My initial reaction to that was unease, seeing as I wasn’t very religious. In fact, I was never entirely comfortable around those who were hard-core believers. Thirty seconds later, the full impact of the rest of her words sank in.

“Wait a minute,” I exclaimed indignantly. “Are you talking about all of us-dhampirs and Moroi? We’re all evil creatures of the night?”

Her hands dropped from the cross, and she didn’t respond.

“We’re not like Strigoi!” I snapped.

Her face stayed bland. “Moroi drink blood. Dhampirs are the unnatural offspring of them and humans.”

No one had ever called me unnatural before, except for the time I put ketchup on a taco. But seriously, we’d been out of salsa, so what else was I supposed to do? “Moroi and dhampirs are not evil,” I told Sydney. “Not like Strigoi.”

“That’s true,” she conceded. “Strigoi are more evil.”

“Hey, that’s not what I-”

The food arrived just then, and the fried chicken was almost enough to distract me from the outrage of being compared to a Strigoi. Mostly all it did was delay me from responding immediately to her claims, and I bit into the golden crust and nearly melted then and there. Sydney had ordered a cheeseburger and fries and nibbled her food delicately.

After taking down an entire chicken leg, I was finally able to resume the argument. “We’re not like Strigoi at all. Moroi don’t kill. You have no reason to be afraid of us.” Again, I wasn’t keen on cozying up to humans. None of my kind were, not with the way humans tended to be trigger-happy and ready to experiment on anything they didn’t understand.

“Any human who learns about you will inevitably learn about Strigoi,” she said. She was playing with her fries but not actually eating them.

“Knowing about Strigoi might enable humans to protect themselves, though.” Why the hell was I playing devil’s advocate here?

She finished toying with a fry and dropped it back on her plate. “Perhaps. But there are a lot of people who would be tempted by the thought of immortality-even at the cost of serving Strigoi in exchange for being turned into a creature from hell. You’d be surprised at how a lot of humans respond when they learn about vampires. Immortality’s a big draw-despite the evil that goes with it. A lot of humans who learn about Strigoi will try to serve them, in the hopes of eventually being turned.”

“That’s insane-” I stopped. Last year, we’d discovered evidence of humans helping Strigoi. Strigoi couldn’t touch silver stakes, but humans could, and some had used those stakes to shatter Moroi wards. Had those humans been promised immortality? “And so,” said Sydney, “that’s why it’s best if we just make sure no one knows about any of you. You’re out there-all of you-and there’s nothing to be done about it. You do your thing to get rid of Strigoi, and we’ll do ours and save the rest of my kind.”

I chewed on a chicken wing and restrained myself from the implied meaning that she was saving her kind from people like me, too. In some ways, what she was saying made sense. It wasn’t possible that we could always move through the world invisibly, and yes, I could admit, it was necessary for someone to dispose of Strigoi bodies. Humans working with Moroi were an ideal choice. Such humans would be able to move around the world freely, particularly if they had the kinds of contacts and connections she kept implying.

I froze mid-chew, remembering my earlier thoughts when I’d first come along with Sydney. I forced myself to swallow and then took a long drink of water. “Here’s a question. Do you have contacts all over Russia?”

“Unfortunately,” she said. “When Alchemists turn eighteen, we’re sent on an internship to get firsthand experience in the trade and make all sorts of connections. I would have rather stayed in Utah.”

That was almost crazier than everything else she’d told me, but I didn’t push it. “What kind of connections exactly?”

She shrugged. “We track the movements of a lot of Moroi and dhampirs. We also know a lot of high-ranking government officials-among humans and Moroi. If there’s been a vampire sighting among humans, we can usually find someone important who can pay someone off or whatever… It all gets swept under the rug.”

Track the movements of a lot of Moroi and dhampirs. Jackpot. I leaned in close and lowered my voice. Everything seemed to hinge on this moment.

“I’m looking for a village… a village of dhampirs out in Siberia. I don’t know its name.” Dimitri had only ever mentioned its name once, and I’d forgotten. “It’s kind of near… Om?”

“Omsk,” she corrected.

I straightened up. “Do you know it?”

She didn’t answer right away, but her eyes betrayed her. “Maybe.”

“You do!” I exclaimed. “You have to tell me where it is. I have to get there.”

She made a face. “Are you going to be… one of those?”

So Alchemists knew about blood whores. No surprise. If Sydney and her associates knew everything else about the vampire world, they’d know this too.

“No,” I said haughtily. “I just have to find someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone.”

That almost made her smile. Her brown eyes were thoughtful as she munched on another fry. She’d only taken two bites out of her cheeseburger, and it was rapidly growing cold. I kind of wanted to eat it myself on principle.

“I’ll be right back,” she said abruptly. She stood up and strode across to a quiet corner of the cafe. Producing a cell phone from that magic purse of hers, she turned her back to the room and made a call.

I’d polished off my chicken by then and helped myself to some of her fries since it was looking less and less like she was going to do anything with them. As I ate, I pondered the possibilities before me, wondering if finding Dimitri’s town would really be this simple. And once I was there… would it be simple then? Would he be there, living in the shadows and hunting prey? And when faced with him, could I really drive my stake into his heart? That unwanted image came to me again, Dimitri with red eyes and “Rose?”

I blinked. I’d totally spaced out, and Sydney was back. She slid back into her spot across from me. “So, it looks like-” She paused and looked down. “Did you eat some of my fries?”

I had no clue how she knew, seeing as it was such a huge stack. I’d barely made a dent. Figuring me stealing fries would count as further evidence of being an evil creature of the night, I said glibly, “No.”

She frowned a moment, considering, and then said, “I do know where this town is. I’ve been there before.”

I straightened up. Holy crap. This was actually going to happen, after all these weeks of searching. Sydney would tell me where this place was, and I could go and try to close this horrible chapter in my life.

“Thank you, thank you so much-”

She held up a hand to silence me, and I noticed then how miserable she looked.

“But I’m not going to tell you where it is.”

My mouth gaped. “What?”

“I’m going to take you there myself.”