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sporting a perfect round hole in his
forehead. The two unconscious girls are laid out nicely on the pillows beside
him. The half-dressed witch has a tranq dart in her arm. I don’t see a dart in
Red Riding Hood.
    “Pull the sheet and wrap him up,” I
tell Gabe.
    “Yep.” He shoves the vampire off
the bed, and the body thuds against the floor. “Any of that blood yours?”
    So that’s why his voice is so hard.
    I lay pirate girl down next to her
sleeping companions. “No, it’s Tucker’s. Had to use my dagger. It got dicey.” I
realize the bad pun only after I say it.
    “I don’t like dicey.” It’s not the
way Gabe says it, but the flare of his aura, those spikes of pained reds, that feels
like a punch.
    He rolls up the vampire in the
crisp white sheet, turning him into a life-sized bowling pin. A ruby stain
immediately begins to form and metastasize near the top.
    “Time to go. Tarren’s probably
waiting for us.”
    Gabe grunts, and wobbling only a
little, heaves the swathed vampire over his shoulder. When we make it back to
the hallway, I reload Tucker onto my shoulder. Thank god the two trolls didn’t
come upstairs and find his bundled corpse laying in the middle of the hallway.
    “There.” Gabe points to a door that
opens up into a Jack and Jill bathroom. I twist the crystal knob, and damn, the
bathroom is so big you could probably fit an entire cheerleading squad inside
and still have room for the basketball team in the stone shower.
    “God, why are so many bad guys so
rich?” Gabe says behind me.
    “Batman is rich too,” I point out.
Already, the shaking is beginning to quiet in my limbs. The image of the endless
crimson puddle of Tucker’s blood is retreating from my mind as my training
kicks in. A long, thin horizontal window sits about six feet up from the tub. I
reach up, slide it open, and punch out the screen.
    “You go first, bring the car
around,” I say.
    “Batman doesn’t…” Gabe starts.
    “…unless you want to shove these
guys through that window.”
    Gabe looks at the distance from
floor to window. He’s strong for his size, but I know he doesn’t want to try
shoulder pressing two hundred pounds of dead weight over his head. “Lady’s
choice,” he says and gives me a gracious little bow before stepping into the
tub.
    “You need any help?” I ask Gabe
teasingly. “I can give you a boost.” The window is small, high up. Most people
wouldn’t be able to manage it without a step ladder and a serious diet.
    “In case you’ve forgotten, I was
skvyying my skinny ass through tiny windows in giant, rich-guy bathrooms long
before you ever joined this club,” Gabe says. Then he sticks his tongue out.
“Plus, Batman can always handle himself.”
    He grabs the window ledge and
swings his body up and out in one fluid motion.
    “Batman has a fucking butler,” I
remind him.
    I hear him laugh, and then his gloved
fingertips disappear from the ledge. I listen and hear the faint impact as he
hits the ground below and cusses. I wait, watching the weird blobby shape the
blood makes on the white sheet covering the vampire.
    “It’s clear,” Gabe says into my earpiece.
“No eyes out here.”
    And then it’s time for my hat
trick. I start with Tucker, who is smaller and thinner than his vampire friend.
I boost him back onto my shoulder and step into the empty tub. I know that
Tucker is dead, but I still tense up, half expecting a hand to come shooting
out from the cover to wrap around my neck.
    Get a grip, I tell myself.
With a quick bend of the knees, I press Tucker over my head and shove him
through the window. He gets a little stuck, but I push, and then he’s gone,
tumbling into the night.
    The vampire is much more stubborn.
His body is unwieldy in the thin sheet, and I almost lose him as I struggle to
get him overhead. He’s all muscle, tall and heavy, with broad shoulders and a
barrel chest that does not want to go through the window. I get his legs out,
but his chest