“There is a group of boundary witches who have dedicated themselves to the cultivation of boundary magic,” Katia said darkly. “This group hunts down the few families who are still strong with boundary magic, and they take the young women. For . . . breeding purposes.” Her fists clenched, crumpling the napkins. “My parents knew of this group, but they thought we were well hidden in our little village. They were wrong.” She paused again, fidgeting. The story was hard for her.

“When they came,” she went on, “my mother was too old to bear more children, but they took Valerya. They would have taken me too, most likely, but my father and I were on an overnight visit to my grandparents. When we returned the next morning, my sister was gone, and my mother had been killed trying to save her.” Her voice turned bitter. “They beat my brothers badly, but left them alive, in hopes they might grow up and have children with witchblood.”

“Until a few minutes ago,” she continued, “I did not know what happened to Valerya. I did not think I ever would know. But Lex has informed me that they forced my sister to get pregnant, and she had twin girls. Valerya died in childbirth, and one sister died as an adult. Your friend Lex is the surviving twin.”

Jesse and I exchanged a look. We knew the other part of the story. The two of us had stopped the nova werewolf who had killed Lex’s sister Samantha—just not soon enough. But I didn’t see how telling Katia I had incinerated her niece’s body would help at this point.

“How did Lex know you were her aunt?” Jesse asked, quite reasonably.

Katia gave us a tiny smile. “Valerya told her.”

When I processed that, my mouth was suddenly dry. This is part of why the whole Old World still hates boundary witches. They creep everybody out. “What happened to you?” Jesse asked.

“To make sure this group did not find me later, I was sent to the United States, to be adopted anonymously,” she said. She shifted on the cot, clearing her throat. When she spoke again, it was in a rush, like she was getting something out of the way. “The man who was supposed to be my new father was a pedophile. I will not talk about that time. All you need to know is that I ran away when I was thirteen, and Oskar found me a year later. You can probably figure out the rest.”

“You worked for him,” I said quietly, “in exchange for him keeping you safe.”

She nodded. “I am—I was—his daytime contact. I helped him manipulate the girls, it is true. But I helped them as well. By pressing them, I could make them forget any pain. And the men who visit vampire brothels, they like pain.” Her voice cracked, and she looked out the window for a few minutes. We were getting close to our destination.

“You think Oskar is a monster, and you are correct,” she said softly, not turning to look at me. “But I did make it easier for them to survive. I did not feel like I was working for him. I felt like I was helping them.”

Jesse and I were silent for another mile. The weight of this woman’s story had kind of crushed anything we could have said. Finally, Jesse gathered his thoughts enough to say, “One thing I still don’t understand. Oskar does this thing with the necklaces, as a way to take ownership of you. But Molly had a similar necklace, presumably from her maker.”

It was a very good question, and it doubtless had something to do with how this Oskar was connected with Molly, but Katia shrugged. On a hunch, I asked, “Does the name Alonzo mean anything to you?”

She gave me a look like I might be a little thick. It really did seem like I got that look a lot. “Of course. Alonzo was Oskar’s father.”

Okay, maybe I did deserve the look. I glanced at Jesse, who must have been thinking pretty much the same thing. “Well, his maker,” Katia corrected herself. “He turned Oskar into a vampire so he would have an heir. Oskar calls him Father.”

“Of course he does,” Jesse said, sounding more tired than anything else. “We’ve been so focused on Alonzo making new female vampires, we never considered that he might have made a male. An heir.”

“Did you ever meet Alonzo?” I asked Katia.

She shook her head. “He died the year before I met Oskar.” Her lip curled a little. “But Oskar worshipped him. I think he had to. The bonds between a vampire and his maker are strong.”

“We’ve heard,” I muttered.

“So back in the nineties, Molly killed Alonzo,” Jesse said, thinking aloud. “Not knowing he also had a son, Oskar. Twenty years later, Oskar tracks down Molly in Los Angeles and kicks off this elaborate revenge scheme.”

Katia’s eyes widened as she looked up at me, but she didn’t speak, just processed the new information. She was probably used to staying quiet.

I wondered how Molly was going to feel when she found out that Alonzo, her worst nightmare, had basically recreated himself. That although Molly had stopped Alonzo, his legacy had lived on, and his “son” had continued selling the young women he kidnapped and turned.

So many women. So many years.

“How could you work for him for so long?” I blurted to Katia. “How could you stand to?”

For a moment I didn’t think she was going to answer, but she’d promised Lex to give us any information we wanted. “Do you know,” she said slowly, “how a boundary witch activates her powers?”

“No.”

“She has to die. And I did. I was stabbed”—she touched her side, though I doubted she was conscious of it—“and buried. Oskar, he dug me up. He saved me from being buried alive, then demanded twenty years of service as repayment.” Her face hardened. “It was only many years later that I learned Oskar had ordered my attack in the first place.”

And I think that was the moment when I joined Team Katia. I no longer cared if she walked away from this scot-free. In fact, I wanted her to.

“When was this?” Jesse asked.

She smiled. “Nineteen years, ten months, and two days ago.”

“That’s why he came for Molly now,” I said, understanding. “He needed you for his revenge.”

She nodded. “I did not suspect it then, but you must be right. I thought we were just on another mission to get new girls, and start over in a new city. We did this before. He likes to get new girls every ten years, so there is never a time when he has only new people or only veterans.” She sounded disgusted. “This is also probably why he has not yet come to ‘rescue’ me from you. My time is almost up, and the one thing that you could say for both Oskar and Alonzo, they always keep their promise to release their . . . employees.” She touched her chest, right where the necklace would have hung if it hadn’t been stuffed in my pocket at the moment. “They don’t want to anger what little vampire authority remains.”

“That’s a pretty damned complicated revenge,” I pointed out. “He could have just killed Molly.”

“The woman who killed his precious Alonzo?” Katia shook her head. “No. That would not be a fitting tribute. Alonzo himself was very into drawn-out, elaborate revenge. Sometimes, I believe, he would set his revenge in motion even before he had been betrayed. And Oskar’s greatest wish is to be just like his father.”

And this was the guy who now had Molly’s friends—four fresh-faced young women who had barely tasted human life before it was taken away from them for darker purposes. Jesse and I exchanged another look. I’m not even sure what it meant, but he inclined his head a little, as if to say I’m with you.

“Okay, I’m officially fucking decided,” I announced. “One way or another, we are tearing it all down.”

Jesse glanced my way, but Katia was nodding. “This is what Lex said you would do. She said you are clumsy and immature, but also as stubborn as she is.” There was a smile in her voice. “And you’ve gone up against bad things before. So I will help you take down Oskar. And you will help me meet my niece.”

As she finished those words, we pulled into tonight’s safe house of choice—Will’s house.

I hadn’t had a whole lot of options for where to stash Katia, but the alpha werewolf’s place was isolated, it had a security system, and Will had a guest room that was always ready for a werewolf who might need a place to lay low. I figured as long as no one but us and Will knew she was there, she would be safe for the night.