I wished a floating, nearly headless body at three in the morning were an unusual thing for me, but this was the fourth time this one had visited me in as many weeks.

A squinty gaze at my watch made me groan. At least she’s punctual.

“Avenge me!” the apparition demanded in an over-the-top ghostly voice.

I pushed myself upright to offer an annoyed look. “Don’t pull that scary crap with me, Melinda. I’m not some kid trying to contact spirits at a sleepover.”

The spirit shimmered then crossed her arms and gave me the same dirty look back. Ghosts have the worst attitude. “Well, if you did what I wanted the first time I asked, I wouldn’t have to keep bothering you.”

“You want me to kill a teenager.”

“He killed me. How is that not a fair reaction?”

“You ran a red light because you were trying to get your caramel macchiato to mix while complaining the barista didn’t make it right. Can’t really blame him for that.”

She pursed her lips as though she’d blown out a huge sigh, but with her being incorporeal, no actual air escaped. “If he hadn’t been driving, it would have been fine. Isn’t this your job? To make things right? You were given this gift for a reason.”

“I don’t know why I was given this gift, but I know I won’t be using it to murder innocent teenagers.”

“Can I talk to someone above you? Like your boss?”

I groaned and rubbed my eyes as it became clear I wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep any time soon. “Did you really just ask to speak to my manager? Look, if you can find whoever is responsible for me, please, be my guest and speak to them. While you’re at it, tell them I’d like to quit.”

Melinda jammed a bony finger at me. “Do you know who I am?”

“Someone who has ruined my sleep for four weeks.”

“And I’ll keep doing it until you agree to help.”

The threat was good, as far as threats went. Most ghosts tried to scare me into doing what they wanted, but after a person had seen as much as I had, those tactics fell flat. The worst an apparition could do was annoy me until they lost their hold on this world and went to the afterlife. A poltergeist could do some damage, but they were few and far between, luckily.

Melinda’s outline had already lost its sharpness. She’d dimmed until she was more of a shimmer than a clear picture. Another week—maybe two—and she’d drift to a whisper, then to nothing.

“And I’ll keep ignoring you until you’re no longer in this realm.”

An entitled huff came from her. “Look at me! I can’t believe I’m sitting here being ignored by some short, frumpy girl with bad hair.”

I considered pointing out that my hair didn’t normally look quite so wild, but she had woken me up in the middle of the night.

“Make peace with what happened,” I told her as I rolled over, my back to her. “Because I’m not going to help you.”

The bed didn’t sink, but an electric feeling that said she’d neared ran along my back. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” she whispered, some of that sureness missing. “I wasn’t supposed to die like this.”

“Well, that’s how it always goes. Everyone thinks their death will be some great sacrifice, some noble leap, but that isn’t what it is.”

“Harrison already moved his mistress into our home.”

Okay, so I wasn’t entirely jaded, because an ache ran through my chest at that. Being dead sucked, I was sure, but being forgotten so quickly? Replaced? Far worse.

“The world keeps moving. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that no matter what, no matter who dies or how, the world doesn’t stop for any of us.”

“Then what’s the point? Why does any of it matter if as soon as we’re gone, it all goes away?”

I cuddled into the warmth of my bed, unsure what to tell her. She wanted to be reassured. She wanted me to tell her there was some great plan, that at the end of the day everything, made sense. I would have loved to tell her that because I’d love to hear it—to believe it.

The reality was that despite having spent my life surrounded by death, I had no stunning pieces of wisdom about it. I didn’t know why we were all here, or what the great purpose was, or why any of it meant a damn thing.

Instead, I told her the only thing I could. “Make your peace, Melinda, because you don’t want to end up where you’ll go if you don’t.”

She wailed, the screeching of a soul that few could hear and even fewer could survive. It made my ears want to bleed, so I grabbed my headphones and cranked up the music to cover it.

She’d be gone soon, since she only ever stayed for twenty minutes or so. I’d done this long enough to know which ones would cross over and which ones who would get stuck. Melinda?

She’d get stuck. She’d cling and try to bargain until the last moment, when she faded to nothing and ended up in purgatory. Even I didn’t like to think about that, about the place I’d glimpsed a handful of times that sent a creeping, gnawing terror through me.

The deep bass and rhythmic drumming drowned out her wailing, and I fell back to sleep. Eventually.

* * * *

A banging on my door at ten at night made me grit my teeth.

Really? Last night Melinda kept me up and now this?

Did the universe have a personal vendetta against my sleep? It didn’t matter who was there, I couldn’t be blamed for whatever I did. Even if it was the hottest stripper-gram I’d ever seen, I’d tell him to take his G-string on home and let me rest.

Dicks were nice and all, but at thirty-five, I’d realized sleep mattered more. Finding a willing cock was far easier than managing a full eight hours.

When I pulled open the front door, a dark-haired man stood there, his suit impeccable and his hands folded behind him like some regal prince.

It took a moment for me to realize I’d seen him before. We hadn’t ever spoken, but he’d been into the small occult store I spent time at. I doubted he’d noticed me—I didn’t tend to be the sort of person others spent a lot of time caring about. The sharp points of his fangs also told me exactly what he was.

“Ava Harlin?” he said, voice smooth and careful, my name a question. Maybe he didn’t remember he’d seen me before? “My name is Kase, and I am here at the behest of Lord Raymond Colter.”

And that was about the time I realized my night was going to get much, much worse, because Raymond Colter led the local vampire coven.

I’d avoided most of the supernatural world by treading along the outskirts like a mouse avoiding the trap. Others like myself—those who walked the line between human and supernatural—tended to leap right into a world they weren’t equipped for. Humans playing the games of immortals never went well for the human.

They ended up dead, which was a fate I’d rather avoid for as long as possible.

“What exactly does he want?”

Kase lifted one of his perfectly manicured eyebrows. “That isn’t for me to ask, and I’d suggest you not ask, either. All I know is that he sent me to collect you.”

I groaned, wishing Melinda would come back. She wasn’t great company, but it had to be better than vampires. The few I’d run into were always insufferable bores who thought far too much of themselves.

“Let me get dressed,” I muttered. Arguing with vampires was, in general, a bad idea.

“There isn’t time.”

I waved down at myself—my pink fluffy bath robe with cartoon penises on it over a pair of boy shorts and a tank top—both with a quip about books being better than boys. “I’m not well versed with vampire etiquette, but I’m thinking this might not be the best outfit to go meeting royalty, huh?”

Kase traced his gaze down my body impassively, a look so uninterested it offended. Sure, fucking a dead guy wasn’t my idea of a good time, but he could at least look as though I were slightly more appetizing than spoiled meat.

Though, at the same time…using ‘appetizing’ when talking about a vampire was probably a poor choice of terms.

“He won’t care. He made it clear time is of the essence, so this way.” Kase held his hand out toward a dark car parked in front of my house, someone else in the driver’s seat.

There wasn’t really a way to refuse that was there? I was pretty sure if I pushed any further, I’d end up gagged and tied, and while that might be wonderfully fun on my days off, I just didn’t think this vampire was a fan of safewords.

So instead, I followed his lead.

He sat up front with the driver, leaving me in the back alone.

Faint whispers rattled through the cab, and I did my best to ignore them. They were the echoes of ghosts who followed vampires around. When I’d still been young and full of optimism, I’d thought they were the whispers of the souls from the vampires themselves. Eventually I’d realized the truth—they were the whispers of their victims. Why those whispers never went away, I didn’t understand. They just kept growing into a chorus that followed the vampire everywhere, even though only I heard it.

The presence of so many whispers in the car said the two up front were not vampires I should trust. Like anything that eats people should be trusted. I’d sooner turn my back on a man-eating tiger than a vampire.

The ride didn’t take long, and the stretches of empty road in the barren night reminded me of how isolated the desert was. Why so many vampires would choose to settle in a place with so much sun and heat never made much sense to me, but then again, no one asked for my opinion.

The car pulled past large iron gates, and the house before us didn’t fit the area at all. Instead of a Spanish style—all flat stucco walls and clay roofs—this house was an old Victorian mansion with peaked roofs and oval windows near the top. A large porch sat at the front, the wood aged as though the place had been there for centuries.

Maybe it had. Who knew the truth when it came to immortals?

Kase opened my door, and I ignored the way the pebbles of the driveway dug into the bottom of my fuzzy slippers. My absurd outfit might have bothered me, but there was a benefit to looking weak and ridiculous.

It was easy to play the part of a medium when I had to, to pretend my abilities were on par with fortune tellers at fairs and the stay-at-home-moms who sold love potions along with MLM leggings. Safer, too, since those people were never seen as a threat. What I was, I didn’t know, but I didn’t need anyone else taking an interest in it—or me.

Inside the house, a young man offered to take my robe as though it were a jacket.

Keeping covered seemed a good idea, so I waved him off. No reason to walk into a room full of blood drinkers looking like a buffet.

I followed Kase not up the staircase but down. Beneath the first level, the already impressive mansion spread out into more rooms and areas than I could count.

It made sense, though. Being underground helped them conduct business even when the sun was up and reduced the chance of attack or danger. It had to suck to know only a curtain stood between someone and a fiery end.

Inside the final set of doors—two large ones that reached from floor to ceiling and were adorned with gold and jewels —was a place that made me rethink the entire thing.

Vampires stood on either side of a center aisle, the floor shiny black stone except for a middle strip of red tile. At the end of the walkway were several seats on two different levels of stage, most on the lower level, and on the upper level, just one.

Dense shadows twisted around the throne, as though a layer of living darkness surrounded the chair. I sensed something from those shadows, but I couldn’t tell what they were. If they had ever been spirits, it had been so long ago that they were nothing but glimmers of what they had been.

And on the throne? A vampire who made my skin crawl and all my warnings go off like an old car the owner hoped would keep limping forward. He had long, straight black hair and dark skin. Flat and empty red-rimmed eyes met mine.

The older a vampire got, the less human they appeared and acted. It was as though they stopped remembering how to be human. All that showed in the absolute stillness of the one in the throne, the way he didn’t even blink.

“Ms. Harlin?”

I gulped and nodded. The whole idea of not showing fear before predators sounded like great advice until facing off against one.

“Thank you for coming. I wish to hire you.”

Well…that wasn’t what I expected…

I tried to play dumb, to pretend we were talking about my boring day job selling life insurance. “I’m afraid I don’t do policies for the undead since you don’t really…die.”

Colter tilted his head, as though unused to having to tell anyone something twice. Then again, as ruler of a coven, he probably never did. “I require your other set of skills.”

Well fuck. I supposed that answered if they knew about me, didn’t it? I’d thought I’d kept that side of me under wraps, but clearly, I hadn’t done a good enough job.

“What did you need?”

“I need you to speak to the spirit of someone recently deceased.”

Not a difficult task, nor an unusual one for those who knew my powers. Though… “I can’t talk to vampires who have died.” I frowned. “I mean, dead-dead. Like, deader than you are.”

And that was not the best example of self-preservation I’d ever heard.

Still, if Colter was offended, he didn’t show it. “No. Not a vampire.” Good. The last thing I needed was to explain how vampires didn’t have souls anymore, thus couldn’t be summoned. That was the sort of thing they might take offense to, and offending things that could kill me was dumb. For beings with such hard skin, I’d found vampires to be exceptionally sensitive. “I need you to speak with the most recent person a vampire killed.”

Less good.

I shuffled my fluffy slippers along the tile to buy time. Turning down the leader of a vampire coven was a good way to waste all that staying alive I’d done, but getting involved with the mess of a vampire who had been killing people—and the whole ‘most recent person he killed’ was a very bad way to put it—wasn’t a great idea either.

“Murder victims are notoriously difficult to summon—” I started, trying for my best ‘oh, I wish I could, really’ tone.

Colter’s eyes flashed red, the rim expanding until the entire iris turned ruby and bright. “You will do as I ask, and I will pay you well for your time. If you refuse, you will be lucky if a medium can find what is left of your soul when we finish with you. Now, let us try this again. I have a job for you.”

My gulp was harsh against my bone-dry throat, but really, there was only one answer.

I plastered on a smile I didn’t feel and stuck my hands into the pockets of my penis robe. “Sounds great. Just give me a shovel and point me in the direction of the corpse.”

I wish fewer of my nights led to graverobbing.