Page 9 of Fangs with Benefits

"What was he doing here to begin with?" Isla asks as she glances down at Treyton, who is still staring up at me with the same fixed expression that he can't change.

The other witches know that I have an informant in the vampire clan, but none of them know fond of him I've grown. Regardless, there isn't time to talk about that now.

"Look," I say, changing the subject, "We don't have long. The spell won't hold forever, and we need to figure out what we're going to do."

"You've always been the most brazen and the most outspoken of us," Elspeth says. "But this is quite the predicament, even foryou."

"It's not like I'm the reason Arman is a two-faced clan leader!" I pout.

"Okay, enough," Sybil says as she tries to steer the coven back on track. "This is no one's fault, but we need to find a solution."

"Agreed." Isla nods.

We brainstorm, throwing out one idea after another. At first, we don't come up with any particularly good ones, but after much talking and the occasional glance down at the frozen vampire in the room, we decide that we won't involve the other factions yet.

"There's no need to put everyone else at risk," Sybil says. "The vampires have an issue with us, no one else. So, we will handle the matter on our own."

It's admirable, but we still aren't surehowto handle it.

"How much longer do you think your spell will hold?" Sybil asks.

"I'm not sure, until morning at least," I answer. "But after the sun rises, the power behind the spell will wane."

"So, most likely we have a few hours at best. We need to leave the vampire informant here and go back to the coven building," she says, looking sympathetically at Treyton. "He should be fine for a few hours. It's not like he can get into anything, and no one else knows that he's in here. We need to go back to the coven building to look through the grimoires and try to formulate a plan. There might be something in the spell books that can help us."

I nod. Since we can't come up with any other feasible solutions, at least ones that don't involve getting the other factions to stick their necks out, we really don't have any other place to look for help than in the old grimoires. Hopefully they'll have some guidance. Still, I don't feel entirely comfortable leaving Treyton here alone.

"He'll be fine," Elspeth reassures me as I bend down to push some of the dark hair out of his eyes. "It's not like he can get into any trouble. He can't evenmove."

She's not wrong. And we need to come up with a planfast.

"I'm sorry about this," I whisper again in Treyton's ear. I feel immensely guilty about what I've done to him, albeit unintentionally. "I won't be long, I promise."

I rush out the door with the other witches, leaving Treyton behind in my apartment and feeling terrible about it. But I won't be long. We don't have much time left.

After an evening of paging through the grimoires, we finally find a viable solution.

"This is a longshot," Isla says with an exasperated sigh.

"It is," Sybil echoes. "But itcanbe done."

We've never attempted something like this before, and it's going to take a very strong magic to succeed. We must recite a very ancient, very powerful incantation that willreplacethe vampire clan leader with another. Unlike most of the other factions, whose leaders are replaced by challenges of might or appointments based on merit, the only way to replace a vampire clan leader is to remove him, and then welcome a new leader with a royal bloodline. It's similar to a monarchy, but it can be toppled by magic. The spell will ensure that the clan won't realize the change has happened.

It's a complex process though, involving getting rid of Arman, then finding a replacement from within the vampire ranks, and enchanting the rest of the vampires into believing that the noble replacement was the rightful clan leader all along. The fact that vampires can't be glamoured makes all this even more difficult. But Sybil is confident that our collective magic, along with this incantation, will manipulate their memories.

"Itmustbe a vampire from the royal bloodline though," Sybil reminds us. "Vampires have so many ways of telling which vampires are aristocracy and which aren't. If we don't replace Arman with a vampire from the right background, not even a spell will fool the clan."

"Where are we going to find another vampire with the right bloodline here in the city?" Isla asks. "I was under the impression that the clan was hard-pressed to find Arman. I heard he was the last one around formiles."

"I don't know, but we have to try."

Sybil's resolve is inspiring, if not unrealistic. But if there's a chance, we have to try.

"We can use tracking magic," Elspeth suggests.

"No, that won't work without knowing exactly who we're looking for," I remind her.

"True," she concurs. "So how do we find one? How do we even tell one vampire from another? This would be easier if we had help. The werewolves might know how to track them."