Ava sat on the room's one armchair with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, crimson eyes boring into me like red lasers. She had kept her promise thus far, although I suspected it was not so much that as the fact that her hands were actually holding her jaw shut.

I had promised that I would give them the whole story, uncut and unrated, as soon as we were home (my thinking being that walking and talking would make us go slower) and I wanted to be home as soon as possible.

Katherina and Elizabeth were having something of a harder time keeping their end of the deal as well as Ava was. Both had possessed the cushions on the other side of me, watching me raptly. It would have been flattering, how sharply they were focused on me, if their comments- or Katherina's, anyway, Lizzie was more astonished than malicious- had not been so ego-bruising.

As I got to the part about turning Lucy, it became painfully obvious that Ava had clenched her jaw in order to keep herself from talking. Her Sisters did not, evidently, think I merited that treatment.

"W-o-w," Elizabeth, eyes wide as she made the word into three syllables. She pulled a face. "So the whole house had garlic on it? Yuck!"

Katherina turned her head and stared at her as if she was just itching to knock her out the nearest window. Ava's expression was merely a physical rendition of "why must I suffer these fools?"

"Just her room."

"And she fell asleep?"

"To be honest, Liz, she was fairly out of it, and didn't have much of a choice."

"Ohhhh." She sat back again. "Okay. Keep going."

I kept going. Ava kept her promise, now by physically putting her hand in her mouth, up until I got to the piece about biting Mina (including the, um, "one night stand"), and at that point it became too difficult for all three of them to contain themselves.

Katherina was, as always, first.

Whack! The heel of her hand cuffed the back of my head. It sent my face hurtling downwards, and it hurt. A lot. I very narrowly avoided breaking my nose on my knee. "Ouch!"

"You deserved that," she growled, narrowing her beautiful blue eyes and baring her sharp white teeth.

I privately disagreed with her, but thought it unwise to say so. I would agree to anything, consent to any punishment, if it let me stay here, with them and everything that I knew and cared for. "Yes," I said.

"You are an idiot," she admonished. And then, as an afterthought- "A really, really big one."

"I am," I repeated feverishly. "And I promise to never, never do it again, ever."

"Maybe so, but still," Katherina said and smacked me again, this time much harder and on the base of my neck, which is a considerably more tender place, and her blow left me only able to vaguely turn my head over the next few days. I let her. It was easier than fighting her, anyway.

Ava's turn was next. She had buried her face in her hands as I had explained and got a tongue-lashing from my eldest Brides, and she now raised herself enough to look out at me from between her fingers. I tried, and failed, to read the set of her feline eyes.

"I have to clarify," she said, pulling up fully, setting her hands into a "let me explain" gesture, and pausing for a moment as if to collect her thoughts.

"Go ahead."

"So you turned this girl Lucy."

"Yes."

"And she was staked."

"Yes."

"And then you bit the wife of one of the people hunting you." I had already explained Mina's affiliation with Harker. Katherina had been especially pleased with this and, I think, forgave me.

"Yes."

"So, somewhere between the staking and the second biting," Ava said slowly. "You thought it was a good idea to bite someone even closer to their heart than this Lucy in a way designed specifically to be horrific and terrifying to her."

I bit my lip and said, "Yes."

"Ah," said Ava calmly, folding her hands. "As long as that's clear. Go ahead, please."