“Don’t underestimate them, August.” Jude’s brows dip down. “They’ve spent hundreds of years waiting for this. They’ve been careful not to make waves, because they couldn’t risk giving the Syndicate any justification to crack down on them. But now that they believe their moment has arrived, they’re not going to let anything stand in their way. If Duclos wants you in her grasp, she’s had since the sixteen hundreds to devise countless ways to manage it.”

“Fantastic,” I croak. We’re outside, the sky spreading everywhere, and suddenly I feel like someone’s sitting on my chest. A centuries-old sorceress-slash-vampire is out to get me, and my only protectors are my math tutor and a vampire who might want to stuff me in a cage. “Just … fantastic.”

“It’s the second group that’s truly dangerous,” Jude goes on, finding the only words that could possibly be worse. “The Mystic Order of the Northern Wolf. They are … Well, they make those ‘Baeserta nutjobs’ look like the Von Trapp family. They make the Manson family look like the Von Trapp family.” He pushes off the side of the Prius, coming even closer, and I shuffle sideways along the length of the car until I bump against the side-view mirror. “They hold nothing sacred and have no limits. Where the League venerates the Corrupter, Northern Wolf sees it as a weapon—a doomsday device they’ll use to annihilate whoever or whatever displeases them.”

“Is that their endgame?” My voice sounds like a radio transmission from Mars. “Doomsday?”

“Effectively, yes.” He doesn’t even blink. “They want absolute power, a world where they’re in charge and humans are hunted for sport, and this is their chance to make that dream a reality. What the Corrupter offers them is a pathway to total domination, and they will happily drown the Earth in blood for a chance to seize it.”

“Neat.” It’s all I can manage, my esophagus suddenly in a half-Windsor.