Page 23 of Fall into Place

Ruby: Exactly. This clan is all about order—that’s like Felix’s whole thing. He wants there to be a vampire hierarchy with sheriffs and accountability to stop indiscriminate violence.

Cat: And the west side? Callum and Octavia’s clan?

Ruby: They looooove indiscriminate violence. Clan of chaos!!!

Cat: Maybe they get to this later in the books, but like why did the two clans form? Why do they hate each other so much?

Ruby: This is gonna sound a little reductive, but it’s basically sibling rivalry? I know you just referenced Romeo and Juliet, but the story is actually closer to King Lear. Before the Isle, Felix, Callum, and Octavia all worked for a big bad vampire named Konstantin. And Konstantin was, like, a super villain. Think Thanos, Voldemort without the transphobia, whatever.

Cat: Wait, but I thought Felix was a good guy?

Ruby: He is! Felix always believed he could bring Konstantin to the side of good, could use his influence to help create more order in the vampire community. But Felix wasn’t sired by Konstantin—

Cat: Meaning Konstantin didn’t make him a vampire with his own blood?

Ruby: Exactly. But Konstantin did sire Callum and Octavia—in fact, they’re the only two vampires he ever sired. And Felix was always pretty butt-hurt that Konstantin favored Callum and Octavia over him, no matter how hard he worked for Konstantin’s approval.

Cat: Wooooooow, huge Kendall Roy vibes. Who are Callum and Octavia? Roman and Shiv?

Ruby: They’re certainly not Connor.

Cat: America’s first pancake, gone but not forgotten. Okay, so this actually makes a ton of sense to me! Because Konstantin died right before everyone was sent to the Isle, right? So now there’s a power vacuum, with Felix on one side, and Callum and Octavia on the other?

Ruby: You got it! On the east side you have Team Felix, where everything’s nice and organized and kinda noble but also occasionally verging on boring? On the west side you have Callum and Octavia, and it’s all about hedonism—they do whatever they want, whenever they want, without sparing a thought for any possible consequences. This clan is a lot more dangerous than Felix’s clan, but they’re also a lot more exciting. That’s why fans love them so much.

Cat: Well, Ruby, if you want more danger and excitement in your life, you may want to consider trapeze lessons—and luckily, we have a discount code for you to do just that!

Ruby: Really, Cat?

Cat: It’s been kind of a slow month for ads.

Tess barely had time to register her journey through Flora’s portal, but she felt it in her stomach—a lurch like a too-fast elevator, except instead of just going up, it seemed to move her body in every possible direction simultaneously. She doubled over, bracing herself against her knees so as not to topple sideways.

“Fucking hell,” she whispered. She inhaled deeply, and the air felt cool and clean.

After a few big breaths, her stomach began to settle, and Tess straightened up and took stock of her surroundings. It was a grove of trees, misty but not gloomy, thickly populated with young-growth evergreens that made the whole place smell like Christmas. The light was dim and pleasing—a mix of orange, pink, and lavender, like the first minutes after sunset. Behind her was another silver birch tree and a little igloo like the one she’d used to enter Bar Between, except this one was made of dark petrified wood that blended seamlessly with its surroundings.

Okay, she thought, so far, so good. She’d come through the bar unscathed, she had a way to get back home, and beyond the trees, she could see the outline of the crystal bridge, mammoth and steeped in sunlight. There was a path through the grove, and Tess hurried down it so she could get a better look. She’d read about the bridge in the Blood Feud novels, of course, but that was nothing like seeing it hulking before her, glittering in the light, refracting thousands of rainbows over the sparkling iridescent waters of the lilac river below it.

“It’s like I walked into a fever dream of Lisa fucking Frank,” Tess muttered, gaping at the sheer size of the bridge, the intensity of the colors.

As Tess got closer to the bridge, she was able to see the silhouettes of buildings on the Isle beyond. It was darker there, but Tess could make out what had to be enormous homes—towering gables, flying buttresses, and even a turreted palace. She felt a small twinge of regret that she’d never fully get to experience it, this place she’d spent so many hours reading about, imagining, visiting in her dreams. But it was exhilarating just to see it, to know it was real, that she might be the only human ever to have gotten this close.

Tess felt a reassuring surge of warmth as she stepped into the sunlight at the foot of the bridge, and her rushing pulse slowed enough that she could take a moment to appreciate the staggering beauty of this place. The glimmer of the water, the sparkle of the cut crystal, all of it was beyond anything she’d ever seen on Earth—and, Tess realized, maybe that was the point. If the vampires were lulled into complacency by a beautiful prison, they might not fight as hard to get out.

As Tess walked closer to the Isle, the buildings came into sharper focus, but she didn’t see any movement at all. It was pretty dark outside the bridge’s banner of sunshine—was this their nighttime? Maybe all the vampires were asleep? Or maybe this part of the Isle wasn’t very populated? As best as she could tell, the crystal bridge approximated the location of the Brooklyn Bridge, and she was near the Isle’s southern tip. Tess knew from Blood Feud that most of the vampires on the Isle lived on one side or the other of the forest at the Isle’s center, which served as a sort of neutral zone in the ongoing conflict between the Isle’s two main clans. So it stood to reason that this part of the Isle would be empty.

At least, that’s what Tess was telling herself as she stepped off the bridge and into the final stripe of sunlight that offered any sort of protection. The Isle was as silent as the forest on the other side of the bridge had been, but the silence felt different here—charged, somehow. Alive with the possibility of danger.

Quickly, her movements jittery, Tess reached into the neckline of her dress and extracted Octavia’s scent vial. Her hands shook as she unscrewed the little cap, but she was flooded with relief as the heady smell of Octavia’s perfume filled her nostrils: smoke and musk, leather and rose, overwhelmingly and unmistakably the same as the woman Tess had met in New York. This was going to work. All she had to do was wait.

How long would it take Callum to get here? A minute? Five? Tess took out her phone to see what time it was (did they even have time zones on the Isle?), but it wouldn’t turn on. She wondered if the entire dimension was some kind of technological dead zone—or possibly she was just out of battery.

After several minutes, Tess started to get antsy. Octavia hadn’t prepared her for this possibility. What should Tess do?

“Callum,” Tess whispered. “Callum.”

Her heart was pounding so loudly she could hear it—if any vampire was nearby, there was no doubt in her mind that they could too. But as she got closer and closer to the place where the bridge’s hot sunshine melted abruptly into darkness, she still couldn’t sense any movement, even as she was just inches away…