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He shakes his head like a dog resetting and runs his hands over his face as though he’s washing it. “Something is wrong ...” he murmurs out loud. His tone is serious, his eyes alert in the way they get when he senses danger. I drag my mind out of the gutter, my hand going to the heart-shaped amulet that I wear around my neck. All the Vecchissime Seers have them, and they leap into action when we are threatened. It’s not always helpful—if I’m being attacked by a shifter or fighting off a rogue vamp, I already know I’m in trouble—but in more subtle situations, it can be of use. He’s right, I think, looking at Minnie again. The fluttering of her eyes has intensified, the skin of her lids now so pale that it’s almost transparent—lined with blue veins that seem to be writhing like snakes. Fuck. I don’t know much about witches, but this can’t be normal, can it? Is she okay? Are we okay?

My amulet doesn’t know either. I clasp it in my fingers, and it is cold. I let out a gasp—that has never happened before. Most of the time, it’s a nice ordinary trinket, very pretty, goes with lots of outfits. When I’m in danger, it heats up, singes my skin as a little warning. But this? This is new. The coolness is increasing, and when I drop it from my grip, it falls in an icy disc between my breasts. Luca stands, his nostrils flaring. “You feel it, Rosa?” he asks, his voice a low hiss. I nod, not even sure what “it” is—just a sense of wrongness, like he said.

“Matteo!” he bellows at the top of his voice. “Donna! Get in here now!”

He pushes my chair back, places himself between me and the table. “Get out!” he tells me, as he tries to form an inhuman shield between me and an increasingly intense witch.

“No,” I reply simply, scampering to my feet. He should know by now that he has a snowball’s chance in hell of making me leave him when there is danger. I almost lost him once, and that memory is seared into my brain—him lying on the floor of Don Vincenzo’s twisted court, battered and bloody and broken, while his monstrous master literally squeezed the life out of him. It was only Freya, the invisible girl everybody underestimated, who saved him. For that, I will always owe her not just his life, but my own, because the fury and grief that raged through me that night felt like nothing else I’d ever experienced. It literally felt like I might explode and take the whole world with me.

He glares at me, and I give him a cheeky wink. “You might be the Don of the Firenze Cosca these days, big boy, but you’re not the boss of me. Now, what the fuck is going on with the witch?”

Matteo bursts into the room, his enormous brindle pit bull, Moonface, hot on his heels. “What is it?” he demands, his six foot seven inches of muscle just as ready to pounce as the dog. Moonface is barking, her usual bundle of energy, but she sniffs the air and lets out a whine. She creeps slowly towards Minnie, sniffs one of her hands. Hands that are now dangling lifelessly from her lap, her whole body still and slumped. The damned smoke is still whirring around her head, building in intensity, like a mini tornado. The dog crouches at her side, licks those hanging fingers, and slinks down into a solid ball. She’s low-level growling, the sound mixing in with a distinct buzzing noise that’s starting to come from the smoke. Not a mini tornado—a swarm of insects? What the actual fuck?

Donatella Agostini, the only other active Vecchissime Seer, flies through the door. Her long blond hair is wet, and she’s only wearing a towel. Looks like we caught her mid-shower. Nobody even blinks. “Fuck,” she says, hands on hips, taking in the scene. “Is Minnie about to blow up? Are you two okay?”

Her eyes fly from the witch to me to Luca, then back to me again, and they widen. “Your amulet, Rosa. It’s ... it’s glowing.” I glance down, see the glint of shining silver. Which might not be so weird if it wasn’t made of gold. The chill of it against my skin is deeper now, so cold it feels like its burning. I look up at Luca, and he is on me in seconds. His eyes are ringed with silver, which is something that only usually happens when he’s aroused, something that as far as I know doesn’t happen with any other vampire. He doesn’t look aroused right now—he looks furious, worried, ready to kill for me or die for me. As usual. He grabs the amulet, tears it from my neck, throws it to the floor. It’s left a heart-shaped mark on my skin, and he snarls at the sight of the damage. “It’s okay,” I assure him. “Barely registers on the pain front. But I don’t feel right ...”

All the energy seems to fizz around inside me, and I’m suddenly lightheaded, my vision blurred and striped with jarring flashes of white. He catches me in his arms as I fall, but as I stare into his silvery eyes, I see that he is just as off-balance. He manages to maintain enough control to lower us to the floor rather than collapse, and we huddle there together while chaos flows around us. I hear Donna yelling my name and Matteo calling Moonface. The dog growling, the smoke around Minnie’s head swirling, the insect noise building. Despite it all, I can’t move, can’t react, can’t even speak. I cling to Luca, and he holds me tight, his face set and grim. Our eyes connect and for a fraction of a moment, his pupils flare silver. Not just the unusual little silver ring around them he sometimes has, but the whole damn things. It is freakishly beautiful and gone as soon as it came. My fingers find my amulet on the ground where he threw it and wrap around the ice-cold heart. It should hurt, I know, but it doesn’t. It’s still mine, but it’s somehow changed.

I try to speak, but my mouth won’t work. My lips are moving, but nothing is coming out. I open up my mind and throw three words at him: I love you.

He nods briefly, clinging to my hands, his thick hair ruffling in a breeze that shouldn’t exist. My own rising in dark strands, like ghostly seaweed floating in the air. The pressure is building in my head, the world’s strangest headache, throbbing and booming, as though someone is pounding on the door begging to be let in. Or let out. My hands pull free of Luca’s grip and go to my temples. The pain is immense, crushing, agonizing ... and then gone. Just like that. Gone.

At exactly the same moment, there is a loud hiss like a steam valve busting open, and I manage to raise my head enough to see the cloud of smoke around Minnie’s head explode. It bursts apart, then rains down bright ash—like a vampire when it’s been staked and disintegrates. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of little pieces, floating and falling through the air, a multicolored rainbow of ... what? It was smoke, gray smoke. Stinky but pretty ordinary. Now it’s something else, like a cloud of glitter. It lands on Minnie’s shoulders, on the giant pit bull by her side, scatters across the table.

Minnie shudders, and her eyes pop wide open. “Am I still alive?” she mutters, her hands fluttering to the smoke-glitter on her face. “Are you all okay?”

Moonface clambers to her feet and whines, giving Minnie a reassuring lick. Deciding she’s okay, the dog gallops over to a stressed-looking Matteo. Her big head is covered in glitter. “Fuck,” says Matteo, squatting down to cuddle her. “Poor baby, you look like you got mugged by a fairy ... who’s a pretty girl then?”

Moonface is many things—loyal, huge, strong, ferocious, sweet-natured—but pretty? Maybe only to Matteo, with his crooked broken nose and his deceptively thuggish appearance.

It breaks the ice, and Donatella lets out a tinkling laugh as she crouches down next to me. She reaches out, smooths my still staticky hair from my face, and kisses my forehead. It is a curiously maternal gesture and makes me smile. Luca scowls from behind her, and she glares at him over her shoulder. “Back off. I’m just checking my girl for damage.”

“That’s my job,” he snarls but stands up to give her space. I nod at him, letting him know I’m all right. I can already tell from the fact that he’s snarking at Donatella that he is.

My brother Pietro makes his way into the room, mobile now but still on crutches. Freya creeps in behind him, her now-styled dirty blond hair down to her shoulders. She’s dressed in designer leisure wear that Donna bought her on a shopping trip to Bloomingdale’s, but she still looks hesitant, nervous. I guess being raised in a vampire Mafia court full of predators will do that to a girl.

“What’s going on?” Pietro says, his light brown eyes taking in the carnage. “You fire off a confetti cannon?”

“Fuck off,” Luca tells him succinctly. They’re not the best of pals, my brother and my man. Except ... is he still my man? Did Minnie break that damn blood spell or not? And if she did, are my feelings for Luca still the same?

I get to my feet, stride over to him. I grab hold of the front of his top, bunch it into my fists, and push him back against the wall. He growls, but when my body crushes into his, I see the familiar ring of silver around his eyes. Just the normal one. I delve my hands into his thick, black hair and press my lips against his. His fingers close around the back of my neck, possessively, dragging me even closer as his tongue twines with mine. It is a kiss, but it is so much more. It is proof.

When I finally pull away, he has a dick the size of Cleveland and his fangs are showing. I grin up at him, and he gives me a slow, pantie-melting smile. “Yeah,” he says, his eyes glued to mine. “I still love you.”

I let myself have that moment, let us have that moment. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the chaos of the last few weeks of my life, it’s that sometimes, a moment is all that you get. You have to make the most of them. Right now, we are the only two people left in the entire world. Me, him, everything.

I turn around, face the room. Donna gives me a thumbs-up. Matteo only has eyes for Moonface. My brother looks away in a combination of embarrassment and confusion. Minnie is picking the glitter from her hair, staring at it in wonder. I get it. Smoke shouldn’t do that—it is pretty interesting. And all part of a bigger picture.

“So,” I say. “What the fuck just happened?”

Chapter 3

Luca

Istare at her ass for a few moments as she walks away. It is a spectacular ass, and it does nothing to help my swollen cock go back to anywhere near normal. I shake my head, try to clear it of sex. Almost impossible when I’m in the room with Rosa and proof that whatever happened with the damn blood spell, I’m still completely bewitched by this woman. By her thick, dark hair, her glowing green cat eyes, her curves, her fire, and her huge heart. By every last thing about her. It was never only a spell, I always knew that—but it feels good to have that made obvious.

Good but still confusing. As she so aptly put it, what the fuck just happened? I hate witchy shit, was completely pissed when I found out I was spellbound. Felt like some kind of parasite was living inside my body. But as witches go, Minerva is the best—we couldn’t have defeated the Don without her, and my precious Rosa would now be in the clutches of her sick twisted grandfather, Tomasso Capelli. Vecchissime elder, one-time hero, and now very much a zero. Hunted by vampire and Vecchissime alike for his sins. It was his idea to attempt to kill the other Seers, then try to take control of the only one left—my Rosa—and get her pregnant to produce the next generation, who would all be his playthings, his power pawns. I glance over at her brother Pietro, feel the familiar rumble of rage. No matter what he’s done to redeem himself since, I will never forgive and never forget. I will hate him for as long as I live, which could be for a very long time yet.