"Girl, your club is amazing, honestly, love what you've done with the place. Classy. Slutty. Just, the chef's kiss of vampire nightlife. To think that used to be a high school gym! It's all you. You made that place what it is, not the crypt keeper in the other room. You should be proud, really, you should! And don't worry so much about Denise. She still owns the building, which means she'll sweep that raid under the rug with the Magistrate." I forced a laugh. "I mean I, personally, don't exactly have sway with her but rumor has it one of the bitch's nephews/sons-in-law is Magistrate anyway."

Sat across from me, Sloane chuckled, passing me the half empty wine bottle. "She's a bitch alright."

She was warming up. Good for me? A barrier in her had clearly broken with her admission of being one of Dmitri's former conquests (gross). I sat on the floor of the sunroom, assuring her that I was only just tight enough with the wolves to know they wanted that raid about as much as she did, in hopes this convoluted conversation might lead me back to Lily. I didn't mention that my cheek still stung from her slap. She didn't ask about it either.

I took a swig straight from the bottle and offered it back to her with a gesture. Sloane declined, scrunching her nose in disgust. Instead, she leaned back against the wicker sofa and kicked off her skyscraper height stilettos. Yikes, those would murder my feet, but Sloane gave no complaints. She used one shoe to sweep broken crystal and golden thorns under a chair.

"When the heat cools, then put in a higher bid," I said. "Hey, not much higher. Just a smidge. The property will be too hot for the Pack and Denise'll be looking to ditch it. Personally, I love the idea of dedicating a couple floors to the newly turned transitional center you mentioned. That's such a great way to give back to the community. You're so generous." Sloane nodded along to my completely unfounded advice. Good. I took a deep breath. Here it goes. "Especially after what you must've endured after you first turned."

Sloane raised a brow. Her dark eyes glowed golden. I held back the shudder threatening to tap dance up my spine. She reached out, but instead of snagging my throat in her manicure and poking her teeth into my neck like juice box, she snatched the wine bottle out my hands after all.

"He said the only thing that could challenge the radiance of my beauty was the radiance and strength of my will. That's it. My panties were drenched. That's how he fucking wooed me," She took one sip and gagged, spitting the wine out and splattering it on the window. "You fucking believe that shit?"

"Charming," I said, allowing her to return the bottle to me. Think bits of Caleb were backwashed in there?

"Yeah, well, what fool doesn't want to live young and hot as fuck forever?"

"You're truly nailing that aspect of immortality."

"Fucking thank you."

"The hubby on the other hand."

Sloane clapped, amused. "At the time Dmitri was a fucking stud. Mmm. That hair? He had this long, luscious medieval mother fucker in shining armor thing going. For real, he was wearing a suit of fucking armor night we met."

"Which I can only assume was at a joust."

"Fuck, in 1993? Ha! Another club, actually," laughing, she made a show of stretching a leg into the air and pointing her toes. "I was a dancer."

"Dmitri has a type."

"All men do, it's their fucking kryptonite," she said, voice sharper than glass. "I believed his fucky shit at the time. Convinced. I was his goddess. His queen. His one true love rein-fucking-carnated. Said my soul sang to his. Steaming pile of batshit that was."

Sloane kicked the wicker rocking chair, launching it across the room. I ducked as it soared past. A chair arm nicked the doorway and splintered. Rest of it flew right out into the hall. I heard it smack something solid. Caleb yelped from the sitting room.

I scooted a bit closer to the exit. Just a smidge.

"Vampires don't have souls. Learned that lesson right fucking quick."

The undead typically don't. Typically.

"Must've been hard to hear him say those same things to some other floosy."

"Oh, give it a fucking rest," Sloane moaned, "leave the poor girl alone and let her keep her fucking soul. She doesn't want this. She just got swept up in all the fucking attention."

"Sounds more like she stole it to me," I sipped my wine.

Sloane shot me another bitch please look. She studied me, drowning in my wine bottle, for a long, icy minute. My arms trembled, almost as if I was afraid to put the bottle down and have to answer for that last remark. Almost. But after about six thousand years Sloane sighed, or belched; honestly I really couldn't tell. Regardless, it was a sound of surrender. She straightened her shoulders.

"Fucker'd lost interest in me right after I turned. No more bouquets of roses or fancy as fuck gifts. I gave up everything to be queen of the fucking damned. You know what that's like?" Well, necromancy wasn't exactly an easy as 'buy nine coffees and get the tenth free' kind of achievement. "No, you don't. I was a brand ass-spanking new rebooted fuck of a person and my new cockslap of a husband turned his batty fucking nose up at me cause my soul was out of tune or some other bent dick excuse. The promised mindfuck orgasmic reawakening of my former life breaking through the surface, or: What. Ever. Never fucking happen. I was still the same bitch. Just dead. Never felt so angry. Or stupid."

Sloane shook her head. "So, as if, no, fuck no, was I jealous over his latest little fling with a dancer. I fucking budget for that shit."

"Oh, girl, come on. Even for the gifts?" I nodded at the shards of chalice hidden as well as a child after breaking mom's favorite vase. "What, you keep track of those in Excel? I thought we were being real with each other."

"You and the bumfuck detective fuck it out yet?"

I coughed up wine.

Sloane shrugged. "I thought we were being real."

Cursed eyes-of-newts, I wasn't expecting that. Based on her smirk, she already knew she rattled me. Could probably hear my spike in blood pressure. She'd know if I lied to her now. Balls.

"No," I said (she tsked at me). "Not for lack of trying, though. He, uh, well, you know he hasn't had a ton to drink lately, so..." Sloane understood my hand gesture so perfectly she actually had the grace to cover her mouth when she laughed. Thanks, girl.

Once she composed herself, she cleared her throat. "Fucking don't."

"What?"

That, again, was super not the answer I expected. What the heck Sloane, can't you just stick to the haphazardly concocted plan in my brain you've never seen before? Is that too much to ask?

"Baggage. Those old boys all got a metric fuckton of it in their coffins. Trust me, skank. It's not worth the dirt it takes to bury it the fuck out back again."

Oh, yeah, Sloane sounded real secure in her relationship with Dmitri. But I found myself picking at the label on my wine bottle, wondering how exactly Phoebe wound up haunting the home of a vampire since the 1950s. Would she be there next time I came over? I mean, not saying there definitely will be a next time, just saying that ghosts linger like the bag you took to Cancun three months ago and never got around to unpacking your bikinis out of because winter rolled in just so quick.

Obviously, Dmitri, Lord of Arthritis and Bengay's baggage was Rosemond.

"Yeah," I said, slathering on the sympathy. "I saw her portrait. Dmitri's really never unpacked her, has her?"

"Her portrait?" Sloane snorted. "I fucking saw her."

"Uh. Come again?"

The vamp rose in an elegant spiral, grabbed the curtains, and ripped them apart. A set of French doors appeared from behind the fabric. Browned vines and wisteria crept up the sides of the glass, perfectly framing the, oh no, graveyard beyond it.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Even from the sunroom, in the dark of night, I could see the gravestones. Slim. Weathered. Crooked. Almost entirely swallowed by weeds and ivy and dead leaves overrunning the yard.

Pixie dust, there better not be any bodies buried within six feet of this house. Or under the house. Oh, mother of fuck, there probably were bodies buried under the house.

I kicked, propelling myself backward and out into the hall. Or it would have, if in a blink Sloane hadn't materialized behind me. I bumped into her knees and she scooped me up by the armpits, her fake nails digging into my flesh.

"Out there," she cooed into my ear from behind. "Wallowing outside her own crypt. Completely see through. Had that sickly, Medieval white bitch look to her. Nightgown dragging through the fucking mud."

Out by the brick wall surrounding the property was a small mausoleum. Marble slabs and water-stained angels tangled in dead ivy. Tall, untrimmed, bloomless rose bushes surrounded the crypt like soldiers at their post.

Oh, heck. I swallowed.

A cold snap gripped my bones, sharper than Sloane's manicure. It itched and scratched under my skin. Sloane inhaled deeply, her chest swelling against my back. I shuddered. In my peripheral, I noticed the shadows growing darker in the corners.

"He carried her dried-up bones from the old country across the fucking ocean. Romantic, isn't it?"

My gut twisted. No. Graverobbing to relocate your deceased ex rarely led to rekindling the romance.

"Restless spirits tend to wander their burial places if they have nowhere better to haunt," I said.

"Slut wasn't wandering. She was staking a fucking claim," growled Sloane, glaring out into the yard. "Sick of me hanging the fuck around, playing house, I guess. Absolutely screaming. Showed me dickhead's stash of crusty-fuck old letters too. Three other true loves of his bitching and whining about being a vampire's ex-fucking wife."

Uh. What.

"She showed you?"

"Sure fucking did."

I swallowed.

"That's a powerful haunt. Not only aware but trying to interact... she must have been very determined."

Sloane sucked in a breath. "It fucking happened."

"Oh. I didn't mean—"

She held me by the arm, her grip cutting off circulation enough to tingle my fingers and pulled me forward. She threw open the French doors so hard the panes rattled. The sudden cold bit my cheeks. Goosebumps sprung to life all up my legs and arms. Troll balls, I couldn't go out into a graveyard! With my free hand I latched onto the threshold.

"I believe you! I just, you know, it's really cold out right now and I'm not wearing my best graverobbing boots, so—"

"Right there. In an old ass chest. Like a fucking pirate," Sloane released me and pointed to an open grave on the edge of little burial plots. It had evidently been open a long time, as weeds and winter-dead plants grew tall out of it. The dirt pile from when it'd been dug up had grown a layer of frosty grass. "I've been the only one he's turned, you know."

"Lucky you?"

"Probably why Ho-sie got a thorn up her snatch about me."

The darkness was thick. As Sloane sauntered deeper into the graveyard, she become one with the shadows of the headstones, the only tell there was a vampire lurking at all was the occasional glow of her eyes. But she wasn't the only lurker. The air was heavy with death. It tickled my insides. And shit, it was freezing out here. My breath practically created a fog.

Contrary to popular belief I am not a complete fool and stayed behind in the relative safety of the doorway. Lucky for me the anklet had not yet started to warm (the warning sign that the curse had activated and alerted the Magistrate that I'm a dirty rule breaker).

Although the energy of the restless dead was cloying, like sickly sweet wilting grave flowers, I couldn't pinpoint the force of any one particular ghost. If any specters were looming over us this evening, they stayed hidden. But I more suspected that any haunts hanging around this place did so out of ritual. Poor souls stuck repeating the same song and dance like broken records.

Rosemond, if Sloane was telling the truth, was anything but a stuttering recording. She was aware of her former lover's uh, rebound chicks and was evidently pretty pissed about it.

Pissed enough to, say, destroy a necromancer's teapot when yet another alleged iteration of her attempted a séance? Balls. Greg was right. Lily was trying to commune with her 'former self' that night.

"Did Lily see her too?" I asked, teeth chattering.

I couldn't see Sloane anymore, but I knew she could still see and hear me.

"Fuck no. I warned her. From the get-go," sang Sloane from among the headstones. "When Julian thought he was being clever, leaving her gross ass thong in my room, he let slip hubby was getting serious about fucking turning her. Told Lily what exactly the fuck was in store if she let Dmitri fang fuck her. She's not a complete bitch, you know? Just desperate. I felt for her."

"I guess that's why she tried hiring a psychic," I called back, not sure which direction I should even be talking to. "To see for herself."

Sloane appeared in my face, snarling. I pressed myself firmly against the wall. The freezing glass bit sharply at my back. "What the fuck you know about some fucking psychic?"

"Oh, honey," Yes, of course I regretted saying that to a snarling vampire, but it was a reflex and I soldiered on. "This psychic knows that Rosemond is at present missing her little finger. Because Lily stole it. Needed a focusing object for a séance. Got to say, she did her research."

Sloane made a face, a genuine air of confusion settling over her.

"Rosie and I've crossed paths already, I think," I said, breath leaving me in a cloudy puff. "Ran across so fast she cracked my window, actually. Denise is not going to be pleased about that."

Sloane, again, I hadn't even noticed her move, cupped my cheeks. Her long fingers were icy and I couldn't stop the shiver. She tilted my head up. A knot twisted in my stomach. The tender muscles in my neck were no match for her vampiric strength, so I pressed my eyes shut, praying to saints who don't even like me that she didn't force me to look her in the eye so she could enthrall me.

"Could you do it again?" she asked, voice barely a whisper.

I cracked one eyelid. Sloane's eyes were a normal, deceptively human shade of brown, and absolutely pleading. Her veneer was gone. All the polish worn away.

"Do... what?"

"Call the ghost, summon it, text, send mother fucking smoke signals, whatever the fuck. Get that poltergeist on the fucking line again so we can talk."

"Ah, well, a ghost and poltergeist aren't actually the same—"

Sloane squeezed my skull and I shut the heck up before my jaw cracked. "Fucking semantics. Can you do it? For me? As a friend?"

Friend was a strong choice of words but it sure would be great if she didn't pop my whole face open like a rancid pimple right now. "I, uh, would need a focusing object."

Sloane dropped me. Hadn't realized she'd been dangling me over the edge of the yard till she let go. Unbalanced, I fell (again) and tripped deeper in the graveyard. Was I imagining that touch of warmth in my anklet? Didn't matter. I tore handfuls of grass and dead weeds out scrambling back to the safety of the house.

"C'mere!" called Sloane.

The loud scraping of stone on stone rumbled through the graveyard. I turned around to spot Sloane dragging open Rosemond's tomb. Spirits didn't like that. A pressure, like a firm hand on the back of my neck, bore down on the yard. The weeds seemed to whisper. Harsh and bitter. Despite the city lights twinkling all above us, the darkness thickened. I don't think Sloane noticed, cause she bulldozed her way straight into that crypt.

Not daring to inch closer—okay well maybe an inch closer. The anklet wasn't hot yet. I just wanted to a peek inside.

It wasn't lit. But Sloane didn't need light. When she looked back at me, the light from the house glared off her eyes like a cat's.

"How much?" she said, cracking open a coffin lid. The wood splintered and a frigid wind ripped passed my ears.

"Are there any personal affects? Some jewelry maybe?"

"Fuck off, I'm not half-assing this shit."

Crunch. Rip. Pop.

Oh no. "Ah, no need to rob the whole grave! One bone is fine. Plenty. More than enough. Too many will just, uh, muddy the signal, you know? Confuse the spirits. In fact, what works best is a small bone. You know, a toe or a finger. Preferably one that a good lawyer would argue is non-essential to living?"

Sloane wasn't really paying attention to me.

She tossed something out the tomb. Rosemond's skull rolled to a gentle stop at my feet. Her jawbone had detached. What remained of Lady Favi...whatever it was... stared up at me with vacant eyes and her three remaining teeth and flaking skull that somehow managed to give off the most foreboding bitch I dare you vibe I'd ever felt.

"Yeah," I groaned as Sloane sauntered out the tomb, arms laden with more bones. "This seems non-essential."