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Matteo comes next, woken by all the commotion. He wasn’t asleep from the looks of it, and thank fuck, he actually has clothes on. Moonface gallops in behind him, eager to play. She barrels her massive head into Donna’s legs, and it’s exactly what my friend needs. She folds elegantly to a crouch, her bare ass hanging out in a way that still somehow looks classy. Matteo does a double take, then averts his gaze like a gentleman.

“What’s going on, boss?” he asks.

“Meeting. Kitchen. Now,” Luca says, taking charge. I’m normally straight into the action when I’ve been Called, but this was something else. This was a total head-fuck, and it’s also complicated. Different countries, different continents, different time zones. Could it be nighttime in all of them? Yeah, I figure it out, doing the calculations in my head. Just about.

The monsters were lurking in all the visions, but nothing had happened yet. It was building; it felt like all hell was about to break loose. Why so much all at once? It felt almost timed, not as random as the idiot end of the vamp spectrum can sometimes be. Is it down to the stupid game again, the Grand Ball Sack’s new toy and the perfect way of manipulating the lowest of vamp society? The most gullible and dangerous? If so, it’s a stroke of genius, really—last time, he had to pay them. This time, they’re doing it for free, for fun. Knowing him, he’s even found a way to monetize the damn app.

We make our way downstairs to the kitchen, setting ourselves up at the big table. Luca banged on Pietro’s door on the way down, even his hatred of my brother overshadowed by the fact that he might be useful. He’s the last to join us, using one crutch to hobble into the room, laptop under his arm. He braces himself as Moonface goes in for a cuddle, then sits. “Coffee?” he says sleepily, yawning. His light brown hair is all mussed up, and he looks about five years old. I have a flash of affection for him, remembering him as a little boy when our family was whole. Our parents, Angie, Serena. All gone now—because of our grandfather. Whatever has happened between me and Pietro, he is family.

Maybe that’s why I act out of character, jump up, and get a pot on. Everybody stares at me. I’m not, it has to be said, usually the domestic type.

“What? We’re going to need coffee!”

“We are,” Donna adds. “And maybe a time machine or a teleport machine. You have either of those hidden away at Vamp HQ, Luca?”

He shakes his head. “No. Now, where were you Called to?”

I look at Donatella, biting my lip. Neither of us wants to revisit those awful moments, but we have to. It’s our job. We might both have picked up on different things, clues that will help us narrow it down. “Four places. Griffith Park in Los Angeles,” I say first. That was the most obvious. “Somewhere near the observatory.”

Donna nods her agreement. “Also, England. I think London, somewhere around there. I saw a stadium, maybe soccer?”

“Which club?” Matteo asks. He’s a huge soccer fan. Donna thinks about it, trying to dredge up more detail.

“I don’t know. Not my area of expertise. There was a crest on the building, some coat-of-arms-type thing? Red, maybe with a gun? Does that make any sense to you?”

Matteo nods, grins at her. “Yeah. Arsenal. Good girl.”

She flutters her eyelashes at him, and Luca grimaces. Still a little surprised by this, I guess.

“Poplar Way,” I tell them. “That’s what I got from the other one in the States. It felt East Coast, from the trees and the front yards, or maybe Midwest or in the north. It was kind of woodsy but not hot woodsy.”

Pietro’s caught on quickly. He’s seen me do this before, use the glimpses from my visions to piece together a location. I don’t always get there in time; there are logistics and always will be unless someone follows up on that teleportation idea. My brother googles it, comes up with a series of images on his screen. I look at them as I pass him his coffee. I scroll through the many Poplar Ways that exist in those areas and find the one that fits. I turn it to Donna and she nods. “Yep. On the edge of the forest.”

It’s near a place called Ridgewood in New Jersey and close enough that we can do something about it. I want to go right now. I hate that there probably won’t be anything we can do about the others, but I can’t change that. It’s going to haunt me forever, making this choice, but it is what it is. Better to save some than none.

I stand, ready to grab my gear, but Pietro speaks up. “Wait a second. Take a breath. There was another one?”

“Colombia,” I tell him impatiently. “A bar in a small street. Too far away.”

The visions we get are more art than science. Sometimes we see them in the days preceding the Bad Thing, sometimes after it, in this case on the very edge of things happening. Often, there’s nothing I can do apart from taking out the vamp who misbehaved. In other cases, I chase—Rogan, the vamp I was hunting when I first met Luca, had been killing his way across various places for weeks until I tracked him down through my visions. I couldn’t save the ones that went before, but I did save the girl he was attacking that night. Heather O’Malley, she was called. I looked her up a few days ago. She’d posted on her Insta about her wild night out, when a rat “as big as a cat” jumped out of a dumpster and attached itself to her neck. Yeah. A massive, big rat, that’s what happened.

I’ve had to learn to shoulder the failures, the losses, but it never gets any easier. I’m annoyed that Pietro is slowing me down, and I give him a death stare.

He is used to them and ignores it. “You remember what it was called? The bar?”

I’d quite like to punch him in the face, but I know him well enough to understand how clever he is. That if he’s delaying me with these questions, he must have a reason.

I shake my head, as does Donna.

“Relax, both of you,” Pietro tells us. “Stop pushing for the memory. It’s in there somewhere, just let it find its way to the surface. Think about something else. The music you could hear, the night air, the stars in the sky.”

I take a deep breath and do as I’m told. Donna has closed her eyes, and I do the same. I let myself drift back there, smell the sea air. Hear the music and the underlying sound of cicadas. I lose myself in that moment: the van, the monsters, the laughing humans with no clue about what is heading in their direction. My eyes fly open and I look at Donatella. “La Rana Negra!” we both say at the same time. She holds up her hand for a high five, and I slap her palm. In a life full of losses, you have to take your wins.

Luca frowns. “The Black Frog?” he asks. I don’t know why I’m surprised he speaks Spanish. I mean, he’s had centuries to learn. It’d be lazy not to.

“If you say so.”

Pietro gets to work again, shows us a picture from a map’s street view. It’s the right place. A town outside Cartagena.