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“Why, what’s going on?” I asked, placing my stake in the belt loop of my jeans.

“Something happened on Main Street a couple of hours ago,” he explained. “There’s police everywhere.”

“In East Greenwich?” I asked.

Caleb nodded.

“Vampire attack?”

Leah shrugged. “We don’t know yet, but Lily told us someone died, and she had overheard the police speak about an injury on the victim’s neck.”

My stomach twisted into a tight knot.

Was it someone we knew?

“What time is it?” I asked Ezra, who stood next to me.

Ezra looked down at his phone. “Midnight. Lily told us it happened around ten, just a few hours after you went missing.”

Caleb reached into his pocket and pulled out my phone. I guess I had dropped it when they attacked me. I didn’t even have a moment to defend myself before the needle pricked my neck.

I had planned to meet the coven for a couple of rounds of pool and beers when those two snatched me. We were right outside of downtown Providence. Not once since this all started had the vampires attacked so close to our hometown. I hadn’t expected it and scolded myself for letting my guard down. I needed to be much more careful from here on out.

“Well, let’s go, then,” I said, and we hurried to Simon’s car. As much as I didn’t want the attack to be from a vampire, it was the only way we’d find the ones that needed to be eradicated—the ones that refused to turn human—likethe two we had just killed.

Those who chose darkness were worthless, evil, and undeserving of our mercy.

CHAPTER 2

“WHAT HAPPENED HERE?” I asked an officer, my eyes narrowing on his badge. “Officer Shields?”

The officer looked to be in his late forties, strong in stature, and very handsome. His mustache was shaved thin, and his hair was light brown, with a few silver streaks along the sides of his head, right above the ears.

Officer Shields leaned against a Victorian-style steel light post next to Tippy’s Pancake House, jotting down something on his little black notepad. They had wrapped yellow caution tape around the curb that stretched over to the other side of the parking lot.

The officer ignored me, of course. I was a nosey bystander, and he had orders to keep things quiet until they received the official report to be released to the public.

I glanced past him, but all I saw were a dozen cops inside the restaurant, moving around and conversing with each other.

“Is Tippy okay?” I asked. “I mean … Ryan Harrison?”

Ryan was a resident who had lived in East Greenwich for the last four years. He kept to himself mostly, but the pancake house was new and exciting for him and a way to get to know everyone in town. It brought our entire community together when it first opened.

When Officer Shields didn’t respond, I kept prying. “Look, I live right down the street. I just want to make sure it isn’t someone I know.” He glanced in my direction, shook his head, and walked away. “Don’t worry,” I mumbled to myself. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

The thought of the victim being Ryan, or as we called him, “Tippy,” made my stomach ill. The attack had happened right around the time when he would have been locking up.

Lily appeared from behind the building. “I asked a few detectives, too, from the other side of the restaurant. They aren’t giving me any answers. Only the parts they slipped up when they didn’t realize I was within earshot. I’ll sneak around to the south side of the parking lot and see what else I can find.”

My stomach was in shambles again while I shook my head, thinking about it being someone I was close to, if not Tippy himself.

I turned my attention toward the parking lot to search for Caleb, who was trying to get answers, too, but when I shifted to the right, I bumped into him.

He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head with a slight side smirk.

“The Mercy I know wouldn’t have given up so easily,” he said, winking at me as he sauntered toward Tippy’s, crouching under the caution tape near the front entrance.

“What the hell are you doing?” I uttered in a near whisper. “They won’t let you in there.” Caleb reached the doors as they opened, with the backside of the coroner pulling the front of a gurney. Once they emerged from the doorway, I immediately eyed the black tarp over the shape of what I assumed was the body.

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