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what’s the other thing?”
    He traced circles on her bare ribcage. “Do you really have to ask that? Abel loves you. He wouldn’t want to go to your wedding anyway. Especially not when I’m the groom.”
    She thought about kissing Abel, and her cheeks got hot. Love wasn’t the word she would use for what they shared.
    “He doesn’t love me,” Rylie protested, sitting up and hugging the sheets around her chest. She had been trying to stay covered all night so that Seth wouldn’t notice the faint curve to her belly.
    He raised his eyebrows. “Do you seriously think that? Really?”
    A dull thud shocked through the house—the front door opening.
    Someone screamed. It sounded like Bekah.
    Seth bolted out of bed, pulling on his pants as he ran to the hallway. Rylie was just a few steps behind him. She whipped a bathrobe around her shoulders and knotted the belt at her waist.
    She stared at the tableau in front of her, unable to make sense of what she was seeing.
    Gwyn stood in the doorway, holding an old revolver that looked like it might have belonged to Abel. Bekah was shrieking, hands clapped to her face. Levi was halfway to turning into a wolf.
    And then Rylie’s gaze dropped, and she saw why.
    Scott Whyte’s body rested at Gwyn’s feet with a gunshot wound in his forehead.
    It took time for Levi to change, which gave Seth the advantage in reaction time.
    He grabbed a shotgun out of the unlocked case on the wall, pumped it once, and turned on the werewolf.
    “Don’t move,” he said, and Levi froze.
    “Oh my God, Gwyn,” Rylie said. “What’s going on? Did you kill him? What—why—?”
    Gwyn kicked Scott over. Considering his mass, he should have been a lot harder to budge, but the man was totally limp. She never lowered her aim from his body. “He’s not dead. Trust me. Or at least… he’s not dead for good.”
    Seth moved forward and pressed his fingers to Scott’s throat without dropping his aim from Levi.
    No heartbeat.
    “What the hell is going on, Gwyn?” Seth asked.
    “It would be easier for me to just show you,” she said.
    She kneeled beside Scott, unbuttoned his shirt, and pushed it aside. There was a tattoo of a bleeding apple on the left side of his chest.
    Bekah cried out again. “No!”
    Seth was only distantly aware of Levi changing back to his human form behind him.
    “What do you kids know about Scott Whyte?” Gwyn asked. Nobody answered. She looked between their shocked faces and sighed. “You don’t get to be high priest of a coven unless you’re strong. Scott likes to pretend that he’s a healer. That’s a pretty special talent right there. But it’s not as special as the truth. He’s a necromancer.”
    Seth lost balance and sat down hard. He carefully placed the shotgun beside him.
    Slowly, everything fell into place.
    In order to bring Eleanor back from the dead, Cain would have needed a necromancer. But he was a werewolf, not a witch. And if Scott had the bleeding apple tattoo…
    “So you killed him,” Levi said. He was pale and shaking. Almost the exact mirror of Rylie.
    “It’s not that easy.” Gwyn stepped inside and shut the door behind her, blocking out the cool night. “Necromancers can’t die the first time. He’ll be back soon. Give it a few hours.”
    Bekah turned her tearful face up without releasing Scott. “How can you possibly know that?”
    “Because,” Gwyn said with a grim smile, “Scott brought me back from the dead months ago.”
    Gwyn put Scott Whyte’s body in the cellar beneath the ranch house, called Stephanie at the hotel, and then brewed a strong pot of coffee. Rylie sat at the kitchen table next to her aunt, struggling not to cry.
    “It was the disease,” Gwyn said, taking a sip from her steaming mug. Even though the entire pack was there—Seth, Bekah, Levi, Trevin, and Crystal—the silence in the kitchen was deathly. She addressed Crystal and Trevin directly. “You probably don’t know this, but I had AIDS, and I