I spun through the room again, helping people keep their attackers at bay. Vampires were at their most vulnerable when lost in the feed, so I smoked a few right where they stood, sucking the life out of someone.

No, not the life, I reminded myself. Not even the memories yet.

This was just the first wave—the takedown team. Once everyone was knocked out with venom, a second crew would come in and do the complex job of erasing and replacing the memories.

“Not on my watch!” I cried, leaping, stake out, toward a nearby figure in black.

“Whoa!” The figure’s hands flew up. “Charlie, it’s me!”

The stake dropped from my hand and skittered across the floor. “Poe?”

“You almost stabbed me,” he said. But then he wrapped me in a hug.

“Are you okay?” I replaced my stake and handed him another from my bandolier.

He tested the weight of it in his hand. “I am oddly unflummoxed.”

“Huh?”

“I’m not as freaked out as I should be.”

“Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that going around,” I said. “It’s kind of freaking me out.”

“Charlie!”

It was Reg’s cry, but it echoed across the chaos in the gym, so I couldn’t tell which direction it came from.

“Charlie!” he called again, and this time Poe spotted him.

“There! He’s over there.”

Reg was pressed against the far wall of the gym, waving frantically, and we pushed through the scrum, trying to reach him.

A fresh spray of glass rained down from above as a new wave of vampires leaped through the high windows. One pair dropped right next to us, a man and a woman. I smoked the guy before he’d even straightened out of his crouch, but the woman—no, the girl—caught me off guard. It was the doe-eyed Elder, the one representing the Blood Clan. I wasn’t exactly her biggest fan, but seeing a face I recognized made staking the heart below that face feel . . . wrong. It took me out of autopilot, interrupting my fight-or-flight response.

Basically, I hesitated.

And she did not.

“I knew we couldn’t trust you,” she snarled, fangs out and glinting.

She darted in for the bite, but all that grazed my skin was smoke, and in the small space between me and where she had once stood was Poe’s hand, wrapped around his stake.

“Friend of yours?” he asked.

Before I could answer, Reg shouted again.

“Charlie! Come on!”

I dragged Poe behind me as we dodged the throngs of humans and vampires still sparring. Damned if this little village wasn’t made up of some decent fighters.

Reg moved down the wall as we neared, motioning for us to follow. “This way. I heard them.”

“Heard who?” I asked.