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looking for a Sunwalker.”
    He blinked. “At night?”
    “Well, maybe he’s trying to blend,” I shrugged.
    He raised a brow. A lot of people were raising brows at me these days. “With what? Corpses? Ghosts, maybe?” Was that sarcasm?
    I shrugged. “Well, you never know.”
    “Right,” he gave me a look not unlike one you might give a mad woman.
    “Inigo,” I hissed, “back me up here.”
    Inigo cleared his throat. “We were thinking that, quite possibly, he might be — ah — living here. In a crypt. Like a vampire. Maybe. You know, so no one suspects he’s not a vampire.” Way to go Inigo. Though I was starting to think he’d been spending too much time with me.
    “Ah ha.” The guy didn’t buy it. That was obvious. “Well, no Sunwalkers here. I would know. I have an affinity for the dead. And the undead.” His smile creeped me out a little.
    Well, that settled it. Necromancer. Maybe even a Necromage. I always wondered how much truth there was to the stories about Necromancers raising the dead or Necromages powering their magic with the energy of ghosts, but it seemed rude to ask. He certainly seemed convinced of his own abilities though I wasn’t sure he was right about the whole Sunwalker being undead thing.
    The book had only said they were like a vampire, not that they were a vampire. They weren’t necessarily undead, just pretty much immortal though I still wasn’t ruling out undeath entirely.
    “Well, thanks for your help.” I gave him a little wave as Inigo and I backed up and headed quickly for the car. The necromancer or whatever he was continued to munch on his popcorn. I swore some days I was surrounded by weirdness.
    As I pointed the car back down the hill toward the sparkling lights of the city, I glared at Inigo. “Well, a fat lot of good that did.”
    Inigo gave me an enigmatic smile. “Oh, that did exactly what we needed it to do.”
    It took me a minute. I could be a little slow sometimes. Then it hit me. A guy who hung out in graveyards munching popcorn was probably the type of guy who had friends in strange places, friends who he’d be sure to tell all about the cute couple in the cemetery looking for Sunwalkers. “Well, damn.”
     
    ***
     
    The rest of the week passed slowly. No Sunwalkers popped up on the radar, but I dusted four more low level vampires and helped Kabita seal a hell hole. Not bad for a few days’ work.
    Friday night I had a date. I hadn’t had a date in quite a while, so I admit to being a bit nervous. OK a lot nervous. Despite the fact that deep down I’d really love to be in a relationship, dates were so not my thing. I didn’t do well on dates. I mean, small talk was bad enough to begin with, but how on earth do you answer questions like “What do you do for a living?”
    My mother dug this one up. A guy she met at a charity function. My mother was always trying to pawn me off on some guy or other. At least this one did something involving charity, so he couldn’t be all bad. I’d said yes more to shut her up than anything. Apparently she thought we’d make a “cute couple.”
    Sure, until the first time I killed a vampire in front of him. Gods save me from my mother and her matchmaking. I hadn’t realized my hands were shaking until I tried to put on my lipstick and nearly smeared it across half my face. Like I said, I didn’t do so well with dates.
    This was ridiculous! I killed vampires without breaking a sweat. Or at least not much of one. How could one stupid date turn me into such an incredible mass of nerves? I didn’t even know the guy, for crying out loud!
    I took a deep breath, found my center, and tried again. The lipstick went on OK this time, but I was still a bit shaky. The mascara was a little trickier, but I got it on eventually without poking out an eye or ending up with a black streak on my cheek. Go, me.
    I gave myself a critical look in the mirror. The neck wound had healed nicely, leaving only the faintest trace of a