My excitement had to be put under control, because I could barely focus over the fluttering of my heart. Once again, I didn't share Ian's phone call with anyone, they already looked at me like I was some lame, infatuated school girl.

I wasn't far off, though.

The next day, we've begun extensive vampling training. William was by far the best instructor one could get, way better than Thomas or me. He had patience of an old man, and he didn't mind smacking the shit out of them if they refused to listen. He was a firm believer in hitting your children. The vamplings were afraid of him, so they listened and obeyed.

I wondered if he was an army general in some other life.

Caiden was cooped up in his room, hacking the Sacred Order. Sheila's return made sense to me, especially after she's somewhat explained it, because she didn't look like she was enjoying her life on campus, but Caiden was a mystery.

Why did he return? Was he truly so bored?

It was also extremely strange having him in my house. It almost felt like we were back on campus, two kids living in the same building, visiting each other between classes.

I knocked on his door.

"Come in."

He took one of the studies the previous owners constructed. It was much smaller than mine, but equally filled with books and a large, oak table. Thomas dragged a single bed into the room, which now took all the remaining space. Caiden truly looked like a shady hacker inside the dark room.

"You okay in here?" I asked.

Caiden was facing his not one, not two, but three screens, hitting the keyboard like a lunatic.

"A little hungry, but fine."

"William and Pamela are making barbeque." I said. "It'll be ready in half an hour."

Caiden faced me with a frown, "I hope it's regular meat."

I chuckled, "Yes, it's regular meat. We still eat food, you know? As long as we drink blood, we pretty much function just like humans."

"Extra strong and fast humans." Caiden murmured.

"True." I nodded. "Do you want a tour of the house before dinner?"

Caiden glanced at his screen and rubbed his eyes, "Sure. My eyes are beginning to hurt from staring at the screen."

"Cai..."

He stopped mid-standing up and looked at me, "Yes?"

"Does Angie know you're here?" I asked quietly.

Just as usual, Angie has been posting flower photographs on Instagram, nothing has changed since Caiden came here, but I felt weirdly bad, like I was the reason he wasn't spending the week with his girlfriend.

"Does she know I'm spending some time with you after two years? Yes." Caiden grinned. "Does she know I'm helping you take down an army of vampires? Not really."

I chuckled, "As long as she knows you're here."

"She doesn't hate you, Chloe." He sighed. "She's the one who pushed me to reach out to you after everything that's happened, but I... I don't know, I was ashamed and I thought you didn't want to hear from me."

"You know I'm glad you're here." I looked at my feet. "And I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but what are you doing here?"

Caiden spun in his chair and shrugged, "The Sacred Order murdered my parents. If there's anything I can do to help stop them, I'll do it."

"Fair enough." I nodded.

There was something else that required an explanation.

"Hey, do you know what's going on with Sheila?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.

Going behind her back like this felt wrong, but I still felt uncomfortable asking her whether she was sick or something like that. I needed to know what I was up against before I intervened.

Caiden sighed, "Honestly, I don't know. She was fine at first, but then she began alienating from everyone and everything. I've tried to talk to her a couple of times, but she kept pushing me away, telling me it's nothing I can help with. So I recommended my therapist who really helped me work through everything."

I squinted, "You've talked to your therapist about what happened?"

He grinned, "Well, I had to leave out the fact they were vampires, but trauma is trauma. You know, feelings of helplessness, mortality and all that shit."

"Do you think that's what's going on with her?" I asked. "She's traumatized?"

"That she definitely is, but I don't think that's all." Caiden said. "I think she misses you a lot, and, don't take this the wrong way, but being around you sort of feels like being endangered all the time. I think that's messing her up, missing being endangered."

"But you're here now." I murmured. "Doesn't that kind of mean you're purposely endangering yourself, too?"

"Yes, but I have an agenda." Caiden shrugged. "I want to help you because I want you to defeat the Sacred Order. I'll gladly put myself in harm's way for a few weeks if it means I'll get to avenge my parents, but she doesn't have that sort of motivation."

"So... does that mean you won't hang out with me anymore once we defeat the vamps?" I asked, obviously very confident for someone who pretended ten immature vamplings were an intimidating army.

Caiden stood up and approached me, "Of course I'll still hang out with you from time to time. I missed you, Chloe, but... not in the way I've missed you before. I don't want to be with you anymore."

I nodded, "I know."

"But I think Sheila misses William." Caiden said. "And I think it's messing her up."

"That makes sense." I mumbled. "Gosh, I wish being my friend wasn't so damn complicated."

Caiden hugged me suddenly.

Warmth flooded my belly and I put my arms around him.

"Being your friend was always complicated." He whispered and pulled away from me. "How about that tour?"

I smiled, "Sure."

Thomas and Sheila joined us on our tour through the house. On the third floor, we had a bunch of guestrooms and bathrooms. The second floor was reserved for studies and libraries, as well as mine and Thomas's bedroom. The first floor was where the kitchen, the living room, the laundry and storage rooms, and the large, ornate dining room were.

The basement was where the magic happened.

The steel entrance to the basement was hidden behind a bookshelf at the end of the hallway. Usually, an eye-identification was needed to enter, but we mostly kept it open when there wasn't any danger around.

Thomas led us down the wooden staircase, "Here we have the gym, the sauna and the bowling alley."

"You have a bowling alley?" Caiden narrowed his eyes. "How much did this cost?"

"Thomas insisted on putting in the bowling alley." I said. "I wanted an indoor pool, but Thomas said I was a vampire and therefore capable of swimming outside in the middle of winter."

"You don't need two pools." He murmured.

"There's also a lounge bar." I squeaked and jumped to the first wooden door in the long hallway. "It's connected to the outdoor pool and the terrace. We play chess there."

"We haven't played chess once." Thomas said. "Chloe mostly drinks alone here and sulks."

The room opened up in front of us; a dark, dim area with long, sleek leather couches, a neon-lit bar filled with liquor bottles, a pool table and the chess table. The sliding glass door connected it to the second outdoor terrace, a level lower than the rest of the house.

"Can we use this sometimes?" Caiden's widened eyes took in the room. "This is so cool."

"Anytime you want." I closed the door. "Let's go to the wine cellar!"

"No, the armoury, first." Thomas shook his head. "The armoury is the sole reason why we've looked for a house with a basement."

"Uh, I think you may have confused the weapons room with a winery." I put my hand on my hip. "We only needed the basement for the wine cellar."

Caiden grinned, "So... which one of you does the laundry?"

Thomas pointed at me and I pointed at him at the same time.

He grunted, "You haven't done the laundry?"

"It was your turn this week!"

"Alright, moving on." Caiden laughed. "Show me the weapons room."

Thomas led the way to the two locked steel doors. While the lounge bar and the wine cellar had regular, wooden entrances, these were coated in steel with a high level of security. Thomas put his finger on the scanner and the door slid open.

"Our weapons are here." Thomas said. "I'll take your fingerprints and adjust the door to allow you access, just in case. If anything happens, this is where you hide."

"The room is bulletproof." I added. "We've invested a lot of money in this place."

We've entered the steel-covered room filled with rows and rows of shelves and boxes. Caiden looked like a little boy as he took in the guns, the automatics and semi-automatics, the assault rifles, machine-guns, missiles and bullets, all neatly lined up on the shelves and walls. The neon-lightning flickered above the room.

"Holy shit." Caiden mumbled. "What the hell?"

"I've always thought of myself as an anti-weapon person." Thomas shrugged. "Turns out I really like guns."

"The walls are lined with bullet-resistant fibreglass panels and a thick layer of steel." I said. "There's two months worth of blood in the fridges in the back, which reminds me, we should put some actual food in here."

Thomas nodded, "I'll send someone."

"There's also an underground exit that leads to the mountains." I continued. "If someone decides to take this house down, they won't be able to penetrate this room. We can outlast a siege here. There's also a prison cell down here, for any rogue vamps that want to mess with us."

"Jesus." Caiden walked through the rows of weapons. "Do you have any explosives here?"

Thomas smirked, "What do you think?"

"I think this can work as a nuclear shelter." I said. "What happens to us if we're exposed to radiation?"

"No idea." Thomas shrugged. "We should try it."

"I know where to go if there's a war." Caiden murmured, still in awe of the room.

"What's in here?" Sheila remained quiet up until now and she didn't enter the armoury. Instead, she stayed in the hallway, staring at the steel door right next to the armoury.

"Oh," I left the boys in the gunroom, "That's our lab. This is where we make money."

I put my finger on the scanner and the door slid open, revealing a cold, sterile room filled with lab-equipment, fridges and metallic shelves full of samples. This room was bulletproof as well, because I insisted on it.

"What does that mean?" Sheila asked.

"We study our blood here." I said as Thomas and Caiden entered the room. "We study what makes us vampires. Sometimes, we find useful things and sell them."

"We're also harvesting salvia divinorum here." Thomas said. "The plant that harms vampires. And we keep a bunch of dead blood here, which is also poisonous to vamps."

Caiden grinned, "That's kind of badass."

"Thank you. It was my idea." I chuckled. "If it were up to Thomas, we would be living off writing vampire romance novels."

"Ha-ha." Thomas leaned against the doorframe.

"What's in the fridges?" Sheila put her hand on the metal fridge handle.

"Our blood." I shrugged. "We ship it out monthly to hospitals and the science sector. They use it to treat fatal wounds in secrecy."

"Isn't it kind of twisted you're making money off it?" Sheila frowned and opened the fridge.

"Welcome to capitalism." I murmured and watched Sheila stare at the vials of blood in the fridge. "Oh, don't look so horrified."

"Aren't you afraid you'd make more vampires?" She asked.

"They don't know you have to die with it in your system to become a vampire." I explained. "And the chances of someone dying accidentally in the small time frame after ingesting the blood are very slim."

Sheila still stared at the fridge and I couldn't quite read her expression. I knew it was twisted, but her moral compass stopped applying to me a long time ago, and we couldn't quite fight the vampire cult on the budget.

"The dinner is ready." Thomas said. "This concludes our tour because I'm starving."

"Let's go." I touched Sheila's arm and she finally tore her gaze off the blood vials.

She offered a small smile, "Let's go."