'I am the slide master,' Adam announced, rummaging in one of the cabinets. He pulled out a box of gla.s.s slides and began to lay them out on the counter. 'Slides, I understand. This DNA-reader-thingie I do not understand. Does it have a name?'

'Not that I know of,' Sienna said.

'Then I hereby christen it the DNAbilizer,' Adam announced. 'Jason. Hair.'

Jason reached up to pull a strand of his hair out.

'Wait!' Adam said. 'Make sure you get some skin on the end of it. The DNA is in the skin, not the hair.'

Jason obediently pinched his scalp and yanked out some hair. Adam slipped on a plastic glove, took the hair, and began preparing a slide.

Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out Dani's brush. 'Can you hold the light for me?' he asked Sienna. She aimed her flashlight at the brush while Jason pulled out a few strands of hair. He studied the ends. 'I can't see well enough to tell if there's any skin on the ends,' he said.

Sienna leaned in close to him and examined the hair. 'Neither can I,' she said finally. 'Let's make slides for a couple of pieces of hair. Hopefully the DNAbilizer will be able to find DNA to read on one of them.'

Jason chose a few strands and handed them to Adam, who put each hair on its own slide.

Then Sienna took the slides and fed them into the slot in the DNAbilizer. Each slide disappeared soundlessly into the machine. Then a series of knocking sounds began, growing faster, then slower, and then starting the entire process again.

'What's it doing?' Adam asked.

'Performing the test,' Sienna said. The knocking cycle stopped, the machine now whirring softly.

'All in that one machine? We don't have to do anything else?' Jason asked.

'The DNAbilizer is actually about five machines in one, based on what the technician told me,' Sienna said. 'They like to streamline everything here.'

'Well, what's taking so long?' Adam demanded.

Sienna gaped at him. 'It's isolating a single strand of DNA for detailed a.n.a.lysis. How fast do you think that can happen?'

He shrugged. 'It would probably take a week to get DNA results at the CSI lab. So I'm thinking it should take about three seconds here.'

'We have advanced technology, not a magic wand,' Sienna said. 'It takes a while.'

'Shh!' Jason hissed. 'I hear something.'

They fell silent. From out in the hallway came the unmistakable sound of footsteps.

'Turn off the flashlights,' Sienna whispered frantically. They all shut off their lights. The computer monitor glowed in the darkness, casting an eerie bluish light over all the black machines.

The door opened.

Wordlessly, Jason grabbed Sienna's arm and pulled her back into the shadows behind the DNAbilizer. Adam crouched below the counter he'd prepared the slides on.

A security guard stepped into the room, propping the door open with his foot. Some of the green light from the hallway leaked into the darkness. The eerie glow backlit the guard, making him much easier to see Jason hoped than he, Sienna, and Adam were in the shadows.

Jason felt Sienna's hand grasp his, her fingers cold. He looked at her and she gestured with her head toward the monitor. Data had begun scrolling quickly down the screen, numbers changing faster than the eye could follow.

In the doorway, the guard frowned. He reached for the light switches. Jason's breath caught in his throat: if the lights went on, they'd be discovered for sure!

Eighteen.

BEEEEEP!.

The DNAbilizer let out a loud final sound and turned itself off. On the monitor, the numbers vanished and a message flashed up: DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE.

In the doorway, the guard chuckled to himself. 'd.a.m.n machines!' he muttered, stepping back outside. The door swung shut behind him, and the room returned to darkness. Jason held still, his heart slamming against his ribs. Sienna waited beside him, not moving.

Across the room, Adam slowly crumpled to the floor. 'Oh, thank G.o.d,' he whispered. 'I totally froze in the wrong position and got a leg cramp!'

Jason bit back a laugh. He could see Sienna and Adam also struggling not to crack up. The relief of not getting caught was making them all giddy.

'That was close,' Sienna said finally. 'It's a good thing the DNAbilizer is fast.' She clicked on her flashlight and crossed over to the keyboard. She typed in a command: DISPLAY RESULTS. The monitor went blank. A green light clicked on over the slot in the machine, and one of the slides slid back out. Jason took it. It was his hair, short and blond.

On screen, a report appeared: SUBJECT #1. COMPATIBLE.

A tingly feeling shot up Jason's spine. He locked eyes with Sienna. Compatible. He could do it. He could become a vampire if he wanted to. He could be with Sienna. Forever.

The green light went on again, and another slide popped out.

Adam grabbed it. 'Uh-oh,' he said.

Jason pulled his gaze away from Sienna. 'What?'

'Subject number two, incompatible,' Adam said, gesturing at the monitor, where Jason could read the words for himself.

'Oh, no,' Sienna murmured. 'Dani . . .'

The green light came on again, and a third slide shot out. The monitor added a new line: SUBJECT #3. INCOMPATIBLE.

'Wait. What?' Jason said. 'What does it mean, subject number three?'

'We did two slides from the hair on the brush, remember?' Sienna reminded him. 'It probably thinks each slide was for a separate person. Here, I can make it give more detailed info. We can check.' She typed in another command: DISPLAY DETAILS. Immediately a long list of numbers appeared under the heading 'Subject #1'.

'See? That's everything about you,' Sienna told him. 'The mtDNA markers are displayed in red.'

'Maybe I should print it out for future reference,' he murmured.

'Now here's Dani,' she said as the monitor displayed the detailed results for Subject #2. 'And here's the mysterious subject number three. It will all be the same data . . .' Sienna's voice trailed off. The numbers appearing underneath Subject #3 were not the same. They could all see that. The numbers displayed in red were different numbers. Not all of them, but enough to prove that this was not the same person.

'That's not Dani,' Jason said slowly. 'And it's not me. The numbers are different.'

'Maybe somebody else's hair was in Dani's brush,' Sienna suggested. 'Kristy's?'

Jason grabbed the hairbrush and began pulling out individual strands. Some were only seven or eight inches long, some were more than a foot long, all were dark.

'Is there a way to tell if the subjects are related to each other?' Jason asked Sienna. His stomach was cramping. He had an idea who Subject #3 was, but he really, really wanted to be wrong.

'I think the number of shared DNA markers indicates that,' Adam told him.

Sienna toggled back and forth between the results. 'Well, all three subjects have a lot of markers in common,' she pointed out.

'I'm pretty sure that means all three subjects are related,' Adam said.

Now Jason knew exactly who those hairs belonged to. He knew exactly who the incompatible Subject #3 was. He ran his hand through his hair in agitation.

'Jason?' Sienna asked. 'What is it?'

'Subject number three,' he whispered. 'It's not Kristy. It's my Aunt Bianca.'

Nineteen.

'BUT IT CAN'T be!' Sienna exclaimed.

Suddenly, a whole lot of things were starting to make sense to Jason. 'I'm pretty sure it can, actually,' he replied. 'She's been acting totally weird. She plucked out all her eyebrows the other day.'

'Dang,' Adam muttered.

'That doesn't mean-' Sienna began.

'It's not just that,' Jason interrupted. 'It's the way she's acting. You saw a little bit of it in the pool house, Sienna. Aunt Bianca has a different personality every thirty seconds.'

Sienna shook her head in disbelief. 'I don't want to believe it, but she certainly was acting weird that day.'

'Bianca's been acting crazy, but it never occurred to me that she really was crazy,' Jason said, his head spinning. Aunt Bianca was incompatible with the vampires, but now she was a vampire. And she was going mad. She had the transformation sickness.

'Jason' Adam's voice cut through his thoughts 'we have to get out of here.'

'You're right.' Jason tried to shake off his worry. 'I'll figure out how to deal with this once we're safely away from the lab.'

Adam pulled the remaining slides from the machine and shoved them in his overstuffed backpack. Sienna typed 'DELETE DIAGNOSTIC' into the keyboard, then turned off all the machinery.

Adam shut off his flashlight, pulled open the door, and led the way out.

'There's a closer exit,' Sienna whispered. 'It's that way.' She pushed Jason in front of her, and brought up the rear. Jason appreciated her concern he knew he wasn't thinking too clearly at the moment. What was going to happen to Aunt Bianca? How was he going to break the news to her?

'c.r.a.p!' Adam muttered. He held up his hand, signaling for them to stop. 'Look.'

Jason glanced up and froze. A camera was mounted on the ceiling, its red light focused like a laser as it swept slowly across the hallway. 'Two more seconds and it'll be right on us,' Jason said. He turned to Adam. 'Take off your jacket.'

Adam whipped it off and tossed it to Jason. 'Get close together,' Jason ordered. Then he flung the camouflage jacket over their heads.

'Now run!' Adam cried. Huddled together, they raced for the nearest door. Adam elbowed it open and they all hurried through.

'd.a.m.n! I was so busy thinking about the key codes, I completely forgot about the cameras,' Sienna cried. 'Did they see us?'

'I think Jason got my coat over us in time to block our faces,' Adam replied. 'But they definitely saw a bunch of idiots running around under a camouflage jacket.'

'My father will murder me if I get caught breaking into the Center with a couple of humans,' Sienna said. 'This is so far beyond what's acceptable to the Council.'

'Are you kidding?' Adam cried. 'My father will murder me if I get caught breaking into anything, anywhere, with anyone. He's a cop! He's chief cop! His son is not, repeat not, allowed to commit crimes.'

'Everybody calm down,' Jason ordered them. 'The longer we stay near that camera, the faster they'll find us.' He took off down the hall and pushed open the first door he came to, holding it open until Sienna and Adam got inside.

Jason scanned the room. It was another lab, this one without any super-secret vampire machinery. There were windows in the far wall. 'Quick. Out the window!'

In one fluid motion, Sienna moved across the room and unlocked the window, sliding it open and peering outside. 'OK, I know where we are,' she said as the two guys joined her. 'But the gates are way around the other side of the building. We'll have to climb the wall and then walk back to the cars once we're outside.'

'The wall is covered in ivy,' Adam said. 'It shouldn't be too hard to climb. Unless, you know, there are dogs nipping at our heels although that might be quite the motivator. How do we know where the guards are?'

'I think we just have to chance it,' Jason said. 'They must've seen us on the camera. They'll be looking in the building first.'

'Then let's go.' Sienna climbed out the window and took off toward the wall.

'Not fair,' Adam muttered. 'She has superhuman speed.'

'So let's not hang around,' Jason said. He swung his legs through the window, jumped down, and sprinted after Sienna. He heard Adam running behind him.

By the time Jason reached the wall, Sienna was halfway up, climbing the vines like a rope. He grabbed onto one of the leafy branches and pulled himself off the ground. Any second he expected to hear the barking of dogs. Or to see a spotlight go on and catch him, like in a prison escape movie.

But suddenly he was at the top of the wall. He straddled it, then reached down a hand and hauled Adam up beside him. 'I don't see anyone following us,' he said.

'That's no reason to stay here talking,' Adam replied. He swung his legs over and climbed down the other side. Jason followed more slowly.

Sienna was waiting at the bottom, her expression serious.

'What's wrong?' Jason asked.

'I turned my cell back on and there was a message from Belle,' she said. 'It's bad.'

Jason's throat went dry. Had the security guards called Sienna's father already? Were they caught after all?