“You’re working with a bunch of vampires?” Adriana clearly can’t believe what she’s hearing. “My whole life you’ve told me the undead can’t be trusted, and now—”

“You watch your tone, Adriana Verdugo,” the woman snaps, fast as a cobra, and my best friend’s mouth clicks shut. “Don’t speak to me like that.”

“Why are you working with them?” I demand, because Ximena isn’t my grandmother, and I don’t even know if I trust her now. “Whose side are they on?”

It should be an easy question to answer, but the woman gets a pensive look, her mouth shifting. “To be honest, I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?” Adriana squeals, and her grandmother glares at her again.

“I don’t need you to lecture me, young lady. I’ve only trained with them because they’ve made me stronger in my craft than I ever dreamed possible. But I’ve always questioned their motivations and tried to anticipate their end game. I meant what I said the other night, when I reminded you that vampires never tell the whole truth.” She sighs. “They didn’t reveal to us until last month that this was to be the year of the Ascension, and it was only a few weeks ago that I learned Auggie was the intended vessel.”

“Whose side do they say they’re on?” I try again, growing exasperated. My parents are missing, I’m pressure-cooking Satan’s office buddy, and she needs prompts?

“According to them, they’ve sacrificed everything to save mankind from the Corrupter. They’ve spent millennia tracking him from one Rising to the next, hoping to confront him again and cast him into hell once and for all.” Her wedding ring clinks against her coffee mug. “Only three of them remain now, and they’ve been grooming me and two others for years to replace their fallen sisters.”

Immediately, my mind flashes on the sketches I did in the art room, and the trio of mysterious, black-clad women that figured into both. “If that’s really their plan, then why haven’t they done it yet? If this thing comes back every hundred years, they’ve had shitloads of opportunity!”

“A ritual of this magnitude can’t be worked on a whim.” She sets her mug aside, crossing her legs. “It requires a confluence of factors that can’t be forced, and a balanced circle with experienced magic-workers … They say the circumstances necessary to pull it off didn’t come together until just now. And all of that is true enough, as far as I can tell.”

“You keep saying stuff like that—‘according to them,’ and ‘as far as you can tell.’” I tuck my hands under my thighs so the sofa can absorb the sweat from my palms.