Timmie’s mouth fell open. Then he goggled at us. “You lost a little vampire?” Why would you need MY help to find her? flashed across his mind.

“We can’t ask our normal allies because we don’t want people in our world to know about her.” I gripped his arm, my smile fading. “I can’t explain why, but they’d kill her, Timmie. Or use her to make really horrible things happen.”

From his thoughts, he was intrigued, yet hesitant. He needed to find another freelance photography gig to make rent this month. Plus, it kinda sucked investigating something he couldn’t tell anyone about—

“We’ll give you twenty-five thousand dollars as a retainer,” Bones said, freezing Timmie’s thoughts into a single chorus of YES! “And another twenty-five if your information leads us to the little girl.”

“W-when do I start?” Timmie managed, stunned into stuttering.

Bones broke the strap around Timmie’s neck with a casual swipe, sending the camera crashing to the floor.

“Now, so you won’t be needing that anymore.”

We knew Timmie was good. He’d given Don, then Tate headaches when he kept exposing paranormal secrets to the public through his investigative e-zine. He was also trustworthy, as he’d proven over a year ago when we enlisted his help tracking rogue ghouls. When we left California, I had high hopes that he could sniff out Katie’s trail eventually.

What I didn’t expect was the text only two days later: “Check for your package on the east side in Detroit.”

“Wow, Timmie thinks he has a lead, and it’s nowhere near where Ian and Tate have been looking,” I told Bones.

He glanced at the text. “Detroit’s east side is one of the most crime-ridden places in America.”

Oddly enough, he sounded approving, and tinges of admiration threaded through my emotions.

“You’re glad a little girl is on her own in that area why?”

“She’s safer there,” Bones replied, arching a brow. “She has her pick of thousands of abandoned buildings in an area where people don’t pry into each other’s business, and where the occasional body of someone who attempts to trifle with her won’t raise a public outcry.”

Such a coldly logical analysis. Bones had had hundreds of years fighting for his life to think that way. Katie was only a decade old, yet she was demonstrating the same mentality if she’d picked Detroit for those reasons instead of ending up there by accident.

“If it was deliberate, it also shows restraint on her part,” Bones went on. Something icy brushed against my emotions this time. “That’s good. Less chance that she’ll need to be killed if she’s amenable to staying hidden.”

For several seconds, I couldn’t speak, my mind rejecting that he’d actually said such a thing.

“Need to be killed?” I finally repeated. “Are you insane?”