But in the future, I needed to be more careful.

I'd been saying that a lot lately, but hey, it was true. If I had nothing else to thank Ian Stott for (apart from the inconveniences), I could thank him for the wake-up call. I needed to get my business back in gear, and my head back out of my a.s.s.

As my mind had been wandering right up that rearward ca.n.a.l, Adrian had been pondering. He pointed at the gear and said, "Tonight, we can work together. As long as you understand that I don't trust you, and that I still believe that somehow, this is all your fault."

"This? What this this?" I demanded to know. "Even if I blew your cover at the drag bar-which I most certainly did not not-I'm not the one who stole sensitive government doc.u.ments and buried them out in the open, where any d.a.m.n fool could come along with a bulldozer and retrieve them!"

He gave me one of those shrugs that made his torso ripple. "No one's bothered it yet. And okay, you can have that one-that part wasn't your fault."

"Thank you," I spat, even though I didn't feel very thankful. But I had to say something, and it was either be polite or start fighting with him. I didn't want to fight with him. I wanted to get along with him long enough to get Ian's paperwork and get back to Seattle, or to wherever, and leave this jerk to whatever covert disco nightlife he best preferred.

Unflapped and cool, he said, "You're welcome. Are you ready to go? Let's get this over with."

"I'm ready. And I couldn't agree with you more." Even though I had a feeling I'd be doing most of the digging, purely by virtue of the fact that I'm faster and stronger. Ah, well. Hand me a shovel and call me a feminist.

We skulked out of the building together, trying to simultaneously act normal and be super-careful. I don't think we succeeded very well at either goal, but I had to give credit where it was due-Adrian could skulk like a motherf.u.c.ker. That was a man with skulking in the blood...or maybe, it'd been trained into him. I didn't know much about Navy SEALS or what they do, but just from watching him navigate a corridor I could guess that they were pretty much total bada.s.ses. Or maybe just this one was. I'd need a broader sampling to really form an educated opinion.

He moved almost as silently as I did, though I think he put more effort into it. And when he moved, he looked like some kind of big cat-all long, lean muscles and poised tension. It was nice to watch.

We made our ninja way out to the parking garage and over to my mock-cop-car. For a split second he acted like he thought he'd be driving, but I disabused him of that notion immediately by jingling the keys and hip-checking him away from the driver's door.

"Sorry," he grumbled. "Force of habit."

"Yeah. Well by force of my personal habit-my car. I drive."

"Wait a minute."

"What?" I asked.

"Should we even take this car?"

"What?"

He said, "Just in case we're being watched. Satellites. You know."

I stood there with the keys hovering before the lock, suddenly torn. "Do you think? I mean, it's a big dark car. There have to be zillions of them in the Greater Atlanta metro area. I always pick the blandest vehicle possible."

"Easily jillions of them," he agreed amiably. "But this is the one you drove to the Review, right?"

"Right."

"And not long after you showed up, they they showed up." showed up."

I pulled the keys up into my palm and frowned. "True. But they didn't follow us here. here."

"It's a busy part of town and, like you said, big dark car. Jillions of them. You might've lost them. It's hard to follow one car through a river of cars, especially when it looks like any other car."

"I like the way you think," I said, even though I hated what he was thinking. "But...if I lost them before we made it home-and G.o.d help us if we didn't, and they're only watching us, stalking us from afar-then they won't know to chase this car again. Will they? I mean, in case there are..." I had a new scariest word, something to usurp reconnaissance reconnaissance. I said it. "Satellites? Watching us?"

He shook his head and said, "Maybe we're overthinking it, but I'd rather overthink than underthink. If you were followed..." I began to object but he held up a hand and said quickly, "And I'm not saying that you were, but just in case...let's put one more piece of distance between what they might know and what we're really doing."

"Fine. What do you suggest?"

He looked around the parking garage. "No cameras in here?"

"None. And I like it that way."

"Then how about that car?" He pointed at the precise opposite of my mock-cop-mobile. A tiny white Prius.

"Are you s.h.i.tting me? That's a hybrid hybrid. What if we have to run away from someone? Jesus. We'd have to get out and push. Or G.o.d help us if we have to pa.s.s somebody going up a hill. No way. Forget it. What about that one?" I indicated a gray Cherokee with a few years on it.

"That one?"

I said, "We could climb difficult terrain in it. Four-wheel drive, I bet."

"Control freak much?"

"You have no idea," I said. Though he'd spent nearly twenty-four hours in my company, and he probably could guess.

"Whatever makes you happy," he muttered, and that that was an att.i.tude I liked to hear. "Got a Slim Jim?" was an att.i.tude I liked to hear. "Got a Slim Jim?"

His directions to the cemetery were precise and limited, doled out in monosyllables all the way to the other side of town, where we got caught in the midst of a three-car pileup and the subsequent cleanup. On the other side of that, we puttered down into a neighborhood with which I was unfamiliar. It was somewhere on the south side, at the edge of the sprawl that makes Atlanta look like a big ol' stain on any given map of Georgia.

We found the general location and parked a few blocks away-or at least, the general equivalent of blocks. There weren't many buildings and there weren't strict blocks; it looked like an abandoned quadrant of someplace that was never very well built up in the first place. I almost asked Adrian why his parents had put up a marker there, of all places, but then I remembered their modest home and I realized that the property out here in the boonies was probably pretty cheap.

The cemetery itself was surrounded by a low wooden fence that was too small and rotted to keep anybody out, and unlikely to keep anybody in, either. We found a particularly darkened corner, away from even the fuzzy white lights of a distant streetlamp that was probably a hundred yards away.

I heard a rumble, somewhere not too far off. I gave it a second of attention and called it a train, then recalled that we'd driven over tracks. This distant clatter of metal wheels on rattling rails, the soft shush of our feet pushing through the gra.s.s, and the salty puffs of my companion's breath were all I heard. We were all alone-blessedly alone, but almost unnervingly alone, there with the dead.

"This way," he whispered, despite the fact that (as I just now established) we were all by ourselves. It's something about graveyards, I guess. They make you quiet. Like libraries.

h.e.l.l, I'm mostly dead already and I whispered back, "Okay. Can you see all right? I've got a flashlight back in the car."

"I'm fine," he said.

I took him at his word and followed him along the unmowed rows and stepped sharply past fallen monuments and dismembered cherubs. The cemetery was old, but it wasn't that old. If you forced me to take a guess, I'd say that the oldest graves were dug right around the turn of the twentieth century, but some of the graves were newer. You could tell, because the monuments were flatter.

I tripped down into a pit created when someone's casket had collapsed, there under the sod. "Pardon me," I mumbled.

"What?"

Drat his hearing. I said, "Nothing."

But yes, I had begged the pardon of a corpse. Believe me when I tell you that I know how stupid this is, but people who've been dead a long time freak me out. Fresh corpses? No big thing. I've created more than a few of them in my time. But moldering old bodies, left in the ground to mulch themselves into dust? I shudder to consider it. And on those rare occasions that I traipse through graveyards (and believe me, they are are rare), my obsessive compulsions become extra-ludicrous. I cannot bear the thought of walking over anybody's...well... rare), my obsessive compulsions become extra-ludicrous. I cannot bear the thought of walking over anybody's...well...body.

It feels so f.u.c.king impolite, you know? And worse than that, mostly these old folks are buried on a grid system of sorts, and once I know there's a grid I can't keep the OCD on a leash. Step on a crack and break your mother's back? Step on a grave and horrifying things might befall you, or maybe not, because, like, who's going to do the befalling? I know. It doesn't rhyme. But that's what it is, and that's how I roll-awkwardly, and mumbling like a lunatic past the cracked and crooked stones.

"Are you still apologizing to the dead people?"

"No," I told him.

"Because it sounds like that's what you're doing."

"Shut up. And where's-" I almost said, "your sister's fake grave?" but I thought that might annoy him. I tried to think of some nicer way to put it, since I was relying on him to find it, but he beat me to the punch.

"Almost there. See? Under that tree."

"Awesome," I grumbled.

"Why?"

I approached the stone and accepted one of the shovels. "Because it means tree roots. Harder to dig through. I a.s.sume." I had to a.s.sume it. I'd never tried to dig up a grave before, so this was new turf for me.

I suppose it bears mentioning that I kind of kind of lied just now because I lied just now because I have have dug up a real one. But that's a long story, and the grave was so old I justified my actions by calling it "archaeology." Which may or may not have been fair. And it was practically out in the desert. No tree roots. dug up a real one. But that's a long story, and the grave was so old I justified my actions by calling it "archaeology." Which may or may not have been fair. And it was practically out in the desert. No tree roots.

Anyway.

The marker was simple, just the poor girl's name and the dates she was born and apparently died. Nothing but a little dash in the middle, marking the rest. And not even a body underneath-nothing to be commemorated. The whole thing felt achingly futile.

Adrian stared down at the little patch.

I stood on the other side of it, facing him, mirroring his posture with my shovel. One of us had to be the first to dig, but I decided that it shouldn't be me. So I waited for him. He didn't move.

He said, "The last time I saw her, she was like you."

I knew what he meant, even though he wasn't looking at me; he was looking at the ground with an expression I couldn't really read. It might have been as simple as sadness, or as complicated as nostalgia. He was still quiet, so I said, "That's how you knew, I guess. When we first met. You knew what I was, because you'd seen your sister."

He didn't nod, but he didn't have to. "She came to me for help. Showed up while I was home on leave, visiting with my mom and dad. I'd shut myself up in my bedroom, getting ready to call it a night. The window was open. I closed it. And when I turned around, there she was...looking like...looking wrong. Looking dead."

I a.s.sumed that anything I had to say would be unwelcome, so I kept my trap shut. But he looked at me suddenly, like there was something he wanted to hear from me. I didn't know what it was. I just said, "I'm sorry," because it seemed all-purpose.

He swallowed. "She looked like you, but not exactly. You look less...you look more...it's hard to say." Giving it some thought, he amended the sentiment to say, "If you were really, really sick sick, maybe."

"Um. Thanks?"

The hand that wasn't holding the shovel flapped with frustration. "I could tell, when you came into the dressing room. I knew what you were, but not right away. It took me a minute. It took your eyes-the way they're black like that, and the way you don't...you don't..." He derailed again.

"I don't move like somebody who's alive. I know what you mean."

My beating heart stirs cold, recycled blood around. My skin doesn't blush or flush unless I'm eating (or unless I've freshly eaten); you can't see my pulse at those little spots on my neck and my wrists. Other people have noticed it before, and been similarly unable to articulate it. Vampires...we move like dolls, all clockwork and hydraulics, but no soul.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, that's it. But she didn't look...healthy like you do. She looked like she was strung out on drugs, or starving to death." like you do. She looked like she was strung out on drugs, or starving to death."

I made a noise that implied I was thinking, and I was. "Did you ask her about it? Did she tell you anything? My kind-we heal up fast, and survive things with, shall we say, aplomb." I've seen hungry biters that looked like skin and bones, and that's not pretty. But most of us don't bother with drug abuse because our systems don't process it well.

"Do your kind...do they ever do drugs?"

"Not most of us. We don't have much reaction at all to those things."

Leaning on the shovel, driving it an inch down into the turf, he observed, "But you were drinking last night. It changed the way you looked, and the way you spoke."

"Did not," I argued.

"Did too. It definitely had an effect."

"Okay, fine. Alcohol does, yes. So does caffeine. Look, I can't give you a list of what does and doesn't work on us-I haven't tried much myself. Mostly I'm giving you hearsay. All I can really tell you is that, as far as I know, most young vamps don't shoot up or snort up. Maybe your sister was an exception." I c.o.c.ked my head at her stone. "Or maybe she stumbled into something weirder or worse. I have no idea."

"I don't either, and she wouldn't say. Maybe she looked that bad when she was turned," he ventured, but it wasn't likely. Vampirism is like Photoshop for the flesh-it fills out, rounds off, smooths over, and brightens up everything. I've seen cancer patients turn into supermodels with a good undead infusion. So if his little sister looked like h.e.l.l, it must've happened after her bite.

Adrian went on. "I asked what had happened and she wouldn't say. She was frantic, and she kept talking about how her House had turned her over, whatever that means. Then she told me that she needed a place to hide during the day, and she begged me. She begged me..." His voice trailed off.

"What was that about a House?"

"I don't know. She kept saying they were handing her in, or turning her over. But she didn't say more than that. What'd she mean by a House, anyway? Is that a vampire thing?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's a vampire thing. Kind of like a family, only the blood relations are a different sort. Some of them are pretty powerful; some are barely little clans, living out on their own in the middle of nowhere."

"Like hillbillies?"

"I wouldn't have thought to put it like that."

"But like hillbillies," he said again, more certain this time.

"Fine. Like hillbillies." Quite the mental image that scared up. I almost laughed.

"In cities I guess it's different," he mused. If I'd guessed where he was going in time, I would've changed the subject before he could go there, but I was slow, and I didn't see it coming until he asked, "Is there a House that runs Atlanta?"

Yeah, there was a House running Atlanta. A big one. The biggest in the South, and one of the biggest vampire Houses, period. I swallowed. "Sure."

"Only one House? Or several Houses?" He drummed his fingers on the shovel.

"Watch it, mister."

"I want to know," he said, and it was clear that he wanted to know before he planned to do any digging.

I flailed, throwing my hands up in a shrug and almost dropping my own digging implement before catching it quickly again. "You want to know what? That there's a House? I just told you that, and I'll tell you this, too: You don't want to go messing with it. That's a big fat bees' nest, right there. You poke it with a stick and you'll wish you'd never been born."

"Okay, I won't go poking with a stick," he said drolly, and I only a.s.sumed that this meant he'd poke it with a Glock, given half a chance.

"I'm serious, serious," I stressed.

"You must be. You haven't said anything about having a House of your own. Do you?"

"What?" I stalled ineffectually.

"Do you belong to a House? You haven't mentioned one, and your...home"-he said it like he was using the word loosely-"is a lone-wolf bachelor pad if I ever saw one. You live alone, you work alone. You don't belong to a House. Am I right?"

"Fine, you're right. I don't. But I used to, and my reasons for jumping ship were many, varied, and valid. Houses work for plenty of vampires, but they don't work for me. I don't...um...play well with others."