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Everyone started speaking at once as a buzzing sounded in my ears. Em glanced up at me with her big burgundy eyes, and something inside me clicked.

“She’s a psychic,” I said quietly, but somehow, the chatter stopped. “I have to be the one to help her.”

“And I’m pretty good at raising girls,” Mama added, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be her guardian. I was getting bored around here anyway.”

“That’s sweet, but they’ll find her if she stays on the island,” Daphne said, standing to stretch.

“Not if we have anything to do with it,” Hazel said then sipped her coffee. “We witches got this. The rest of you just forget she exists. She’s now part of our coven and under our protection.”

In case anyone doubted what that meant, Karma stretched, yawned, then roared in my lap, vibrating every cup sitting on the coffee table. His dragon sound was strange coming from a cute little bunny, but he could shift into anything anytime he wanted—well, except a human.

“I suppose that’s settled then,” Mama said. “Daphne and Sam, you go make the necessary incident reports for SHADE, omitting every mention of Em, while we fix up Zoe’s room for her.”

“Why my room?” Zoe whined.

Hazel punched her arm. “You can stay at my place until we figure it out.”

“I should prepare a report for the general as well,” Julian said, reaching for the doorknob.

“Oh no you don’t,” I said, standing and sending Karma darting into cat form and under the couch. “We need to talk. Now.”

Julian’s vamp face did little to intimidate me anymore I realized as I marched over to him and took his hand so I could speak in his mind.

You aren’t good at subtle, you know. I expect the whole story with no omissions, either.

A small nod was all I got as everyone else cleared out or went into Zoe’s room to see about setting it up for our new guest.

“You’d better sit down,” Julian said once we were alone.

Despite the lump that formed in my throat at those words, I sat and smoothed my pants as I waited for the bomb to drop. Julian paced a moment then knelt before me, placing a hand on my knee.

I found the intruder immediately. A male vampire that, though familiar, I did not recognize. He was headed for the brig.

“For Lydia,” I said, spine stiffening. “Was someone trying to eliminate her for supposedly killing Carmichael? Carry out some weird form of justice on behalf of that monster just because he was the sect leader?”

Julian squeezed my leg. Quite the opposite, actually. It seems he was intent on breaking her out of prison.

That shut me up. And he continued as I tried to wrap my brain around it.

We had a frank discussion since I know what Lydia means to you. It seems he’d heard about her professional background and wanted to hire her as an assistant. Julian paused and tilted his head as though he was willing me to understand something.

“She’s my…was my assistant,” was all I could manage. I squeezed out the vision of the vampire who’d ripped into her neck before she was taken from our lab and turned into a vampire herself. The old feeling of failing someone I cared about threatened to tear me apart, but I walled it off inside so I could focus on the now.

“That’s exactly why he wanted her,” Julian said.

“Who is he? Some kind of Dr. Frankenstein wannabe?”

“He’s a geneticist,” Julian said, brows drawn slightly.

“Then I probably know of him,” I said. Did he have anything to do with the experiments going on with the children?

No. He wanted to continue his own research that had been…shut down.

“Well, what’s his name, Julian? Out with it.”

“Dr. Alfred Devaux.” His grip on my knee was almost painful, but that didn’t stop my vision from blurring with shock from hearing my father’s name.

“Where—” I whispered.