A hint of suspicion slid into Ghastek’s voice. “And you need a quart of blood for that?”

“Yep.”

The bloodsucker became utterly still as Ghastek mulled it over.

“If I win this silly game, you will tell me why Rowena came to see you after the Keepers affair.”

Sucker. “Deal.”

“Excellent.” He put emphasis on the “x” and the word came out slightly sibilant.

“You need a fluffy white cat. That way you can stroke it when you say things like that.”

Tracy’s vamp made a small noise that might have been a clearing of a throat or a choked-up laugh.

A purple vampire popped out of the bushes, dragging something behind it. The bloodsucker strained, tight muscle flexing across its back, and heaved what looked like a large collapsed leather tent into the open.

“We found human bones,” the vampire reported.

“In the ravine?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I knew about the spot. Immokalee had described it to me this morning, trying to scare me into not going. A few dozen yards to the north, the ground dropped sharply into a narrow fissure lined with human skeletons. Some still held their weapons. When a draugr sucked the flesh off your bones, he did it quick, like jerking a shirt off a body.

“We also found this.” The vampire indicated the tent.

Ghastek’s vampire raised the top edge, exposing a dark opening, and vanished into it. The leather shifted, mirroring the vampire’s movement inside it. The bloodsucker emerged into the clear air. “The design is ill-conceived. It is clearly too large for one person, but it has no structure or method of remaining upright as a tent, and besides, this side is completely open to the elements. Perhaps it’s some sort of communal sleeping bag?”

“It’s not a sleeping bag,” I told him.

“Would you care to enlighten me?” Ghastek said.

“Look at it from above.”

The purple vampire leaped onto the nearest tree and scurried up into the branches. A long moment passed and then it dropped on the ground next to me without a word.

“What is it?” Tracy asked.

The vampire’s face was unreadable, like a blank wall. “It’s a glove.”

The wind stirred the tree branches. The world blinked, as the tech vanished, crushed under the onslaught of a magic wave. Cold froze the glade. The other vampire burst from the bushes and came to rest by Tracy.

In the distance something wailed in an inhuman voice, its forlorn cry rising high above the treetops.

Gloom claimed the clearing. It came slowly, like molasses, from the dark spaces deep between the roots, washing over trees, leaching color from the greenery, drenching it in shadows, until the shrubs and foliage turned dark, almost gray. Behind the gloom, mist rose in thin wisps, tinted with an eerie bluish glow.

A crow cried overhead, its shrill caw impossibly distant.

“They are putting on quite a show,” Ghastek said.