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and looked accusingly at Lex. “It’s gold. Why is it gold?”
    “First Tier and very powerful,” Lex said as she crossed her arms over her chest.
    “Abysmal magic?” Rhonda said.
    I frowned. Abysmal what? Was that possible? I looked around for Tim, then realized I’d left the rock in the car. Crap.
    “Wraith,” she said, and my gaze snapped to her. I had no choice in the matter. “Reach inside.”
    Uh . . . what?
    I shook my head. “That’s gross.”
    ... alone . . .
    I wondered if I was hearing things.
    “Do it.”
    And I did. Of course . . . I could actually have just made my body incorporeal and slipped my hand in—but I hadn’t shared that little tidbit yet. So I held out my right hand, allowed my astral hand to sieve out. It looked really weird—as my physical hand relaxed away. Kinda like shirking off a flesh glove.
    Scrubbing bubble—— ewwwwww.
    With a glance at Rhonda, I paused. “Now . . . how come I can stick my hand in there, and she can’t touch the flesh?”
    “Oh, just do it, chicken shit,” Rhonda said.
    Oh . . . you are so gonna get it.
    Lex nodded, and I took a deep breath—
    —And plunged my hand into the iciest, murkiest, nastiest gunk I could have imagined. Even before I could yell, I was yanking my hand out, the cold actually burning my astral arm.
    “MOTHER GUPPY FUCK AN EGG GOD DAMN—”
    Yes! I could cuss out loud again. And I did, waving my now-frozen hand around the tiny room.
    “What happened?” Rhonda was saying, her eyes even bigger.
    You know . . . if they got bigger than that . . . she’d look like Mr. Magoo.
    Lex nodded to the body as I held my physical hand and hissed as I eased my astral one back into it. Ow. Fuck. Damn. Ow. Burns. She then motioned for us to look and tilted the girl’s head to the side.
    There . . . blatantly obvious against the white skin . . . were two distinct puncture wounds.
    “She was drained of blood and her soul destroyed.”

4
    I tucked my still-stinging right hand under my left arm, and said, “You telling us that a vampire did this?” I gave her my you’re shitting me look. “I thought you were a vampire.”
    Lex nodded. “Yes. I am. But a vampire didn’t kill this woman. Yet it was made to look as if one had.”
    Okay. I hadn’t expected an outright admission to being a blood-sucking creature. But there it was. I knew what they were because of the Dioscuri—but ever having met one? Other than Lex?
    Nope.
    Joe reached into his shirt pocket and grabbed his pad and pen. He scribbled. TELL THEM.
    I looked at Lex. “Tell us what?”
    Lex looked uncomfortable, which was uncomfortable for me too. My hand tingled when I took it out from beneath my arm, but it was better.
    She indicated my hand. “What you physically felt inside of this body—the burning ice—was my blood. It was the spark of life that kept the flesh from corrupting.”
    Oh. Kay.
    “This girl—this woman—was my companion. Mialani. She had been with me for a little over a hundred years—the longest living ghoul in existence.”
    Rhonda nodded slowly, as if she got it.
    Well, I didn’t. “Okay—lesson here. This woman was a ghoul? Like in a zombie ghoul? Did she have a Symbiont too?”
    “No,” Rhonda and Lex said in unison.
    Freaky.
    Rhonda glanced at Lex and spoke to me. “First Borns—when they join with the souls of their hosts—change the chemistry of the human body. It’s not a fast process—and it takes time. But over the years, the human body changes to adjust to the creature dwelling within it. The blood changes, the organs, the brain, it all shifts into something a bit more than Homo sapiens .”
    I pursed my lips, then went into full-on boo-boo lip. “Mmmhmmm . . .”
    Lex took it up from there. “The word vampire does, and does not, fit what we are. I joined with this body over three hundred years ago. It is, for all practical purposes, no longer human. But in order to stay anchored to these bodies—to remain hidden from prying