Overbite by Meg Cabot

morning that David’s wife was missing, when his mother called me to ask where he was. Now I know it must have been his wife’s death I was sensing, not David’s . . .”
    “No worries,” Abraham said lightly. “Most newly infected vampires do return to their homes within the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours of awakening in their transformed bodies, if they aren’t immediately provided with food. I ordered an extermination team to be assembled and dispatched from headquarters to David’s home the moment you phoned, Meena. We’re meeting them there now, while the Delmonicos are occupied at the police station. With any luck, we should have the wife taken care of by this afternoon.”
    Taken care of . She knew what that meant. Tears prickled Meena’s nose. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. All this crying was so pointless. She lifted her wrist to dab at her eyes.
    “We’re going to David’s house?” she asked.
    Abraham glanced at her questioningly in the rearview mirror. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”
    “Oh,” she said quickly, “it’s fine.”
    It wasn’t fine. She did not want to see Brianna Delmonico taken care of. And she definitely did not want to see where David Delmonico had lived—and had presumably once been happy, before she’d staked him. She just wanted to go home, get back into bed, and go to sleep.
    Only she couldn’t even do that, because then she’d dream of Lucien.
    “Good,” Abraham said with a smile. “The two of you know what this means, don’t you?”
    “It means that the Dracul are back, and still want Meena’s blood,” Alaric said darkly.
    Meena inhaled to protest that this was not what it meant it all, but Abraham beat her to it.
    “On the contrary,” he said. “This whole attack smacks of an amateurism that I would think the Dracul—if they were still around, which I do not believe—would consider beneath them.”
    “Exactly,” Meena said. “And though I know you’ve never believed me about this, the Dracul were forbidden to murder their prey, unless they intended to turn them into one of their own kind. And David definitely wanted to kill me.”
    “I don’t know,” Alaric said skeptically. “Tricking the victim into a false sense of security by turning a former lover into one of them seems exactly like something a Dracul would do, if you ask me.”
    “But attacking Meena?” Abraham shook his head. “No, no. Think of the anger—the retribution—the prince rained down upon his own clan for hurting Meena the last time. That was truly a fearsome display of aggression. Only a clan that didn’t witness—or hear about—it would dare risk Lucien Antonescu’s wrath in such a way again . . . not after what he did to his own minions.”
    “True,” Alaric said. Meena noticed that Alaric, who still had his elbow out the window, as usual, had turned the side-view mirror to point at her. She saw that he was staring at her neck. She looked away.
    “But the prince doesn’t seem to be around,” Alaric went on. “So he’s hardly likely to be raining down much of anything on anyone these days.”
    “Which makes this an exciting development,” Abraham said. Then, with a nervous glance at Meena, he added, “Er, apart from the tragedy that a young mother is missing and could be a demon, and the death of Meena’s friend. But it means a completely new and different clan may be moving into the Dracul’s former North American territory. We’ve theorized, of course, that this was likely to happen, because the eradication of the Dracul here and in Europe has left ample feeding grounds ripe for the taking . . . particularly since Lucien Antonescu seems truly to be gone. It was really just a matter of time—and which clan. Personally, I felt the Aswang from the Philippines would be most likely to take hold—”
    Alaric shook his head. “Not likely. You know they don’t like the cold.”
    “But,” Abraham said, “it’s still summer.