“I’m sorry,” I blathered, wanting to curl up and die. “You’re probably really busy. Would you like me to tell her you called? I can try to reach her cell.” My thoughts flashed to the vampire dating guide he had written to help increase a shadow’s life expectancy. It was currently shoved to the back of my closet. Ivy had given it to me on our second night sharing the same roof so I’d quit pushing her vampire buttons. Reading it had been an education, one that left me wide-eyed and a little ill. Some of the stuff they did in the name of pleasure…

Rex appeared at my feet, pulled out from the depths of the church by the scent of vampire, something she associated with Ivy. The stupid cat rubbed against me by mistake before going to twine about Cormel’s feet. Shaken from my musings, I lunged for her, and when she spat at me, Mr. Cormel picked the cat up, crooning to the animal as he looked at me from between her ears.

Rynn Cormel had run the world during the Turn, his living charisma somehow crossing the boundaries of death to give his undead existence an uncanny mimicry of life. Every move was a careful study of causality. It was highly unusual for so young an undead vampire to be so good at mimicking having a soul. I figured it was because he was a politician and had had practice way before he died.

“Actually,” he said, “it’s you I’ve come to see. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

I choked on my breath, and the corners of his mouth rose in amusement. What did Ivy’s master vampire want with me? “Uh…,” I said, backing up into the black foyer. He was an undead. He could ask anything…and if he insisted, I wouldn’t be able to say no. Oh, God. Table 6.1. Had he really…I mean, you have to try stuff before you can print it, right?

“It will only take two minutes of your time.”

I breathed a little easier. Everything in the guide would take at least twenty minutes. Unless he was working on a sequel. HOW TO NAIL YOUR SHADOW AND LEAVE THEM BREATHING IN TWO MINUTES.

Letting the cat slip from his arms, he brushed at his somehow immaculate coat. Rex continued to purr and twine. Her attention went behind me, and the clatter of pixy wings became obvious. “Rachel, it’s getting late,” Jenks said, his voice high and preoccupied. “I’m moving everyone out to the stump for the night.” But his entire demeanor changed when he came wing to shoulder with me.