“Want to talk about it?”

Lowering my hands, I peeked at the bartender. I’d seen him before—a tall, thin man in his late twenties with dyed black hair that hung over one side of his face, hiding one dark-lined eye. He smiled in a friendly way as he set a bowl of limes beside his station.

“I’m Ramsey,” he added.

I blushed as I slid my glasses back on. “Sorry. I couldn’t remember.”

“I figured,” he replied good-naturedly. He picked up a knife and sliced a lime in half. “Don’t worry about it. You have lots of new names to learn.”

“Are you the bartender?” I asked hesitantly. “Or is Tori …?”

“Tori is the all-mighty overlord of the bar. I’m just the cook.”

“Overlady,” I corrected with a shy smile.

“That too.” He chopped a few more limes. “She’s off for Christmas. Went to Vancouver Island with the guys, so Cooper, Clara, and I are taking turns covering the bar for the next two weeks.”

Tori was gone? Well, that was one less thing to worry about, though I couldn’t help but feel a prickle of disappointment too. She might be alarmingly suspicious of me, but she’d also defended me from other guild members.

My mind turned to the paper folded in my pocket. I wanted to ask about Ezra Rowe, the mage from Claude’s printout, but I needed to be careful. “How long has Tori been a member here?”

“Six months—wait, no, seven. She’s the next newest member besides you and Amalia.”

“What about the three mages? How long have they been members?”

“Aaron and Kai, almost seven years now, I think. Ezra, not as long. He—”

A bell jingled as the pub door opened and closed. Outside, rain fell in fitful sheets, whipped sideways by the wind.

“Hey!” Ramsey greeted the new arrival. “How’s it going?”

Zora swung onto the stool beside me and unzipped her rain-splattered coat. “The weather is a nightmare today.”

“It’s December, so that’s nothing new.”

She scrubbed her short hair, making the damp locks stand on end. “Hey Robin.”

“Hi Zora,” I murmured, nervousness lightening my stomach.

“Want anything, Zora?” When she shook her head, Ramsey scooped his halved limes into the bowl. “I need to juice these suckers. Holler if you change your mind.”

He pushed through the saloon doors behind the bar, leaving Zora and me alone. The pub was empty, too late for lunch and too early for dinner. I swirled my straw through the ice in my glass, wishing Amalia were here to do the talking.

“So.” Zora planted her elbow on the bar and faced me, her brown eyes bright with curiosity. “What can I help you with?”

I forced a smile, trying not to look terrified. After my vampire encounter this morning, I’d looked up her number in the guild directory and asked her to meet me. Now that she was here, I didn’t know how to broach the topic.

“I, uh, well … I have questions about … vampires.”

She blinked, then laughed. “I was expecting something more urgent.”

I cringed. “Sorry, but—I mean—yes, it kind of is. I think vampires are involved in the Demonica rumor I’m … investigating.”

It felt weird to describe my fumbling search as an investigation.

“Oh, hmm. Now that’s interesting. What makes you suspect vampires?”

“Well, the, um …” I pulled myself together, shrugging off my nervousness. Amalia and I had gone over what we would reveal. I knew what to say. “The house I was searching on Sunday is the location where the unbound demon on Halloween was summoned. You uncovered a vampire on the neighboring property.”

She nodded slowly.

“A clue Amalia and I found there led us to another address, where three more vampires attacked us.”

“Three? You handled them all right with your demon?”

“Yes, but they were much faster and stronger than we expected. And more … human.”

“Their mental competency depends on what stage of the transformation they’re in. Over time, their humanity erodes until you get beasts like the one we tagged. Until then, they can pass as human, though the scent or sight of blood can send them into a frenzy.”

I described how the vampires had searched the house and stolen Claude’s computer and documents. “Do you know why vampires would be interested in a demon summoner?”

“Hmm.” She crossed her legs at the knee. “How familiar are you with the process of vampirization?”

“Uh … all I know is vampires are created by parasitic fae spirits that infect people.”

I’d never seen a fae, but I’d read about them. Any story about the elusive creatures, who existed somewhere between our world and their own demesne, was an automatic favorite for me; they were so fascinating and mysterious, as were the Spiritalis mythics who dealt with them.

The fae we were talking about right now, however, were an unpleasant subset. They were spirits that preferred human hosts—which wasn’t a good thing for the human.

“A newly infected person,” Zora explained, “what we call a new vamp, usually has no idea what happened to them. The spirit will drive them to start biting victims, but they can control the blood cravings and continue on with their lives for a while—months or sometimes years, depending on the person.

“Eventually, the new vamp can’t keep up the act anymore and they have to ditch their regular life. They usually join a nest. Safety in numbers, right? Nested vampires hunt nightly and hide during the day. They can blend in with the masses, usually to make hunting easier, and they’ll live like that for a long time. Old vamps are easy to find and exterminate because they’ve lost all ability to reason, but nested vamps are problematic. Hard to identify, difficult to catch.”

“Do you think the ones I fought this morning were nested vampires?”

“I guarantee it. Thing is … their behavior is weird. Going out during the day, for starters. They’re weaker in daylight. Why take that risk? But what really bothers me is their methodical search of the house. Nested vamps care about three things: survival, comfort, and their next blood fix. They aren’t long-term thinkers.”

I shifted in my chair. “So you don’t know why they’d be involved in Demonica?”

She braced her elbows on the bar, hands fisted under her chin. “This is the weirdest occurrence yet in a string of weird vampire occurrences over the last four or five weeks. I’ve never been as busy with exterminations as I have this past month. Increased vampire activity throughout downtown, and way more new vamps than I’ve ever seen before.” Her expression closed. “I really hate exterminating new vamps.”

“Do vampires have any interest in … money?”

“Money?”

“Like, acquiring something very valuable to sell.”

She gave me an odd look. “Nested vampires are still human enough to see a profitable opportunity and take it, but like I said, I’ve never known them to plan more than a few days in advance.”

Searching for Uncle Jack in order to claim the Athanas Grimoire and sell it was a lot of steps to take for creatures that didn’t plan ahead.