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  “Thanks for the heads-up.” Irritation added a hard edge to Tasha’s words. “As the liaison officer between the Bureau and local enforcement, I’d like to know these things in advance.”

  Alex frowned at the detective. “Sorry, Tasha, but between notifying the Williams family, tracking suspects, and all the corpses piling up, I guess it slipped my mind.”

  “You don’t have to be snarky. I’m asking for a little communication, that’s all.”

  Alex could understand Tasha’s annoyance, but not telling her of the mobile lab’s arrival earlier had been an honest mistake. She’d been surprised by Chief Enforcer Damian Alberez’s willingness to send the lab to Jefferson. The Bureau had three mobile labs, and all were precious commodities, usually assigned to large or high-priority cases. The fact that he’d agreed to send one to Jefferson for only two bodies—now three—made her uneasy and left her wondering what Damian knew that she didn’t.

  Her footsteps slowed and then stilled as something in the grass beside an adjacent tombstone caught her eye. She squatted beside the marker for a closer look and called to the others over her shoulder. “I need tweezers and a small evidence envelope.”

  Tasha appeared at her shoulder. “Find something?”

  Alex accepted a tiny manila envelope and a pair of long tweezers that looked more like small tongs from Jeff. Kneeling down, she pointed to a wad of paper and waited as he snapped a series of pictures with a digital camera before seizing the tiny ball with her tweezers. She held it up for closer inspection. “Looks like a gum wrapper.”

  “A gum wrapper isn’t that unusual,” Tasha said. “Considering we’re in a publicly accessible area, it could belong to anyone.”

  Alex moved it below her nose and inhaled.

  “Smell anything?”

  “No, but this is the one thing close to the body that was also near the others.”

  “Are you thinking the killer dropped it?”

  “It may be nothing, and it may be just the thing we need to break the case.” She slipped the wad into the envelope, sealed and labeled it, and handed both to Jeff.

  Alex stifled a yawn but was unable to avoid a full body stretch as she stood. Even though the night was young and dawn hours away, she could see the subtly shifting colors along the eastern skyline and feel the changes in the air.

  Microcurrents swirled around her. Their molecules vibrated in response to the gradual changes in the sun’s and moon’s positions in the sky. Shadows faded from black to gray in tiny increments too faint for human eyes to detect.

  One shadow danced along the edges of her vision, drifting against the slight breeze that caressed her cheek. The shadow elongated, seemed to take on more mass, then quiver and fade, becoming less distinct. It moved away from the floodlights, returning to the darkness.

  Alex recognized the shadow as one of the unquiet spirits haunting the cemetery. Most were harmless and unseen to human eyes. But she wasn’t human, and her own close encounter with death six years previously had heightened her awareness of the spirit realm. She often wondered if she’d be able to see them at all if it weren’t for her innate empathic abilities and her talent for psychometry—the ability to gain knowledge and visions of past events through physical contact with objects, including bodies such as the one she now left behind her—a gift she’d possessed since birth, and a rarity among vampires. More than once she’d wished for the ability to control her talents, to direct them and use them to aid in her work as an Enforcer. Unfortunately, control was something she lacked, and her visions of the past came at random and in disjointed fragments, leaving her to muddle through the interpretations.

  She pushed all thoughts of the shadows aside, and watched Jeff as he placed paper bags over Eric Stromheimer’s hands to preserve any trace evidence that might be present. However, a cursory look earlier had shown no visible signs of trace under his fingernails. She could only hope that once the mobile lab arrived, the techs would be able to find something usable.

  Alex rummaged through Jeff’s kit and found two small plastic evidence bags. Once again she opened the leather pouch that had been draped around the cross-stake and inserted Stromheimer’s driver’s license into one bag and his wedding ring into the other. The fangs remained in the pouch and would be sent on to the ME’s office with the body. As she labeled the bags to establish a chain of evidence, her stomach rumbled loudly and she sighed.

  “Sounds like someone’s in need of a break.”

  Jeff’s voice carried more than a hint of humor, and Alex blushed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  The wind shifted and carried the smell of blood to her. Her eyes found and lingered on the bloody stump that once supported a head, and she licked her lips. Her gaze shifted from the body to Jeff, locking onto the young man’s neck and the pulsing vein beneath the surface. Her stomach rumbled again.

  “Whoa.” Tasha’s voice intruded into Alex’s mind as plainly as the woman’s hand now latched on to her arm. “I think it’s time for you to go.”

  Alex focused on Tasha’s face. The detective’s caramel skin pulsed with life, and Alex’s eyes slid involuntarily to the woman’s neck. She pulled away, forcing herself to look at the ground. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

  “I’ll wrap things up here.”

  Alex nodded, picked up the two plastic bags containing the driver’s license and ring, and headed for the yellow tape barrier. She removed her protective gear as she made the trek back to the scene’s entry point. She dropped the clothing items into a bag provided by the communications officer and signed out, indicating that she retained possession of the two items now nestled in the inner pocket of her leather jacket.

  Human officers huddled in the strobing wash of blue and white lights, stealing furtive glances and whispering as she passed. Being the only Enforcer assigned to police Jefferson’s vampire population made her a minor celebrity, as if her name alone wasn’t enough.

  She was the youngest child and only daughter of Bernard Sabian, whose brutal murder in the spring of 1968 in Louisville, Kentucky, had led to vampires announcing their presence to humanity after centuries of secrecy. She’d been five when her father’s decapitated body was found with a wooden stake through his heart. Bernard Sabian had become an instant martyr to the vampires, and the community as a whole had taken up the rallying cry of “Never again.” They offered up Alex, along with her older brother and their mother, as the paramount image of lives shattered by violence, ignorance, and hatred.

  But seven years later, the Braxton Bill, named for the senator who introduced it to Congress, passed and vampires became legally recognized citizens of the United States. Once the human government finally gave them equal protection under the law, the Sabians were forced out of the spotlight. Bernard Sabian and his family had served their purposes. The vampire community gave them pats on the back and quietly shuffled them off to relative obscurity, which suited the Sabians just fine. Seven years after Bernard’s death, his family had finally been allowed to grieve, but Alex’s father’s murder still haunted her.

  She hurried past the final group of officers. The scent of fear and adrenaline drifted up from the crowd and spiked her oncoming blood-hunger. Holding her breath, she trotted the last few yards to her Jeep and climbed inside.

  Her hands shook as she reached into the glove compartment. It’d been three days since she’d properly slaked her blood-hunger. If she didn’t do it soon, the tremors would worsen. Her concentration would start to slip. The hunger would gnaw at her until it consumed her thoughts, and the spiral would deepen, drawing her down, down, down, into madness.

  A triumphant cry escaped her lips when she shook the carton she’d pulled from the glove box and she heard the distinctive rattle within. She ripped open the carton and dumped the single vial into her hand.

  Thick liquids—one clear and the other a pale pink—sloshed within the tube. She applied enough pressure to the tube to rupture the thin gelatin barrier between the liquids and shook it to
combine them. The mixture turned a dark red, and the chemical reaction warmed the new compound until it matched her body’s temperature. She ripped the black stopper from the tube and greedily drank its contents.

  The fluid coated her tongue and throat like oil. A metallic tang failed to completely cover the bitter taste of chemicals.

  Alex sucked the last drop from the tube and then exhaled loudly, like a swimmer surfacing from a deep dive. She hated Vlad’s Tears, the synthetic blood product vampires used as a stopgap measure when a human donor was unavailable. It wouldn’t rid her of the blood-hunger, only delay it for a time. She shoved the drained tube back into its box. At least her hands had stopped trembling.

  She cranked up her Jeep and rolled down her window, allowing the cool air to permeate the suddenly warm interior. The scent of pines, adrenaline, and blood wafted to her on the night breeze, and she felt a sharp hunger pang in her belly.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, and threw the SUV into gear. Only when she was out of the cemetery and away from humans did she allow herself to breathe freely.

  Varik Baudelaire peered through the window inset in his Victorian-style home’s front door and swore softly before thumbing the latch on the dead bolt. The door swung open and he stared at the huge black mass standing on his porch. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Nice to see you, too,” Damian Alberez, Chief Enforcer for the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigation, said in a rumbling bass voice. “You going to invite me in?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not really.”

  Varik stepped back, holding the door wide, and gestured for the vampire to enter.

  Damian ducked his bald head beneath the stained-glass transom and entered the foyer. Standing a few inches over seven feet with a barrel chest and biceps nearly as large as Varik’s thighs, he was an imposing figure long before he ever flashed his fangs. He tapped the edge of a file against one meaty palm. “We need to talk.”

  “Well, I didn’t think you were here for milk and cookies.” Varik closed the door, slipped around his oldest friend, and passed through an open archway leading to the front parlor.

  He’d been slowly restoring the Victorian manor on the outskirts of Louisville in the five years since his retirement from the Bureau. Working on the house gave him something to do besides dwell on the past and the woulda-coulda-shouldas of his life. While much of the first floor was complete, the second floor was in varying stages of demolition and reconstruction.

  On the first floor, he’d retained the original moldings around the dormant fireplace and high ceilings throughout, and the heart-of-pine wooden floors would glow a warm gold in the sunlight. Much of the home’s color scheme remained true to the Victorian era, but the walls of the front parlor were painted a light gray and the furnishings a mixture of burgundies, grays, and creams—colors that brought him comfort.

  Comfort he wished he felt as he settled into a wingback chair and watched as Damian perched on the edge of a sleek burgundy leather sofa. “So, to what do I—”

  Damian slid the file he held across the glass-top coffee table to Varik.

  He stared at the FBPI seal emblazoned on the folder but made no move to pick it up. He met Damian’s steady gaze and shook his head. “I’m not—”

  “Pick it up. Look at it.”

  Varik sighed and grabbed the file. He flipped it open and was greeted with a full-color photo of a decapitated corpse—legs bound with yellow nylon rope, arms outstretched, and a cross-shaped stake driven through its chest. More photos followed. Wide-angle shots of a loading bay. Close-ups of the cross-stake. Another wide view of the scene, with a woman standing beside the body, a mix of horror and recognition on her face. A yawning pit opened beneath him, threatening to devour him, and he closed the file. “When were these taken?”

  “Four days ago.”

  Varik glanced at the folder in his hands. His heart now pounded in his chest, and it sounded like a drumbeat in the stillness of the room.

  “She needs you,” Damian said softly.

  “Did she ask for me?”

  “No, she asked for a mobile lab and two forensic techs.”

  Varik smirked. “Then she doesn’t need me.”

  Light from a tableside lamp seemed to be absorbed by the blue-black of Damian’s ebony skin, giving him the appearance of a humanoid black hole. He nodded toward the file. “That was the second. The first showed up over a week ago, and another body was discovered about an hour ago in a cemetery.”

  “You can’t possibly think this”—Varik held up the folder—“has anything to do with Bernard’s murder.”

  Damian shrugged. “A good investigator doesn’t rule out anything.”

  Varik tossed the file onto the table and rose to pace to the archway. When he turned, he spread his arms wide. “Alex hasn’t asked for me. After—” He paused, fighting the flood of memories that crowded his mind. He pulled in a deep cleansing breath and released it slowly. “After what happened between us, she wouldn’t ask for me, even if she did think I could be of some use.”

  “She’s in over her head.”

  He threw his hands up in frustration. “I’m retired! Don’t you understand that? I don’t work for you anymore.”

  Damian drew himself up to his full height and produced a silver badge and identification card from a pants pocket. He set them both on top of the file. “I took the liberty of reinstating you with full pay and benefits—Director of Special Operations assigned to the Jefferson, Mississippi, field office.”

  “Damian—”

  “Mobile lab leaves from Bureau headquarters in two hours.” Damian rounded the coffee table and strode toward him. He paused as he drew even with Varik and gave him a meaningful stare. “I expect you to be there and ready to go to Jefferson tonight,” he said, and then continued toward the door.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Damian’s coal-black eyes settled on him, and the vampire smiled, showing the full extent of his fangs. “Not really.”

  The door closed behind Damian, and Varik crossed to the coffee table and slid the folder from under the badge and ID card. He pulled out the photo showing the entire crime scene, dropped the file on the table, and sank onto the sofa as he studied the woman in the picture.

  Alexandra Sabian stood beside a vampire’s corpse, wind billowing her hair around her face, a moment frozen in time. Her emerald-green eyes, visible in the wash of lights from the loading bay, seemed to stare back at him. He knew all too well that the past had a habit of intruding on the present. Sometimes it was for the best, but more often it was better for the past to remain in the past.

  Now he had an opportunity to atone for some of his past by intruding on Alex’s present, something he’d sworn he’d never do unless she asked for him, which she hadn’t. But if by going to Jefferson he kept part of her past where it belonged, he owed it to the Sabian family to try.

  “Ready or not, here I come,” he said, and shoved the photo back into the file before heading upstairs to pack.

  two

  October 14

  “I’M SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS,” ALEX SAID, RETURNING THE evidence bag containing Eric Stromheimer’s wedding ring to her jacket’s inside pocket.

  Natalie Stromheimer hid her face behind her hands and sobbed.

  Alex looked away from the woman’s grief. It was a raw, private emotion not meant to be viewed, but she’d seen others in the same state. They all reminded her of her own loss, a constant ache deep inside her that never went away.

  She studied the tidy family room adjacent to a spotless kitchen. Plush carpet felt springy beneath her hiking boots. Floral pillows added a touch of brightness to the mocha-colored sofa upon which a distraught Mrs. Stromheimer wept. The neutral beige walls were lined with photos: A black-and-white photo of Eric and Natalie on their wedding day. Natalie holding an infant in her arms. Snapshots of ball games, birthday parties, and vacations. A portrait of the Stromheimers with a gangly teenage son an
d a shaggy dog at their feet. Evidence of the all-American suburban family who thought violence was something that happened to “other people.”

  She’d seen another example of domestic bliss shattered by violence in the small town—the only unsolved case on her books. Claire Black had been killed a couple of years after Alex arrived in Jefferson. She had worked the case, exhausted all her leads, until the trail fell cold.

  Irritated with herself, she turned her attention back to the new widow in front of her and was startled to find that a grayish-white mist had settled beside Natalie and seemed to enshroud her thin shoulders. Natalie appeared not to notice the wispy fog surrounding her, and then Alex understood. The spirit of Eric Stromheimer had found its way home. Natalie couldn’t see or feel the mist around her, but later, when her mind gave out and she fell into an exhausted sleep, her subconscious would replay the message being imparted now. Alex was witnessing a husband’s final farewell.

  “Mrs. Stromheimer,” she said softly. She cleared her throat and leaned forward in her chair. “I know this is a difficult time, but I need to ask you a few questions about Eric.”

  The mist quivered and roiled like a gathering cloud as Natalie shifted her position, smoothing her dark hair away from her reddened face. “Of-of course,” she sniffled. “I’ll d-do what I can.”

  “When was the last time you saw your husband?”

  “Two days ago, when he left for work.” Natalie brushed a tear from her cheek. “He works offshore as a roughneck on an oil rig.”

  “Is that why you didn’t report him missing?”

  “He usually called when he reached the platform, but sometimes, if the weather is bad, I may not hear from him for a few days. I just assumed—” Her voice cracked, and fresh tears leaked from the corners of her closed eyes.

  The spirit-mist beside Natalie shivered. Alex gave the woman time to compose herself and studied the undulating vapor. Its edges rippled, lengthened, and took on a vaguely humanoid form before shuddering and returning to a translucent cloud.