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Bones threw my way said he could guess my thoughts. Or maybe he noticed me clenching my hands into fists.
    “Chin up, Kitten. Perhaps the chap we’re meeting will find a particularly brutal way to banish the sod for good.”
    “You seem pretty relaxed about this whole situation,” I said with mild exasperation, noting the nonchalance in his tone and vibe.
    Bones all but rolled his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be? For the first time in years, our relationship is solid, no one’s actively trying to murder us, and our closest mates are happy. Blimey, Kitten, if I were any more relaxed, I’d need a smoke.”
    I was about to point out that things were hardly rosy considering my uncle’s stuck-in-between state, the potentially troublesome Madigan, and a murderous ghost on the loose, but then I paused. Wouldn’t there always be something stressful going on in our lives? If I didn’t learn how to savor the positives—and everything Bones pointed out was a big positive—then I would march through life with a permanent case of Glass Half-Empty syndrome.
    “You’re right,” I said, reaching out to squeeze his thigh. “Things have never been better.”
    Bones caught my hand and raised it to his mouth, lips brushing over my knuckles in a whisper of a kiss.
    We’d always have challenges, but like everyone else, we would tackle them one at a time. Right now, Kramer was first on the list, and for all the problems the spectral schmuck represented, there were also positives. He might be able to terrorize and harm humans, but once I had Kramer in my sights, he’d be picking on someone his own size. I didn’t scare easily, and a ghost could never beat a vampire in a fight. He couldn’t even throw a punch until Halloween, and we’d lay the smackdown on him well before that. My mood improved even further.
    “I bet this medium is going to give us great news,” I added, voice throatier from Bones’s tongue flicking between my fingers with the barest of touches.
    Elisabeth had said mediums couldn’t get the job done before, but she’d only been able to get a few to try, and the last attempt had been over fifty years ago. Bones’s best friend, Spade, knew some noted demonologists who’d recommended the medium we were on our way to see, and if we were lucky, he’d prove more efficient than the others. If he didn’t pan out, we still had a few other tricks up our sleeves. Good thing, too, because October wasn’t far away.
    At least we had an ace in the hole. As a ghost, Elisabeth was limited to traveling long distances by either physically hitching a ride on a car or using a ley line, which was a supernatural version of a speed train. Ley lines usually led to various supernatural hot spots, so then she’d have to pit stop at each one during her attempts to locate Kramer, but put me within a hundred mile radius of him, and I could use the borrowed power in my blood to lure Kramer to me. Then, once he was there, I could command him not to leave until we were done exorcising him. I’d detested that one of the side effects of drinking the voodoo queen’s blood—in addition to becoming catnip for spirits—was the ability to strip ghosts of their free will, but that ability would come in handy in this situation. I didn’t feel comfortable using that power on the ghosts who found their way to me, but on a prick like Kramer, I’d wield it with a smile. And a distinctly witchy cackle.
    As for the accomplice, well, a human would be so easy to dispatch, it took the fun out of contemplating it.
    “We’re here,” Bones said, letting go of my hand to pull into a strip mall parking lot.
    I glanced around, looking for any afterlife-themed names in the businesses lining the front of the L-shaped complex. The closest thing I found was Deena’s Heavenly Cheesecake, but I doubted that was the place.
    “Are you sure this is it?”
    Bones pointed. “Helen of Troy’s Garden is right over there.”
    “But that’s a florist,” I said,