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things were okay, and passed the time streaming old episodes of
Firefly
on Netflix. I heard the screen door snap shut downstairs and looked at the alarm clock by my bed. He’d certainly had a long brood. I was considering going down to talk to him, when glass shattered in the kitchen.
    I jumped tomy feet and raced down to see what had happened. Of course, the downstairs was completely dark; Elias didn’t need the lights. I flipped the switch. The harsh overhead light flicked on.
    Elias lay, sprawled facedown on the linoleum. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but there was no obvious pool of blood. The decorative bowl that usually sat on the table was in tiny pieces. Oranges, apples, and kiwi littered the floor.
    Heedless of the broken porcelain, I knelt beside him. “Elias!”
    There was no response.

Chapter Three
     
    E lias’s face was always pale, but I thought there was something particularly sickly in the stark contrast of his dark curls against his brow. I shook his shoulder anxiously. “Elias!”
    Hegroaned.
    I nearly fell over from relief. He was alive, at least.
    Behind me, Mom shuffled into the doorway in slippers. A sleepy mutter of, “What’s going on?” turned into an ear-piercing shriek.
    The noise made Elias’s eyelids flutter—another good sign, I hoped.
    “I think he’s alive,” I told her.
    “Think?” Her hand was over her heart. She wore her plain white nightshirt. She started to step into the kitchen but stopped when she saw the broken bowl. “What happened?”
    “I have no idea.” I couldn’t imagine that he’d been hungry for a kiwi, since he hardly ever ate human food that wasn’t set in front of him, so the only thing I could think of was that he’d passed out. On the way down, he must have hit the table and caused the fruit bowl to drop somehow. “Maybe it was the wards.”
    “He wouldn’t have made it this far,” she insisted. But when I shot her a doubting look, she added, “Listen—I don’t always like him, but I accept that he lives here. I didn’t make them lethal to Elias. I marked him as friend.”
    If friend wasmore painful than family, it still might have hurt him. “What else could be wrong with him?”
    “I have no idea,” Mom said. “I wish we could call a doctor.”
    I couldn’t have agreed more, but could you imagine? What would a doctor make of his fangs? But, he was mostly human. Maybe some of the same sorts of things would apply. But what? One of the only things I remembered from CPR class was that you weren’t supposed to move people if you didn’t know what was wrong with them. But, it didn’t seem right to leave him facedown. He might be hiding some major injury. “Maybe we could roll him over? See if there’s something obvious?”
    Mom must not have heard the question in my words, because she got down on her knees right away to help me try to heave him onto his back. He was heavy, but the two of us got him over quickly. I pushed the bigger bits of bowl out of the way with my forearm before we gently set his head down.
    Mom put her cheek to his lips. “I can’t feel much breath,” she said. We gave each other worried looks, but she added the same thing I’d been thinking, “Not that that means anything. Does he normally breathe?”
    “He does, but I don’t know that he
has
to, you know?”
    Shenodded, taking his wrist into her hand. “Of course, there’s no pulse that I can detect. But I can barely find my own without help.” She sat back on her heels. “We might have to call Victor.”
    Victor Kirov was Nikolai’s dad, and the local vampire hunter. “Mom! You can’t be serious.”
    “He’s the only one of us who has ever seen a vampire die. He might have a clue as to what’s wrong with Elias.”
    He was also the sort who would just stake Elias out of spite. “You’d have to reveal that Elias is living here. Wouldn’t that hurt your reputation?”
    “I informed the council immediately after he moved in,” she