And the storefronts all seemed to have gone away. Maybe this was because of those “malls” he’d heard about. He’d have to see one.

“Look at this,” said Redgrave, falling into step beside him. “Balthazar’s revisiting his glory days.”

Balthazar stopped where he stood, staring at Redgrave, trying to understand how he could be here. It made no sense—he hadn’t seen Redgrave in at least—in at least—

“You tried to destroy my tribe. To destroy me.” How was Redgrave in his mind? Everything around them was changing now. The twilight Chicago street seemed to be shimmering—no, melting, not vanishing but melting the way candle wax did—taking on new shapes.

The shape of a dance club in the late 1970s.

He’d been here once. No. This was the first time. Balthazar’s confusion only increased as Redgrave became more and more gleeful, clapping his hands as he circled Balthazar. A haze of smoke from cigarettes—and other smoked substances—made the blinking lights around them seem almost eerie.

“I’ve only just begun finding ways to hurt you,” Redgrave said. “Take this dream, for example. I’d never have done anything so rude, if you would only mind your manners. But Charity says you haven’t minded yours at all.”

Charity. His baby sister. Balthazar looked across the club and saw her—

—Charity and Jane in their dresses from the 1600s, with Constantia standing between them—

“Do you want to live it all again? I’ll make sure that you do.” Redgrave leaned closer to Balthazar, his feral smile bright in the gloom. “Unless you get out of town now. Leave Skye to me.”

Skye—Skye didn’t belong to this place, to this time—

Balthazar sat upright in bed, startled awake. That dream had been a vivid one.

Too vivid.

Any vampire’s dreams could be invaded by that vampire’s sire. Normally it was an affectionate gesture—which was why Redgrave had always left him alone. Balthazar had hardly thought of this skill before last year, when Charity had taken to invading Lucas’s dreams during his time as a vampire. She had tormented him psychologically all night long until Balthazar had stopped her—by invading her dreams in turn. It had been a savage business, one that sickened him to think of.

But not as much as it sickened him to realize that Redgrave was following their example. From now on, any given night could see his dreams turning into a torture chamber. The dreamer never understood the true nature of the dream until it had ended; until then, all the fear, confusion, and pain was quite real.

Balthazar thought once again of seeing Charity and Jane standing side by side. He remembered the last time he had seen that, and he never wanted to return there.

If the only way to stop the dreams was abandoning Skye—

—then let Redgrave do his worst.

Balthazar knew how to look twenty-one years old if he had to.

He’d mastered that art long ago, though these days it mostly came in handy when he needed to buy a beer. (Whose idea had it been to raise the drinking age that high anyway? As someone who’d grown up in an era when fifteen-year-olds were considered adults, he found the modern prohibitions on marriage and alcohol consumption ridiculously Puritanical—and he’d been a Puritan.)

At any rate, he knew how to appear older than the age he’d died at, nineteen. Allowing a shadow of stubble to grow on his cheeks got him partway there. Wearing expensive, well-cut, conservative-looking clothes helped a lot, too.

Now, looking twenty-four years old—that was tougher.

His suit appeared right. The stubble was scratchy without making him look unkempt. Balthazar studied himself in the mirror before dispensing a considerable amount of hair gel—“Infinite Hold,” it promised, somewhat rashly—and combing it through, so that his curls vanished into a hard, slicked-back style. Then he pulled out a pair of tortoiseshell glasses with the modern rectangular frames. The lenses were merely glass; he’d heard these were fashionable these days and had bought them just to experiment. But hopefully they’d work as part of his disguise, too.

Double-checking his phone, he saw that Lucas had sent the fake documents he needed. Supposedly there was a twenty-four-hour copy center in town; he’d be able to print those off, and he knew that Lucas and his other friends would provide the phone verifications necessary.

This could work—if he played his role right. It was all up to him.

“It’s lucky you showed up today,” said Principal Zaslow, across the desk in her cozy office at Darby Glen High. “There was a car accident last night; we lost our history teacher for at least two months. I had no idea where we were going to find a qualified substitute who could work that long, starting immediately.”

Balthazar gave her his best, most confident smile. “I’m your man.”

Chapter Eight

“DO YOU REMEMBER THAT THING THAT WENT around about how gang members were going to beat up people at random, for, like, an initiation? And if anybody flashed headlights at you then you had to get out of there because they’d picked you? I bet that’s what happened to Mr. Lovejoy.”

“That’s so stupid. He was in a car accident.”

“I heard he was driving drunk.”

“He’d be fired already if that were true. Maybe the person who hit him was drunk and that’s what you heard.”

“You’re awfully quiet, Skye.” Some girl looked at her with narrow ferret eyes. “What, feeling guilty? Were you the one who ran him down? The rich think they can get away with anything.”