Was picking a wix seriously the smartest thing to do when the whole freaking point of this entire endeavour was to kill vampires? Did Eleanor want me to be used as some kind of tool for a vampire to curse people?

And, again, healer’s son here. Not a hunter. Like, the exact opposite of a hunter. I’m learning the art of healing, not hurting.

I voice a bit of this to her — “Look, I want to be a doctor when I’m older, why am I the kid you chose for this?” — as we walk through Lamstoke Woods, on the tail of a vampire she claims is named Julian.

It’s hardly the most vampiric name I’ve ever heard, but then the Greyson twins had a mother named Saskia so…

Eleanor laughed, slinging the heavy backpack off her shoulders and onto the forest floor. “Come on, Kester, we’ve got a vampire to kill.”

“You picked like the worst person to do this with,” I muttered, giving the bag a wary look. “Ellie —“

“How come you didn’t bring it up when I first chose you?” she shrugged. “Like, back when I was trying to beat those bloody twins?”

“Is that a dhampir joke or a ‘Alex is haemophobic’ joke?”

“Shut up.”

We continued walking for a while, until the very vampire we were hunting found us first.

“You ally yourself with the dhampir twins?" Julian hissed, a foreign haziness around his words. Eleanor frowned as he spoke, signalling that she had no clue what he was saying. It was a good job, too, because while she already knew about the Greyson twins, this didn't seem too good. "The traitors! Making friends with the spawn of their mother's murderer!"

And that was how I realised we were screwed.