“If you commit to the League, not only will you earn all of our loyalty and all of our resources, but vampires around the world will jump at the chance to take down Rasputin and earn your favor. Even some of his own acolytes.” She folds her hands together in her lap. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, and I’m sorry for taking advantage of a bad situation—but together we have a chance to make this the best of all possible worlds, Auggie. You just have to trust me.”

26

I won’t pretend my feet are steady as I walk away from Viviane Duclos and the offer she’s placed on the table … even though I haven’t declined it yet. My parents’ lives in exchange for my body’s endless servitude to an apocalypse cult is an arrangement that’s terrifying, overwhelming—and final. Once I say yes, it is literally the beginning of the end, and no matter how badly I want to save my mom and dad, I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready. But as I make my way to the Colgate Center’s exit, I struggle to find even the smallest sign of something better to hope for.

You just have to trust me. What if Daphne/Viviane isn’t lying—this time? I know Gunnar was being honest about his desire to live alongside humans, because I saw the truth of it when I was inside his head at the rave, so maybe saving the world really is the League’s agenda. At least, after a fashion. No matter what, the vision she described is way better than what Jude foretold if the Syndicate gains control, and it’s certainly better than what would happen if I give in to Rasputin’s demands.

So maybe that’s what my vision of Gunnar and the bowl of blood was about. Maybe I’m already destined to take the oath, to commit myself—whatever “myself” is in the approaching days—to Viviane’s cause. Maybe my free will is an illusion, and all of this is already written out in a prophesy no one’s discovered yet.

I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts that I’m not even aware of the man behind me as I push through the exit, until he catches the door before it can shut—and I don’t take any special notice of the woman who gets to her feet from a bench outside the mall’s entrance as soon as I emerge. I don’t think about either of them until a second man steps directly in my path, and when I go to move around him, I find myself flanked on either side.

“August Pfeiffer.” His hair is salt-and-pepper, and he isn’t asking my name—he’s telling me. “You’re coming with us.”