“You can’t be serious,” Lee cut me off. “You’re not gonna go after him.”

“I have to,” I argued.

Sierra was sitting at her desk, looking shocked at my rather simple request to borrow her machete.

“Are you completely insane?” Lee pressed.

“I have to,” I repeated. “And no, I’m a tad unhinged.” I couldn’t help but say it pretty nastily. I had never felt so revolted to be called crazy. It was never a good feeling but now it was straight up offensive to my soul.

“He almost killed you,” Lee told me. “It was by chance you didn’t die after throwing yourself out of a second story window or bleed to death or suffer really bad brain trauma.”

“I’m with Lee on this,” Sierra put in. “Normally I’m down for violence but this is too far.”

“It’s not too far,” I said. I glanced toward the bedroom door to make sure no one was lurking. “You have no idea what that man has done. To me. To Scarlet or her brother or countless other people.”

“But this’ll get you killed. I’ve seen Scarlet go from dead to conscious in a matter of minutes simply because she drank some blood, and if even a fraction of the mythos around them is true then it's not like you can just stab him.”

“That’s why I need the machete. I’m gonna hack his head off.”

“Duuude,” Sierra said with a grimace of true disgust. “That’s not like you.”

Lee sighed and grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me over to Sierra’s bed. She sat me down and then folded her arms to glare at me. “Let’s talk about this.”

I groaned. It felt like everyone and their mother was trying to talk me out of doing a very simple thing. If this was a movie Sierra wouldn’t’ve questioned loaning me a machete.

“I agree this man has to be dealt with, that’s not even a question. But you killing him is not okay.”

“Why not? He tried to kill me.”

“Do you even know how much effort it takes to get someone's head off?” Sierra asked. “It’s not easy.”

“And how would you know?” I snapped at her. “Have you ever had the need to kill someone before?”

She went quiet. “I’ve carved up enough meats to know it’s not simple,” she mumbled. She turned to her computer and went about clicking on things.

“Listen, Lexi, we can do something but it’s not going to involve you killing him. Let’s get the police involved for once,” Lee sat down next to me. “That way people who are actually equipped to handle murderers can deal with him.”

“But they have no evidence it was him. And until they do, they're more likely to get on our cases again before they do anything actually helpful.”

“So set a trap. You’re already going to go after him somewhere. Instead of taking a machete to his head, tip off the police. If he tries to attack you they’ll stop him and drag him off. They’ll have reason to hold him, collect their evidence and then formally charge him.”

“But he’s a vampire,” I pointed out. “He can’t be dealt with by human laws.”

“If he’s such a problem for Scarlet and her brother, he’s probably a dick by vampire law too. So if he gets transferred over to them, they’ll deal with him.”

“I don’t think vampires have a legal system.” My impression of the ones I’d run into so far was they all operated in their own little groups.

“Then the police get to take care of him themselves.”

“But how do I know he’ll stay there. What if he breaks out or–or kills someone else in prison or–”

“That’s their responsibility,” she stopped me. “Their job is to control the criminals. It’s not yours. If you try to take care of this on your own, you’re going to lose your life. One way or another.”

I swallowed. Lee had a point. There wouldn’t be any way for me to go back from murdering someone, no matter how in-self-defense it was.

I let out a breath. “Okay. But can I still have the machete just in case?”

Sierra turned back to me and opened one of her desk drawers before handing me the sheathed, giant knife.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll… call LeBlanc and ask him to come or something so he’s there. And he can deal with Demetrius.”

Lee wrapped an arm around me to give me a sideways hug. “We’ll come too. So there’s no chance in hell that man’s going to hurt you.”

I nodded. “We were going to catch him at the asylum. Later today while the sun's out.”

“Christ, Lexi,” Lee cursed, “You didn’t even think to get your weapons together before arranging to lure him out?”

“I didn’t think Sierra would question it.”

“I may joke about murder a lot but that doesn’t mean I want anybody dead,” Sierra pointed out. “There’s way too much pain in the world for me to condone something like that.”

Even Sierra knew how to make me feel crazy for wanting to murder somebody. Sierra, whose catchphrase was ‘do you need help with the body?’

“We’ll come with you. You’re going to bring Scarlet too right?”

I nodded.

“I need her to lure him out.”

Lee nodded. “Alright. Let’s go catch us a vampire.”

We got back to my house many minutes later. Sierra’s house wasn’t too far, but it wasn’t super close either. Lee had just happened to be there, working on sound mixing with Sierra.

Scarlet perked up from the bed once she heard the bedroom door open, then looked uncertainly at Lee and Sierra.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “We still have plans but…”

“I won’t let Lexi try to kill someone. We’re gonna use the police instead,” Lee explained.

Sierra held up an additional tomahawk she’d grabbed from her room. “I’m here as a backup head lopper,” she explained. “In case things go bad.”

Scarlet jumped up and threw herself against me. “Is this alright?” she asked quietly. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” I reassured her. I didn’t really want to do this alone, and while I didn’t want my friends to get hurt, the more people involved the more control we’d have over Demetrius.

“Okay,” she said.

With a creak my door opened from where it’d half closed behind us. I looked, expecting Mom or Mike but it was Blacke who was sulking at nothing in particular.

“Hi,” I said.

“If you're going after that man I’d like to be involved,” he said. “Although… I can’t do much about…” he stopped himself, blinking at the other humans in the room.

“Oh, they’re aware,” I explained hastily.

“Okay. The sun. I can’t do any more than he can in the sun.”

“This is Scarlet’s brother?” Lee asked.

I nodded as I went to dig out the bottle of sunblock I’d helped slather Scarlet down right before Hallowsgreed. I tossed it to him and he caught it with more grace than I expected from someone who barely had the motivation to stand upright.

“Does this work?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes. But it’s more like you’ll burn like a regular person does rather than practically instantaneously.”

“Nice,” he said and squirted a generous amount onto his fingers.

“Why does it never occur to people that vampires might just need some extra sunblock?” Lee asked.

“Well in Twilight the problem wasn’t burning, it was they sparkled,” I pointed out. “And Twilight’s been the culturally recognizable rendition of vampires.”

“That’s… because they sparkled, and it was ridiculous,” Sierra put in.

“What’s Twilight?” Blacke grumbled as he lathered his arms in the white paste. Just like Scarlet, it only made him look even more sickly pale.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him.

He accepted that answer and slathered more sunscreen onto his fingers before tossing it over to Scarlet, who began the same process.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked.

“Scarlet— I guess you and Scarlet together need to lure Demetrius out and then, if he sees me he’ll come after me. So we’re going to call a police officer to arrest him when he does so.”

He frowned at me. “Does that really seem wise?” he asked.

“Her initial plan was to decapitate him,” Lee put in.

Blacke snorted. “Are you an idiot?” he asked.

“What else am I supposed to do?” I snapped. “I can’t let him just run about murdering people.”

“Isn’t that rather hypocritical?” he asked. “Shouldn’t I receive the same treatment? Shouldn’t Scarlet?”

“But it wasn’t your choice,” I pointed out. I let out a breath. “We need to go anyway. We’re gonna run out of daylight if we fool around longer.”

I didn’t leave space for any other commentary and left the room, knowing the others would follow.

The sun was slanting over the trees. Soon there wouldn’t be any reaching the asylum’s clearing so we had to get this over with.

I dug out LeBlanc’s business card and typed the number into my phone, taking a deep breath.

“Are you ready?” Scarlet asked shyly from behind me.

“Yeah,” I said, and hit send on the text message. I’d check it in a couple minutes for a response but for now, we had to move. “Let’s go.”