“If you can see them, you can stake them,” I said.

Lina added, “Fighting and feeding take precision. Most of us have to slow down—”

“Us?” Sydney cried. “Lina, are you . . . ?”

A body dropped in front of us, so close it skimmed my fairy skirt on the way down. It was a woman, and she hit the floor with a heavy thud.

“Oh my God!” Sophia wailed. “She’s dead!”

“Not dead,” Reg corrected. “More like a temporary coma—”

“Less chatting. More staking,” I snapped.

Then, without any further explanation, we leaped into the fray.

Fighting was clunky in my human form, but I was surprised to find myself a worthy opponent for the Elders. I knew their moves, so I knew how to dodge, how to throw my neck out as bait, then duck just in time, sliding the stake home.

One grabbed my arm, and I spun into him instead of away. Dust.

Another caught me from behind, and I went with the momentum, rolling backward, right over his head, and catching him in the back. Vapor.

I tried not to look in their faces. I knew I was on the right side now, but a small part of me didn’t want to recognize any of the Elders, didn’t want to look them in the eyes before they disappeared.

They sealed their own coffins, I reminded myself.

And nobody crashes a party I helped plan.

All around me, the people of Nowhere were fighting back. No longer scrambling, they were now working in teams to ward off attacks. An equipment closet was open, and someone had smashed a few baseball bats against the wall until they splintered. Several people were running around with sharp sticks from the bat’s remains, their screams now changed to guttural war cries.

I had lost the twins, but in the middle of the gym, I found Sal, both of us staking the same vamp at once.

“Having fun?” he asked with a wink.

It seemed like a strange question until the answer came bubbling up inside me, even stranger.

“I’m having . . . something,” I said.

A group of vamps surrounded us, and we whipped around, fighting back-to-back.

“I can’t explain it,” I yelled over my shoulder to Sal even as I sparred with the pair of unfamiliar Elders in front of me. “I’m all amped up. Jittery, kind of, but powerful too. Like how coffee makes me feel, but times a hundred.”

My stake landed in the first opponent. Poof.

“I’m just so . . . buzzed!”

The second vamp came in for a bite, and I feinted left. She followed my movement, and I snagged right, my weapon finding her exposed sternum.

Sal ended his vamps at the same moment, and we turned back to one another.

“So, what is it?” I asked. “This feeling.”

“Adrenaline,” he said.

Then he was gone again, lost in the crowd with a new foe.