It was another copy of The Sanguinarius. This copy was a little more beaten up than the previous one.

Nathan frowned and headed to the storeroom. “Near mint my ass! Bluebird45 is getting some seriously bad feedback.”

“You bought this on eBay?” I flipped to a random page and started reading. “Man, you really can get anything on there.”

The shop door swung open, and the bells, which Nathan had yet to replace, announced Max’s shrill entrance.

Max was as young, confident and good-looking as I remembered. But I’d learned from Nathan that Max had a reputation as a merciless assassin. Judging from all the purple hickeys above the collar of his T-shirt, he was a merciless ladies’ man, as well.

“I love this town, I love this town!” He jumped and grabbed the lintel of the doorway to swing inside.

“Have a good flight?” Nathan didn’t look up from the stack of mail he browsed through.

“You better believe it!” Max grinned from ear to ear. “Listen, am I now in the seven-mile-high club, or does this just mark my seventh membership card?”

“Excuse me, lady present!” I turned back to the book.

Max sidled up behind me to read over my shoulder. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Not you,” Nathan snapped.

I ignored him. “Reading The Sanguinarius.”

I turned a page and was greeted by a particularly gruesome diagram of the vampire stomach. “There is no way my insides look like that. I won’t stand for it.”

Max laughed. “It’s amazing how many vampires are all caught up in that worthless book. Stake plus heart equals dead vampire. That’s all you need to know.”

“Actually, it depends on which heart you hit,” Nathan said quietly. “There are two. Or should be.”

A foreboding chill crept up my back. I studied Nathan’s face. He looked away.

I frantically flipped through the book until I found a diagram of the vampire heart. I scanned the text on the opposite page.

The main weakness in vampyre physiology is the first of the two hearts, the original human organ. Rendered obsolete by the emergence of the seven-chambered vampyre heart, it now serves as the most efficient way to dispose of the creature.

Max, apparently oblivious to my sudden frenzied state, began to hum, and something about the tune grated on my nerves. It was disturbingly familiar.

To pierce the human heart with any implement is to render the vampyre instantly deceased by incineration.

“Nathan, why didn’t you tell me?” Tears slid down my face as the physical emptiness in my chest made itself known. Or it could have been my imagination.

“I didn’t want to frighten you.”

“What?” I hadn’t intended to sound so shrill and loud. I lowered my voice. “How dare you! This is my life. You should have told me!”

Max wandered away from the conversation, feigning great interest in the tape on the bare drywall on the opposite side of the room.

Nathan leaned in close. “How was I supposed to tell you something like that? For the past four days, I’ve stayed up while you slept, watching for any sign you were going to—” He looked away. “My blood runs in your veins. I know every part of you. If I didn’t tell you what he’d done, I thought maybe…maybe nothing would ever come of it and I could forget.”