“Fuck yes!” Talia had hissed, pounding a fist onto the table. “You and me, then, Harlow. It’s gonna be bomb.”

Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure what I’d even thought her bedroom would be like. A macabre chic aesthetic, maybe, heavy on skulls, melted candles, and flocked wallpaper in the obligatory shades of black and red. Possibly a snake or two. Instead, Talia’s suite was elegant and pretty, not a reptile in sight, and smelled distractingly like a distillation of her perfume. The bed was huge—which did actually track with my expectations—with a spindrift mass of pillows and comforters, and a button-tufted velvet headboard in a lovely shade of teal. A stunning chandelier hung above it from the coffered ceiling, like a more bafflingly intricate version of those birdcage lighting fixtures you saw at Restoration Hardware and knew you could never afford.

Talia smiled when she saw me craning my neck to admire it. “Micah made that for me,” she said, naming her little brother, the second-to-youngest Avramov. “Without magic, imagine that. Kid is surprisingly good with his hands.”

I wandered over to admire one of the haunting watercolors that hung on the gray walls. They were all of nightscapes, a fine balance between dark and bright; deep dusk edged with the ruffles of aurora borealis, or shimmering spills of galaxies like cosmic treasure chests. Each was lightly infused with magic, just enough to stir the stars into a slow, hypnotic sea of motion. Leaning in for a closer look, I could just make out Talia’s name in the corner in a jagged scrawl.

“You painted these?” I asked, glancing at her over my shoulder with eyebrows raised. “How many secret talents do you even have?”

“I’m trying to parcel them out slow, for maximum effect,” she said, leaning against the wall with one foot up, a smirk tugging at her mouth. “But now does feel like the time to tell you I can also whistle like a fucking nightingale.”

“See, that’s just not fair,” I complained. “No one person needs baking and painting and whistling, not to mention necromancy. Really gilding the lily over there.”

“What can I say?” She gestured showily at herself. “I’m extraordinarily well rounded.”

We lapsed into a silence that quickly grew velvety and dense, both of us intensely aware of the proximity of Talia’s foamy bed. Or at least one of us was intensely aware of it; images from our interrupted night seared through my brain like a meteor shower.

Talia cleared her throat and looked away, a smile twitching at her lips. “Speaking of necromancy, it’s almost time. We need to pull the trigger at seven minutes past midnight.”

“That’s . . . specific,” I said, trying to wrest my head back in the game. “The witching hour, I get, but why the seven minutes after?”

“Secrets of the trade, Harlow. You know how it goes. I could tell you, but then . . .” She clawed her hands, miming monsters bursting through soil. “Strigoi.”