Besides, I could just see me explaining who Annette was to my mother. Mom, this is Annette. Back in the seventeen hundreds when Bones was a gigolo, she used to pay him to fuck her, but after more than two hundred years of banging him, now they’re just good friends.

Yeah, I’d introduce Annette to my mother—right after I performed a lobotomy on myself.

“I still can’t believe she wants to talk about the wedding,” I marveled to Bones as I climbed into my car.

He gave me a serious look. “She’ll never abandon her relationship with you. You could marry Satan himself and that still wouldn’t get rid of her. She loves you, Kitten, though she does a right poor job of showing it most days.” Then he gave me a wicked grin. “Shall I ring your cell in an hour, so you can pretend there’s an emergency if she gets natty with you?”

“What if there is an emergency with Tate?” I wondered. “Maybe I shouldn’t leave.”

“Your bloke’s fine. Nothing can harm him now short of a silver stake through the heart. Go see your mum. Ring me if you need me to come bite her.”

There really was nothing for me to do at the compound. Tate would be a few more days at least in lockdown, and we didn’t have any jobs scheduled, for obvious reasons. This was as good a time as any to see if my mom meant what she said about wanting to end our estrangement.

“Keep your cell handy,” I joked to Bones. Then I pulled away.

My mother lived thirty minutes from the compound. She was still in Richmond, but in a more rural area. Her quaint neighborhood was reminiscent of where we grew up in Ohio, without being too far away from Don if things got hairy. I pulled up to her house, parked, and noticed that her shutters needed a fresh coat of paint. Did they look like that the last time I was here? God, how long had it been since I’d come to see her?

As soon as I got out of the car, however, I froze. Shock crept up my spine, and it had nothing to do with the realization that I hadn’t been here since Bones came back into my life months ago.

From the feel of the energy leaking off the house, my mother wasn’t alone inside, but whoever was with her didn’t have a heartbeat. I started to slide my hand toward my purse, where I always had some silver knives tucked away, when a cold laugh made me stop.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, little girl,” a voice I hated said from behind me.

My mother’s front door opened. She was framed in it, with a dark-haired vampire who looked vaguely familiar cradling her neck almost lovingly in his hands.