Sitting around the room earlier with Xander’s troupe felt like a glimpse of a big family. Reina and Diantha leaned against each other. Xander and Aristelle kept sharing looks that seemed to carry secrets. The twins… well, they were staring straight ahead like dolls who’d been set down, but when one of them sneezed, Diantha had pulled a tissue from her sleeve the second before it happened. Even in the small amount of time I sat with them, I could tell they were family.

Mom always said that one day we would perform together. She never let me help with the birthday parties, but she always said one day it would be my turn, and I used to do little drawings of what our mother-daughter outfits would look like.

I’ll never be onstage with Mom, but here, right in front of me, is the chance to join my own troupe—to take back one of the dreams I thought died with her.

“So are you with us?” Xander asks again.

I weigh his words for a moment. But the only thing in my life I really love is Parker, and as much as it kills me to say it, sometimes he’s just not enough. I need this, and it’s not just about revenge. I want the power to create my own life, one I can share with him, and it’s standing right in front of me. I can hunt vampires until I feel whole again and then get a residency in Vegas with tricks the world’s never seen before. This could help me escape… everything.

“She’s with us,” Aristelle says. “We leave the day after tomorrow. Five a.m. sharp. The competition is in Santa Cruz.”

“What?” My voice squeaks. “You said I had time to train.”

“You do. We have to check in, though, and then we’re granted time to train at our compound.”

“So that’s why you needed me. What happens to you if I don’t go?” Something bad. Something to make the desperation I heard in their voices earlier make sense.

They share a look, and there’s true fear in it.

“The Society takes the competition very seriously,” Aristelle says. “With a limited number of immortality spells, we need the best of the best to keep vampires from overrunning the world. If we don’t bring someone to the competition, our troupe gets split up.”

My stomach bottoms out. I know what it’s like to be afraid of that. Parker and I were separated at first, and I’ll never forget how desperate I was to get back to him. And then after, how afraid I was that we’d be separated again—that someone would want a sweet little boy with big smiles and not an older girl who cried in her sleep.