“You have a battle to attend to. Meat for protein, carbs for energy.” She pointed at the tomatoes. “Lycopene and vitamin C for improved healing.” She pointed to the bottle of Blood4You that another vampire had placed beside my plate. “The blood is self-explanatory. Because you’re a vampire,” she explained anyway.

   “Yeah, I figured that one on my own.” I poked the black blob with a fork. “And black sausage because . . . ?”

   “Because it’s delicious. It’s blood sausage, and an old family recipe.”

   I believed the second, doubted the first, and poked at the rubbery cylinder with my fork.

   Eat your breakfast, Sentinel. Or I’ll tell everyone why you’re especially hungry this evening.

   I forked a potato obediently.

   • • •

   Like the mayor, Ethan was ready to move the moment Catcher arrived. But Catcher insisted on training first, on careful preparation for the magic we’d have to face.

   In our fighting gear again—but minus shoes—we met in the House’s training room, where dark wood walls reached down to floors covered in tatami mats.

   Catcher wore jeans and a Hawkeye T-shirt today, while Mallory opted for jeans and a Black Widow T-shirt. They looked exhausted, but managing it.

   Catcher carried a black canvas bag to the middle of the floor, began to unload scabbards from it as vampires filed into the balcony that ringed the room to watch. My scabbard was red, Ethan’s black. Jonah’s scabbards were bright yellow, the wrapping on each handle vermillion red. All four were absolutely gorgeous, and undeniably deadly.

   “If Portnoy’s got it right, you’ll be able to do more damage with each blow than with a nonmagicked sword. But like I said, you don’t want to get too comfortable. This is still a monster, and a supernatural one.”

   “Don’t let him step on you,” Jonah said.

   “Pretty much,” Catcher agreed.

   “The armor on his toes was relatively weak,” I said. “That may also be the case on his underbelly. Slipping the blade between the plates of armor might work.”

   Catcher nodded approvingly.

   “And how will the binding work?” Ethan asked.

   “Similar to tempering the blades,” he said. “Blood on the blade, then say the magic words.” He pulled out his phone, typed something, and ours beeped a second later. We pulled them out, scanned the lines of text.

   “Those are your charms,” Catcher said. “Memorize them, and don’t forget.”

   “I was an English lit student. I can recite a four-line poem like a boss.”

   “It’s true,” Mallory said. “I used to make her recite Shakespearean sonnets. I threw popcorn at her when she got the lines wrong.”

   “You two have a complicated relationship,” Catcher said, gaze narrowed.

   “Besties,” Mallory said with a shrug by way of explanation.

   “What comes after the words?” Jonah asked.

   “The dragon has to be mortally wounded, with that sword.” Catcher looked at us. “So whoever of you kills it also binds it.”

   “Roger that,” Jonah said.

   Catcher looked at us. “And you should know—there could be side effects.”

   Ethan’s gaze narrowed. “What kind of side effects?”

   “It’s hard to say, because we’re dealing with a creature made of magic, which adds an unknowable element. But my concern is that you’ll be affected by the very magic you’ll be casting.”

   “In other words,” Ethan said, “because we’ll be holding the sword when we bind the dragon to it, we could be bound, too.”

   “I don’t know,” Catcher said. “But, yeah, that’s my concern.”

   My grandfather looked at each of us, his gaze settling on me. “Your call whether to proceed knowing that. If this won’t work, we’ll try something else.”

   There wasn’t really a call to make. This wasn’t like the issue of children, of facing the possibility of love and loss. There was only one option here—keep the dragon from killing anyone else—so there was no point in fear or worry. There was just the doing.

   “I’m in,” I said, and looked at Jonah and Ethan. They nodded, too.

   “If that’s what we have to do,” Jonah said, “it’s what we have to do.”

   “Good,” my grandfather said. “Good.”

   “Okay,” Catcher said with a smile, clearly proud of our determination. “Let’s test them out.”

   I wasn’t bashful about swordcraft, so I stepped onto the mats, picked up my scabbard.

   “It’s heavier,” I said, and flipped the thumb guard, released the blade with a ringing whish of sound.

   I hadn’t expected it to look different. I hadn’t expected the katana to have a soft glow, like a little CGI had been added to its edges so it gleamed.

   “Hello, beautiful,” I said, and slipped a finger down the top of the blade, felt the answering call that sent a shiver down my spine.

   “If only she looked at me that way,” Ethan said, then unsheathed his own sword. “My, my, my.”

   Jonah’s reaction was pretty much similar, except that he kept getting distracted by glances at the gallery, where Margot sat with Lindsey and Katherine. And to my eye, she looked like she was working very hard to ignore him.

   Catcher picked up a bokken, a wooden practice sword, tapped it against his hand. “You can take practice swings at me,” he said, “so you can get a feel for how they move.”

   “I was kind of hoping you’d be wearing a dragon costume,” I said, extending one hand above my head and the other behind me. “With head and tail and the whole shebang.”