Metal on metal screeched from my father's studio. A grinder or a band saw.

He's not at work?

The ear slaughter got louder as I walked down the hall. Somehow my anxiety attack had brought on a new sense of calm—cathartic release, perhaps. Or maybe it was just the residual effect of Isaac's kisses.

The studio was open, which was rare; my father always kept the door closed as a courtesy, containing the screeching tools and harsh chemicals.

He's waiting for me to come home.

I grabbed a pair of earmuffs—he kept protective gear hanging in the hallway just outside the door—adjusted them to fit my head, and put on plastic eyewear before I went in. My father was a stickler for safety.

"Dad!" I yelled, waving my arm to get his attention.

"One second!" He turned off the saw. "Keep your muffs on!"

I nodded as he picked up a ball-peen hammer and slammed it into a large sheet of metal. He held up his hand, letting me know that he wasn't done.

It was too early in the process to guess at what he was making.

He whacked the metal again, the explosion of sound still intensely loud through the muffs.

Mac had two kinds of swings when it came to blacksmithing. The first had the careful precision of an artist; when he made those kinds of swings, you could almost see the end piece sitting in his head, each swing getting him one step closer. Other times, his pounding was more aggressive—yes, he was making art, but he was also working something out . . . something that had nothing to do with art. These were swings of the latter variety. A final swing squeezed a spark from the metal and a grunt from his throat. I could practically feel the reverberation through my fingertips.

He tossed aside the hammer.

Definitely of the latter variety. My father's love affair with metal really made me wonder sometimes . . .

"Are you okay?" he asked as I pulled off the goggles and earmuffs. "Where have you been?"

"Nowhere, really. I exhausted myself walking around and then got upset and fell asleep."

His eyebrow slanted.

"At the Borges'," I added. "Désirée's mom made me some tea; then Isaac found me and walked me home." It was mostly true. I tried to convince myself the lie was better than giving my dad a meltdown with "I fell asleep in an abandoned building."

"You didn't answer the question." He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. His eyes were heavy and a little pink, maybe from the air in the studio, more likely from going straight from a graveyard shift to the graveyard. "Are you okay?"

"My feet hurt," I said, but he just looked at me until I conceded. "I'm fine, Dad. I just . . . can't believe they're gone." I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wanted people to stop worrying about me.

"I can't either," he said, pulling a stool over and sitting down.

I looked at the pile of tools on the floor and back to him. "Dad, are you okay?" When was the last time someone asked him that?

"Yeah, sweetheart. I'm fine."

His stock answer was unconvincing. "You sure?"

"I'm sure. I'm just worried about you." He leaned down, picked the hammer back up, and flipped it around in his hand. "And . . . just a little surprised your mother didn't come to the funeral to support you, considering she's in town. That's all."

"Oh—" My breath caught short at the mention of my mother, and when he flipped the hammer again, it spun out of his hand and shot directly to my feet.

"Watch out!" He jumped up.

My feet danced out of the way. "I'm fine!"

"Jesus, I'm sorry. Did it nick you?"

I shook my head, scooped up the hammer, and handed it back to him. Frowning, he put it down safely on the tool bench.

"She surprised me," he continued without questioning the hammer's unnatural trajectory, thank God. "And I didn't think Brigitte could still surprise me."

It was so strange hearing him say her name. He usually only referred to her as "your mother." The one little word humanized her more than all the good things he'd ever told me about her—things that had fallen on angsty ears.

"I know, Adele, that you're not going to believe me, because you were too young to remember your mom before she left, but it's just not something she would do. I even left her a message with the details. I knew she'd want to be there for you, but . . . I guess I don't know her at all anymore. It's so hard to accept that she's a different person now."

I stood there, stunned, the lump swelling in my throat. Literally a different person.

"She called me," I said.

"What?" His back straightened.

"She called me and told me how much she wished she could have been there." Tears rose, but I fought them back down. "She was on a plane back to France when you left the message. Émile was supposed to call me to say they were leaving New Orleans sooner than expected. She was furious when she found out he hadn't . . ."

"Her assistant was supposed to tell you she was leaving?" His head shook in disappointment—and that headshake was the worst thing my father had ever said about my mother. I wished I'd left out the part about Émile. I hadn't thought fast enough.

"It's okay, Dad. Émile and I were friends in Paris."

"It's not, Adele. It's not okay."

I was pretty sure he knew I was lying, but he didn't push it. I was also pretty sure he knew I was doing it to spare his feelings—there was no other reason I'd have ever covered for Brigitte's irresponsibility in the past. He had no idea of the real level of lying I'd sunk to.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, I shouldn't say anything to you about it."

"Dad, it's okay. I'm not a kid anymore."

His arm went around my shoulder. "You'll always be my kid."

"One day I'll be your adult."

"Not a chance." He gave me a squeeze and then walked me to the stairs. As he told me good night, the distance in his eyes killed me. It was obvious he was still thinking about Brigitte. None of it made sense to him, from the moment when she'd just packed up and dumped us for her native France. I hated how the lack of closure made it impossible for him to move on. And I hated lying to him, and not just about Mom—about everything.

Most of all, I hated that we had secrets now.

I climbed the stairs to my room, wondering if he would ever learn the truth about Brigitte Dupré Le Moyne.

***

I didn't bother turning on the lights. All I cared about was removing the restricting clothing. I kicked off my shoes, immediate relief washing over me as my toes spread out. I hurled the mutilated pantyhose directly into the garbage can. Not salvageable.

Sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a washed face, and I went straight for my bed.

Alone in the darkness, under the security of my duvet, I continued to think about Brigitte.

My dad was right. This wasn't okay. None of it was.

The tears released: slow trickles down the sides of my face.

My mother is dead.

My mother is a vampire who murdered two students, and I locked her in an attic for eternity.

That was the moment I decided I had to know everything. Not just everything that had happened to her—all of it. The magic. The coven. The feud.

Getting answers to why the Medici were after Adeline, the Count, and now me was the only way I'd ever get her out. It was also the moment I decided: I have to save my mother.

Whatever they were after, I needed it. It was the only thing they seemed to care about. Nicco was willing to kill me for it, which meant it could be a bargaining chip.

My mother wasn't a part of their family. She was a part of our family—the Saint-Germains. And I was going to get her back.

But I couldn't just charge into the attic. If I broke the seal, we'd be right back where we'd started, with the Medici still half-cursed and wholly pissed, and Gabe and crew stuck in the Quarter. They'd retaliate by killing people until we broke the rest of the curse, which we couldn't do unless we found the other descendants. Besides, giving them what they wanted didn't exactly work for me either. They'd just go back out into the world, feed on people, and turn other innocents—other people's mothers—into vampires too.

No, opening the attic was out of the question. The Medici were monsters who belonged caged.

But my mom isn't a Medici. She tried to save me that night, even against Emilio's orders. She's not a monster. She's just caught in the crosshairs of this ridiculous family feud. There had to be a way to get her out.

I scanned my memories for missed clues: every interaction I'd had with Emilio in France, everything Ritha had ever told me about magic, every word of Adeline's. But no matter where my thoughts started, they always ended up in the one place I was always trying to avoid: Nicco.

Why had he been after the Saint-Germains in 1728? And why was he still after the Count? Why had he pretended to care about me?

My eyes watered again, but this time I sat up. I refused to cry over Nicco. How had I ever been so stupid to think he was on my side, that he'd betray his family for me?

Family.

Adeline wouldn't let them have her dad, and I wasn't going to let them have my mom.

A slow creak came from beside the bed, almost as if in response to the intensity of my thoughts.

I turned my head as the closet door creaked open wider.

I'd been ignoring Adeline ever since that night. I had an implicit love for her, but Adeline Saint-Germain had caused me nothing but trouble since the moment I'd discovered her. Now it felt like she was in the room with me.

I slid out of bed into the darkness, heart pounding. Things were different now.

Now I was ready for trouble.

I tiptoed inside the little closet room, which I'd cleaned out as a distraction from the funeral. Only the two antique steamer trunks remained and the darkness and silence, and the remnant smell of the vanilla candle I'd burned trying to cover up the must. A slither of moonlight slipped through a muck-stained window, providing just enough light to guide me to Adeline's floorboard.

I knelt down, and the door swung closed behind me, shutting me in the tiny room. I took a deep breath, pushed out any claustrophobic feelings, and looked up at the decaying string. It was attached to a little strand of ball 'n' chain, hanging from the Edison bulb. I envisioned the chain pulling down.

Click.

Beneath the muted light, the floorboards, old and worn, all looked the same, but they weren't. I raised my hand over the wood, and the nails began to shake. The magical tingling, the sensation of supernatural energy, crept from my fingertips into my hands and then my arms, until the nails wriggled out and popped up into my palms. I gently put them aside and did the same with the nails in the adjacent floorboard.

Wedging my fingers between the loose wood, I popped the boards out, feeling a rush of excitement when I saw the metal underneath. It was cool to the touch but radiated magical energy. Her magic . . . Saint-Germain magic.

Our magic.

My hands hovered over Adeline's safe. I'd done this twice before, but it wasn't as simple as turning on the light or opening the door. Focus, Adele. My hands shook, feeling polarized against the metal beneath them, like two repelling magnets.

"Come on, steady," I said, rising on my knees. "Come on."

The metal rippled.

"Almost there . . ."

I gasped as it morphed, parting ways like water. As fast as I could, I reached in and grabbed her things, still afraid of the magic, as if the safe might simply close up and cut off my hand.

My fingers were spared, but the safe did close quicker than it had opened, like it didn't want me to renege and shove everything back in.

Clutching Adeline's necklace and diary, and my journal with the French translation, I scooted away from the hole until my back knocked against one of the trunks. I sat there under the moonlit window, slowing my breath, my thumb rubbing the opalescent stone on the medallion. I hadn't worn it since the night we sealed the attic.

It had started out a simple necklace: a gift from the Count to his daughter. The initials ASG were etched onto the silver disc in a delicate calligraphy, but were now mostly covered by a silver star. Now that I thought about it, I wondered if it had ever really been so simple. The more puzzle pieces I put together, the more I understood that nothing about Adeline or her father was ever simple. On her journey across the Atlantic, Adeline had pressed the giant opal—formerly of the eye socket of a pirate captain—into the other side of the medallion to serve as a reminder of just how dangerous the Medici were. And that was something I needed to remember now.

I slipped the medallion back onto my chain where it belonged, next to my father's sun and Isaac's feather. It was hard to believe I'd ever taken it off, but at the time I'd just wanted to bury it all. I wanted to believe we were finished with the Medici.

I hadn't yet processed my mother coming back into my life.

I'd only found half of the medallion in our attic; Brigitte had sent the other half back from France with me. Did she know what it was? Had she been trying to help me, even back then?

That meant she'd helped me twice—consciously or not. Now it's my turn to help her.

And so, I needed to know everything about the enemies I'd inherited. But everyone who had answers about the past was locked in the attic.

The only thing I had to turn to now was . . . magic.

We have to put the rest of the coven together.

Together we could figure out a way to save my mother. I pictured myself calling a cabal and telling Dee and Isaac everything, finding the other descendants, and sorting all of this out. My nerves ate away at the image like hungry rats until it was gone. It was too risky. I'd tell them after we found the other members.

I took Adeline's things back to my room, tossed them on the bed, and grabbed my phone.

Adele 6:29 p.m. We need to find the rest of the descendants.

Désirée 6:29 p.m. Thank God. What brought on this revelation?

Adele 6:30 p.m. I guess the funeral put things into perspective. Priorities.

Désirée 6:30 p.m. Great, now u just have to convince Isaac that putting together the coven is a worthwhile cause.

Adele 6:30 p.m. Why me?

Désirée 6:31 p.m. Please...

Adele 6:31 p.m. Ok. I'm sure it won't be that hard. Right? He's obsessed w everything magic.

Désirée 6:31 p.m. I'm burning a candle for u.

Just thinking about asking Isaac to help with breaking the curse, even if indirectly, made my heart race, especially after today.

I opened the leather cover of Adeline's diary and turned the first few pages until her handwriting, with all its flourishes and exotic French phrases, appeared. I used to think the dry, aged pages were too precious to handle, that the diary should be in a museum, not in my possession; but now I suspected it was magically indestructible, like Adeline's spirit. Every piece of the puzzle I'd found so far—every artifact, person, curse, and mystery—had always connected back to Adeline. All roads led back to the Saint-Germains.

To the Count.

Why were the Medici so obsessed with him? Any person who held so much power over the Medici made me insatiably curious. But most importantly, how the hell is the Count still alive? Emilio seemed to think it was plausible when I tricked him Halloween night.

After leafing through some of the pages at random, I turned back to the first page.

And so, back to the beginning, I went.

3 mars 1728

Le voyage a commencé, Papa. Nous avons été à bord du SS Gironde, sous le commandement du capitaine Vauberci . . .

And I read and read, until I was dreaming about Parisian salons, and bubbly wine . . . and Monsieur Cartier.