Jet Black Heart

PROLOGUE: just like in a song from days of yore

PROLOGUE

          Mila could see the end as it began.

Unlike her late mother—her biological mother—whose psychic visions spoke of the future, holistic and seeking forward, life branching outward through time, Mila saw only the dark umbra of death. Death creeping forward. Death stealing through her dreams. Death draping its gossamer hands over her eyes and stealing away the light.

When the present came rushing back to Mila Carlisle, it was a Tuesday night and just months from now, half her coven of vampires—her family, as she's come to think of them after almost fifty years—would be dead.

She wouldn't know this yet, though.

"There's a reason I called his meeting," said Will, lips pursed as he surveyed his family—or, the majority of his family who could've made it to this gathering at the last-minute's notice—with a grave severity. "I need you all to listen very carefully."

It'd been months since Mila had last seen her elder siblings. At present, there were six of them, Declan and Cecelia Carlisle's brood of adopted children—for all intents and purposes. While she still lived with Knox and Will, the three of them, the youngest Carlisles of the clan, lashed tightly together even at the prep school they attended, it wasn't the same as when they were six strong, the Carlisle Mansion alive with the chaos of history and noise entangled within its walls, all of the rooms as full as the chambers of her heart. Recently, they were spread across the region, moving onto building a life for themselves. Charlotte had been in Paris designing dresses for fashion week, Leo had been running around London doing God-Knows-What, and Dante was in New York, attending an important meeting with his law firm—her eldest brother had called ahead to let them know he wouldn't be able to make it, and to email him the update if it was truly urgent—that he hadn't been able to excuse himself from.

Now, they were gathered in the living room of their family home, pulled from all corners of the world to the Wisteria-swathed Carlisle mansion in South-East London. And Mila's heart was almost bursting with the love she held for each of them, the relief of having her siblings close to her once more.

And yet.

"Well, spit it out, then," Leo chaffed, the gold signet ring on his pinky finger winked as he toyed with a positively gleaming silver Rolex that Mila was almost certain wasn't in his possession yesterday, when he'd arrived at their doorstep, rucksack at his feet, arms outstretched and waiting for Mila to fling herself into the embrace. "Not all of us have all day to wait around for you to announce who's died."

Lounging with leonine arrogance across the white couch, Leo eyed Will with a raised brow and an impish grin, vicious fangs flashing under the light. He raked a gloved hand through his unruly blond hair. He'd spent at least half an hour on it this morning, primping and prepping in the mirror, so late for breakfast he'd nearly missed it. Just looking at him now, dressed in a simple blue hoodie and dark cargo pants, the brown Timberland boots, the signet ring and the expensive Rolex, no one would've guessed that, in another life, Leo Carlisle had been one of history's most ruthless pirates in the Golden Age. ("My prime," Leo had joked, once.)

"Leo!" Cecelia chided, narrowing her eyes at him reproachfully. Despite the disapproving look on her face, their mother could not look any less delightful, in that her milk-pale skin was a canvas splattered and smeared with paint and her corkscrew curls were escaping from the bundle atop her head, the comfortably rumpled way she always looked after a long hour in the lofted art studio Declan had built into the mansion for his wife.

"I'm sorry, Mum, I know you're trying to be intimidating, but I can't take you seriously when you look like a child's finger painting."

"Can we please just get this thing over with?" Charlotte scoffed, scowling, and crossed her arms over her chest, the string of diamonds on her necklace glistering beneath the chandelier, a siren call. Leo's pool blue eyes glimmered in response, and Mila could see the plan turning in his head.