Not tonight, Balthazar reminded himself, though he followed it with an inner promise: Soon.

The footsteps reached the stairs, heavy against wooden floorboards. Skye jumped slightly, and Balthazar could see that she was trembling. He laid one hand on the small of her back, and she steadied herself immediately. It was humbling to think that she would rely on him so completely, given how he’d failed with Redgrave in the past.

Starting, of course, with the day of his death.

The tribe was in the hall now, mere steps from the door. Skye’s breathing had become as fast and shallow as a deer’s at the moment of slaughter. Balthazar pressed his hand more firmly against her back, just for an instant, before he took it away to step in front of her, between her and the danger.

So faintly that Balthazar could barely make it out, Redgrave laughed.

He thinks it’s funny. Funny that Skye’s scared to death, funny that I’m up here waiting for him.

We’ll see how funny he thinks it is in a minute.

The door swung open. Redgrave stood there, framed by darkness, as though he were alone. Skye gasped, but Balthazar forced himself not to turn back to her. Redgrave would see that as weakness.

“Well, well,” Redgrave said. “I always knew we’d meet again, but I hardly thought it would be in a girl’s bedroom.”

“Get out.” Balthazar didn’t expect Redgrave to do this, but it was all he had to say to him.

Redgrave just grinned. “You were making a pet of her, weren’t you? Can’t say I blame you, Balthazar. She’s quite lovely. You never did indulge enough. But I hope you’ve already had your fill.”

“You’re seriously disgusting,” Skye said, but Redgrave didn’t even glance at her. To him, she wasn’t a person, merely a vessel for the blood he craved.

“I said, get out. Turn around and walk out of here,” Balthazar said.

“You don’t really expect me to do that, do you?” Behind Redgrave, at the edges of the doorframe, a couple of the other vampires appeared, as if to prove to Balthazar just what he was up against. They might have been any other set of young people—college aged, perhaps, one of them still wearing her hipster horn-rimmed glasses—but Balthazar could sense the ferocity behind their bland faces.

“No, I don’t expect you to go,” Balthazar said. “But I thought I should give you fair warning.”

Redgrave grinned, his smile refined, even beautiful, despite the evil heat in his eyes as he looked past Balthazar to Skye. “Do you even know what you’ve got there?”

The flickers of the intense flashback he’d experienced that day lit up within Balthazar’s mind, reigniting his anger. “You’re the one who doesn’t know what he’s dealing with.”

As Redgrave stepped forward—stalking turning into attack—the room’s temperature plummeted to a chill so deep that Balthazar felt as if he would go numb. Skye’s human breath created a small cloud of vapor in the darkness of the room.

Redgrave hesitated only a moment, but that was long enough.

Brilliant, aquamarine light flooded the room as ice began to coat the windows, the walls, and the ceiling. In the center of the light, Bianca took shape, spinning from something not unlike a wavering candle flame to herself, red hair streaming around her.

As Redgrave lifted his head to see her, Balthazar could tell the ancient fear still held sway over him—that he, and all of his tribe, were still violently repelled by one of the only things that vampires dreaded as much as fire.

One of the vampires behind Redgrave whispered, “Wraith.”

Bianca swept forward, sliding horizontal, somehow turning herself into a blade that slashed through Redgrave, the wall, the door, all the vampires. Balthazar knew from having seen her in battle that this wouldn’t kill any of them, but it apparently hurt like hell. Half doubled over, Redgrave hissed something in his old language, the one Balthazar had always refused to learn, and the entire tribe fled.

The only sound for a moment was the thumping of the back door as they went out the way they’d come.

Then Bianca laughed. “Wow, some vampires scare easy.”

“You’re telling me vampires are so terrified of wraiths that they’ll steer clear of this house just because they saw Bianca?” Skye, who had already scooped out most of the ice from her room, shouted over the whirr of the hair dryer she was currently using on her bed quilt.

“It’s an old superstition that goes deep for us.” Balthazar himself didn’t care for being around wraiths who weren’t named Bianca, and even that had taken some getting used to. “Deeper for Redgrave than for most—he always had a particular horror of the wraiths. I’d seen him panic at the sight of one before. Trust me, he won’t come back to confront Bianca again. From now on, at least, you can spend time here and sleep without worrying about being attacked every single second.”

Bianca reappeared in the room; Skye jumped only a little bit. She was making progress. “I’ve searched everywhere,” Bianca said. “Where’s your ghost?”

Skye blinked at her. “How did you know I used to have one?”

“That’s the only way humans got admitted to Evernight Academy,” Balthazar explained. “A connection to the wraiths. Ghosts. Haunted houses, that kind of thing.”

“Like Clementine’s haunted car,” Skye said thoughtfully. “The house I grew up in, in the center of town, that one was haunted. It was a little girl who sat by the fire with me sometimes. She never said anything; she just seemed to want somebody to sit with. I liked her. Thought of her as, like, an imaginary playmate who wasn’t imaginary.” Her expression was fond, even warm; Skye’s ability to deal with the supernatural continued to surprise Balthazar. “But we moved here two years ago. New construction. No haunting here that I know of.”