“I knew you’d started the minute you began hearing Hudson’s voice. Because he didn’t talk to you when he was free to take control of you. It’s only after you started to impede that freedom that he had something to say.”

“That’s not true!” Hudson throws his hands up. “I’ve been trying to get your attention all along. You just couldn’t listen until Yoda here taught you how to make an illusion real.”

“Wait a minute.” I turn to the Bloodletter in horror. “You mean I’ll still be able to hear him, even after I wall him up?” Just the idea turns my stomach. “I thought the whole point was to get rid of him.”

“The whole point is to make sure he can’t take you over anymore. The wall will prevent that, at least for a while. But now that he’s figured out how to get your attention…” She shakes her head. “I don’t think we’ll be able to do anything about that.”

Jaxon balls his fists at this statement, but he doesn’t say a word.

I sigh. “Well, this day just got a whole lot worse, didn’t it?”

Hudson shakes his head. “You really think it’s any better for me? At least you haven’t been able to hear me for the last two days. I’ve heard every thought you’ve had, and let me tell you, they weren’t all gems. Especially the hours you spend thinking about my dreamy baby brother,” Hudson tells me. “Not fun. Not fun at all.”

“Then do us both a favor and get out!” I turn and yell at him, not caring that Jaxon and the Bloodletter hear me. I’m more than a little embarrassed at the idea of Hudson being privy to all my thoughts, especially the ones about Jaxon.

“What the everlasting bloody hell do you think I’ve been trying to do?” he answers. “You think I decided to pick a fight with an alpha werewolf just for fun? Believe me, there are better ways for me to get my kicks—even when I’m locked up with you.”

Hudson keeps talking about how miserable it is to be locked up inside me—like I don’t know that already—but I stop listening as I try to work through everything he just said about the fight with Cole.

None of it makes sense, unless— “Jaxon? What are the five things the spell says we need to get Hudson out of my body for good again?”

“Four,” Hudson snaps. “You need four things. One, two, three, four. Even a kindergartener can count that high.”

“Temper tantrums are so unbecoming,” I throw at him over my shoulder without taking my eyes off Jaxon.

“Yeah, well, so is ignorance, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping you.”

That gets my attention, and I turn to Hudson and smile. “Maybe I can sew up your mouth while I’m walling you away. Surely there’s a spell for that somewhere.” I keep my voice saccharin sweet.

“Yeah, because I’m totally the one with the temper here.” He rolls his eyes.

Jaxon’s gaze darts between me and roughly the direction I’ve been looking in for a few seconds before he decides to settle back on me. “The first thing we need is a vampire’s bloodstone,” he tells me. “That’s a stone that’s formed when droplets of a vampire’s blood are put under extreme pressure. Like how a diamond is made.”

Wow. If that doesn’t give a whole new kind of horrific meaning to the term “blood diamond,” then I don’t know what does. “So there are a lot of these stones out there, just floating around?”

“That’s the thing. There aren’t that many of them at all. It’s a really difficult process to get right, so very few vampires have them. I mean, my family has several—including the ones in the king’s and queen’s crowns—but they’re very closely guarded. Which is why I’m worried about getting my hands on one to—”

“I already told you that I’ll find a way for one to come within your grasp,” the Bloodletter interjects. “We’re vampires, for God’s sake. Getting a bloodstone is the least of your problems.”

“So what’s the worst of our problems, then?” I ask, because I’d rather have the bad news first. And I’m tired of hearing everything piecemeal. For once, I’d like the whole picture up front.

“Dragon bone,” Hudson and Jaxon both say at the exact same time.

“Dragon bone?” I repeat, mind boggled. “Like a real, live dragon bone?”

“Actually, a real, dead dragon bone,” Hudson answers, poker-faced. “Considering most live dragons tend to be using their bones, and nobody likes a grumpy dragon.”

“Where would we find dead dragon bone?”

Jaxon gives me a weird look at my emphasis on the word “dead,” but he answers, “Dragon Boneyard,” at the exact same time that Hudson does—again.

“Dragon Boneyard?” I repeat. “That doesn’t sound terrifying at all.”

“You have no idea,” Hudson says. “I keep trying to figure out how we’ll navigate the boneyard. It’s going to be a disaster.”

“I don’t think I even want to know yet. One problem at a—” I freeze as something occurs to me. “Hey, wait. You really do know what we need to perform the spell.”

“Nothing gets by you.” Hudson gives me a fake, wide-eyed look, then growls, “No shit, Sherlock.”

“You know, you really don’t have to be so intolerable all the time,” I admonish.

“And here I thought you liked intolerable guys. You are dating Jaxy-Waxy, after all.”

“Your brother’s not intolerable,” I tell him, a little offended on Jaxon’s behalf.

“Says the girl who’s known him less than two weeks.”

I ignore him—not because there’s a part of me that thinks he might be right but because I don’t have time for this right now. We have things that need to get done, and they have nothing to do with my and Jaxon’s relationship.

“So we need a bone from a dead dragon and a bloodstone from the vampires,” I tell Jaxon. “We already have something from the alpha werewolf. And the athame of a powerful warlock, courtesy of Hudson, although actually, not sure why we needed that. Wasn’t the warlock thing supposed to be a stone?”

Jaxon’s eyes widen as he realizes where I’m going. “You think that’s what Hudson was doing when he…” He trails off, like even saying the word is too much.

“Body snatched me? It would seem so.”

“The spell only calls for a tooth, though,” Jaxon says. “Why all the excess blood?”

“I already told you Cole’s got an attitude problem,” Hudson answers. “And apparently a chip on his shoulder a mile wide when it comes to you, Grace.”

“Hudson says Cole freaked out and the extra blood was an accident.” I pause, unsure if this next bit sounds like I’m defending him. “Cole and I haven’t exactly had the best relationship since I got to Katmere.”

Jaxon nods. “That’s an understatement. Although did Hudson really have to nearly kill him?”

“Tomato, to-mah-to,” Hudson answers with a negligible little shrug that does nothing to hide the satisfied gleam in his eyes, one that reminds me an awful lot of Jaxon after he, too, nearly drained Cole dry.

I wonder what Hudson—what either of them—would do if I told them that they have way more in common than they could possibly imagine.

Probably scream at the messenger, and who’s got time for that? Especially when Jaxon already looks so tense that I fear he might start shaking the ground at any moment.

So instead, I content myself with saying, “You’re terrible, you know that?” to Hudson before turning back to Jaxon. “So does the athame help?”

“Actually, no,” Jaxon answers, a contemplative look on his face. “The fourth item is a talisman from one of the seven main covens. I’m not sure why he took the athame.”

“Because at the center of the athame’s hilt is a talisman—a moonstone,” Hudson answers in a voice that clearly says how he thinks Jaxon is a child. “You’re welcome.”

“Which you’re going to share the location of immediately.” I don’t even bother to make it a question.

“Of course, Grace.” He gives me the most condescending smile in existence. “How can I resist when you ask so nicely?”

I relay what he said about the talisman to Jaxon and pretend I don’t notice the way my boyfriend’s eyes narrow at the in-his-face knowledge that I’m carrying on a full-blown conversation with Hudson at the same time I’m talking to him.

“The fifth item is near the North Pole,” Jaxon continues with a deliberate sneer on his mouth as he says it—definitely rubbing in the whole “we’re going to make you human and you have no say in it” thing to Hudson. Which, not going to lie, is totally well deserved after everything Hudson did.

“The North Pole? What’s there? I mean, besides Santa’s workshop?”

Jaxon and the Bloodletter both kind of raise eyebrows at that, so I give them a sheepish smile. “Not the right time for levity, huh?”

“I thought it was funny,” Hudson says. “Besides, I bet you’d look cute in one of those tiny little elf costumes with the bells on the toes.”

“Excuse me?” I say, not sure if he’s making fun of how short I am or if he’s implying something lascivious and inappropriate. Either way, I’m really not okay with it.

For once, Hudson is mysteriously silent. The jerk.

“The Unkillable Beast,” the Bloodletter finally answers, and there’s something in the way she says it that has me looking at her more closely. Something that has the hair on the back of my neck standing up and the rest of me trying to figure out just what feels so off about the voice she used.

But her face is impassive, her eyes placid pools of green, so I decide I must have imagined it. And focus instead on what she said and not how she said it. “Unkillable?” I repeat. “That sounds very…not good.”