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there. If that vamp knows about her and where she lives, it’s a good bet he knows her friends too.”
    “Oh, good idea. That’ll work.”
    “What will work?”
    “Your feeble plan to keep her around, Nic.”
    “It is not feeble.”
    “But it’s your plan, right?”
    “Shut up, Cho.”
    The black lizard blinked his dark eyes, leaped over the space between the bucket seats, climbed onto her shoulder, and then wrapped his tail around her neck.
    “I like the view from over here.”
    — • —
    “Your lizard’s pretty friendly.” Fiona had calmly accepted the lizard perched on her shoulder.
    “Not usually.” Nic shrugged.
    Fiona centered herself. A lot had happened this evening. She’d held herself together because she had a purpose, a goal, a mission. Now all the urgency was gone, the terror over. It would be so easy to just curl up and try to forget about it. Closing her eyes, she saw the crypt and realized she would never forget about it. Shit . Just what she needed, a new set of demons to slay.
    “Okay. What the hell happened back there?” Fiona turned in her seat, brushed the hair from her face, and leaned against the door of the very expensive car.
    “It’s called a ‘frenzy.’ The local vampires get together to party. Sometimes it’s an initiation. Sometimes it’s for no good reason, just to kill. Each of them brings a virgin.”
    Fiona felt the heat rise in her face and hoped the darkness hid it.
    “Then?” She tapped her fingers on the center console in frustration.
    “They pop the virgins.”
    “Pop?”
    “Like pop their cherries? Bust them?” He rolled his eyes. “Fuck them.”
    Her eyebrows shot up, but she stayed silent.
    “Then they feast on them, drain all their blood until they’re dead.”
    “Shit.” The word escaped like a long hiss. “How did you know where we were?”
    “It’s my job.”
    “That’s one hell of a job. I never saw it advertised in the papers.” She wasn’t going to let it go. “How did you know?”
    “I work for a special interest group. They find out and send me to break it up.”
    “To kill them, you mean.”
    “Yeah. I kill them. Is that a problem?” He cut his eyes sideways at her.
    “Must be nice being judge, jury, and executioner.” She eyed him and wrapped her arms around her waist.
    “Don’t give me that crap. They’re parasites. Leeches clinging to the throat of humanity.” He tightened his grip on the wheel. “Besides, you seemed to be having a good time making them go ‘poof.’”
    Fiona leaned her head back and sighed. “Yeah, it was…I don’t know. Like my whole life led up to this one night.” She shivered. “It was really freaky, you know.”
    “I know. It was like that the first time for me,” he said.
    “Vampires.” She snorted. “I thought they were just make-believe. Legends. Stories meant to scare children. Bad-date movies.” She waved her hand in the air.
    “Most stories and legends have some basis in fact,” he said. “Bad-date movies, not so much.” His grin flashed.
    She chuckled and then sighed.
    “So, you can decapitate them or stab them in the heart, and they go poof. That much I got. Are there other ways to kill them, like in the movies? Daylight cooks them? Holy water burns them?”
    “They’re nocturnal creatures. They burn in sunlight.” He stared ahead as he clenched the wheel. "Early in my, uh, career, I’d been curious, my hatred for them fresh and deep. I can still see and hear the vampire I’d dragged out of its lair and thrown into the sunrise, just to see what would happen, like a science experiment. It went up like a torch, screaming. Christ, it took forever for it to burn. I never did that again."
    She groaned and looked away. "God."
    He cleared his throat and continued. “Holy water and crosses don’t do anything. They have reflections. They’re powerful but not unbeatable.”
    “Thank God.” Running her fingers through her hair in a swipe, she leaned back again. “How do