Feeling almost dizzy with the connection, Kristi stretched her arms over her head, hearing her spine pop, but still she kept her gaze fastened to the conversation on her monitor. Her mind spun backward as she remembered the conversation that had taken place in her father’s living room. She hadn’t been living with him then, but she’d been visiting. Olivia hadn’t been home, but Bentz and Montoya had been discussing the case and Montoya mentioned something about the “weird Goth girl” wearing her own blood. She hadn’t wanted to be called Ophelia, her given name. She’d told the detectives to call her “O” or “Just O”.

There was a girl named Ophelia in Grotto’s class, a sullen, quiet girl who always sat at the back of the room. Kristi hadn’t actually met her face to face, hadn’t been close enough to notice if she wore a chain around her neck and a tiny vial of her own blood.

But that was about to change.

Even though the idea of anyone taking the time to draw blood, seal it in a tiny bottle, then wear it…Jesus, that was really out of the boundaries of normal.

The screen flickered and JustO logged out of the chat room.

Kristi felt a sense of disappointment. She knew she was on the verge of something important, though she wasn’t certain what. She glanced at the clock on the computer screen and groaned. It was nearly two and she had an early morning class. Besides, she really needed to think about what she’d learned online. Process it. It was probably just as well that JustO had left the conversation, which seemed to be rapidly going downhill. Even Carnivore18 gave up the ghost and logged off.

Her eyes burning from lack of sleep and staring at the monitor, Kristi closed out all of the open screens and thought about how she would approach O, the quiet girl, how she would get her to admit that she was JustO. If the vial were visible, that might start the conversation, but Kristi would have to pretend to be someone else because ABneg1984 had bragged about wearing her own blood and Kristi couldn’t fake it. If the people wearing the vials were part of a cult, there was probably a certain vial they used, maybe a certain necklace on which it hung, some sort of conformity that would make it immediately evident if she came up with a fake. Maybe the vials were a certain shape, or etched, or dark glass or…Oh, she couldn’t think about it now.

Yawning, she stretched again and envied the cat, who was already back in his hideaway.

She wasn’t certain of the significance of what she’d just discovered, but it sure looked like it had a lot to do with Dr. Grotto’s vampyrism class. Maybe the cult Lucretia had mentioned was a subject of the class.