“Good. Make it two weeks.” I hung up the phone. “I’ve decided to relocate to the moon to pursue a career as an astrohermit. Either of you interested in a job as Director of Research?”

“You couldn’t afford me,” said Lena.

“Besides, Smudge would hate the moon,” added Nidhi.

“He might enjoy the decreased gravity. Can’t you see him jumping around my moonbase, spinning like a little flaming pinwheel?”

“What could possibly go wrong?” asked Lena.

I sighed and shoved my phone back into my pocket. The rest of my messages could wait. At the rate I was going, I’d give myself a stroke before we reached Detroit.

When all else failed, there had always been one guaranteed way to calm my thoughts. I hooked a clip-on reading lamp to the collar of my jacket, grabbed one of my newest acquisitions—Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker—and started reading.

The recession a few years back, combined with the decline of the auto industry, had hit Detroit hard. The city had just begun to turn things around when word got out it was also home to the largest nest of vampires in the Midwest.

That was back in late June. A week later, a thirteen-year-old girl turned up dead, her throat slashed. There was no proof a vampire was responsible, but it didn’t matter. Her death led to mobs of self-styled vampire hunters roaming the streets. At least two vampires ended up dead, along with five “suspected vampires” who turned out to be humans in the wrong place and time.

It wasn’t until the vampires began fighting back that the National Guard was called in. They used ground-penetrating sonar and satellite images to pinpoint the nest’s location, deep within a forgotten salt mine.

For eight days, they poured fire and explosives into the mine. By the end of July, not a single vampire remained in the nest. Some escaped and fled to join nests in other parts of the country. Others refused to abandon their home town.

Parts of Detroit were once again beginning to recover. Deb DeGeorge lived in one of the areas that wasn’t.

We passed abandoned houses and vacant lots as we got farther from the highway, making our way toward the northeast part of the city. Cars lined the streets and plugged narrow driveways like corks.

Deb lived at the corner of Benson and Concord in a narrow two-story brick building with broken windows and a gutter jutting down over the front porch like a compound fracture.

We parked on the opposite side of the road, just past a street lamp. I saw no lights inside the house, but that meant nothing. Deb could see perfectly well in the dark. It was one of several changes she’d gone through when she traded her humanity for a longer life as a creature from a book called Renfield, by Samantha Wallace.