“—so they’re looking for more evidence, more bodies,” Jay wrapped up as he took a long swallow from his cup. “It turns out that one of the detectives, Portia Laurent, has suspected all along that the girls who are missing from All Saints were abducted. They just didn’t have any evidence to prove it.”

“But now they might,” Kristi said. She was still processing and almost missed it when he changed directions and asked her about the morality play. Slightly distracted, she told him about the events of her night, carefully skirting any mention of the vial because she knew he would demand it back, and she had every intention of wearing it to her meeting with Dr. Grotto the next day.

She finished with her less than productive snooping around Wagner House and her belief that she’d heard someone call for help.

“I’m not crazy about you meeting Dr. Vampire,” he said, pouring them each a little more wine. “And don’t go back to your apartment again.”

Kristi ignored that. “What’s Grotto gonna do to me? I’ll be at his office in the English Department.”

Jay’s eyes had turned dark as he stared into the fire. “But he’s involved in the girls’ disappearance; I can feel it. You seeing him, it just doesn’t feel right.” He rubbed his chin and shook his head. “And what about whoever was crying ‘help me’ outside Wagner House?”

“I said I thought I heard it, but it could have been a cat mewing or…I don’t know, something else. The wind was blowing, it was raining, and I was maybe imagining things.”

“You’re not one to imagine things,” he pointed out, and she decided it was time to set him straight.

“What if I told you I could predict death by just looking at someone?”

“You have some psychic power I’m not aware of?”

“You could say that.”

He smiled lazily and stretched out in front of the fire, his head propped on one hand, his drink in the other, his gaze fastened on hers. “Lay it on me.”

And so she did, explaining about her dreams where her father died and the way she saw people in black and white before, she assumed, they were to die. When she was finished, she took another long swallow from her cup and noticed that his smile had faded.

“I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“There isn’t one,” Kristi assured him.

“You’re serious.”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“But your father, and Lucretia and Ariel, they’re still alive.”

“Yes, I know, but there was the one woman on the bus.”

“An elderly woman.”