“Then help me,” I said, catching hold of her hands. “Help me to understand so that I can help you. I promised Nina I would.”

“Adrian? Is that you?”

The voice calling me wasn’t immediately familiar, and I slowly turned from Olive to see who was speaking. We’d set out walking at random, and the place we’d stopped gave us a good vantage on what I thought of as the “Red Light District Cabins.” Another Moroi guy appeared to be leaving one of those cabins, and from the stagger in his steps, he’d been enjoying happy hour out in the woods.

“It is you!” the man exclaimed, smacking his leg in triumph. “I knew it.”

A few more seconds, and recognition set in. “Uncle Rand?” I asked in disbelief.

He strode on up to us and grinned. “The same.”

I could hardly believe it. In my life, I’d come to expect any number of fantastic and wondrous things to happen in day-to-day affairs. Spirit battles? No problem. My wife turning into a cat? Sure, go for it. So it was astonishing that the sight of a relative I hadn’t thought about in years would so completely floor me. Rand Ivashkov was my dad’s older brother, someone I’d neither seen nor thought about since I was a child. Rand hadn’t been disowned—not officially—but it had been clear to me from an early age that everyone preferred it when he wasn’t around. My father had assumed his responsibilities at Court and sent Rand out of the country on errands that were mostly meant to keep him out of the way and give him things he couldn’t screw up. Once, when I’d gotten in trouble as a teen at an illicit party, my mother had urged my father to go easy on punishing me. “After all,” she’d said, “it’s not like he’s as bad as your brother.”

He’s a screwup, whispered Aunt Tatiana. A disgrace. More consumed with women and wine than family honor.

Doesn’t sound that different from me, I admitted.

She scoffed. Hardly. Your family never shipped you off to keep you out of the way.

Last I’d known, Rand was somewhere in Europe. I certainly hadn’t expected to find my uncle in northern Michigan. “What are you doing here?” I asked.