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way.”
    Even now, he wouldn’t spill his secret? Frustration made me bite my lip to keep from screaming at him. I hadn’t felt my fangs come out, but from the instant taste of blood, they had.
    “Don’t be a fool,” Bones said sharply. “Remnants feed off pain, so as your suffering increases, so does their strength to inflict more.”
    “Noooo.”
    My uncle drew out the word with such despair that my control snapped. I couldn’t stand to see him like this, and I couldn’t make it stop, as Marie’s flinty expression reminded me.
    “Tell me what the fuck Madigan did, Don! Right now!”
    “Genetic experimentation!”
    My mouth dropped at the reply. Don’s did, too, before another scream contorted it into a maw of agony. Aside from pain, something else flashed across his features. Surprise, as if he couldn’t believe he’d answered me with the truth.
    “Genetic experimentation of what? Humans?” Bones pressed.
    A groan followed by a stream of curses was his only response. Once more, I found myself biting my lip out of frustration. Damn Don’s stubbornness.
    “Answer him,” I snapped.
    “Not only humans,” Don said before another What the hell? expression crossed his face.
    Marie began to chuckle. “Ah, I see.”
    I didn’t. The only time I’d been able to force ghosts to do what I wanted was when I had Marie’s grave power coursing through my veins, but I’d run out of that long ago.
    “Care to inform the rest of us?” I asked tightly.
    Her glance was equal parts impatience and amusement. “How did so many of my kind fear you when you are so naive?”
    Before I could bark out a response, she went on. “He died while you still possessed my powers, didn’t he? And you wept as his spirit left his body?”
    I didn’t appreciate her isn’t-this-obvious? tone. “Doesn’t everyone cry when a loved one dies?”
    “Mambos don’t,” she said, using the word she’d called me when she realized I absorbed powers after drinking undead blood. “Not unless they want the person to stay.”
    “But he didn’t stay,” I said, anger at Don’s pain sharpening my words. “He died.”
    “Yet here he is,” Marie replied with a flick of her fingers toward Don. “A ghost. Or more precisely, your ghost.”

Six
    W hat do you mean, her ghost?”
    The same question resounded across my mind, but Tyler asked it first. Maybe I was still too shocked to respond.
    “It’s the blood,” Marie replied, nodding at my red-smeared lip. The unearthly echo had left her voice, and she spoke with her normal sweet Southern drawl.
    “Blood unlocks the power of the grave. With it, a Mambo can raise Remnants and transform the newly departed into a ghost if the Mambo draws her blood when that person dies.”
    I racked my brain to remember the last moments of Don’s life. Had I inadvertently drawn some of my blood, as I’d done now by biting my lip? No, I’d been crying too hard—
    Bones’s pitying look coincided with a flash of understanding. Vampire fluids were pink due to the limited water-to-blood ratio in our bodies, but when Don was dying, I’d cried so much that my tears had turned scarlet, staining my blouse and the floor by Don’s bedside where I’d knelt, not leaving even after his heart had stopped beating . . .
    “You can turn people into ghosts ?” Tyler sounded almost afraid.
    Guilt made my voice a croak. “Not anymore.”
    Then I met my uncle’s gaze. If I lived to be a thousand, I still wouldn’t forget the anguish I saw there—or the anger.
    You did this to me! his expression screamed, and he no longer meant the Remnants’ pitiless assault. That would end, but his suspension between this world and the next wouldn’t. He wasn’t a spirit who’d held on because he still had one final task to accomplish, as we’d been hoping these past several months. No, he was one of the cursed few who could never cross over, and it was because of me. The fact that I hadn’t known what I was doing when it