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Ashley looked up to see Esther, propped on an elbow, her dark hair sticking to the blood on her cheek. She tossed a small, silver object through the air. It slid across the floor and landed a foot from her—Esther’s second earring.

Keeping a fistful of John’s button-down in one hand, she dove and grabbed it, ignoring the pain that burned through her side at the movement. Half the ceiling’s plaster crashed wherethe earring had been moments before, leaving a cloud of dust and blocking her view of Esther.

John ripped himself free, leaving behind scraps of his shirt in Ashley’s fist. It was just the two of them now as more plaster fell and a second column cracked and bent under the weight of the crumbling house.

Ashley stood, the cool metal grasped firmly in her palm as she circled the last of the open space, John mirroring her on the other side.

“I always knew you were a terrible vampire,” he said, narrowly dodging a piece of falling plaster. His shirt hung in tatters around his lean frame, and his thin, brown hair was covered in so much plaster it looked white. It was the most disheveled she’d ever seen him. “I only regret how much I underestimated that first assessment.”

“I really am a terrible vampire.” She ducked and somersaulted away, narrowly missing a support beam as it crashed between them. “Good thing I was always a decent cheerleader.”

She vaulted over the beam and landed knees first on John’s chest. Before he could move or say anything else, she pressed the second cross to his exposed chest, right where his heart would be, and didn’t let go until it sank beneath his skin.

The second floor gave way around them, drowning out his scream.

40

Esther

Someone knocked on the front door.

Muffled words carried through from the other side. “Are you kidding me, Uther? Look at the house.”

August and Uther had found them.

Esther tried to get up, but something pinned her in place. She called out, her voice a dry rasping sound that broke into a cough.

The door creaked open, and more dust and plaster fell around her.

“Esther.” The cloud settled, and there was Uther crouching over her, his face more serious than she ever recalled. His warm hands traced her cheeks. She hissed when his thumb brushed a cut. “You’re going to be all right, okay? I’ve got you. Everything is fine.”

For some reason, the shaky way he said “everything is fine” while scanning her body and avoiding eye contact made her think that everything was not, in fact, fine.

The last few moments ran through her head. Ashley covered in blood and being flung across the room by that reaper of avampire. The sound of her body hitting the column not once but twice. That last image of Ashley grasping, nails raking the floor for the earring Esther had tossed before it all went dark.

“Ashley,” Esther said.

“Is she here? Do you know what happened?” Over Uther’s shoulder, August climbed through the rubble.

The ceiling was gone, leaving a giant chasm in the middle of the house. A rug hung precariously from one side, and on the other, water spurted from somewhere unseen and trailed in a waterfall to the floor below before disappearing in the litter of timber, plaster, and splintered furniture piled in a heap.

“Ashley!” August screamed her name and flung chair legs, then a whole bed frame, from the pile.

Esther focused on his movement. If she just concentrated on his actions, she could ignore the sinking feeling in her heart the longer they went without a reply.

Maybe Ashley had made it out. Or she got to the basement before the collapse. Maybe she finally turned into a bat and flew out a window.

“I’m going to move this off you.” Uther was talking to her.

She pried her attention from August flinging chunks of plaster to see what Uther was fussing over. A wooden beam pinned Esther’s thighs to the floor.

“When I lift it, can you slide out of there? Hey!” He called to someone outside the front door. “Come help me already.”

The pressure on Esther’s legs eased, and Uther pulled her out before it crashed back to the ground. Confused, Esther looked up at the newcomer in the doorway. Meg shoved her hands in her coat pockets, and behind her, Gwen fidgeted with the skirt of her dress as her gaze darted between August flinging furniture and the open space above them.

Esther wasn’t sure what to say, torn between, “Thanks,” “How dare you show your faces,” and “Go, help him!”

Meg nodded, as though she read all three options in Esther’s face, and walked to August, putting her hand on his arm so he’d pause. They exchanged a silent conversation that Esther couldn’t follow before August backed up and let her take over.