We thanked her for her hospitality, but it was hard to relax, knowing we were so close to finding Olive. I’d given Rose and Dimitri the full rundown on her story when we’d met up in Houghton—at least as much as I knew about it. They were as concerned as I was and also concurred that there was probably something sinister going on if she felt such a strong need to hide her pregnancy. I got the impression that if she had been taken advantage of—and Dimitri found out who was responsible—there were going to be some serious consequences.

Dinner turned out to be chicken salad sandwiches, a surprisingly ordinary meal to be eating in a wilderness resort of half vampires. Sydney didn’t even hesitate before biting into hers, which I thought spoke legions about how far she’d come in dealing with Moroi. Lana meanwhile made it clear to me there were no official feeders around here and that I shouldn’t even think of soliciting blood from any of the Wild Pine dhampirs. There was a catch in her voice as she spoke, however, and combined with what I knew about these communes, I suspected there were dhampirs here who sold their blood to Moroi as freely as they sold their bodies for sex. It was the dark side of these camps, what had given them such a bad reputation. It certainly wasn’t a practice they all engaged in, but it happened frequently enough.

After dinner, Lana was true to her word and led us out herself, giving us a brief tour of the community. As I’d suspected, some of the buildings doubled as businesses.

“We make regular runs into Houghton for supplies,” she explained. “But we also try to be as self-sustaining as we can. We grow a lot of our own food and even make some of our own clothes.” She nodded to one cabin where two dhampir women sat sewing on the porch by lantern light, now that twilight was fast moving in. They waved back in greeting. She pointed out other buildings as we passed them. “That’s Jody’s shop—she can fix anything. And that right there’s our medical center, such as it is. April’s in charge of it, but she’s out of town getting supplies. The things she needs are a little harder to make. Over there is Briana’s school.”

“You’ve got some solar panels over there,” Sydney remarked. “Smart idea out here.”

Lana beamed, clearly proud. “That was Talia’s idea. We get some electricity wired in, but she felt we should have a renewable source on hand.”