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  “Love her so much she’s gone missing? What did you do, Rabbit? If you tell me, I’ll make it quick. If I have to work for it, I’m going to hurt you. Bad.”

  Rabbit’s eyes went wider, if that was even possible.

  “Man, you done got cold since you killed Tiram. You used to be fun.”

  “And you used to not kill human teenagers,” I shot back.

  Greg pushed through the door, ignoring the crowd of grumbling Morlocks gathering just outside. I stopped short when I saw the heap of Bishop moaning on the floor. “Shit,” I breathed. “You weren’t screwing around, were you?”

  “I just got my best friend back, and now this asshole is trying to hurt you? Not happening,” Greg said. “Anybody kicks your ass, it’s gonna be me.”

  Bishop would heal, and in just a matter of hours, but it wasn’t going to feel good. Greg left him in a sorry shape. His arms and legs were broken. His feet were twisted around to point in a direction nature most certainly did not intend, and from what I could tell, both shoulders and elbows were dislocated. He also had a busted lip and the previously- and-newly crushed nose, but those were minor compared to the broken bones and dislocated kneecaps. I made a mental note not to get in any more fistfights with my best friend. The last one broke most of me, and from the looks of things, he’d been practicing.

  Greg deposited Rabbit onto a battered conference table, and I pulled out my pocketknife. Rabbit tried to scoot off the table, but Greg held him fast. I shoved my wallet in the little vampire’s mouth while I dug the bullets out of his wounds. I wasn’t very delicate about it, and the wallet didn’t quite muffle the screams, but it did a pretty good job all in all. A couple of minutes later, I folded up my knife, put my tooth-dented wallet back in my pocket, and pulled a chair over to the table.

  Rabbit rolled off the table and staggered to a small blue-and-white plastic cooler. He pulled out two bags of blood and sucked them dry, then walked back over to the throne. He looked at it, looked at me, and limped over to the chair. “It probably looks better if I don’t try to sit on the throne right now, huh?”

  “Let’s replace ‘right now’ with ‘ever’ and I think you’re getting there, Rabbit,” I said. I pulled a chair over and sat in front of him, so close our knees almost touched. Greg stood behind him, his arms folded. He wasn’t the most imposing figure, more like a grumpy Patton Oswalt, but given the destruction he’d wrought upon Bishop, I didn’t think Rabbit wanted to cross my partner.

  “Now,” I said, leaning forward. “Why did you run, Rabbit? I know it’s in your nature, but what did you do to that poor girl?”

  Rabbit rocked back and forth, his knee bouncing so fast it almost vibrated. “I didn’t hurt Jules, man. Like I told you, she’s my girl!”

  “Then why run?” I asked.

  “’Cause I figured you didn’t want me seeing her. I mean, I’m a couple years older than her, and I figured you wouldn’t want me dating a human.”

  “Rabbit,” I said, leaning back. “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you date. If you can find a human with enough poor taste to go out with you, then go for it. As long as you aren’t compelling her to do anything, or letting her know about me or anything about the vampires in town, I could care less. Is that something Tiram worried about? Who vampires were dating?”

  “Man, you bastards get weird when you get a little power. Master Gordon never cared, but I didn’t know if you had some kind of hangups about dating humans. How’m I supposed to know that?”

  “Rabbit.” I leaned forward. “You’ve met my girlfriend. The human police detective?”

  “Oh yeah.” He relaxed a little. “I guess you ain’t gonna beat me for dating a human, then. So then what are you doing down here? Jules ain’t been down here in a couple weeks. She doesn’t like it here. Says the place smells bad. I told her, she should smell it with my nose. Am I right?”

  “You told her you’re a vampire?” I asked, dropping any hint of mirth from my face.

  “Nah, nah, nothing like that,” he said, holding up his hands. “I swear to God, I didn’t tell her that. I just told her I had a real sensitive nose.”

  “What reason did you give for living in a sewer?” Greg asked.

  Rabbit twisted around to look up at him. “I just told her I ran into some trouble with the IRS and had to go underground.”

  “So she took you literally,” I said with a shake of my head.

  “Yeah, sure, that works,” Rabbit agreed, nodding so hard I thought his head might fall off. He was into a third bag of blood now and looking a lot better. “Can I go give this last one to Bish? You kinda broke him.”

  “I’ll do it. I should probably apologize,” Greg said. “I didn’t need to break both legs. One would have been sufficient.” He took the bag from Rabbit, looked at it, then walked over and picked up the cooler. “I’ll just take all of these. He’s pretty busted.” He walked to the door, and I turned back to Rabbit.

  “You’re not going to run again, are you? Because I’m not going to wait this time; I’ll just shoot you.”

  “Nah,” he said. “Long as you ain’t here to kick my ass for banging a human, I got nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m going to just skip the fact that she’s in high school for a moment, because we’ve got bigger fish to fry than your statutory rape charges.”

  “Hey, she’s eighteen! She’s a senior, and I think she said she got held back in elementary school or something. Measles, maybe,” Rabbit protested.

  “Rabbit, you’re over thirty.”

  “I got turned at seventeen.”

  “Twenty years ago.”

  He finally had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I got nothing.”

  “Yeah, that’s a pretty good description of your morals,” I said.

  “You know you’re a leech when the crime boss is slagging on your moral fiber,” Greg chimed in from the doorway.

  I shot him a look. “Not helpful.”

  “But true.”

  I didn’t argue, just turned back to Rabbit. “When was the last time you saw Julia?”

  “Why? Did something happen? Holy shit, is Jules okay? What happened?” Rabbit was out of his chair like a shot and right up in my face. I stood up and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “We don’t know if anything’s happened,” I said, “but her brother is worried. She didn’t come home from work a couple of nights ago, and he says that’s not like her.”

  “Shit,” Rabbit said, sitting back in the chair and putting his head in his hands. “Was it Monday night?”

  “It was,” Greg said, coming fully into the room. “Why? Is Monday important?”

  “We were supposed to meet up after she got out of school Tuesday. She was . . . helping me with a project.” Rabbit suddenly became very interested in the grain of the faux wood of the conference table.

  I leaned forward, putting an elbow on that same table. “What project?” I asked.

  Rabbit mumbled something almost unintelligible.

  I grabbed his shoulder and turned him to face me. “Now is not the time to mumble, Rabbit. What was she helping you with?”

  “I’m going to night school, okay?” he said, then leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest. “I dropped out before I got my diploma, so I found a night school and I been working on my GED.”

  “Why? You got a job interview?” Greg said with a smirk.

  Rabbit rubbed his hands over his face, then flipped Greg off. “One, screw you, fatass. Two, I’m the closest thing the Morlocks got to a leader, and I figured if I knew a little more book stuff, like philosophy and stuff, maybe it’d help me do better.” He leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “Almost everybody I know is dead. Not vamp-dead. Real dead. Squirrel got eaten in the sewer by that stupid rag monster last year. Alexis got offed by Ti
ram. His goons killed a shitload of the other Morlocks, and most of the rest died fighting Lilith and her guys. There’s not that many of us left, and I’m the best option we got for a boss. I want to get smarter, so the rest of my family doesn’t get killed. I know you think I’m stupid, and maybe I am. But I’m all we got, so Jules is helping me go to night school so I can get better. And if I can graduate in May, then she’ll help me take some classes at CPCC or something.”

  I had to admit, that confession was more than I expected out of Rabbit. He’d always struck me as a petty little shithead crook, but it looked like the near extermination of the Morlocks had changed him. Losing almost everything that ever meant anything to you could do that. I should know.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Greg’s cell phone chirped like R2-D2 and we all turned to look. He pulled it out of his pocket, tapped the screen, and looked up at me. “We gotta go. Sabrina caught a case, and it looks like something we want to see.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Is it Jules?” Rabbit said, almost overlapping me.

  “It’s a girl, and she’s been drained. She was killed by a vampire.”

  “Completely drained?” I asked.

  “Is it Jules?” Rabbit asked, louder now, and on his feet.

  “We don’t know yet,” Greg said. “But it was a vampire kill, and that makes it our problem.”

  “Does Sabrina have any idea of the time of death?” I asked.

  “No. The coroner isn’t there yet,” Greg said, “but we’d better move.”

  Rabbit looked at me, fear in his eyes. “Are you gonna . . .”

  “Yeah. I’ve got to, Rabbit. You know this life isn’t for everybody. Hell, it’s not even for most of us. I can’t have a new kid vampire running around, especially since she’s going to wake up starving and kill anybody that’s close. That happens, and any hope of secrecy goes out the window.”

  “But if it’s Jules? I mean . . . couldn’t you, I don’t know, bring her here or something?” he asked, pinkish tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

  “If it is Julia, do you want to do that to her? Do you want to trap her down here, with you? Everything she’s ever had has been taken from her. Do you want to tell her she has to live without it forever?”

  “Would you want the choice? Would you want the chance to decide, or would you want somebody to stake you before you even woke up?” Rabbit almost spat the words.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but Greg cut me off. “The stake. I’d take the stake every time. And you would, too.”

  Rabbit just stood there, for a long moment before nodding at me. I stepped out of his “office” into Morlocktown and moved toward the main tunnels.

  Greg was right beside me as we jogged, then ran through the sewers. “Call Bobby,” I said. “Tell him we need him to expedite removal, and to secure the body with the silver-plated cuffs I gave him. We’ll deal with the body when we get there.”

  “Deal with?” Greg asked. He knew full well what we were going there to do, but he wanted me to say it, to make it real to myself.

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice flat. I ran through the sewers toward a murder scene, knowing that whoever this girl was, I was going to have to kill her all over again.

  Chapter 8

  SABRINA STOOD beside her car when we pulled up. “That took long enough,” she said. The look on her face told me she wasn’t kidding. “I’ve had to tap dance around Detective Do-Right for the last half hour.”

  “Sorry,” I said, lowering my voice so the uniforms walking to and fro wouldn’t hear. “Had to wash the sewer funk off and change clothes. I don’t think you wanted us to show up fresh from Morlocktown.”

  “Or less-than-fresh, as the case may be,” Greg said.

  Sabrina sighed, then nodded. “Yeah, good point. I’m glad you drove, too. I don’t need to explain to Fitzpatrick how you guys just happened to be walking by and saw the lights.”

  “Especially since nobody is just walking by this time of night,” Greg said, waving a hand at the deserted South Boulevard. We stood in the parking lot of a converted mill building just outside of downtown Charlotte. In the daylight, or even early evening hours, this part of town was packed with shoppers at the antique stores and the kitschy decorating shops that filled the parking lot, interspersed with folks jamming the English-style pub or the upscale Mexican restaurant on the corner. But at four in the morning, the place was deserted.

  “Wow, even the strip club is dark,” I remarked. “Any security cameras?”

  “Sean’s looking around. That’s how I got him to get out of my hair for a little while.”

  “He’s a pain in the ass, huh? Want me to get him reassigned? I have a little pull with your boss.” I grinned at Sabrina.

  She didn’t grin back. “Stay out of it, Jimmy. I actively try to forget your ‘other activities.’ I don’t need you sticking your nose in with McDaniel and using some kind of Master of the City leverage on him.”

  I held up both hands in surrender. “No problem. Just wanted to help.”

  She sighed again. “Sorry. It’s just a pain in the ass, you know? Trying to be a cop, dealing with your secrets, now I’ve got a partner for the first time in years, and I have to juggle all that stuff.”

  “All what stuff?” Fitzpatrick’s voice came from behind me, and it was all I could do not to turn around and rip his heart out through his ribcage. I cursed myself silently for letting a human get the drop on me. I could have all the power in the world, but if I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings, I was gonna end up with a stake through my heart sooner rather than later. I cut myself a little slack by thinking that Greg would have taken out anyone or anything that really meant me harm, but still made myself a mental promise to do better.

  “Hey guys, what are you doing here?” Sean’s voice was cheerful, but for the first time since I’d met the chipper detective, there was a hint of steel under it. He didn’t like us being there, poking around his crime scene. That made two of us.

  “Detective Law called us in,” Greg said. He stepped forward and pulled out his phone. A few taps and swipes on the screen, and he handed it over to Fitzpatrick. “Is that the girl you found?”

  Fitzpatrick looked down and pursed his lips. He looked up at Greg, then me. “Yeah, that’s her. What does that have to do with you two?” Now he really didn’t like us being at his crime scene. He had no idea how much he needed us here, depending on how long Julia had been dead.

  “Her name is Julia O’Connell,” I said as Greg pocketed his phone. “Her brother hired us to look for her. Seems she went missing Monday night after her shift at Landmark. Her mother didn’t get any help from CMPD when she reported the girl missing.”

  “Monday night?” Sabrina said. “That’s two days. Why haven’t we heard about this, Fitz? A missing kid should have been part of the morning brief. At least a memo from the lieutenant . . .”

  “She’s eighteen,” Greg said, his voice dark.

  “Crap,” Fitzpatrick said. “So she’s an adult.”

  “Which means that she only became a real missing person about . . .” I looked at my nonexistent wristwatch for emphasis. “Four hours ago.” I didn’t bother to hide my disgust. The whole thing stunk to high heaven.

  “Shit,” Sabrina said. “She looks so young.”

  “Can I see her?” I asked. Fitzpatrick’s head snapped up. “To confirm ID,” I said quickly. “I don’t want you knocking on her mother’s door if this is just someone who looks like Julia.” I also wanted to see if I could get a sense as to how drained she was, and if she really was going to come back. Because if she was going be reborn as a vampire, it would be about eight hours after she died, and she would come back hungry.

  Sabrina turned and walked toward an ambulance, motioning for us to follow. I ducked under
the yellow crime scene tape strung up between a bush and a light pole and walked over to a gurney with a black body bag on it. I unzipped the bag, and Julia O’Connell stared up at me. She was dead, all right, and I could smell the stink of a vampire on her. I didn’t see any puncture wounds on her neck, but that didn’t mean anything. Vampire bites heal quickly thanks to the magical nature of the wound, but the absence of a cause of death told me as much as a bullet wound.

  She looked so damned young.

  I zipped the bag and nodded to Sabrina. “That’s Julia.”

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy.” She reached out and put a hand on my arm.

  I jerked my arm back, pissed. “Why? I did my job, right? I found her. Now we can go to her mother, wake her up, if the woman has even managed to sleep for worrying about her oldest child, and tell her that we found her daughter, she can be collected at the county morgue, and by the way, here’s the bill.” I gave a sharp laugh and turned away.

  Sabrina grabbed my shoulder, and I turned back to her, still angry. “No, Detective, I did my job. I found her. You guys are the ones that failed Julia. Your department and your stupid forty-eight hour rule. Does that look like an adult to you?” I pointed at the bag, my voice rising. “What was the giveaway that she was fully grown? Her flowered bookbag? The Wonder Woman T-shirt? The high school ID? Yeah, she was real grown up. But our local police didn’t care about any of that, did you? Nope. She was eighteen, so you couldn’t do anything until she was already dead. Good job, CMPD. Cleared that missing persons case in just hours. Well done.”

  Fitzpatrick rammed me like a muscular bowling ball, shoving me back with a forearm to the chest and slamming me up against the ambulance. I looked down at his snarling face and was honestly surprised. I didn’t know he even knew how to scowl, but he was doing a pretty good imitation of it right now.

  “You shut the hell up, Black,” he growled at me. His voice was thick, and his eyes teary. “You think this doesn’t tear us up? You think we aren’t just as pissed off as you are? Well, kiss my ass, you little prick. I’ve got a nineteen-year-old daughter, you son of a bitch!” Sean was yelling now, pulling me down by the collar until he was right in my face. “This sucks. I know it, Law knows it, McDaniel knows it. But we don’t make the rules. We just have to play by them. So we can’t go looking for every college kid who doesn’t call home for a day or so, or every husband who gets pissed off and turns his trip to the store for smokes into a night at a hotel to take a break from his crying kid. And we have to put a number on it. And that number is eighteen. Would it matter if the number was twenty-one? To this girl, yeah. But most of the time not at all.”