Smith pounded the table. "Dammit, you stupid girl." He seemed ready to lay into her with a sermon, instead pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "What do you plan to do with her?"

Felicia's surprised gaze shifted to me, though she kept her mouth shut.

I raised an eyebrow. I really hadn't planned on doing anything with her even if she was a vicious little brat who'd sicced a bunch of vamplings on me and Elyssa. It wasn't like I could turn her in to the Templars. I didn't know much of anything about the supernatural community either. But maybe I could use her to get Smith to trust me more.

"I'd be happy to leave her with you once we're done here."

Smith shook his head. "I don't want anything to do with her anymore, especially after hearing what you've told me."

"How can you say that?" Felicia asked, tears brimming in her eyes. "I'm your sister."

Smith clenched his teeth and glared at her, a thousand unspoken words passing between them. I had no idea what their history was like, but it couldn't be good. He took a deep breath and seemed to calm before looking at me. "I feel as though I owe you something for the ordeal my sister put you through."

I almost blurted back that he didn't owe me a thing for the bad behavior of his sibling, but I really wanted his help. Maybe he would have helped me anyway, but a little insurance couldn't hurt. "If you can help Sheltonremove the tracker from my dad and figure out these runes, that would totally rock."

"You got it." He looked at Felicia for a long moment. "Where is the Templar you mentioned? Can she maybe lock up my sister for safekeeping?"

Felicia lunged across the table at him fangs bared and hissing, barely making it halfway before Ryland and Stacey jerked her back. "Don't you dare, Adam. I swear to god I'll kill you if you make them lock me up again."

He threw his hands up in the air. "Make them? Make them? I had nothing to do with the last time. You did that all on your own. But Maximus has brainwashed you to the point you don't even think for yourself anymore. It'd be doing you a favor."

Now that Smith mentioned it, I'd love for Elyssa to toss Felicia in Templar prison complete with a pretty orange jumpsuit. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure when I'd see Elyssa again after the disastrous meeting with her father. Just thinking about it sent my heart plunging to the bottom of DepressionBay. It made me want to hurt somebody. And if I'd had my strength right then, the 'somebody' would have been Felicia. On the other hand, Ryland could probably take her in, though I hadn't told Smith the werewolf was a Templar.

"We can take her with us to Shelton's hideout. I'm sure there's something we can do to hold her in the meantime."

Smith nodded and pulled out what looked like a brass smartphone. Once I looked at it closer, I realized it was a regular smartphone modified with a steampunk theme.

"Shelton told me you don't use a cell phone or email," I said.

Smith chuckled. "I don't have any one phone number or email address. It took me a long time, but I wrote a spell allowing this device to spoof other phones at random."

"So the number you use changes each time," I said. "Wow, now that's cool."

"More like freaky," Felicia said. "In case you didn't know, my brother is a total nut-job who thinks there's a conspiracy behind everything. He even thinks someone in the Conclave killed our-"

"Shut it, Felicia," Smith said, smacking the flat of his palm on the table.

"What's the matter?" she said in a whiny mocking voice. "Don't want them to know how crazy you are?"

He took a deep breath and calmed himself. "I may be a conspiracy nut, but I'm not crazy."

I looked at Felicia. "Do yourself a favor and stop trying to tick off your brother. Otherwise I may ask Stacey or Ryland to knock you out."

"I might even do it myself," Smith grumbled.

I looked around and noticed more people coming into the restaurant. It was time to get a move-on. "We should go to Shelton's now."

Smith nodded. "Meet me at your car. I need to grab a few things from my place."

"How in the world are we going to fit everyone into the back of that sodding Prius?" Stacey asked.

Good question.

We made our way out of the restaurant, Stacey and Ryland pressing Felicia from each side. Felicia, for her part, looked defeated and slumped visibly between them. Even if she did break free, either of those two could catch her in an instant, and considering how much wolves and panthers relish the hunt, the takedown would probably get nasty.

"Should I follow Smith?" Ryland asked me as the sorcerer split off from us and went between two shops.

I shook my head. "No. Let the man have his privacy. Besides, if his hideout is anything like Shelton's we couldn't get in without a magic wand anyway."

"It would still be a good idea to know where it is," Stacey said.

I gave the two of them a look. "You two just agreed on something? Amazing."

Ryland grinned at Stacey.

She blushed and gave me a cross look. "Really, my lamb, must you ruin things with such a crude observation?"

Felicia, for her part, looked completely out of it. Her head was down, pigtails flopping on the sides. With the short plaid skirt, knee-high socks, and the geek glasses, she looked like a Catholic school girl who'd gotten busted for hacking computers. I wondered why she wasn't cold considering it wasn't much above freezing at the moment, but neither Stacey nor Ryland seemed all that affected by the weather, either. Maybe I'd been as blissfully and supernaturally unaware of the cold before donating most of my blood to Stacey.

At least I wasn't dragging like before. My body still felt loaded down with bricks but Meghan's pain-killing tea was still doing the trick.

We reached the car. Ryland had to drive-I didn't trust myself behind the wheel-and we needed someone strong in the backseat with Felicia. That left Stacey. She pushed the vampire into the backseat from one side while I climbed in on the other, sandwiching her between the two of us. Felicia didn't know I was in a weakened state, so hopefully she wouldn't try anything.

I closed the door and leaned back, my eyes wanting to close again and not open for a good eight hours or so.

"I'm sorry," Felicia said.

I opened my eyes and looked at her. "Kind of late for apologies."

"I know." She hung her head and bit her lower lip. "You just don't know how things are under the Red Syndicate. They rule everyone with an iron fist, and all the initiates like me are treated like dirt. Maximus makes us feel important. He wants to help people, not enslave them like the masters do."

"The masters?"

"Yeah, the vampire governors. They make rules and live like kings while the rest of us have to do whatever they tell us. It's really unfair."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before becoming a vampire."

"Maximus saved me. I was in a really bad place in my life. He gave me a purpose and a family."

Ugh. I wasn't having any of this crap. Since when did a vampire help anyone? Granted, I only knew what I'd seen in the movies, but this girl was full of excuses. "I'll bet your brother and parents were happy to find out about your new family."

She sniffled and a tear trickled down her cheek. "My parents are dead."

I congratulated myself on not feeling bad for making a girl cry. On the other hand, I felt bad about her parents if it was true. Of course, all I had to do was ask Smith when he got back.

"I'm sorry."

"Why do you think Adam is so loony? He thinks it was a conspiracy reaching all the way up to the Overworld Conclave." A bitter laugh escaped her lips. "As if those idiots could agree on anything, much less conspire to kill a couple of no-name people at the bottom of the rung."

"Why aren't you a sorceress?" I asked. "Obviously your parents were part of the arcane community seeing as how your brother practices magic."

She pulled off her glasses and wiped red-rimmed eyes. "That's just it. My dad was a big-wig in the magic community but my mom was just a nom. Adam got all the abilities in our family." She sniffed and wiped her nose. "I was just plain old me. A nom."

Stacey handed Felicia a tissue. "That's no reason to nick somebody's father, dear."

Felicia blew her nose loudly into the tissue. "I know, I know. I didn't want to do it, but Maximus told us how evil spawn are and how we'd be doing everyone a big favor by keeping one prisoner."

I narrowed my eyes. "Did Maximus put the bounty on my dad or me?"

She shook her head. "No. He didn't even know about you two until Mortimer found the bounty online and showed it to him. Maximus was certain about spawn blood being the answer to his issues."

Her answer brought up another thought which promptly kicked me in the guts. "Those vamplings...my god, they were people. He killed those people trying to turn them and you and the others helped him. How can you live with yourself?"

Her eyes widened to the point where I thought they'd fall out. "What do you mean he killed them? He didn't kill anyone! He said they died because they were too weak to undergo the change. He gave them a choice."

"Don't give me that crap. You said he knew about his problem with turning people. His attempts to make them into vampires killed them and created those zombie things. That makes it his responsibility."

"But they all went willingly! Maximus is the one who turned me and Mortimer and several others. He said he needed your dad's blood to be more potent so the weak people could survive as well. He wants immortality available to everyone, not just the privileged few."

I shook my head unable to make sense of it. It wasn't like I knew a damned thing about vampires or how turning worked. Either Maximus was lying to them, or Felicia was willing to protect him at all costs. Probably both.

"Ain't no way Maximus turned you if he made vamplings," Ryland said. "You either can or you can't, and it sounds like he can't."

"How would you know?"

"I'm a Templar."

Felicia's round eyes grew wider though her face couldn't get any paler, being a vampire and all. "Are you going to kill me?" Her voice was a small frightened whisper.

Ryland showed her his teeth. His silvery eyes gleamed with the promise of things worse than death.

"Ooh," Stacey murmured, her face full of something like awe. She shook her head when she noticed what she was doing and blushed like a school girl.

Either the werewolf didn't notice, or he pretended not to. "Vampire, I know all about vampiric turning. Only one of potent blood and focus can enable the virus to make the change happen. Anyone lacking either will unleash a vampling infected with a contagion the likes of which you've never seen."

"Then how did he change me?"

"Give me your finger, girl."

"Are you going to bite it off?"

He grimaced and shook his head. "You kidding me? Vampires taste as bad as hellhounds."

Her lower lip quivered but she held out a pale finger to him. He pricked it with a silver dagger, pulled from under his ninja camo. She shrieked at the unexpected blade, but he held her finger fast and touched a bit of parchment paper to the dark black blood welling on the tip. Felicia sucked on her finger when he let go.

"Why does silver hurt so bad?"

Ryland ignored her as he mumbled something, pulled a lighter from his pocket and set the paper ablaze. It burst into a white flame, the paper vanishing instantly and leaving strange symbols hovering in the air which faded to nothing within a few seconds.

"What was that about?" I asked, clearing the afterimage of the brilliant flash from my eyes by squeezing them shut.

He tucked the lighter away. "It's a blood test. Her blood is clean of infection and points to a vampire of just over two centuries old as her blood master."

"Nobody in the uprising is that old," she said. "Maximus is just over a hundred and fifty."

"And that's way too young to be a blood master." Ryland wrinkled his forehead. "Hell, two-hundred is too young, so whoever did it must have some special blood, or been turned by one of the ancient masters."

Felicia knitted her eyebrows. "Maximus claims he was turned by an ancient master."

Ryland snorted. "Yeah, well he claims a lot of stuff, this Maximus idiot. And he's obviously lying. I'll bet he has someone there who's turning people for him. People he wants to live through the process anyway."

"When you say blood master, does it mean that vampire can control you?" I asked.

"It depends. From what they taught us at the Academy, the old masters have a lot of control over their brood. How much control is anyone's guess."

The passenger door opened and Smith climbed in. He saw Felicia's red-rimmed eyes. "Don't fall for the teary-eyed act. God knows I gave her enough money before figuring out that little game of hers."

Felicia gasped. "I'm your sister. Why would you say such mean things about me, especially to strangers?"

Smith laughed. "Considering your reputation and what you did to them, I don't see how their opinion of you could be any lower."

Ryland pulled into traffic and headed for Shelton's. He sniffed the air through his open window, his eyes casting about, ever watchful. The sun just barely lit the sky on the horizon, but gray clouds threatened to make it a gloomier day.

That's when they came from the shadows. A lot of them.

Vampires.

Chapter 17.

Elyssa Elyssa had been expecting a fight. Maybe even a couple of deaths resulting from the fight. After all, David had looked ready to tear off Vallaena's head. Instead, the man he and Shelton had been speaking with came over and threw himself between them, speaking urgently in a language Elyssa didn't understand. David's coiled muscles relaxed ever so slightly, but the look on his face betrayed the violence lurking behind his thin facade. He nodded and followed the man back to the other table.

"If you will excuse me," Vallaena said, and followed him.

Elyssa allowed her breathing to return to normal. If a fight had broken out, she wasn't sure what she would have done. David was Justin's father, but as a Templar she couldn't go around cutting up other spawn because of a family feud. She also desperately wanted to find out who the mystery man was.

"Well, lookie who's here," Shelton said, coming over a few minutes after Vallaena left her sitting there pondering her thoughts and wondering what to do next.

"Have a seat, Shelton," Elyssa said, gesturing to a chair across from her. "I think we need to have a little conversation."

"Oh, is the weather really nice?"