“Maybe they aren’t,” Alexei said. “A spell can always be undone. You will figure out a way.”

Connor looked down at me. “Can you feel them? Or the House?”

“I . . . don’t know,” I said. The air was thick with magic and emotions, and I wasn’t sure if I could separate them out. “I can try.”

He let me go and I stepped forward, putting a few feet of space between me and the others so I was clear of their magic. I closed my eyes, blew out a breath, and tried to center myself, to push away the distractions. The fear. The grief. The fury.

I made myself think of the House itself, of the buzz of magic and scent of gardenias, of the flowers that always waited on the table in the foyer. Of the old-book smell of the second-floor library. Of my mother’s perfume and the feel of curling up beside her to watch a movie. Of sitting in my father’s office, eating pizza. And, for better or worse, of the sword in the armory and the tendrils it seemed to stretch out to monster, drawing it near. But even monster went still now, offering me the quiet to reach out and feel what I could.

In the mental quiet, through a tunnel of darkness that led to a place I couldn’t see, I could feel the faint and familiar buzz. The magical heartbeat of my home, my family, and the vampires I’d grown up with.

They were alive, I thought, with gasping relief. But they were far away, their connection to me as faint as a whisper. And streaked across that thin connection was a smoky, bitter stain that was becoming all too familiar.

Demon.

Rose.

I hadn’t had any doubts that she’d done this. But sensing her mark on the magic was another slap, another wound atop the damage she’d already inflicted.

I opened my eyes and felt the tears, already fallen, cold on my cheeks.

I turned back, looked at Lulu, trying to reassure both of us. “I can feel them,” I said. “They’re alive. They’re just somewhere else.”

“Where?” Connor asked, his voice low and deep and full of mingled hope and trepidation.

I shook my head, wiped my cheeks. “I don’t know. But the House wasn’t destroyed, right? It wasn’t exploded or burned down or dismantled. It just isn’t here anymore. So we figure out where they are and we bring them back.”

“How are we going to figure that out?” Lulu asked.

I didn’t know that, either. “We’ll either figure out the magic on our own, or we’ll capture the demon and make her do it. One way or the other, we’ll fix this,” I said, forging the promise.

Lulu nodded. “It almost sucked you in.” She swiped at tears.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe because you lived there?” she said. “Maybe because of the binding spell that made you.”

“Maybe,” I said, and slid my gaze to Connor. His face was carefully neutral, but his expression said he understood what had happened. What the magic had targeted and tried to pull away. Monster was still reeling from the attack, still in shock about the absence of the House and the sword.