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  He kissed the side of my head. “We’ve survived worse. And I mean a hell of a lot worse. I’ve personally survived worse. We’ll make it.”

  “How can you increase your numbers?” I asked. “I know you guys tend to bond over shared blood lines but there are occasions when a Balaj will welcome in outsiders. Is that a possibility? Is there anyone you can bring in to bolster your numbers?”

  He shook his head. “We’re so small right now that I don’t think either I or any of the others would trust bringing in a stranger. There’s too much potential for them to do damage. We have quite a few candidates to turn—some loyal Renfields and several blood partners who lost their vampires in the last month. We just can’t spare anyone to turn them right now, though.”

  I nodded, knowing that it took a lot out of a vampire to sire a newly turned human, and that both of them would need the support of their Balaj until the sire regained his or her strength. It seemed all they could do right now was focus on holding their territory, and as soon as there was a breather, expand their family.

  I had mixed feelings about that. I’d always been taught that in exchange for immortality a vampire gave up not only his or her ability to live in the daylight, but their soul. I didn’t want to believe that, but I still worried that the humans who accepted this bargain weren’t always completely informed of the tradeoffs.

  But I also believed in free will. And I knew that Dario and the other vampires I’d met felt they’d made a good choice. Only God should judge. I certainly shouldn’t.

  “So tell me about your horrible day.” Dario’s voice was low, rumbling through his body and into mine.

  “Work was crazy. The ice maker in the fridge broke and is leaking on the kitchen floor. Raven’s not in Fulk and I’m scared she’s in hell being tortured or something. Oh, and I tripped over a dead homeless person on my run this morning.”

  Dario scowled glancing toward the kitchen with a rather fierce expression before turning back to me. “I’m so sorry. Can Russell contact Raven’s spirit? Find out where she is and allow you to communicate with her?”

  It was mildly amusing that Dario completely overlooked my falling over a dead homeless person, and fixated on my worries over Raven. He’d been living in Baltimore longer than I had, but it wasn’t that he was jaded about the plight of the city’s homeless. Dario was hundreds of years old. He’d seen slaves murdered and die of untreated illnesses and wounds as well as malnourishment growing up as an enslaved child in what was now Haiti. He’d seen his followers die while fighting against the slave owners. He’d seen his vampire family die. He’d seen blood slaves and donors die, watching generations of humans grow old as he remained the same immortal age. He’d become numb to death. Or he’d become numb to most death. I knew there were those in his family who he grieved for terribly. And I knew that he’d be wrecked when I eventually died.

  Hopefully that was a long way in the future.

  “I’m meeting with Russell Saturday morning and I’m hoping he can contact Raven.” I sighed. “And I have to let you know that I might not be too lively of a conversationalist Friday night after driving home Thanksgiving and working the early shift Friday.”

  I wouldn’t see Dario Wednesday or Thursday night, and I really wanted to be able to see him Friday, but I knew I was going to be exhausted. Maybe I could squeeze a nap in sometime between work and my visit with Chuck at the prison.

  “If you’re too tired, then we’ll do something special Saturday night instead. I owe you dinner after cancelling on you tonight.”

  I covered my mouth to hide a yawn. “I think you owe me several dinners, buster.”

  Dario laughed. “I’ll send some cannoli over this weekend to make it up to you.” Shifting my cat off his lap, he scooped me up and stood. “I’m taking you up to bed. Sunrise is in a little more than four hours, and you need some sleep.”

  Ugh. He was right. Even though I really wanted some sexy-times, I had to be up and at the coffee shop early. Maybe I’d skip my morning run and get an extra hour of sleep.

  “Stay with me?” I asked as he carried me up the stairs.

  “Always.”

  Always. He did always stay with me, only leaving when he needed to be safe from the rising sun. Maybe this could work out between us. There were still a million hurdles we’d need to overcome, but maybe, just maybe, a vampire and a Templar could have a happily ever after.

  Chapter 6

  “Have you seen this?” Janice slapped an eight-by-ten glossy on the counter. The other customers edged away because the photo clearly showed a dead body—a naked dead body in a room with bright lights and a stainless steel table. I guess I should have been grateful that the picture was only from the waist up.

  “Janice, crime scene photos don’t really belong in a coffee shop,” I told the reporter.

  Sticking the milk under the frother, I leaned over to eye the picture. I’d had my fill of dead bodies for the week, but Janice wouldn’t have come to me unless there was something odd about this. I wasn’t a cop, but as a Templar the odd fell under my self-imposed job description.

  Self-imposed, because the job that paid the bills was the one I was doing right now. And even though I had been born into a Templar family and thus had all the skills and abilities that came with that birthright, I hadn’t taken my oath and wasn’t a Knight. Although, a Knight wouldn’t care about a dead guy in the morgue. Templar Knights removed magical artifacts from the public and safeguarded them in the Temple, and researched and cataloged information on magic and the supernatural. They were also supposed to protect Pilgrims on the Path, but no one knew what the heck that meant anymore.

  I did. And although I wasn’t a Knight, I took my “safeguarding Pilgrims on the Path” duties seriously.

  “Notice how pale he is?” Janice waved the picture at me.

  I shuddered, thinking of the homeless guy from yesterday morning. “Yes, in my sadly extensive experience, dead people are usually pale.”

  Janice ignored my comment. “My contact at the morgue says he was drained of blood. Zippo. Nada. No blood.”

  The other customers were still giving Janice a wide berth, but they all had an expression of rapt attention on their face. Everyone loves a good murder mystery, although most people don’t want to see the actual photos.

  I did. Finishing up the latte with a swirl of caramel on top, I handed it to my customer and grabbed the picture from Janice’s hand. The dead guy was as pale as my bedsheets, but I couldn’t see anything really notable about him.

  “There have been an increase in what the police are calling animal attacks as well as what they’re claiming are overdose deaths, but no one shoots up in their neck and these mysterious animal attacks are suspect.” Janice looked at the scar on my neck and I lifted a hand to touch the mark.

  I knew what she meant. “If those deaths are a result of what you’re implying, then it’s not Dario’s Balaj doing it,” I told her, trying to be vague because of the interested customers listening in to our conversation.

  Janice made a huff noise. “Right. So how do you explain this guy then? No blood, Aria. None.”

  “How the heck are you getting this information? And pictures?” I asked her. “What are you paying this morgue employee, because I’m pretty sure he’s not supposed to be snapchatting pics of bodies on the slab to reporters.”

  Janice looked smug. “It’s not a regular thing, but I’ve got contacts. The only reason he sent me this one was because when he went to take a blood sample for a tox screen, there wasn’t any. I mean none.”

  I handed the photo back to her and took the outstretched cup Brandi was handing me. Templar duties aside, I really didn’t want to get fired here and needed to keep up with the orders.

  “Anemic junkie? Or the guy bled out and the body was dumped somewhere other than where he was killed?” I hadn’t seen any knife wounds, but the guy was face up in the picture and could have been stabbed, or shot, in the back. Or below the waist.
r />   “They’re calling it an OD in the preliminary report because the guy has track marks, but no junkie is that anemic,” Janice informed me. “The guy had no blood in his body. None. Maybe those track marks aren’t really track marks, if you know what I mean. I’m thinking you need to have a serious chat with your boyfriend.”

  I flinched, worried this was the sort of thing that would eventually end whatever I had going on with Dario. Ugh, don’t let this be a vampire killing. Don’t let me be forced to deliver justice to one of my boyfriend’s Balaj.

  “I can’t ask Dario about every anemic junkie overdose and fatal animal attack in Baltimore,” I protested. “Go back to your friend at the morgue, and ask if this guy has bite marks on his neck. Maybe send a picture of them over for me to show to Dario. Then I’ll have a chat with the Balaj. Otherwise this is just another upsetting statistic in Baltimore’s war on drugs.”

  “Drained. Of. Blood,” Janice insisted. “Not anemic. Drained. Your boyfriend needs to rein his people in.”

  Janice wasn’t a fan of Dario. She felt I should date a nice human man instead, like Zac or Detective Tremelay. She’d had a brief relationship of her own with a guy who wasn’t human, and couldn’t get around the whole predator/prey dynamic. I wasn’t sure I could get around it either, but for now I was in denial.

  I finished making the double-shot mocha and handed it over in exchange for another cup from Brandi. “So the preliminary report is overdose? They’re not ruling that the cause of death was the blood loss?”

  Even if a vampire had been extremely careless with his donor, an overdose was still an overdose.

  “Yeah, but it’s just preliminary.” Janice shrugged. “There’s no final report yet. They just got the guy in yesterday. Some jogger tripped over him on South Fulton right before dawn.”

  Crap, that jogger was me. This was my guy on that slab, the guy I’d discovered dead on the sidewalk. At least, I was pretty sure it was the same guy. What were the odds that two dead guys would have been tripped over by two joggers on South Fulton within the same hour of each other?

  “Surely your friend at the M.E.’s office noticed something on the body, like say a knife wound or two giant puncture marks on the guy’s jugular?” I asked, feeling a bit sick at the thought that the very man I’d fallen over yesterday morning might have been killed by vampires. No, it couldn’t be. Janice’s morgue contact was probably exaggerating with the no-blood thing. The dead man was probably severely anemic from an illness, or giving too much plasma, or getting stabbed early yesterday before shooting up and freezing to death on South Fulton.

  Janice squirmed. “The body had some bruises, and had a set of what my contact called track marks on the inside of both elbows, but I don’t know what else. They could have been bite marks. He could have bite marks elsewhere. I don’t have any closeup pictures yet, and didn’t want to be too specific about asking if the dead man had anything that looked like you-know-what bites.”

  I knew what she meant. We both knew there was a supernatural element in Baltimore. So did Tremelay, and my friend Zac. It was one thing if we slipped and the customers in the coffee shop overheard us talking about vampires, and thought we were a bit off our rockers, but Janice wouldn’t want to jeopardize her contact at the morgue with that sort of talk.

  I hesitated, not wanting to completely dismiss Janice’s concerns even though this dead man probably had some illness or condition that, combined with drug use, led to both his anemic state and eventual death. Inside elbow did seem like the usual place for a junkie to shoot up.

  And as far as I knew it wasn’t a typical place for a vampire bite, unless maybe one of them got off on inside elbows. I’d seen vampires bite from neck and wrists. I knew they bit from the thigh as well. Maybe some liked arms. I flushed, my mind detouring to an image of Dario between my legs and all that might entail. Wow…that…whew.

  I took a steadying breath and concentrated on making the vanilla spice latte. I hated to think that a vampire who got carried away and drained someone would set them up on the street to look like death from overdose, but it might have happened. Homeless people wouldn’t be missed, and it wouldn’t have been unexpected for a vampire “oops” to end up where the body would never be found. Maybe the vampire cared enough that he wanted his dinner to have an appropriate burial. I remembered the guy’s clothes under the blanket. Or maybe he wasn’t just some homeless guy, and the vampire didn’t want it to come to light that one of his donors had met an untimely death. Dario would normally have taken a dim view of an accident like this, but with his Balaj so decimated, he might be more forgiving than normal. I knew he needed every vampire in his family, and really couldn’t afford to lose even one right now.

  A blood donation gone bad. The vampire goes to the Master—or boss—of his family, begging forgiveness and asking for help. Dario covers it up as an overdose, and keeps it all a secret from me.

  I wasn’t so in love that I didn’t realize the dark side of my relationship with a vampire, nor that his family’s survival came first in his mind right now. But if Dario had been involved, I would have thought that an “oops” like this would have never seen the light of day. That body would have vanished, never to be found. Dario wouldn’t take chances like this on a sloppy disposal, especially so near my home on a route that he knew I jogged regularly.

  If this death was due to a vampire feeding gone wrong, and it wasn’t one of Dario’s family, that would mean the rogue elements outside of Baltimore were emboldened enough by the unsettled state and shrunken size of the Balaj to do more than chip away at the territory boundaries. If so, this was something Dario needed to know about.

  But not before I verified a few things. And not until I finished my shift. A girl had to pay her rent, you know? And a girl also had to hustle down to Middleburg Virginia for Thanksgiving dinner with her family as well.

  “Let me see if I can reach Tremelay.” I eyed the photo, realizing the chances I had of getting any information on this the afternoon before a major holiday were slim. “Can you text that picture to me? High-res? I’ll check into it, but don’t expect anything soon with the holiday and all. I’ll call you Monday or Tuesday after I do some digging and let you know what’s going on.”

  Janice wrinkled her nose. “I was hoping to get a story out for the weekend.”

  That so wasn’t going to happen. But I really did owe her one—more than one. Janice had been a good friend and a good resource, and having a bulldog of a reporter on my side wasn’t something I wanted to take lightly.

  “I promise I’ll get right on it. I’ll text you as soon as I know something definitive, and you can call me back.”

  If I managed to reach Tremelay and he confirmed it was a stabbing and body dump or an anemic overdose victim, I’d be texting her before the turkey was on the table. If it wasn’t…well, I wasn’t sure when I’d actually get to see Dario. I wouldn’t get back in town until late Thanksgiving night, and Friday would be a hectic shitshow of work and other obligations. I might be able to see him Friday night, although being the new head of his family meant there were a ton of things he needed to take care of upon awakening, the first of which was feeding.

  And now my thoughts were back to the idea of bite marks on my inner thigh.

  I’d texted Tremelay on my break, and drove home after work to an enthusiastic greeting. There were several perks of my new digs—one of which was the charged magical circle inscribed and inlaid into the basement floor. The other was that I was allowed to have pets. I’d barely put the dishes in the kitchen cabinets before I’d headed to the local animal shelter for a cat.

  I’d come home with a cat and a dog. The dog wasn’t planned, but when the bull terrier mix had come running at me in a jailbreak attempt, and had scratched Raven’s symbol into the concrete floor, I’d immediately adopted him.

  As I petted Fulk, I felt tears well up in my eyes at the memory. My best friend. She’d been killed, murdered and left in a gruesome display for me to
find. Then she’d been killed again, her spirit ripped from the lelek raktarban that had housed it by the frighteningly powerful sun demon who had marked me. I’d hoped when I saw this dog that she’d somehow survived, that her spirit roamed this plane looking for a safe place to land. But the other lelek raktarban on my shelf remained empty, and ever since I’d brought the dog home, he’d shown no signs whatsoever of possession by anything but a sock-chewing, slobbering, pizza-stealing dog.

  I knew Russell had his doubts, but I’d been sure that day at the animal shelter that Raven was somehow in there, possessing this dog. Hopefully Friday’s séance session would reveal more. The necromancer could open a channel of communication with the dead, and my hope was that somehow he could manage to get in contact with Raven on the other side of the veil and let me talk to her. Had she been briefly possessing my dog, or had I just been imagining it? Was she safe and happy in her afterlife, or had Balsur dragged her down to a fiery hell when he’d broken the lelek raktarban?

  Would she ever return, even if in spirit form?

  The bull terrier danced around my legs, breaking through my grim thoughts. Even if Raven hadn’t possessed the dog, I still loved this guy. Even when he ate my socks.

  “Fulk, you adorable little blockhead, my goodest boy ever. Aren’t you? Who’s the best boy? You are. You’re the best boy.”

  I knelt down so he could paint my face with his tongue and wedge his blocky head under my arm, tail going a hundred miles an hour.

  “And Gaia.” The cat chirruped, then shoved the terrier aside and wound her way around my legs. I’d named her after the primordial goddess because Gaia always insisted on being first—first to be fed, first to be petted, first on top of my bed at night. Once she’d claimed her right, she turned back into the stereotypical aloof cat—until another occasion to be first presented itself.

  Fulk wisely moved aside and let the cat receive my affection. From the scars on his head and body, and from what the shelter had said, he’d been used as a fighting dog—and clearly had come out on top of his many fights. Badass he might be in the fighting ring, but one swipe of Gaia’s paw had put him right in his place. He stood aside, impatiently waiting his turn. It didn’t take long. I stroked Gaia’s soft fur, picked her up in my arms to cuddle against my face, then set her back down when she began to squirm. One last pat and she was off to the kitchen to check her food bowl, replaced in my arms by a sixty-pound, muscled mass of slobbery, whining dog.