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I was glad Liam and Khalid seemed to know what they were doing because I didn’t. I was allowed to go on youth group camping trips, but it was on property the church owned. We stayed in cabins and we ate in a cafeteria with a staff cooking for us. There was also a softball field so we could play against other youth groups if they were there.

This was a completely different ball game. Khalid and Liam seemed to be taking charge and working together. I let them do their thing. I got the feeling Lucian was someone important back where he was taken from, but I could also tell he was very intelligent.

I grew up around people who were important and people who thought they were important. They always thought they should be in charge, even if they weren’t remotely qualified to be. Like, if the man who raised me was here, he’d be talking over Khalid and Liam and getting everyone lost or killed.

Lucian wasn’t doing that. He was letting them lead because they clearly knew what they were doing. I wasn’t sure why he kept checking his phone or looking at me like that, but he seemed less disturbed by whatever he’d seen.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m always okay. Why?”

“You said you saw something awful and you’re kind of staring.”

“I wasn’t staring,” Lucian sniffed.

“If you make her uncomfortable, I’ll slit your throat in your sleep and no one will find your body,” Liam growled.

“That’s seriously not necessary, but did you leave a dick on my pillow at the hostel?”

Liam puffed his chest up and beamed at me.

“Did you love it?”

“More confused than in love with it.”

“You left a sex toy on her pillow without her consent? That’s gross,” Lucian said.

“Sex toys are for amateurs. I killed the man I overheard saying he drugged her tea because he thought a pastor’s daughter would be a virgin and he was going to get there first. Leaving his dick was a token of affection.”

“Excuse me, what?”

Because really, what the fuck?

“It was that obnoxious guy from Texas who kept bragging about how Texas was freer than Amsterdam, but if he got caught with any of edibles he was buying from my bakery twice a day, he’d get arrested. He said your dad was famous, and he liked hot virgins. He put some of his Xanax in your tea and was going to break in once you were sleeping. I got to him first.”

Honestly? Liam’s reactions to anyone who might cross me had been pretty extreme so far, but this? I flung myself at him and wrapped my arms around his neck.

“This isn’t an invitation to murder anyone who looks at me funny, but in that case, I think it was warranted. I wondered how I managed to sleep through someone sneaking a dick into my room.”

“Please, even without the Xanax, I’m much better at breaking and entering than that. And if you want to hug me again, I can do much better than that.”

“Do you need to eat?” Khalid asked me.

“I think we can get a little bit more walking towards the X on the map where the crystals are supposed to be before I need to stop to eat something. If vampires are real, aren’t they active at night? We’re going to have to find a place to sleep and maybe protect ourselves from them.”

“We can’t,” Khalid said. “We have to assume everything we know about vampires is human propaganda or stolen from someone’s imagination in fiction. Vampires might not be nocturnal and everything we know about warding them off could be a lie.”

“Some of that could have been started by vampires,” Lucian said. “If vampires wanted to get attention off themselves and still be able to feed, it would serve them well to start rumors that they don’t have reflections, have to be invited inside, and sunlight can kill them. It’s basic survival.”

“That’s smart. How’d you come up with that?” Liam asked.

“Because he’s cunning,” Khalid said. “You and I can manage navigating and foraging, but he’s going to be the one who helps us outwit the people trying to prevent us from completing the trials.”

“I’m better with a Wi-Fi connection,” Lucian muttered.

“No, not like that,” I said. “We all come from completely different worlds. We aren’t even from the same countries. I know you all requested me, but I’m the dead weight here. I have no survival skills and I would have told you all to waste all this time looking for wild garlic because my mind clearly doesn’t work like Lucian’s. And we have to stop more so I can eat.”

“No,” Liam said. “We requested you for a reason. We might not know what it is yet, but we’ll figure it out.”

“Exactly. It means something,” Khalid said.

Lucian didn’t say anything. He was back to staring at me and I couldn’t read him at all.

He could have regretted ever asking to be on my team for all I knew.