“Master! Master! Wake up!”

I opened my eyes. The lid of the coffin trembled, stilled, trembled again. Banging. Someone banging on the lid. What? I struggled through the just-woken-up fog. Girl. Banging on coffin. Girl I knew.

“Master!”

Ah yes. Elizabeth.

I shifted the lid off. She, Ava, and Katherina stood over; their dresses (their white dresses) and hair wet and tousled. She looked prettier than I had ever seen her. She half-shrieked in excitement when I sat up and climbed out. Katherina smirked at this.

“Get out of bed!”

I sat up and climbed to my feet, looked them all over. Finally, I said, “Water fight?”

“No,” Ava said, laughing. Her bun was very messy and her skin flushed. It was a very unusual look for her, she who was most refined. “It snowed.”

“Snow,” I said. I love snow. “Let’s go, then.”

We went outside to enjoy the snow as it is best enjoyed. As wolves.

“Ah, wet! Ah, cold!” Katherina yelped as soon as she was outside. Without pause her cheekbones ran toward her nose into a long, regal muzzle, her skin paled and the pattern of fur appeared and raised on it. She bristled to all-fours.

Ava and Elizabeth were already there. They were matching wolves, both sleek and black; the only difference was that Lizzie was a shade smaller and a shade lighter, with white paws and one white ear, which made her look like a dog, while Ava had a white streak on the underside of her jaw. I changed to match them.

Katherina barked at me and charged; her side hit mine and bounced me off-course. I spun in the ice, all four feet scrabbling for purchase, for five minutes before stopping; as soon as I did, her teeth sunk into the scruff of my neck and shook.

I spun in a circle, trying to shake her off, to no avail. In mild desperation, I grabbed one of her hind feet and crunched down- blood stained the snow crimson. Katherina faltered but maintained her grip. Her retaliation was to yank as hard as she possibly could down on my throat, which not only forced me to the ground (which was shame enough) but also ripping a gash that didn’t just bleed, it spurted.

All in fun, of course. Playtime. This sounds overly gruesome, but it really isn’t; when both parties have superhuman abilities and can heal almost faster than the injuries can be dealt in the first place, the scale of pain gets bigger.

She bounced off, tail wagging. Glee radiated off her. I got to my feet shamefully.

I was preparing for complete, utter war, when the sounds of something reached my ears. It took me a few minutes to place- a cart. A wagon. A gypsy wagon. This wasn’t the time of year the gypsies were in Transylvania, though- they generally came around in the summer months. What the hell?

Kat, who had been gloating, and Ava and Elizabeth, who had been laughing themselves sick, stopped and listened. We waited.

It was the Gypsy’s wagon- they came bouncing out of the woods, all bright colors and thin horses. It slowed, then stopped as it cleared the forest. The horses looked glad for the rest- they were just about falling down- but that wasn’t what really what captured my attention. What I was focused on was that the tall thin Gypsy was helping someone out of the caravan. A girl in foreign clothes.

A girl with long, wavy hair somewhere between red and brown.

No!

Mina!

Mina was paler than I remembered. She was darker-complexioned than I, but she had lost a lot of pigmentation in the two months since I had seen her. (Of course, I was partially responsible for that . . .) She was taller, too, almost Ava’s height, I’d guess. And well-to-do, it seemed. Her full-length coat wasn’t wanting.

And her eyes were the exact same shade of green.

From my right, Katherina uttered a snarl that made my hair stand up on end. I bristled at her, but she wasn’t fazed. Ava and Elizabeth came around my left, looking at me with interest and confusion. What was Mina, who had made it quite plain that she hated all of us and thought us dead, doing at the castle?

Curiouser and curiouser.

The gypsies’ wagon clattered back off through the woods, leaving Mina alone with a duffel bag in the snow, but she made no signal she had even noticed. She wrapped her arms around herself as she stared up at the castle, as if in a trance. Chagrin spread across her face.

After a few minutes, she snapped out of her reverie and actually looked around at her surroundings, which included the four wolves sitting quietly together in the snow, watching her.

“Jonathan was right,” she said, breathing out a cloud of icy steam. “So many wolves.”

She adjusted her coat sleeves so they fell over her hands and headed for the door.

Elizabeth jumped to her feet and began to bark rough, grating barks, which ground into my ears like sandpaper over a wound. If she had a mouth she could talk with, I swear she would have been saying Stranger danger! Stay out, out, out! Stranger danger!

Mina flinched at the evident aggression. She squatted down on her heels, drenching herself to the knees in the wet snow, and held out one hand. “Puppy,” she called in her high, clear voice. “I’m not going to hurt anything, puppy, I’m not going to hurt you . . . come here.”

Lizzie danced from one foot to another, whining at her. Ava came up on her side and nosed Lizzie’s throat with her long muzzle, silencing her sister. Katherina, never one to enjoy being left out of the loop, followed suit, though her way of telling Mina to go back to whence she came was to growl ear-blistering snarls and clip her teeth at air.

Mina began to pull on the door with a little more insistency.

I pulled my fur back in and stood up. Mina had her shoulder to the Brides, her face turned to the door’s wooden face, and tugged on the chains harder.

“Mina,” I said in as low a voice as I could manage. “Please stop trying to break my door.”

Mina made a noise like a fish being ripped from the sea, thrown in the desert, then stabbed repeatedly with poison-tipped spears. She twisted around, her hands flying to the throat, and slid from her knees all the way down, soaking herself to the waist. She yanked something out of the collar of her dress- a gold chain with the biggest cross I have ever seen on a necklace, ever, dangling from the end.

Katherina, Ava, and Elizabeth glanced at me, then stepped back and changed themselves.

Mina’s face drained of all color, but she didn’t cower; she refused to, I suppose. Her large eyes skipped from Katherina to me.

Silence. I folded my arms. Katherina looked at me, clearly trying to tell if I wanted Mina dead or not.

“What are you doing here?” Mina said softly. It sounded like a prayer.

“I live here. Did you forget?”

“No,” she said, swallowing hard. I watched her throat pulse, waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. It didn’t matter, though; I knew she wanted to know why I was here, talking to her as if nothing had happened.

I reached forward. “Get up, Mina.”

Her grip on the door tightened.

I raised an eyebrow. “If you’re worried I have unpleasant things in mind for you, you would be mistaken. I have nothing planned for you. Don’t you think your posse would be a little suspicious if something did? The last few months are not something I’d like to relive.”

“No,” Mina replied. Her voice was steady. “No, no, no.”

“Get up,” Katherina snapped, wrapping her arms around herself. Lack of fur tends to make one cold, and her dress was strapless. “It is freezing out here, and if we have to talk, we might as well be warm. Don’t make us carry you in.”

Mina yanked on the golden chain around her neck, breathing heavily. I’m certain I didn’t remember her being this pale, or her eyes being this big. God, that was unnatural.

“Carrying it is, then,” Katherina said, swooping forward suddenly like a bird of prey does when it has spotted a particularly vulnerable prey. When she straightened up, she was holding Mina tightly around the back and under her knees. The difference in their heights, as well as the ease with which Kat was carrying her, was utterly comical. Mina did not appear to think so. She struggled as if she was being tortured with red-hot pokers, not being held. Katherina, for once in her life, stood patiently while Mina got this out of her system, although she got remarkably close to losing her temper when Mina, in a panic, bit her on the shoulder.

“You want to bite?” Kat asked. She flashed a sharp, razor-edged smile without humor. “Be afraid; I bite back.”

“Don’t do it,” I warned her.

“Spoil my fun,” she muttered, holding Mina tighter. Then, to her, “I don’t care what he says. Don’t make me bite you.”

I smiled a little at that, opening the door. Kat, still Queen Bee, elbowed her sisters out of the way. She marched, not just to the foyer like I had expected, but to one of our numerous off-the-entry rooms, this one containing several couches. She evidently did not think Mina merited one of these couches; she set Mina on her feet as roughly as she could, making her sway a little, and then to make a point of flopping luxuriously next to me on the loveseat. I wondered why she was being so nice to her.

“Alright,” Katherina said in a cool, falsely-serene voice. She was practically sitting in my lap. Not that I minded. “Talk.”

Mina picked herself off the floor warily. Some of the color had come back to her face, and she didn’t look like she was going to faint or anything now. Not that Mina was ever really the fainting type. She dried her palms on the side of her coat and looked at us each in turn.

“I’m not hearing any talking,” Kat growled through her teeth.

Mina met her gaze. The two of them stared each other down like they were playing Chicken. I did not appreciate this, because Katherina’s hand was around my wrist and her nails were digging into my skin harder the longer they looked at each other. And it hurt. Badly. Mina broke the look first, thankfully, before Kat had a change to hit bone.

“I thought you were dead,” Mina said, by way of explanation. It took a great deal of self-control not to roll my eyes.

I tapped my chest. “I am dead, beautiful.”

“You know what I mean. Why aren’t you dead and not talking?”

“To answer one, it’s a long, long story, and besides, I find that telling all the answers takes the fun out of finding them out yourself. Now, to my question; knowing what you mean still doesn’t explain why you chose to go visit castles in foreign countries where you thought your greatest enemy resided. Did you feel like vandalizing the place?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

“No.”

“Shame,” Kat said coolly. “That’s what I’d do.”

“And that,” Mina retorted, turning her green gaze on Katherina’s again. The pale, painful fingers wrapped themselves around my arm again. “Is the precise reason I don’t.”

Katherina’s eyes narrowed and I cringed internally. I knew that look. Oh, how I knew that look.

“And anyway,” Mina said, turning back to me as if she had not noticed that Katherina would kill her with her bare hands and have no qualms about it. “I do not have to confide in myself to you.”

“Ah, did you forget what we used to have so easily? I thought you were better than that.”

“It’s for the sake of what we used to have that I have no intentions of telling you.”

“Very well, then.” Let her keep it to herself. I could weasel it out of her, no problem. I leaned back and waved one hand at her. “What did you have to tell your husband to get him to let you come.”

Pause. “I told him I was going to visit an aunt in Germany.”

“You’re part German?”

“Actually . . . no.”

“Ah.” I glanced at Ava and Elizabeth for their opinions in the matter. Ava, who had been silent thus far, was watching Mina with a very odd expression on her face. I knew that look too; she was unraveling one of the infinite knots she uncovers when she meets anyone. Ava is a very perceptive person. I wondered what she was thinking. “Ava, you’ve been rather quiet. What say you?”

She seemed to pick her words very, very carefully for a minute, and then she asked, “How far along are you?”

Mina seemed to crumple visibly. She stared back soundlessly for what felt like forever. “Two months,” she whispered.

I didn’t really understand what they were talking about, and Kat, good old Katherina, spared me the trouble of asking.

“You’re pregnant?” she yelled, sitting up perfectly straight, and immediately burst into hysterical laughter.

Mina. Pregnant. By Harker, no less. Ugh. “Are you kidding me?”

Kat seemed to be thinking along the same lines, and so stopped laughing long enough to say, “Harker, huh?” before collapsing into giggles again. Elizabeth just made a face and stuck out her tongue, and Ava clearly thought we were being idiots.

Mina looked at Katherina and I like she would like nothing better than to rip our lungs out and strangle us with them.

I shook my head like a dog trying to rid its ears of water. “Ugh. I can only imagine. It must have been a very awkward affair.”

“I bet he was horrible at it,” Kat said conversationally.

“Probably.”

“Probably? No probably about it, buddy.”

“Well, it’s not as if Miss ‘Blushing Virgin’ here could tell the difference.”

“True.”

Mina’s jaw dropped and she folded her arms around her chest. Being strangled with our removed organs was probably too good for us now. “There is no point in discussing this!”

“Be sure to tell him practice makes perfect,” was her antithesis’s reply.

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” Mina said. Her voice was like ice.

“In that case,” I asked her. “What are you thinking?”

“Actually, since you are clearly alive- sort of- and well, I’m thinking . . .” Her voice faltered. She swallowed hard; her hands found each other and twisted into nervous knots, she collected her strength visibly. “I’m thinking this baby might be yours.”

The impact of this accusation was such that I stared at her for minute upon minute upon minute. The room was utterly silent.

And then it sunk in.

“No!” I bellowed, shooting off the couch like it had become something sharp and poisonous. “No, no, no, no, no-”

“I’m just-”

“NO! Don’t you dare try to pin this on me!”

Mina looked furious. I was much furiouser than her, so much that it moved me to invent words like “furiouser.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“I hate to burst your bubble,” I seethed. My nose was a quarter of a centimeter from hers. “But it isn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know what they’ve been teaching you in England, but exchanging blood is not a valid means of human reproduction. To do that, I’d have to have taken you and-” Mina cringed and put her hands over her ears. I wrenched them back down and held them by her sides. “Listen to me!”

“Not if you’re going to be crude!”

“I’m not being crude! I’m being right!”

Ava, who had been perched on the arm of Elizabeth’s chair, cleared her throat loud enough that both Mina and I- who had been shouting rather loudly- actually stopped glaring at each other and turned to look at her. I was not the focus of her attention; she reserved that for Mina.

“Miss Harker,” she said softly. I turned my attention back away from her. Mina was staring at Ava, breathing rapidly, but not angrily. It seemed Ava was the only one who had escaped her anger. Probably because she was the only one who hadn’t mocked her incessantly. “Please allow me to be guileless for a moment.” Ava smiled just a little and raised her eyebrows. “If Master was the child-sowing sort, don’t you think we’d all have plenty of children? Be honest, now.”

Mina looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I wanted to let her.

“There. Now apologize. I don’t even like children.”

“Why not?” Katherina asked, smirking. “They’re high in protein and low in fat.”

“You’re a horrible person,” Mina hissed.

“Yes,” Kat said unconcernedly. “But I’ve learned to live with my flaws.”

“How can you stand this?” Mina cried. I sensed the two were readying for battle and even though I knew I should really stop it before it got messy, I kind of wanted to see it anyway. “How can you stand living like this? How can you stand living with him?”

Now I felt no remorse about not stopping it whatsoever. It occurred to me that if there was a “Make That Girl Cry” competition, Katherina would win. Hands down.

“Don’t preach to me. You slept with Harker.”

“That’s-”

“A little too true? Sorry.”

“How dare you criticize me for loving someone! You’re one of three! Don’t you want better than this?”

Her smile was wide and sharp and evil. I imagine snakes smile the same way before strangling a cute, fuzzy mammal to death. “It’s better than Harker, dear, in so, so many ways.”

Good girl. Good, wonderful, amazing girl. I am too lucky for words.

“Better? Oh? Like how?”

“You don’t know? Being pregnant, I’d think you’d know what men and women do when they’re alone together. You don’t need a practical demonstration, do you?” She kissed my cheek. “Not that I mind.”

“No thank you! You- you kill children and murder people and live like a- a whore- and you’re mocking me? How dare you!”

Katherina decided she was sick of the conversation, and in the span of about four seconds, her tone turned from smooth and light to cold as midnight, sharp as broken glass, and she wielded it like a weapon. She stood up, and even though she was a good four inches shorter than Mina, Mina cowered. “How dare I mock you? You? I’ve heard plenty about you, Mina Harker. Self-righteous and pious and sweet, aren’t you? You run around with your men, so proud of yourselves, and patting each other on the back constantly. And when you and my dear precious Master had your little fling- yes, I know about it, stop looking so shocked- you cried and whined and whimpered like some sort of puppy who’d been kicked, you never once stopped to think that maybe it was your goddamn fault, did you? That if you hadn’t been as noble as you’re being now, it wouldn’t have happened to you? But I’m sure you didn’t mind terribly.”

Mina stared at her.

“I would suggest,” Katherina hissed, catlike. “That if you don’t learn to keep your Bible-thumping, holy-rolling pride in check, that the vampires you are keeping company with will not be pleased, and I will guarantee you that whatever happens to you then, you will not like.”

Mina swallowed

Ava broke it up again. I began to think I should get her a black-and-white striped dress with a whistle. “Katherina, stop it. Mina, do you . . . need something?”

I think she was trying to say Just tell us what you want so you can get the hell out, but was much too polite.

“No,” whispered Mina.

“Why did you come?” Ava asked her softly. I was about to remind her that Mina had been asked this question and had not replied, when she did.

“I wanted to be sure that this existed,” Mina said, shamefully. “And that I hadn’t dreamed it.”

There was silence after this. Kat, Lizzie, and I felt no need to breach it. Ava did. “I think we’ve proved that beyond a doubt, Mrs. Harker, and I think it would be a good idea if we took you back now.” She took Mina’s hand carefully. “On a few conditions, I will take you to the Gypsies’ caravan.”

“What?”

“One- you tell your friends and husband that you had a wonderful time with your aunt in Germany. Don’t mention us. Ever. If you do, you, your family, and everyone you love will be on our version of death row.”

“Okay.”

“And two- you never come back to Romania.”

“Yes.”

“Alright, then.”