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“Luca’s a big boy,” she answers. “But yes, it could. And Minnie’s working on some stuff. In the meantime, maybe try not to firebomb the whole of Manhattan?”

“I make no promises,” I answer, finding Pietro outside. He’s on his crutches but moving from one leg to the other, his version of a nervous tic, like he can’t stay still. He meets my eyes, then looks away again quickly. He’s never quite gotten over his own shame at what our grandfather convinced him to try and do to me. I don’t suppose he ever will, and I’m good with that. I love him, and I might forgive him, but I will never, ever forget. Some things simply never leave you, and your own brother pumped on Viagra and about to rape you is one of them.

“We need to talk, sis,” he says, his voice low and urgent.

“So talk, bro. What is it?”

He waves one of the phones in front of my face. “Did you look at these? Any of them?”

“No. We didn’t really have time. It was a little busy out there, dealing with mass murder and whatnot. Why, what have you found?”

He gulps, sucks in air. “The app. The game they told you about? It’s called Serena. I don’t think it can be a coincidence, do you?”

I’m suddenly nauseous, like I’ve been punched in the gut. My hands fly to my belly, and I breathe slowly to calm myself. My amulet flares, and I know the danger it feels comes from me—from the panic, the sense of dread, the horror that name triggers. The utter grief and desolation from losing her.

Serena. My dead twin sister. My other half, my best friend, the girl I shared more than a womb with. Serena, who should have been alive right now, who died in my place. She was a pure heart, a sweet soul, gentle and kind and good, and now her name is being used on a game that encourages monsters to slaughter the innocent?

A coincidence? I don’t fucking think so.

Chapter 10

Rosa

We’re in one of the meeting rooms, all the usual suspects plus Aidan Flynn. I still haven’t got a handle on him. He’s cute and charming and somehow still has a hint of Ireland in his voice, despite living here for centuries, since he was transformed in fact. All the Coscas take in outsiders to provide council, something to do with fresh eyes and being unburdened by family history. New vamp, brought here at their second birth, trained in the ways of the organization. Not all make it, I’m told, which isn’t surprising. It’s a tough gig, advising psychopaths. Aidan was exiled by Vincenzo for daring to offer views that clashed with his plans, and I guess he was lucky it was just exile and not, you know, staked at dawn and beheaded.

Tables and chairs are scattered around, and Pietro has screens and keyboards set up. Someone has been in and brought a variety of refreshments—jelly claw donuts, coffee, bottled water, blood bags at room temperature. Interesting company I keep these days.

I’m perched on the edge of a table, jittery to the point of no return. I don’t need the damn coffee; that much is for sure. Pietro has been talking a while, explaining the way the app and the game work. It’s taken forever while we all asked questions, requested translations into non-computer genius language, and for him to cast the pages up onto the screen. Serena. It’s right there, in big, bold letters. A medieval kind of font, black, dripping with cartoon blood against a dark background. Garish, vulgar, exactly the kind of thing that would appeal to your common or garden-variety of dickhead vamp.

“Is it him?” I ask, once Pietro winds up his latest speech. “That’s all I want to know. Is it him?”

My brother shakes his head, looking annoyed. I’m not sure if it’s with himself or at having to school a room full of ancient creatures on the latest innovations in technology. “I don’t know for sure, but I’d say yes. He doesn’t have the skills to set this up himself, but you know him, he has the skills to find the right people for the job. He fooled me before.”

Bitterness creeps into his voice. Pietro, like my grandfather, Tomasso—a.k.a. the Grand Ball Sack—is a Maker. They are practical, creative, productive. World-class logisticians, perfect planners, capable of generating great art, scientific breakthroughs, making shit tons of cash, and yes, cutting-edge tech. That was always my brother’s area, and he was the Grand Ball Sack’s go-to guy until he changed sides and was promptly replaced. Pietro always believed Tomasso was too old and too set in his ways to fully embrace the modern world, but yet again, he’s been proved wrong. He might not have come up with the code or the algorithms or whatever the fuck you need to create an app, but the idea? That’s pure Grand Ball Sack, right there. Manipulative, clever, vicious.

“Why?” says Luca from his spot on one of the couches. He’s freshly shaved, hair damp from the shower, his black shirt clinging to the hard outline of his muscled arms. Even in my current distressed state, I can’t help but admire him. “What is he hoping to gain here?”

“It’s hard to figure out the motives of a mad man,” Pietro replies. “He was crazy by the end, planning world domination, the usual shit. He wanted to be the only Vecchissime left standing, controlling the only Seer. Plus, he planned an alliance with Vincenzo to take over the other Coscas too. I think we all know how that would have ended. It was only a matter of time before one of them would have offed the other and taken over the whole shebang. None of that worked out how he wanted, but he’s not the kind of man who accepts defeat. He doesn’t give up. He’s fucking relentless when he wants something …”

Luca’s face twists with contempt, and I look away. I can’t deal with that right now. I know what he’s thinking about, and I can’t get distracted by it. Relentless, yes. Also, morally bankrupt, cunning, ruthless, and all-round evil. We always knew he wouldn’t just slink off into the sunset and lick his wounds, but using my sister’s name like this? It’s low even for him.

“He’s baiting me,” I say, before they can start bickering. “It’s not just the name, that’s simply his way of saying hello, letting us know he’s responsible. That he’s still out there. It’s the game itself. This whole league table bullshit …”

I gesture at the screen, at the list of team names. Fucking team names, like this is an actual sport or a fantasy football league. The leaders are calling themselves the Laughing Hyenas, and they have over three hundred mice. That means they’ve killed over three hundred innocents and provided pictures of their “mice” as proof. It’s sickening, stomach turning, especially the little graphic that has cute animated rodents running around the screen, all big eyes and twitching whiskers, until they get exploded in a pop of blood. Three fucking hundred, all to top some online competition? I wonder what Howie’s crew were called. They’d have topped the charts if they’d ever managed to upload their photos, log in with their victory—the slaughter of an entire town. I have a moment of petty satisfaction that they were cheated of that at least.

“He wants me out in the open,” I continue. “And he’s found a way to tap into the kind of vamp dregs that would do this without even thinking about it. He knows the kind of carnage we saw in Goliath would trigger the Call. Remember how he undermined us the first time? Using the likes of Kurt to constantly ensure we had visions, that Donna and Paola and I were exhausted?”

Donna’s eyes narrow. She is close to Paola, the third current Vecchissime Seer, and was devastated when she was attacked, losing her baby and ending up in a coma. I know she’s out of it now, recovering, safe while she rebuilds her strength. Knowing Paola, she’s probably very fucking angry as well.

“I don’t think it’s just that,” Donna says to the group. “I think it’s also a power play. Anna Lombardi. He had her killed, and everybody assumed it was a vamp, right? The Vecchissime families were furious, the vamps were on the offense, we were on the verge of all-out war? Until …”

“Until Tomasso Capelli stepped in to be the hero of the hour. The elder statesman, the peacemaker, the man who made it all right. It gave him huge status, huge power.”

She nods, does a little shrug. “He wanted a way into the Coscas, to steal their power. Now, he could be trying to essentially build his own. But hey, what do I know? I’m just little old me …”

The whole room erupts into much-needed laughter, and she pretends to be hurt by the reaction. Donatella loves to play the airhead, but we all know that role is a million miles away from the truth. I think about what she’s said, look at Luca. He nods. I can see he agrees.

“It fits,” Pietro says. “It gets you dragged into the light, so he can … well, whatever. It gives him a way to manipulate the less, uh, organized vamps into something dangerous and threatening. He’s the puppet master pulling their strings, using them as a weapon. As Donna says, creating his own Cosca basically. One based on chaos. He thrives on chaos, because that means he can step in and take charge of it. I wonder …”