Jeaniene Frost - Up From the Grave

“Likely not,” I thought he replied, but couldn’t be sure. The nearby booth started blasting an exclusive movie trailer. If that wasn’t enough, the instant cheers and applause drowned out everything else.

I might not have the dedication to spend hours applying makeup and prosthetics to resemble my favorite fictional character, but the idea of leaving my cares behind by dressing up as someone else for an afternoon held definite appeal. Doing it with over a hundred thousand like-minded people must have contributed to the energy in the room being almost palpable. My senses went into overdrive from the carnival of sights, smells, sounds, and continuous contact as people brushed by us on their way to the panels, booths, signings, or exhibits. From the hum starting to generate beneath my skin, I’d almost swear this place was a supernatural hot spot.

Unfortunately, we weren’t here to get a contact high from all the frenetic energy. We had to find a reporter, and according to his text, he was in the video games section.

Easy enough, except we had the equivalent of eight football fields filled with fans and exhibitors between us. We either had to out ourselves as vampires by flying over everyone, or push through people as slowly and politely as we could.

We chose the latter, although here, flying could be brushed off as a mildly entertaining gimmick. It took over thirty minutes to reach the video game area, then we had to search through the throngs of people there. Finally, toward the back wall, I saw a slim, sandy-haired man, the stubble on his face adding a rougher edge to his naturally boyish looks. Thank God he hadn’t disguised himself by wearing a costume; there was no way to track people by scent in this olfactory smorgasbord.

“Timmie!” I yelled.

My neighbor from my college days didn’t look up. After all, I was only one raised voice among thousands. A few more minutes of polite pushing later, and we reached him at last.

“Why the bloody hell didn’t you meet us outside?” were Bones’s first words.

Timmie flinched at his hard tone. Then he glanced at me and squared his shoulders, as if remembering that I’d never let Bones harm him.

“I’m on the clock here. Besides, I thought you’d like this. There’s a True Blood panel starting soon.”

“Really?” I blurted.

Bones’s raised brow had me reluctantly adding, “We’re not here for fun. We came to ask if you’d help us find someone.”

A grin tugged Timmie’s lips. “Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you, Cathy, but you could’ve texted me that.”

“We’re not putting any of this in writing,” I said a trifle grimly. “Or trusting it over the phone.”

“Ah, paranormal-related.” Timmie snapped a photo of someone walking by, then let his camera hang from the strap around his neck. “Is it safe to talk in public?”

“In this place? Yes. Anyone overhearing won’t believe a word,” Bones replied dismissively.

True, plus so far, I’d only seen humans here. Shame. The undead were missing a good time.

“If I help you find this person, am I allowed to report on any of it?” Timmie asked in a hopeful voice.

“Not just no, but hell no,” I said firmly.

He heaved a sigh. “You suck, Cathy.”

“You actually went there?” I asked, grinning.

Timmie grinned back. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget you’re . . . you know.”

“We need you to find a girl ’round ten years old,” Bones stated, getting down to business. “Start with rumors of a child with glowing green eyes, or bodies of people with snapped necks who were last seen with a little girl.”

Timmie’s mouth fell open. Then he goggled at us. “You lost a little vampire?” Why would you need MY help to find her? flashed across his mind.

“We can’t ask our normal allies because we don’t want people in our world to know about her.” I gripped his arm, my smile fading. “I can’t explain why, but they’d kill her, Timmie. Or use her to make really horrible things happen.”

From his thoughts, he was intrigued, yet hesitant. He needed to find another freelance photography gig to make rent this month. Plus, it kinda sucked investigating something he couldn’t tell anyone about—

“We’ll give you twenty-five thousand dollars as a retainer,” Bones said, freezing Timmie’s thoughts into a single chorus of YES! “And another twenty-five if your information leads us to the little girl.”

“W-when do I start?” Timmie managed, stunned into stuttering.

Bones broke the strap around Timmie’s neck with a casual swipe, sending the camera crashing to the floor.

“Now, so you won’t be needing that anymore.”

We knew Timmie was good. He’d given Don, then Tate headaches when he kept exposing paranormal secrets to the public through his investigative e-zine. He was also trustworthy, as he’d proven over a year ago when we enlisted his help tracking rogue ghouls. When we left California, I had high hopes that he could sniff out Katie’s trail eventually.

What I didn’t expect was the text only two days later: “Check for your package on the east side in Detroit.”

“Wow, Timmie thinks he has a lead, and it’s nowhere near where Ian and Tate have been looking,” I told Bones.

He glanced at the text. “Detroit’s east side is one of the most crime-ridden places in America.”

Oddly enough, he sounded approving, and tinges of admiration threaded through my emotions.

“You’re glad a little girl is on her own in that area why ?”

“She’s safer there,” Bones replied, arching a brow. “She has her pick of thousands of abandoned buildings in an area where people don’t pry into each other’s business, and where the occasional body of someone who attempts to trifle with her won’t raise a public outcry.”

Such a coldly logical analysis. Bones had had hundreds of years fighting for his life to think that way. Katie was only a decade old, yet she was demonstrating the same mentality if she’d picked Detroit for those reasons instead of ending up there by accident.

“If it was deliberate, it also shows restraint on her part,” Bones went on. Something icy brushed against my emotions this time. “That’s good. Less chance that she’ll need to be killed if she’s amenable to staying hidden.”

For several seconds, I couldn’t speak, my mind rejecting that he’d actually said such a thing.

“Need to be killed?” I finally repeated. “Are you in sane ?”

The look he gave me was so chilling, I was reminded that Bones had been a hit man for almost two centuries before we met.

“The danger of war hasn’t diminished because of her age. It’s the reason I’m willing to let Katie live if she allows us to hide her for the rest of her life. Otherwise, by our hand or someone else’s, she’ll have to die.”

My expression must have conveyed my flat refusal because he grasped my shoulders and all but shook me.

“It sickens me, but you know I’m right! You turned into a full vampire because the mere possibility that you could add ghoul attributes to your half-vampire nature nearly caused a war. Katie is that addition, and if that ever becomes general knowledge, she’ll start the war we all fear. Or be killed to stop it.”

“But she doesn’t have to stay hidden forever,” I whispered, still reeling over the bleak future Bones had laid out for the child. “When she’s old enough, she could choose to become one species or the other—”

“It’s too late,” Bones said in a far gentler tone. “Katie’s already a combination of vampire and ghoul. Losing her humanity won’t negate that; it will only increase it.”

I had no words to refute that. Too well, I remembered the hundreds that had died when ghouls started taking out Masterless vampires in the early stirrings of a species uprising. Then the hundreds more, on both sides, that died quelling that conflict. Bones was right; only my changing over had stopped those hundreds from turning into millions since ten percent of the world’s population was undead. That, and our uneasy truce with the new ghoul queen, Marie Laveau, who’d already stated that if we didn’t shut down this new threat, she would.