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incredibly—”
    “Vampire hearing,” Sinclair said quietly.
    “—nice of her that I was speechless,” I amended hastily.
    Someone waved at our table, and Sinclair stood. “I’ve received some faxes from St. Paul. If you’ll excuse me.”
    “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you keep ditching us,” I warned him. “You’ll pay.”
    His eyes gleamed, and he kissed my knuckles. “I look forward to it. Our room, half an hour?”
    “Maybe,” I sniffed, pretending my thighs weren’t already tingling.
    “Oh, barf ,” Jessica said. “I never thought I’d wish the cancer would come back to distract me, but . . . ”
    “Don’t even joke about that!”
    “So, the bloodsuckers are happy because you’re the best of a bad lot, eh?” Nick asked.
    “And just when I thought you were done being a dick,” I grumbled.
    “Honey, I haven’t even—wait.”
    “Wait, what?”
    But Nick was looking across the lounge, out into the lobby, where a lone girl was wandering around. She was startling looking, with shoulder-length platinum hair and pale skin. And she was dressed in a white nightgown, in bare feet.
    “Must be a kid of one of the guests.”
    “Yeah, but it’s a pretty fucking dangerous place for a kid to be wandering around, don’t you think?” Nick was already getting up. “Just a sec.”
    Jessica and I looked at each other. “Are we really going to let the guys have all the fun on this trip?” she asked.
    Then we got up and ran after Nick.

Chapter 14
    H on? Can I talk to you for a sec?” The little girl—couldn’t have been more than ten—whirled at Nick’s voice and I saw she had huge blue eyes, eyes the color of the sky. Then she laughed and ran off.
    “Wait! I need to talk to you! Where are your folks?”
    All three of us ran after her because—shit!—she had run out the lobby door, out of the (relative) safety of the crowded lobby. Her white blond hair streamed after her like a bridal veil and I thought that I had never seen such a beautiful child. Real tempting pickings for the asshole bloodsucker who liked to munch kids.
    We came out in time to see her disappear around the block, laughing. I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “We’re not playing tag, kid! We gotta talk to you!”
    No response. I glanced at my human friends. “Later, gators,” I said, because I was going to do my Bionic Woman thing in a sec and they had no chance of keeping up.
    But even running as fast as I could, by the time I rounded the block, the kid was nowhere to be seen.
    I trudged dejectedly back to them. “That’s great. Now we get to wait for another Goddamned crime scene.”
    “If she lives in the hotel, she probably knows a hundred ways to get back in. Like Eloise,” Jessica suggested. “I think she’ll be okay. She certainly gave us the slip easily enough.”
    “Good point,” I said, cheering up.
    “All the same, I think I’ll hang out here for a while,” Nick said. “Honey, you go up to the room and get some sleep.”
    “And leave you out here in the dark by yourself?”
    “Uh . . . hon, I’m a cop.”
    “A human cop looking for a kid-killing vampire! Besides, the Advil worked fine. I’m not even tired.”
    “Well, shit. That means I have to stay out here, too.”
    Jessica and Nick both looked surprised. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
    “Oh, like I’m really going back inside to have nasty sex with Sinclair while you two are walking around trying to prevent vamp-on-kid crime. That’d only make me the biggest jerk in the world.”
    “Well—” Jessica began sweetly, but Nick cut her off.
    “Seriously, Betsy. Go inside. We’ll just walk around out here for a little while and if we don’t see anything, we’ll come in. And if we do see something, we’ll call your cell.” He put a (gentle!) hand on my arm. “Really, go. It’s your honeymoon, right?”
    I was completely torn. Do the right thing, and stick with my human, fragile, easily shreddable friends?