“I promise I’ll … I’ll look into it.” He winces, seeming to immediately regret saying so—but before I can parse his expression further, he adds, “Listen: I said there were three vampires watching your house last night, and it’s important you understand what that means. You need to know about the two major cults that have formed around the Corrupter, because they are gathering in Fulton Heights. Now.”

A dead deer sucked dry in a farmer’s field just past my neighborhood, a vampire purring at me, the Dark Star rises … I swallow. “Of course they are.”

“One is called the League of the Dark Star.” Jude steps out from beneath the safety of the overhang. When he doesn’t burst into flames, I check a mental box. Clouds = adequate protection from sunlight. “The League was founded in the sixteenth century by an undead mystic named Erasmus Kramer, although he’s believed to have been killed by Brotherhood hunters sometime in the late 1700s. Since then, they’ve been led by Kramer’s chief lieutenant—a powerful French sorceress named Viviane Duclos, who is notorious for her cunning.”

“Oh neat.” I shuffle back a few steps as Jude comes closer, wanting to keep a little distance. “And she’s been watching my house?”

“No, sentry duty is grunt work. She wouldn’t expose herself like that.” He pulls out another cigarette, just as I back into the end of someone’s car, and he pauses to light up. “No one’s seen her for centuries, there are no photographs, and the only portrait of her was destroyed in the eighteenth century. For all we know, she died when Kramer did and the League has been using her name as a false front to spread disinformation ever since.”

With a frown, I ask, “So what do you actually know about these people? What am I on the lookout for here?”

“There’s probably fifteen members, they’re all skilled fighters, and they’re all very, very smart.” Jude leans against a Prius parked across from where I’m standing. “Kramer was choosy, and Duclos even choosier, when it came to building the ranks. They expect to become demigods with the Ascension of the Corrupter, and they don’t want that privilege going to just anyone.” He folds his arms across his chest. “Mostly they lie low, stay out of trouble. They either abide by the Syndicate’s precepts or break the laws in ways we can’t prove, so we monitor them but generally leave them alone.”

“Okay.” I adjust my glasses a little. “They don’t exactly sound terrifying. From what you said before, I was expecting a bunch of Baeserta nutjobs.”