We waited.

I don’t know if we waited fifteen minutes or fifteen hours. I stared at the horizon, willing the sun to rise, willing myself to wake up from this nightmare I’d found myself in.

Praying that Toby would wake up, and that we hadn’t laid him in his final resting place.

Doubt flooded my mind and receded like ocean tides, a new thought coming and going with every breath. What if he didn’t turn? What if it didn’t work? What if he awoke in madness? What if he hated me? What if I failed my bio test on Monday?

My bio test. I laughed, in spite of myself. How could I think about my bio class at a time like this?

Nico looked at me like I’d gone mad. The man had been locked in a coffin for three hundred years, and he thought I was the mad one? But I couldn’t blame Nico. I was giggling on my boyfriend’s grave.

Not boyfriend. Toby wasn’t my boyfriend. Our first date was a potentially fatal romp in the woods, and the most we had ever done was almost-kiss right before he almost-died. Hardly a foundation for a relationship.

I thought about how he felt when I stumbled into him--warm. Solid. And so real. More real than anything I’d ever felt.

We were a short walk from campus, but it felt like a world away from the fiberboard desks and fluorescent lights of the TA’s office where I’d first flirted with Toby. Initially I’d gone to his office hours to find out if he was as cute up close as he was from the back of the lecture hall, but talking to him was the first time since school started that I felt like I was home.

I sat there, sleep deprived and adrenaline-drunk, fingers scratching in the dirt I’d dug up to bury his body, and prayed that anything would ever feel real again.

I slowly became aware that Nico was still staring at me. And along with that realization, a sensation that felt even more real than Toby’s lips on mine: embarrassment.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“I’m processing,” I said. Then: “When do we dig him up?”

“Just before daybreak,” Nico said. He was still looking at me--studying me--too intensely. I tried to subtly rub the soil off my hands so that I could wipe some of the dirt off of my face, but I had a feeling I was just spreading it around.

“Is he going to be able to walk, or am I going to have to carry him?” I hadn’t had time to think about this choice when Toby was dying in my arms. Now, it felt like I had too much time to think. “What’s it like to turn into a vampire? Will he remember anything?”

“There will be a period of adjustment,” Nico said. “You will need to watch him carefully.” Then he took another breath to speak, but paused--still staring at me. My face itched from all the attention. Or maybe from the dirt. “Are you familiar with the laws regarding the Averus Clan?”

“When the Averus Clan refused the Accord, a decree was issued… that Averus must be slain on sight,” I said, paraphrasing half-remembered textbooks.

I thought about the way Toby lifted that crossbow without hesitation. Of course the decree had never been rescinded. With the Averus Clan gone--presumed dead--why bother revising a redundant law?

Toby had known. Toby had been ready.

“You knew this, but you tried to stop him,” Nico said. “From fulfilling his duty.”

“And now he’s a vampire,” I said. “Forever.”

“Forever,” Nico said with a nod, “or until I am slain.”

I stared at him, but he didn’t meet my gaze. I had forgotten that myth–I thought it was a myth–about vampires regaining their humanity if the vampire that turned them was killed.

Nico met my gaze suddenly.

“Forever,” he repeated, almost challenging, “unless you kill me.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Me, kill a vampire? He’d snap my neck before I even moved.

“I’m not big into killing people,” I said finally.

“You are a healer.” Nico nodded, as if in understanding, and I shrugged.

“Again. Not a very good one.” I looked at the pile of dirt between us. “I couldn’t heal him.”

Nico followed my gaze.

“The decree,” he said eventually, “applies to all vampires of the Averus clan.”

He looked back at me, as though that meant something.

“So… You, your brother Draven,” I said, trying to remember the major players from middle school term papers. “You had, like, cousins, right? That he turned?”

“Yes. But my brother turned more than family members. Every vampire turned by an Averus is considered a part of the Averus Clan.”

“Right,” I said, nodding, as though this information was as groundbreaking as his gaze made it feel. “Your brother turned a bunch of people. A lot of scary Averus vampires still out there?”

Nico stared at me, and then pointedly turned his gaze back to the grave. After a moment he glanced up again, as though to see whether I was following.

I quickly looked at the grave. Was it time for Toby to wake up? I imagined unearthing him--rising from the earth, disoriented but healthy--the wound in his side fully healed--

Then the proverbial penny dropped.

“Toby will be an Averus vampire,” I said. I looked at Nico for confirmation. “You turned him. So he’s technically part of the Averus Clan.”

Nico bent his head. “The decree applies to him as well. Anyone who knows of his transformation will be honor-bound--and bound by the law--to kill him on sight.”

“But nobody has to know, right?” My mind raced--if Toby remembered this law, the Daybreakers Club would too. They’d be ready to execute it at a moment’s notice. Yikes, Paige. Execute?

“There... is a sign,” Nico interrupted.

“A sign?” I could hear my voice start to crack from stress. “Great. A sign. What are we talking here? Big blinking neon kind of thing? Or one of those subtle out-of-order deals?”

I was too tired to care whether Nico thought I was funny, which was good, because he wasn’t laughing.

“A shape like a birthmark or a scar will develop over his left ribs,” Nico said. “I do not know why it happens. The mark will follow the trace of his veins in that particular spot… each mark is unique to the person turned.”

His left hand wandered across his jacket, finding one particular spot over his own ribs.

“People have always said that our blood is tainted,” he continued. “That the Averus family infects all that they bite--turning not just their body, but their soul. That’s why we’re so… evil.”

“Do you think that’s true?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

“I am working to disprove the theory,” he said, so quietly I wasn’t sure I had heard it at all.

I could see hundreds of years of pain in his eyes, all rising to meet that very moment. I wanted to reach out--I wanted to help--but there was still that voice at the back of my head… How could I trust him?

A low moan reached my ears. At first I thought it came from Nico, but I saw him react just as I did.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered. Then it came again.

I froze, feeling a sense of horror creep over me--a deep-reaching dread that curled in my lungs. While Nico and I were talking, the horizon had turned a dull, angry red. Shadows that had been still started to move in the forest.

I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. I turned my head, as slowly as I could manage--

A hand burst through the fresh soil below us, straining for the surface, and that sound coalesced into a guttural scream.

Toby was awake.

Or at least, his body was.