lood traitor!" Mimi hissed.

"Put down your weapon, Azrael," Kingsley said quietly, still holding his own.

"You will not find me such easy prey as the others," she spat.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded. "I saw the black smoke from the street. My God, what has happened here?"

"You set this up. Don't play the innocent. We all know what you really are, Croatan." Mimi spat, shooting him a look of pure disgust.

"I realize it is hard for you to believe, but I have only just managed to escape from a rather nasty stasis spell myself," he said sourly. "I went to pick up Alfonso for our usual golf game, and the next thing I know I'm trapped in the back of my own car. As soon as I extricated myself I came down here to warn the others."

Mimi sniffed. A fine story Kingsley was telling her. Playing the victim once again. Yeah, right, he'd been detained. When it would have been so easy for him to leave the house from the back and come in the front door.

But what would he gain by keeping her alive? Why didn't he just finish it off? Gut her throat and be done with it?

"Where's Lawrence?" Kingsley coughed as several explosions shook the ground beneath them. "I tried sending him a message, but I couldn't find him in the glom."

"He's not here," Mimi said, noticing that Kingsley had lowered his dagger. She could kill him now, while he was unguarded. But what if he was telling the truth? Or was his act just another part of the trap?

Before she could make a decision, there was a crash, and Forsyth Llewellyn appeared. He was carrying the limp body of his wife. His clothes were singed, and he sported a deep gash on his forehead. So he had survived as well. Mimi felt a little better. Maybe there were more survivors. But where had the Silver Bloods gone? After she had felled Nan Cutler, the rest of them seemed to have disappeared in the smoke.

"Everyone else is dead," Mimi told Forsyth. "You and I are the only ones left. I saw Edmund fall, Dashiell, Cushing...everyone. The Regent."

"Nan's dead?" Forsyth Llewellyn asked, aghast.

"She was one of them," Mimi told him, her eyes watering from the smoke. "I killed her myself."

"You..."

"C'mon, we've got to get out of here," Kingsley said, suddenly pulling the two of them out of the doorway, which crashed to the ground in flames.

If Kingsley wanted her dead, he sure wasn't acting like it.

"Thanks," she said, tucking her sword - again the size of a needle - back into her bag, which she miraculously found she was still holding.

Kingsley didn't reply, his face hardening as he looked above her shoulder. Meanwhile, Forsyth Llewellyn looked utterly lost, sitting in the middle of the street with his head in his hands.

Mimi turned to where Kingsley was looking. The grand eighteenth-century villa was now a giant black fireball. It was a crematorium. The Silver Bloods were back. And they had struck deep into the heart of the Coven.

The Second Great War had begun.