“Fair enough.” He glances around the dark alley, at the bags of trash near the back and the few scattered cans and bottles, and shrugs like this is as good a place as any. He steps a few paces back from me so he can lean against the other wall, making it impossible to see his expression as he begins. “The Society of True Magicians isn’t just a bunch of people who love magic and want to cultivate it. That might be how it started, but I only gave you half the story.”

I don’t say anything, just wait. I want all the answers to everything right now. I want to know why my mom died. I want to know what Xander and his troupe are. I want to understand the power in my veins.

Because I want to know how it can help me kill a vampire.

The thought of actually doing it, actually getting revenge, has my heart pounding. My arms tremble, not from magic or fear, but from being closer to something I’ve wanted for so long. Something I’d all but given up on, pushing it down until it became a dark, festering hole of hopelessness inside me. Who would I be if I could fill that hole up?

“Just tell me everything,” I say. “I believe you. I can handle it.”

“The original vampires were magicians gone bad.”

Didn’t see that one coming, but I wait quietly.

“Some of the Acetabularii were happy enough with their powers. They couldn’t lose, but a little taste of power is never enough for some people. They wanted to test it. They wanted more, and the power boost from a performance only lasted so long. As you well know, we can feel the power in our veins, so someone had the idea to go directly to the source, and it worked. Prick a finger and you could send a ball across the room. Slice a palm and you could send it across town. But even that wasn’t enough. The more power you have, the more you want to keep it, and the only way to do that is to never die. So they pushed themselves closer and closer to the brink of death with their bloodletting. And finally it worked. Someone went too far and used enough blood and power for the magic to grant the request, but the spell sucked dry every bit of their magician blood to do it and left them with an insatiable hunger for more blood to keep the spell going. All spells need to be fed to last, so if a vampire doesn’t drink, their immortality is gone. They hurt others to save themselves.”

“So my mom was killed by a magician gone wrong.” My blood goes cold. It doesn’t feel like magic in my veins at all. It feels like death.