“I’m ready.”

“Are you?”

The way he drew out the words warned her that this next test wouldn’t be easy, which was why she couldn’t stop her surprised blink when the chute above her opened and a new subject tumbled into the arena. It looked similar to the others she’d neutralized, but when it leapt up and faced her, she understood. Her new opponent had no heartbeat.

“What is it?” she asked, her own heart starting to beat faster.

Her opponent had a question, too.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Neutralize it,” her gray-haired instructor commanded.

She hid her disappointment. Perhaps if she finished quickly, she’d be rewarded with an answer. At the very least, neutralizing this . . . thing would give her more information.

She charged without another moment’s hesitation, sweeping its legs out from under it before slamming her elbow down on its throat.

Crunch.

Its bones shattered with the usual sound, but instead of going limp, the thing threw her off and leapt upward while giving the old man a disbelieving look.

“What have you done?”

As it spoke, its neck snapped back into place, losing its misshapen angle in less time than she took to blink again. She stared in confusion. What sort of creature could heal itself like that?

“You want to live?” her instructor answered the thing coolly. “You’ll have to kill her.”

Those same words had been spoken to many opponents before this one, yet for the first time, her hands felt damp. With its incredible healing ability, was it possible that the thing couldn’t be neutralized?

She glanced up at the old man, meeting his gaze for a second before she looked away. Even in that brief moment, she had her answer.

The thing could be killed. She just had to figure out how.

One

Ignoring a ghost is a lot more difficult than you’d think. For starters, walls don’t hinder their kind, so although I shut the door in the face of the spectre loitering outside my house, he followed me inside as if invited. My jaw clenched in irritation, but I began unloading my groceries as though I hadn’t noticed. Too soon, I was done. Being a vampire married to another vampire meant that my shopping list was pretty short.

“This is ridiculous. You can’t keep shunning me forever, Cat,” the ghost muttered.

Yeah, ghosts can talk, too. That made them even harder to ignore. Of course, it didn’t help that this ghost was also my uncle. Alive, dead, undead . . . family had a way of getting under your skin whether you wanted them to or not.

Case in point: Despite my vow not to talk to him, I couldn’t keep from replying.

“Actually, since neither of us is getting any older, I can do this forever,” I noted coolly. “Or until you ante up on everything you know about the a-hole running our old team.”

“Madigan is who I came to talk to you about,” he said.