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old, going back to prerecorded history. If the Vampire Queen hadn’t wantedsomething from me so desperately, there wasn’t a chance we would all be standing here tonight.
    As they continued forward, my wolf’s unease changed to agitation.
They are not the enemy today. We have to do it this way. There’s no other choice.
She swatted her tail and kept a steady growl. I guess it didn’t hurt to be on the lookout for trouble.
Remember, they are bound by their Queen. They won’t risk her displeasure—unless, of course, we force them to by being rude.
    She wasn’t convinced.
    I’m not sure I was either.
    The siblings were clad in jeans and matching dark knit tops, which beat the French period outfits they’d worn when I’d seen them last. I didn’t know which outfit was more ominous—looking appropriately dressed for the Renaissance or looking deadly normal.
    What I knew about vampires could fill one sheet of paper—if I wrote with a big crayon. The old mythologies appeared to be true for the most part, from what I could tell from my brief interactions with them. I knew they could fly—hard to keep that one under wraps—but how they did it was still a mystery. They were rumored to have some mesmerizing abilities over humans. Their hearts didn’t beat. I knew that because I’d just been surrounded by a roomful of them and there’d been nary a beat. They slept during the day and drank blood. They could be killed by beheading, like we could. That’s how my father had always brought them true death. I didn’t know if fire could end them or not. They also had individual “gifts” like we did. These two could apparently track and sense better than other vamps, which is why their Queen had sent them.
    Other than that, they were a complete mystery. I wasn’t surprised they guarded their secrets like every Sect. The more we shared about ourselves, the more vulnerable we became.
    “Hello.” Naomi came to a stop in front of me, her voice laced in soft French undertones. What came out sounded like
’Ello.
“We have arrived.”
    “Yes, that was quite an entrance. I’m Jessica.” I didn’t hold out my hand. I was pretty sure vampires didn’t like to be touched, and actually, the thought of touching their cold, creepy skin was a little unappealing. “This is my team.” I gestured to the boys behind me.
    “The Goddess we search for resides north,” Eamon declared stoically, coming shoulder to shoulder with his sister. They were remarkably similar. Both had sharply defined cheekbones, large wide eyes, and the same chestnut-colored hair. Eamon wore his shoulder length; Naomi’s flowed freely down her back. Maybe being frozen in death in their twenties had honed their similar porcelain features over time.
    “Okay, north it is.” I nodded at the pair. “That sounds easy enough.” North of Minnesota meant Canada. He could’ve said the Congo, so this was decidedly better as far as I was concerned. We anticipated that Selene hadn’t been able to go far from the Ozarks, where we’d seen her last. She was toting an angry werecat, and Rourke would’ve put up quite a fight once he’d broken her spell. Goddesses could fly, but her time in the air would be limited. I was glad she’d headed north and not south.
    “
Mademoiselle
, there will be nothing
easy
about this journey,” Eamon snipped. “The Lunar Goddess is a powerful being. She is a fearsome warrior. We shall be lucky to escape with our lives.”
    I bristled. Gods, I hoped vampires weren’t all this stuffy. “I wasn’t talking about her being easy to defeat,
monsieur
. I was referring to being able to point the car in a northerly directionbeing something we could accomplish easily enough—and in fact, we can do so right now.”
    Both vamps stared at me with clueless expressions, which on a vampire was a face void of any emotion and so still it was eerie. They looked like they were carved out of stone.
    Alrighty then. “Okay. Enough chatting. It’s