She rolls her eyes. “Only you would have boy drama the night you almost get murdered by a bloodthirsty demon. Part-demon boy drama, even.” She groans and holds up the bowl. “Want to tell me about it over two a.m. pasta?”

My stomach growls so loudly I think the whole house must hear it, super senses or not.

She snorts. “So that’s a yes.”

I wake up in a warm bed, heart pounding in my chest. I shove myself upright and search the room for a threat, but it’s empty. A shaft of late-morning light streams in through the old, moth-eaten curtains. The sound of clinking dishes reaches me from down the hall. Alice’s voice. William’s.

But my body doesn’t believe that I’m safe. The same buzzing numbness builds in my hands. I shake them out, trying to relieve the sensation. My throat tightens. Panic is a heavy, invisible hand on my spine telling me to run. I drop my head on my knees. This is just residual fear, setting my system off. I close my eyes and breathe like Patricia taught me to. A single deep breath in, a slow one out. It takes long minutes before my racing heart slows to a trot, then a walk, until feeling returns to my hands.

The Scion of Arthur. A Medium. A Daughter of Vera. And I can’t even handle waking up in the morning.

My left fist clenches over my mother’s bracelet, seeking its comfort on my wrist. For grounding. For purpose.

When I reach for the glass of water on the nightstand I find more evidence of Alice at work: a shiny silver safety pin resting beside a lighter with a small pile of Band-Aids from the bathroom first-aid kit, and Jonas’s cell phone for calling my father with a slip of instructions for faking a number on outgoing calls. Supplies for blood walking and a parental check-in.

I glance at the door and gauge how much time I have before someone comes in.

I prick my thumb. Watch the blood well up from a tiny red dot to a small droplet, then press my thumb into one of the charms on my mother’s bracelet, and call out for an ancestor.

By my blood, on my heart.

I stand on the moss-covered stone in the ancestral plane, and pivot on my heel in a slow circle. Everywhere the earth is waiting for me. To call out with intention.

“Our sword.”

“My bri.”

“The sharpest and strongest.”

I whisper, “Show me how to use our root to strike first.”

A breaking, tearing sound. A stream splitting the earth and opening before me to my left. I step down into its waters and start walking. It widens with every breath….