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“Why the fuck am I only hearing about this now?” Black asked.

Nick folded his thick, marble-like arms. He stared levelly at Black.

“I didn’t think you’d want to hear vampire shit right now,” he said, voice frank. “I figured it was better to hold off until I knew if there was a reason to be concerned.”

“Is there reason enough now, Tanaka?” Black retorted.

I held up a hand between them. I gave Black another warning look.

“He’s not wrong,” I said to Black, quiet. “We wouldn’t have been particularly open to that information right now. Given everything.”

Black gave me a disbelieving look.

“Are you fuckingkiddingme right now, wife?” He looked between me and Nick as his voice rose. “The girl is gone.She has one of thosegaos-damned sight-blocking chips in her head. Jem, a famously level-headed and calm-minded seer, justkidnappedtwo of our people… two of hisfriends… for reasons unknown, after acting like a goddamned lunatic for hours. But you both think it’s totally fine that I had no reason to think I might have needed to up our anti-vampire security measures a little bit?

“Aura is gone, yes,” I warned. “But Cowboy, Holo, and Dog were found unconscious, alive, and without a scratch. They had no drugs in their systems, no vampire bites on them, and none had suffered so much as a hit over the head. Nothing we did in the area of ‘vampire security’ would have prevented Jem from overpowering the three of them––”

“I might have asked the damned question!” Black exploded.

There was another silence.

In it, no one would really meet gazes with me, Nick, or Black.

“I don’t know if it’s Brick,” Nick said finally, breaking the impasse. “I don’t know if vampires had anything to do with any of it. All I know is, Jem wouldn’t do this. And if it helps…” Nick glared at Black. “He wasn’t acting like someone being manipulated by venom. I should know.”

“He wasn’t acting like someone who was addicted toyourvenom, you mean,” Black retorted back. “It might look a little different when his loyalty isn’t toyou,Nick.”

I swallowed at that, looking between them.

I had no idea which of them might be right.

I found myself remembering Solonik, the assassin seer who’d once held me hostage. Nick fed on him for months. Jem more or lessfedSolonik to Nick, to keep Nick alive while Jem tried to reach him as a newborn in the snowy forests of Russia. Solonik turned into a desperate, obedient puppy dog, and basically Nick’s willing slave. Nick eventually handed him over to Brick, mostly just to get rid of him.

We’d all felt pretty weird about that.

Solonik cried, but only because he’d wanted to stay with Nick.

But then, a few months later, Charles and everyone who’d been loyal to Charles had gone, taken away by that being, “Dragon.” Brick told us that Solonik disappeared along with the rest of them. When Brick got back to where he’d left the seer, he found only an empty cage.

I honestly wasn’t sure how I felt about that, either.

Mostly, I decided it was a good thing.

Gods only knew what Brick and his coven would have done to him over the two years since. Given how Solonik had treated me, not to mention all the humans he’d killed, and other seers, and children he’d helped Ian burn and murder in Thailand, I probably shouldn’t have felt as guilty about what became of him as I did.

It was hard not to feel guilty, though.

Solonik had been turned into a slave. He basically had no will of his own anymore.

I wondered if he’d been rehabbed in some way by Charles and the others, wherever they ended up.

“No,” I murmured under my breath. “Jem wasn’t acting like a venom addict.”

“You don’t know that,” Black warned. “Like I said, it would look different if he wasn’t loyal to Nick. I was still able to do jobs for Brick when they were using venom on me. It took everything I had in me to fight back. I had to work with other seers for months, and even then, it was a relief when I could justdo the jobBrick wanted me to do. Brick’s used other seers and humans that way, too. We didn’t always catch those immediately––”

“But how long had they been feeding on you?” I pointed out. “Months, right?”

I looked between Nick and Black, suddenly feeling more sure.