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dusted. Given time, though, they could get very angry about it. Revenge was considered a healthy thing in the vampire world. Right now, though, Maggots just seemed confused.
    Oliver pulled himself to his knees, his side burning. “I don’t know.” He glanced back at the trees. Whatever it was had come from that direction, and inside, he felt a horrible, freezing worry: Had Emalie done this?
    Suddenly something shrieked in the sky above. Oliver and Maggots looked up to see a large bat circling down through the trees. Now a horned owl swooped over, and a crow. There was rustling nearby, and Oliver saw a raccoon bounding toward them, then a coyote. Flares of black smoke began to swirl around the animals—and adult vampires were leaping down to the playground.
    â€œDon’t move! Any of you!” a booming voice called.
    In moments, Oliver and Maggots were surrounded.

Chapter 5
    The Scourge of Selket
    THERE WERE FIVE FIGURES ringing the sand playground. Three women and two men, all in long black coats. On their lapels were gleaming pins made of bone, carved in the shape of a Skrit symbol that Oliver didn’t recognize.
    Oliver stood up quickly.
    â€œWhat happened?” asked a short woman. She had dark skin, frizzy hair, and red eyes.
    â€œBrent,” Maggots mumbled, pointing at the sand.
    The woman glanced down at the ash, then to Maggots. “Did you see what caused this?”
    â€œWe were just sitting here,” Maggots added.
    A narrow man wearing a high black turtleneck sweater beneath his coat stepped forward and knelt in the sand. He had curly black hair and wore small, round glasses. He produced a glass ball, which he flipped open and used to scoop up a sample of the ash.
    â€œHow about you?”
    Oliver looked up to find the woman peering at him. “What?” Oliver said.
    â€œWhat happened here?”
    â€œI, um, I saw …” Oliver had only a second to decide how much he would say. “I just saw Brent light up. Before that, I felt a flash of energy or something.”
    â€œDo you know where it came from?” the woman asked, her eyes narrowing.
    â€œNo.” Oliver cursed at himself inside. Lying again … But he felt like he had to. Had Emalie just done this? Why would she? Maybe because she saw a vampire kill her cousin , he thought. True, there was that. Oh, this was not good.
    â€œYou didn’t see anything else?” the woman asked, sounding unconvinced.
    â€œI don’t know.” Again, Oliver tried to talk in truths without details rather than outright lies. “We were just talking when it happened. Me and Theo, and—”
    â€œAre you Theo?” the woman asked Maggots.
    â€œThis one is,” a male voice called from across the playground. Oliver looked over to see Theo walking back toward them, being followed by another black-coated vampire—
    It was Sebastian. “Hey, Ollie,” he said. “Are the rest of you all right?”
    â€œYeah,” Oliver replied, more than a little confused. “Just some burns.”
    Sebastian turned to the short woman. “Leah, is the area secure?”
    Leah closed her eyes. She held her arms out, tilting her palms up and down. The air began to ripple like liquid around them. “There’s a zombie a hundred meters northwest and a, wait—” She squinted, reading the resonance of invisible forces. “A human leaving the park—ah, no, sorry, that’s a false reading.” She opened her eyes. “The area’s secure.”
    Sebastian turned to the man who had scooped the ash. “What do we have, Tyrus?”
    Tyrus placed the glass ball in the center of a small square gadget. It began spinning in a curved depression. “Well,” Tyrus read grimly from a blue screen, “the burning and vitamin D residuals are consistent with the other incidents. What do you think, Yasmin?”
    â€œIt’s the Scourge,” Yasmin, a woman