Samuel, Elena, and Luke were waiting on the front lawn when we got back, and, to my utter disbelief, Ava stood with them. Luke's eyes blazed when he saw my bloody lip and bruised chin, but even as he hurried towards me, I was looking over his shoulder. The shock of seeing Ava standing alongside the vampires almost made me lose my balance and face-plant the ground.

"What are you doing here?" I blurted out.

"She wants to help, Kiara," Elena said. "And she might have found something."

Wait, the lead was Ava's?

My gaze moved to my mother and she stared tentatively back, as if unsure of her welcome. I suppose I couldn't blame her for being uncertain, considering the last time I saw her, I as good as accused her of selling us out. But this wasn't the time for us to hash out our own issues.

"What have you found?" I said.

"When I heard about Riley, I started doing some digging of my own. I guessed you'd already have checked Caleb's bungalow and found nothing, but that's not his only property. He's got a small lodge just outside Dalwick," Ava said.

Hope surged in my chest. "How do you know that?"

Ava held something aloft and I recognised Caleb's leather-bound journal. "I stole this from Caleb's house." She flicked through the pages and stabbed her finger at something. "Here. He writes about his secret lodge outside town, his retreat in case his enemies ever found where he lived."

Noah was right. Caleb would never really have given up hunting. Luke tensed at my side; he must have been thinking the same thing.

"Leon told you he read his father's journal, which means he also knows about the lodge," Ava said. Her eyes gleamed with triumph. "If Riley is anywhere, she's here." She jabbed her finger at the page again.

I could have hugged her. And I could have kicked myself for not looking in the journal in the first place.

"Is there an address?" Ethan asked.

"Just a road name," Ava said. "I've –" She stopped and cleared her throat, looking almost sheepish. "I've already got us a car."

The awkward way she said it, coupled with the look on her face led me to surmise that by 'got us a car' she meant she'd stolen one.

I felt oddly proud of her. I'd stolen Caleb's car once, and I'd always thought my parents would kill me if they knew. Now I wondered if I didn't get my rash side from Ava, which was weird because I wasn't used to thinking of us as having anything in common.

"Come on then, let's go," Ethan said, jumping up and down on the balls of his feet.

Samuel opened his mouth but Elena touched his arm and shook her head. He looked down at her, another moment of wordless communication passing between them. Elena met my eyes and nodded ever so slightly in Ava's direction, her face earnest. Suddenly I understood. Samuel had been going to offer to help, but Elena felt that Ava should go instead of them. She knew that Ava and I were trying to build a relationship, but she also knew that it was still in the rocky, early stages. Elena was the woman who'd taken me in, essentially a replacement mother, and she thought it would be good for me to do this with my real mother.

I flashed her a grateful smile.

"Come on, already," Ethan cried.

Probably the only thing that had kept him rushing off as I had done was that he didn't know where Ava had stashed the stolen car. She wasn't stupid enough to bring it to the clan's house.

As we turned to go, Luke whispered in my ear, "As soon as this is done, I hope you're going to tell me what happened to you." He traced a finger along my jaw-line, stopping just shy of the bruise from Rachel's fist. Worry turned his eyes the colour of storm-clouds, but there was no time to fuss over minor injuries.

I nodded. When Riley was safely back with us, I'd spell out every single detail of my fight with Rachel.

Ava had parked the stolen car – a silver Honda Civic – three streets over, tucked neatly into a gap between two detached houses. Anyone passing by would just think it belonged to the occupants of one of the houses.

"We don't have much time," Ava said, opening the driver's door and climbing in. "The minute the owners realise their car is missing, they'll call the police. We do not want to be caught in a stolen car."

Clara climbed into the front beside Ava, and I sat in the back, wedged between Luke and Ethan. Ethan's right leg bounced up and down, an impatient, frustrated, desperate rhythm. He kept jolting me in the process, but I didn't say anything. I knew how scared he was.

Ava backed up and pulled the car out of the little parking space. "Don't ask me to break the speed limit," she warned, looking back at Ethan. "It won't get us to Riley faster if we get pulled over for speeding."

Especially not since we were driving a stolen car.

It took us half an hour to leave Dalwick in the rear-view mirror. Deep into the English countryside, the road thinned to a winding black ribbon, fringed on all sides by wild hedges and open swathes of meadowland. The sky looked impossibly huge overhead, an endless stretch of black pierced sporadically by stars.

Ava said we were looking for a left turn between two oak trees, but it turned out to be such a tiny road that we drove straight past and had to double back on ourselves. The trees in question were overgrown, their branches drooping under the weight of their leaves. It would be hard enough to spot the turning when it was daytime; at night it was nearly impossible.

The car crawled down the country lane at an agonisingly slow pace. Ethan's leg bounced even harder, and I thought he was probably on the verge of throwing open the door and going the rest of the way on foot. But frustrating though our slow pace was, Ava had to be cautious. Even with the headlights on, the darkness seemed near impenetrable. Hedgerows and trees crowded around us, overgrown branches scraping along the paintwork. I sent a silent apology to whoever this car belonged to. Once we were done with it, Ava would leave it somewhere easily spottable so it would, eventually, be returned to the owners, but there wasn't much we could do about the damage we were causing.

Clara leaned forward, planting her hands on the dashboard. "Is that it?"

I squinted through the windscreen at the barely discernible blob of shape up ahead. At first I wasn't sure it wasn't just another shadow, but then the car got closer and the headlights washed over wooden walls and the sharp edges of a roof.

Luke and I exchanged a wordless look, and he held my hand. Riley had to be here. We hadn't found her at Caleb's. Ethan's flimsy lead with the two empty houses had fallen through. If this fell through, we had nothing. And I was scared of what Ethan would do if that happened – scared of what he'd do to Leon. Clara was the one who'd dealt with the physically nasty side of trying to get Leon to talk, but looking at Ethan now, the tight coil of his muscles, the muscle ticking in his jaw, the black, bleak look in his eyes, I could him imagine him descending into a very dark place if it meant saving Riley. My fear was that if he did go into that dark place, we might not get him out again.

The lane came to an end, but Ava kept driving. The car jolted over uneven ground, and I was thankful for my seatbelt, though my teeth knocked together with every dip and bump. Finally we pulled up outside the lodge and Ava killed the engine.

Ethan threw open the door and started running. "Riley?" he cried. "Riley!" His voice echoed back to him until it sounded like the woods themselves were mocking his desperation.

I scrambled out of the car, Luke following me. Clara was more cautious, scrutinising the lodge and the surrounding woodland.

It was a small building constructed of half-logs, and featuring two windows on either side of the door and one just above it. A small chimney jutted from the sloping roof but it was ivy-choked and looked disused. I doubted even Caleb had been out here in a long time.

Ethan drew back his fist to punch through one of the windows, and Luke blurred past me to stop him. "Let me," he said.

He delivered a powerful kick to the front door. It was sturdy enough that even Luke's vampire strength only made it shudder. He kicked it again, harder, and then again until the lock smashed and the door, grudgingly, swung open.

Ethan almost knocked me over as he charged inside.

Clara strode up and handed me a knife. I hadn't realised she was armed, but it didn't surprise me. She always had been very good at concealing blades on her body. "Just in case," she said. "This whole time we've been assuming that Leon's acting alone, but it's better not to take chances."

Taking the knife, I stepped through the open doorway.

A musty smell hit me, dust and age and cobwebs huffing up my nostrils and making me sneeze. The room we were in was almost completely empty, just a tiny fireplace, and a folded blanket and pillow in the corner of a floor speckled with mouse droppings. Caleb never had been one for luxuries.

"Spread out," Clara said. "Check every room." She leaned back through the front door and pointed at Ava. "Stay out here and keep watch. I don't want any surprises creeping up on us."

Clara hadn't been the one to issue orders back when we were all working on the same team, but Ava didn't question her. She nodded and took up position in front of the car.

Ethan had already disappeared through a door at the back of the room and was rampaging through whatever lay beyond, so I headed up the tiny staircase tucked into the left corner. Luke followed me, the steps creaking under our feet.

There was only one room at the top of the stairs and it was completely empty. Moonlight filtered through the single cobwebby window and highlighted the dust that had settled in a thick film across the board floor. There was no sign that anyone had disturbed that dust for a very long time. The air was stale and dry.

Despair crashed into me and I reeled back, falling against Luke's chest. "She was supposed to be here," I whispered.

When we'd pulled up to the lodge, I'd truly believed that we would find her. We'd failed twice before, but the third time would prove lucky. Only it hadn't. Our last lead had turned out to be nothing but smoke in the wind, and now we had nothing.

Luke took a few steps into the room, but there was no point. There were no doors, no hidden hatches, nowhere that a human being could possibly be hiding.

Useless tears gathered in my eyes. "It's not fair," I whispered, and I hated myself for saying something so childish, but it was true. Riley was a good person and she didn't deserve this. This was my world, not hers, and if there was anyone that Leon kidnapped, it should have been me. I was stronger than Riley; I could take whatever Leon wanted to give.

A cry of helpless rage drifted up from the room below us as Ethan came to the same realisation.

I fought out of the despair that was threatening to drown me. Yes, we'd hit another dead-end, but we couldn't give up now. I'd search every nook and cranny in Dalwick if I had to. I'd beat the information out of Leon. I'd –

"Kiara," Luke said, and there was a sharp, urgent quality to his voice. "Look." He was standing by the window, peering out.

I joined him, even though all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and scream with misery and frustration. Brushing the cobwebs away, I peered through the window.

Moonlight reflected dully off a corrugated steel roof sitting atop a small structure a few metres from the house. From the ground floor, we'd never have seen it – it was too well concealed among trees and shadows.

"It's an outhouse," I realised, and fresh hope poured through me.

I ran for the stairs, Luke close behind.

Outside, Ava still stood by the car. Alarm showed in her eyes as we rushed out of the door, but I didn't stop to explain. I felt like a hunting animal finally bringing a quarry to ground, and nothing would sway me from that.

We reached the outhouse – hard to find even after we'd calculated its position from inside the house – and Luke tore the door from its hinges.

My heart stopped.