That’s why, as soon as the car came to a stop, I got out and went right over to the nearest snowdrift. Then I bent down and began packing up the snow into roughly shaped spheres.

“What are you doing?” Vlad called out.

My reply was throwing a snowball that hit him square in the chest. He looked down at the white remains on his cashmere coat, and his brows almost disappeared into his hairline.

The disbelief on his face was priceless. My next snowball smacked him in the chest again. Then Marty laughed out loud as my third one went high and hit Vlad right in the nose.

“Nice one, kid!” Marty shouted, climbing out of the car. He ran over to me and began forming his own snowballs while eyeing Vlad with open intent.

“Don’t you dare, Martin,” Vlad growled, forming a ball of pure fire over his palm in warning. Then he looked at me with exasperation. “Come now, Leila, enough of this.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, grinning at him. “How long has it been since you’ve been in a snowball fight?”

Now his brow arched with distinct haughtiness. “Never.”

“Never?” I asked, and lobbed another fluffy white missile at him. He ducked, so it sailed over his head instead of hitting him. “You didn’t even play in the snow when you were a kid?”

“I was in a dungeon by age ten, remember?”

I wouldn’t let his curt tone or past memories ruin this. “That gave you nine years to do it. You’re saying you didn’t?”

“No.” But there had been the slightest hesitation before that single word, and I pounced.

“Come on, Vlad, don’t lie to me!”

He drew himself up to his full height. “As you noted, I am a prince. Thus, my father didn’t allow me or my brothers to demean ourselves with foolish antics in the snow.”

Allow. I snatched at the inference. “So you wanted to, but you couldn’t.”

“My brothers refused to disobey Father, and there was no point in playing outside alone,” Vlad muttered.

For a split second, I could picture him as a child trying to incite his brothers into breaking the rules for a few minutes of illicit fun. My heart swelled, but Vlad wouldn’t want me to be sad over all the ways his youth had been tainted. Instead, I deliberately began forming another handful of snow.

“Then I’m not letting you go another day without being in a snowball fight. Put out the fire, Vlad, and pick up some white stuff. I’m playing to win, so you’d better watch out!”

So saying, I flung my latest snowball at him. Marty joined in and threw his pile of hastily made snowballs at him, too, until Vlad had to spin and duck to avoid all of them. His scowl faded. With a wolfish grin that both warned and delighted me, Vlad finally bent down and began grabbing up handfuls of snow.

“Know what elevated body temperate is really useful for?” he asked in a conversational tone. “Melting things.”

Then he threw five snowballs at us in rapid succession, beaning Marty and me. When they landed on us with far more weight and force than normal, I laughed.

“Cheater!”

He only grinned wider. “You’re the one who said to play to win, Leila.”

I laughed again, throwing snowballs as fast as I could make them. Vlad used the side of the car as a shield while he formed more special snowballs that had their exteriors melted by his hot hands until they had formed into icy shells. That made them faster as well as harder, and for someone who’d never done this before, Vlad was a natural at snowball fights. He managed to match the same number of snowballs that Marty and I threw at him, and when the second car finally pulled up, all three of us were covered in snow and ice.

Mencheres got out and looked around. Vlad was still crouched behind the other car, and Marty and I were behind our makeshift barrier of an overturned barrel.

“Are you doing what I think you are doing?” Mencheres asked, returning his gaze to Vlad with open disbelief.

Vlad stiffened and made a noise that, on anyone else, I would have called part defiant and part abashed. “Yes.”

Vlad’s real father had forbidden him to play in the snow on the pretext that it was demeaning. I hoped that Mencheres, Vlad’s honorary sire and secondary father figure, wasn’t about to be equally scornful now, even if Vlad was several centuries past when this activity would have been normal behavior.

At last, very formally, Mencheres stretched out his hands.

“It is on,” he said in a surprisingly good impression of street talk. Then dozens of snowballs began forming on their own before rising to whirl like aimed, suspended missiles.

Ian bounded out of the car like a puppy that had finally been let off his leash. “At last, some fun!” he crowed, and began forming snowballs next to us.

I shrieked with laughter as the first round of snowballs that Mencheres had telekinetically created began to pelt me, Marty, Ian, and Vlad. Then we all made Mencheres the focus of our attacks as we began returning that snowy fire as fast as we could. Even with four-on-one odds, Mencheres’s abilities made him easily able to keep up. Soon, so much snow was flying between us that it looked like a concentrated blizzard.

“Come on, Maximus, we need you, Mencheres is killing us!” I shouted.

After a final, disbelieving stare at Vlad, Maximus got out of the car and joined us. “This isn’t the kind of fight I expected to be in today,” he muttered as he began forming snowballs.

I just grinned at him. “Always expect the unexpected with vampires, right?”