with the Polidorium, Sangster had said. But Carreras had meant more than that, hadn't he?

"Back up, back up, back up," Alex said.

"Do you want to sit?" his mother said, indicating a chair.

"No." He frowned.

His father spun the empty chair around and sat down, resting his arms on the seat back.

Alex turned to his dad. "I mean, what-what was all that growing up about this doesn't happen. 'Oh, that thing you just saw in a movie, no, that doesn't happen. Van Helsing name? Coincidence.'"

"I'm sorry, Alex. It seemed like the right way to go about it all."

"Dad! Mom! I don't know if you know, but there are vampires out here. Actual vampires with, you know, fangs. There's this one with punky hair and crazy eyes and I can't seem to lose her. These people want my hide. There're no spells, though, that's an all-new little surprise!"

"Witches are actually fairly rare," Dad said.

"And now you're all professorly about the witch-to-vampire ratio, Dad! When were you going to let me in on this?"

The three of them looked at one another. His mother's arms were crossed, and she looked a bit defensive, his father with his fingers laced together, gazing down. He couldn't hide that he seemed to think this was funny. Finally his father said, "We discussed it on the plane and honestly, we came to the conclusion that you probably knew most of it by now."

"That's not-that doesn't even come close to-that's just about whether you were going to talk about it, when were you going to tell me?"

"You know how when you're little and you believe in Santa Claus? We need some fresh air," his mother interrupted herself. She whispered something in a language he didn't recognize, and one of the windows slid open. She looked back at him, flipping her hair out of the way. "Anyway, it's always nicer if the kids find out first by themselves."

"Yeah!" Dad agreed. "They see you taking down the presents, and then they help."

"This isn't Santa Claus," Alex spat. "Santa Claus turns out not to be real. The vampires went the other way." He sighed, shaking his head, and breathed slowly. "When I got kicked out of Frayling, the boy I fought with was-"

"A werewolf," Dad said. "And we talked about telling you then, but we thought we could give you a few more years of, you know, innocence might be the word."

"Did you know that the Polidorium was here at Lake Geneva?"

"Well, I know they're everywhere, but no, I did not know that they had a large base here. And I also didn't expect that you would wind up working with them."

"They gave him a motorcycle," his mom said, clucking in disapproval.

"I didn't expect that either."

"I don't understand," Alex said, "I mean, any of it, but right now I don't understand what you know. How much-what do you-?"

"What do we know about your activities here?" Mom asked.

"Right, that's a start. We'll trade information."

"I would advise you not to do that unless we ask," his father said rapidly. Ever the company man.

"It started with a vision," Mom said, "during a meditation session. It was a vision of a powerful witch, angry with you, but weak, unable to stop you."

"I haven't met any witches," Alex said again. "Do you mean someone at the Scholomance?"

Mom shrugged.

Alex asked, "What else did you see?"

"That vision was not mine," said Mom. "It was-someone I was meditating with."

"Uh, okay," Alex said. Briefly he wondered who the other witches in his mother's life were. She belonged to roughly a dozen charitable boards-was there a coven among them?

"And then I looked for you, spiritually looked for you-that's hard to explain. But I didn't see any danger." She looked at Dad. "But that wasn't good enough for me; I had your father do some checking up."

"After that it was easy. The Polidorium can be leaky sometimes," said Dad. "I got into some minor databases and saw some of the equipment that had been issued to you. I talked to some people I know."