Leon abruptly climbed to his feet. His Coke nearly went flying, but I managed to catch it before it sloshed all over me. I tensed, waiting for him to yell at me, or maybe even take a swing, but he just stared at me, emotion churning in his eyes, then he turned and stalked out of the diner.

Several other customers watched him go, and slanted not-so-subtle glances at me, trying to guess what the drama had been about. Georgia was one of the spectators, but to my relief Arthur was nowhere to be seen.

Not meeting anyone's eyes, I hurried into the locker room to change out of my uniform. That hadn't gone exactly as I'd hoped. Leon hadn't given me any sign that I'd got through to him, that my words had penetrated the ugly bubble he surrounded himself with. And, after having listened to him, I was convinced that he had nothing to do with the rats. He'd said he didn't want to make an enemy of me and I believed him. Whatever poison Caleb had filled his journal with, it had twisted and blinded and confused Leon, but it hadn't turned him into the sort of person who did sick things to unsuspecting rodents.

And there was dead Brian Rathdon to consider. I stuffed the candy-striped shirt into my locker, and pulled on Alice's white one. There was no doubt that he'd been killed by a vampire - something else that had nothing to do with Leon. Problems were cropping up on all sides, and I didn't know which to tackle first.

I paused, halfway through buttoning up the shirt. What if there was a connection between the rats and the dead man? It was an angle I hadn't considered before, but it was too much of a coincidence that everything would happen at once and not be related in some way. After I'd found Brian's body, we'd debated the likelihood that a new vampire was in town, one who didn't play by the same rules as Luke's clan. One who didn't mind killing humans. But why would some nameless vampire none of us had ever met leave dead rats on our doorstep?

I groaned and put my hands up to my head. Nothing was making any sense. I needed to get home and see if anyone else could make heads or tails of this mess.

To my surprise, Ava was waiting for me outside the diner. She looked brighter than she had the last time we met, some of the worry-lines smoothed from her face. She'd always been an attractive woman, but the hardness of her features sometimes detracted from her looks. Tonight she was softer, and when she smiled at me I was surprised to see a glimmer of myself in her face. It had been a long time since I thought there were any physical similarities between us.

I wondered how long she'd been standing out here. It couldn't have been long otherwise she'd have spotted me with Leon. Any parent would be suspicious of a thirty-something guy hanging around their teenage daughter, but if Ava had seen us, she would have recognised the tension in both our stances and sensed the threat of violence crackling in the air. She'd definitely have asked who Leon was.

I spared a moment to wonder why Noah had never introduced Leon and Ava. Maybe on some level he knew that she was drifting further and further away from him, and so he'd already started cutting her out of things that involved the team. Or maybe he knew that she'd never have agreed with his decision to betray me and the clan. I'd probably never know or understand that man's reasoning.

Ava looked past me and through the Waffle House's front window. "Did you ask for a job?"

In spite of everything else that was happening, I couldn't hold back a grin. "Better than that; I've already worked my first shift."

Her eyes lit up and she made a move towards me like she was going to hug me. Instinctively I stepped back. The smile froze on Ava's face, the light in her eyes dying to shadows.

"Sorry," I muttered, trying to look anywhere but at her. We might have taken those first tentative steps towards rebuilding our relationship, but we definitely weren't at the hugging stage yet. Honestly, I wasn't sure we ever would be. I couldn't remember Ava ever hugging me, not even as a kid.

She waved away my apology, but the troubled look was still in her eyes. "So, do you want to tell me how your first day went?"

She probably wanted to go inside and get another round of milkshakes so we could sit and talk about our day like other mothers and daughters did. It had taken her a long time to get around to it, but she was trying and I couldn't help a slight pang of guilt that I had to brush her off.

"I'm sorry, I can't right now. I have to get home," I said.

Ava's hopeful expression wilted, the second smile of hers I'd killed today, and the guilt kicked up a notch. For years, she'd been an iron presence in my life, quick to dole out commands and punishments, almost as distant and imposing as Noah. The Ava standing in front of me was a completely different person, an uncertain, nervous person, struggling to tackle a problem that she had created and didn't know how to fix. For a fleeting moment there was something of Leon in her face, some inner child trying to reach out to someone across a huge chasm. By refusing to spend time with her today, I felt like I'd kicked her or something.

But it couldn't be helped. Not only did I need to get home so I could tell the others the latest Leon development, I desperately needed to tell them about the rats. It felt like something was stalking the clan from the shadows, but I didn't know who or what it was. Samuel and Elena's interrogation of Dalwick's other local vampires had turned up nothing, but someone had killed Brian. And once I tracked down his killer, I could find out if the same vampire was responsible for the rats, and if they were, what they wanted.

Leon was a prominent problem in my life, but I couldn't focus all my energy on him, not when another threat lurked in the shadows.

"I'm sorry, Ava, but it's important. I'll give you a call later in the week, okay?"

She nodded.

I took off running, stopping only once to glance back at her. Ava watched me go, a lonely figure standing in the puddle of light spilling out of the Waffle House window. This new uncertainty didn't just stem from her trying to reconnect with me, I realised. Ava was from a vampire hunting family. She'd grown up surrounded by other hunters, and when she married Noah and met Marc, she'd fallen straight into her own hunting team. Then I'd come along, Ethan had been rescued, and Sophie and Clara had joined the team. Although Ava had taken great pains to distance herself from emotional things like family bonds, there was no denying that she'd always been surrounded by a family of sorts.

Now she wasn't.

Sophie was dead. Ethan and I had left to join a vampire clan. What remained of the team was fractured, falling apart. Ava's relationship with Noah was in tatters, to the point that she was actually thinking about leaving him. I was betting that Ava had never been so alone in her life. She was reaching out to me, not only because she wanted to as my mother, but because she was afraid of being alone. She was afraid that if she left Noah and left the team, that door would slam shut and she'd be lost in the world by herself. I couldn't blame her for desperately trying to find some human comfort.

I wanted to try and make our relationship work, but that didn't mean I would just drop my new life with the clan to spend time with her, nor would I just forget that, thanks in part to her, I'd had a terrible childhood and a terrible life up until the point I left the team. I couldn't forget all the times I'd needed a mother to talk to and she wasn't there. I couldn't forget all the times I'd cried alone as a little girl, desperately wishing that she'd hug me or play games with me, or just look at me with something other than coldness in her eyes.

Shaking my head, I pushed Ava to the back of my mind, and picked up the pace, the wind teasing my hair from its ponytail. Much as I felt for her, Ava's personal anguish wasn't as serious or as important as the threat that seemed to be creeping closer to my family.

"Dead rats?" Riley echoed, pulling a face.

I hadn't been surprised to get home and find her already there. Now that her relationship with Ethan was exposed, they were acting like a proper couple, and I had the feeling she'd be coming around a lot more often. And no one pointed out that, as neither an ex-hunter nor a vampire, she technically didn't have a stake in this problem. She was my best friend and Ethan's girlfriend, and that made her as involved as anyone else.

I nodded. "When I saw the first two, I thought that ginger tom had left them, but this morning? No way."

"Are you sure?" Ethan persisted, resting his elbows on the kitchen table so he could lean forward.

I couldn't help rolling my eyes. "It was pinned to the front door with a metal spike, Ethan. How much more sure do you need me to be?"

He didn't answer, but something passed through his eyes that could have been anger, sorrow, or a combination of both. I could empathise. When Ethan and I joined the clan, we thought we'd left all this behind us. Caleb and Madeleine were dead, and we'd finally found the strength to throw off Noah's chains for good. We'd both thought the clan represented a new life for us, yet here we were, under threat again. I could hardly blame Ethan for wanting me to be wrong about the rats.

"I don't understand." Riley's lip trembled. "Why would someone do that to a poor rat?"

"Poor three rats," I pointed out, although my concern really wasn't with the rodent victims.

Luke hadn't said a word throughout the whole discussion, and I glanced at him, trying to gauge his reaction. He stared down at the table, one hand idly tracing the grains and whorls of wood. He was very still, his gaze carefully blank, but I could sense the tension coiled beneath his skin. Luke was angry. Like me, like Ethan, he'd thought we were past this. He'd thought we were all free to live our lives the way we wanted to, without anyone else getting in the way. I should have known it would never be that easy for us. We'd had a month of peace, a month of bliss, and now the shadows were rising around us again.

"Luke?" I prompted, wanting to hear his thoughts on the matter.

He breathed out a long sigh. "I think you're right. Leon doesn't have anything to do with the rats."

He was the only other person in the room who'd actually met Leon, and his words added weight to my own conviction.

Elena crossed the room from where she'd been heating bagged blood in the microwave. She placed a filled mug in front of Luke, and handed another to Samuel, who was leaning against the nearest wall, letting us teenagers hog the table.

As Luke raised the mug to his lips, I found myself stealing a nervous glance at Riley. She'd been amazingly accepting when she found that not only were vampires real, my boyfriend actually was one, but she'd never seen him do anything really vampire-y, like drink blood.

I shouldn't have worried. Riley didn't bat an eyelid.

"But if Leon didn't do it, who did? And who killed Brian Rathdon?" Samuel asked. He stared into the contents of his own mug, but didn't raise it to his lips.

Guilt pricked at me. I'd been so busy throwing a pity-party for me and Luke and Ethan, bemoaning the fact that our lives had been disrupted by another crazed enemy, that I hadn't spared much thought for how Samuel and Elena would be affected by this. Whatever this threat was, it was a danger to them too. And even if it wasn't - Luke was their son. What affected him, affected them.

I helplessly shrugged. "That's what I can't work out. You're sure none of the local vampires have seen or heard anything?"

Samuel shook his head, his eyes grave. "We asked around all our friends and acquaintances, and even asked them to make their own inquiries, but no one seems to know a thing. If a new vampire is here, they're keeping low to the ground."

"We still don't know that there is a new vampire in town," Elena said. She took up position next to Samuel, her smaller body fitting neatly against his. "I know an innocent man has been killed, but -" She broke off, wincing. "I hate to even suggest it, but what if someone we know is responsible?" She tilted her face towards Samuel, and I realised the question was for him.

"The same thought had occurred to me," he admitted. "But I can't believe it. The whole reason we settled in Dalwick is because it's a quiet, peaceful town. The vampires here don't prey on humans, which means there's no need for hunters to come sniffing around."

A grimace twisted my lip. When he'd moved the clan to Dalwick, Samuel hadn't realised that hunters would follow soon after - my family.

"I don't know that I believe it either, but I do think we need to consider the possibility," Elena said.

I drummed my fingers on the table. My nails were too short to make any noise, but the beat of my fingertips got everyone's attention. "Could any of your friends have slipped up and killed someone? Maybe. I don't know them so I can't say. But would any of them be so stupid as to slip up and then leave the body where anyone can find it, knowing that a hunter would recognise it as a vampire kill? Would any of them be so twisted as to impale a rat and pin it to our door? Why would anyone do that?"

Samuel had started to raise his mug of blood to his lips, but he lowered it again with a sigh. "She's right," he said to his wife. "No one we know is that stupid, and there's no reason for any of them to have some sort of vendetta against us."

Elena nodded, her eyes dark and troubled. She nibbled fretfully on her lower lip.

"What if the rats don't have anything to do with some mystery vamp?" Riley said. Her hands were flat on the table and I noticed that she'd painted her nails purple to match her Doc Martens and the streaks in her hair. "What if this is just some sick kid's idea of a joke?"

The look in her eyes suggested that she knew exactly how lame that sounded.

Luke and I shook our heads at the same time. "It's too coincidental," Luke said.

I'd been about to say the exact same thing. If the situation hadn't been so grave, I'd have laughed at the possibility that we were turning into one of those couples who always seemed to know what the other was thinking.

"The rats started turning up just after I found Brian's body. I'm not going to pretend there isn't some sort of link," I said. And something else had occurred to me, something that filled my stomach with ice. "I'm starting to think that my finding Brian wasn't accidental."

Luke shifted in his seat, looking at me with a frown. I didn't need to meet his eyes to know they had darkened, turning thunder-cloud grey. "What do you mean?"

"Dalwick's a small town, but it's not that small. Anyone could have found Brian's body, but I did." I jabbed a thumb at my own chest. "You want to talk coincidence? Doesn't it seem more than a little convenient that the ex-hunter turned vampire supporter was the one who happened to find this mysterious vampire kill?"

Tension crackled through the kitchen as the clan considered my words.

"What if someone wanted me to find it?" I continued. "What if someone deliberately killed that man and left his body on my run path so I'd be the one to find him?"

"But why would someone do that?" Riley said.

"The same reason they'd do this thing with the rats." I pressed my palms flat on the table, as if I could draw strength from the wood. "I think it's some sort of warning. I don't know what it means and I don't know who's behind it, but I've just got this terrible feeling that something is watching us." I stared around the table, my eyes boring into each face in turn. "Something is threatening us."

Luke gripped my hand. "Or threatening you," he murmured, his voice tight with fear.

"And whoever this person is," I said, "they appear to have the upper hand." A chill shot through me as I looked around at the walls of the kitchen, the familiar room that I was growing to love, but now no longer felt as safe as it had when I'd first joined the clan. "They know where we live."