Greg, Looks Like He's Seen a Ghost. Or Three.

"He knows," The voices inside Isla purred.

All eyes, and jaws, snapped at Julian. A breath of wind, seemingly carrying the glowing embers of Isla's illuminated bones, sighed past my ears and struck him in the chest. The valet's stupid tie slapped him in the mouth.

He spat it away. "I, ugh, I don't know what they're—My Liege, don't look at me like—this is ridiculous! They're dead, what do they know?"

"We know you slipped inside Sloane's room when you thought no one was peeping, silly boy," the ghost trio answered. "We saw you sneak Lily's undergarments beneath the pillow— cad."

That last huffy bit was all Agatha, by my guess.

They tugged at our hands, Dmitri and mine, clutching Isla's, nearly lifting us off our chairs. Despite the pain flaring through my dislocated wrist, I held tight to her, our fingers woven together. She trusted me not to break her circle. Dmitri seemed too distracted to move at all; gasping dryly over his valet's betrayal. But I was mesmerized by her. The loll of her head. Her hair floating around her chin. The endless black pits of her eyes.

The way they moved Isla made me woozy. As her head turned, she left glimmering traces of herself behind, like an afterimage, an aura, before it drifted back into place. Slow and hazy. Made me squint as her glow flared. It was like staring too long at the sun rising over the mountains, burning off fog and dew as day broke.

The memory clogged my throat. Been a few centuries since I thought of those sunrises.

I leaned closer to her. "Isla? Can you hear me?"

She turned to me. "This ain't her show right now, sugar bean."

My neck ached. Like I'd been lassoed by something heavy. The weight of it becoming strangling tight.

"Already fucking knew he did that," snorted Sloane. (Did she? I tried to contain my surprise). "Only thing more cloying than the stench of that girl's snatch was your shitty aftershave all over them."

Isla lurched her head back.

"Aw, yeah, tell it sister," laughed Rusti. "I'd take three days in a tent at Woodstock rank over whatever juice he's sporting."

It was true. The snake did seem to favor overly sweet, yet peppery and musk like, cologne. Body spray, Isla corrected as we clambered out of his van earlier. You don't call the cheap shit cologne.

Julian reddened.

"I-it was a misunderstanding. I thought they were—"

"Don't you fucking dare say mine," said Sloane.

"Thought I made it translucent," Dmitri added, "that all discarded undergarments were to be given directly to me, swine!"

Well, that was disgusting.

The ghosts inside Isla rolled their eyes. Despite literally floating a foot or two off the ground, she looked heavier. Her arms and legs and neck hung ragdoll limp. She leaned gradually to one side as the lights flickered and a stench of smoke and sulfur and the sweetness of mulled wine permeated the air. For a moment, she fell. Only a few inches before jerking herself upright and squeezing my hand hard. Isla shook her head in the same way an untamed werewolf shakes rainwater off its fur.

"Be gentle with her," I snarled.

Something was wrong. The ladies were misusing their borrowed host. Or this was normal? What did I know about communing with ghosts? At the moment, more than I'd ever hoped to, and yet it certainly wasn't enough. It wasn't right either. Let the dead lucky enough to sleep rest in their caskets or great beyond or wherever they were.

The eyes—Isla's black eyes—seemed to flick away from my face. To linger, for just a moment, on an empty space beside me, twisting her lips into a gleeful sneer. The aura of her bones radiated heat like a fire raging just under her skin. It was blinding. And beautiful. She was like a golden painting of saints. Or angels. The kind that inflict acts of wrath.

A puff of air, warm and smelling of coffee and cigarettes, tickled my cheek. I bit my lip. Isla's wine like taste flooded my mouth. The lingering specter of her blood was thick and rich on my tongue. Couldn't help but drag it roughly across my teeth.

Isla tensed. Tightened all her muscles like a pistol ready to fire. But when she opened her mouth, only a hoarse croak escaped, limbs all shuddering as if in a seizure.

Then snap. Just like that. Her shoulders relaxed as Pearl hummed a soft tune in Isla's throat.

Hairs on my arm stood on end.

Sweet hell, this couldn't be normal.

"Pearl, it's been a swell catch up," I said, "but I'd like to speak with Isla again."

"Nay," growled Dmitri. "We've not concluded. This wretch must elaborate himself. Hastily!"

"Wait your turn, darling," taunted the ghosts.

The vamp hammered Julian's wrist against the table. Man shrieked as it splintered under his papery skin like a dry witch's broom about to be tossed into a hearth. Even I winced.

A rivulet of saliva fell from Dmitri's yellowed fangs onto Julian's exposed wrist.

Julian panted. A smirk climbed his lips, reaching his watering eyes in a heady glint. He pushed a small whimper from the back of his throat. His knees bumped the glass table top as he weakly, perhaps unconsciously, swiveled his hips.

My stomach flipped. The tang of iron and bile rose in my throat and dang it, keep it together old boy.

"Cool your heels, Dmitri, before you both start having too much fun," I said.

The old bastard glared at me, and for moment I paused, sucking on my lip. Julian's check sat heavy in my pocket. Fresh, neatly creased, and likely destined to be laundered through a D'Onofrio Pack owned front. 'Cept Isla never accepted that bribe, or my help out of her money troubles for that matter. Was this dirty money worth the rapid way the heat in her hand was starting to cool, like those ghosts were sucking the fire right out her bones? Enough was enough. Dmitri didn't need ghosts to tell him something Julian already'd confessed to. Maybe coming clean would shoo them out of Isla quicker. End this weirdness.

"It's your familiar who's the fraud. He outted you and Lily to Sloane," I said. "Used your truest love's panties to rile up your wife enough to toss Lily out."

"I paid you! I fucking paid you to drop the case and make him forget about her—ah Master!" Dmitri had taken to flaying the skin from Julian's hand with one of his own filthy nails, scowling at me as he did. The valet gulped down a breath. "Do that again."

I plastered my best ass-saving grin. "An investigative tactic. The check'll never be cashed, old pal." Farewell, payday, my dear.

"Hang on, I did no such fucking thing, private dick," Sloane shifted in her seat, nostrils flaring. "Am I really the only bitch up in this joint that gives a warted asshole about that girl's life? I warned the tart the fuck was going to happen if she didn't get the fuck away from you, dearest husband."

Dmitri howled (and twisted the keening Julian's wrist a little further to the left than it should ever have naturally been able to twist). "You too, wife, wish to inflict me suffering?"

"Aw, fuck you, baby, you know I budget for your dumb fuck affairs already. But once you started spewing that true love bullshit to her like you did the rest of us," Sloane gestured with her chin to Isla's weakly hovering body, "look what happened? We're all dead. Nah, I'm not letting you fuck up another girl like that. I showed her the fucking letters. I showed her your hoe's grave. Poor girl cried like she was chasing a damned waterfall to learned you weren't as dreadfully lonely as you claimed, that she wasn't your only fuck."

Well I'll be damned. And probably was, especially for being unable to hide my smirk at Sloane's confession. She caught it. I shouldn't take just any confession as fact, I know. But my instincts told me Sloane was genuine here. My instincts may have been wrong before, but that's beside the point.

"So ye two conspired against my peace!"

Oh nelly.

The ghosts gave a hushed snicker.

Isla's body trembled, her fingers nearly slipping out my grasp. My wrist was healing at an agonizingly slow pace, but a little more strength had already returned, and I held on. Her hair hung, frizzed and wild, in front of her eyes. Despite her temperature seeming to cool, the glow of her bones intensified.

"Well now that we're all on the level, I'll leave you three to sort this amongst yourselves. My secretary will be in touch later, but I think it's time our guests of honor got some rest?"

Isla gave a closed lipped yet, thanks to her illuminated bones, toothy grin.

"But Dmitri's right, sugar bean," the voices cooed together. "We ain't done counting cabbage just yet."

I swallowed the snarl in my throat. "What's that mean, Pearl?"

"The money he pilfered right out the cutesy safe in Sloane's jewelry box." Under the ghosts' cacophonous giggling, Sloane's jaw clicked. "So much money. Snatched right out from under you."

One voice, Rusti's I think, choked. "You're really behind the eight ball on this, ain'tcha honey? Here's the spill. He stored it in his sock drawer, in the box with the fake teeth, fucking square. Oh, we see the sick things you do, talking to the graves of servants before you like some kind of high and mighty vamp—"

"My father is buried out there!" Agatha yelled, jerking Isla's neck to one side. "This was our house!

"Can it, Aggie, this ain't about you. It's about his stash of bribe money that made the greedy girl sing sayonara. Kind of funny how the first time he offered it to her was right atop the grave Pearly kicked it in, oh, and Lily refused it. Poor, stupid thing believed it all then. Almost felt sorry for the old man wooing her, she not even letting him have a sip from that skinny neck she was so scared. But one night this guy left with the money," Isla's body gave a pained shrug. "Came back without it. Lily never came back at all."

"Good riddance," tweeted Pearl. "Oh, Rosemond would have iced her eventually. She always does. No way she wasn't getting all in a lather over Lily stealing her little bone right off her dainty hand."

The bone pile vibrated on the table.

"She's going to be mighty cross with you as well," whispered Agatha.

My head ached. Felt like a jackhammer pummeling pavement between my eyes. I longed for the brief relief of just rubbing my cold hands over my throbbing temples, to finally get a drink to take the edge off, but I couldn't let go and just leave Isla untethered, as she'd said it.

In my hand though, her own shook.

Sloane seemed to squirm uncomfortably in her seat, lips pressed into a thin a line. In the beat of silence that followed, I tried to collect the facts without the aid of my notebook. So, Sloane had seen the ghost. She too was one of Dmitri's false Rosemonds. Each Rosemond met her untimely demise at the hands of the real McCoy, according to them. Maybe Lily's disappearance did link back to a jealous wife. Just not the one I originally assumed.

"And Lily brought that bone straight to my psychic, ah, colleague's parlor," I declared. "What better way to prove whether or not you're someone's reincarnated soul than to ask the source, eh?"

We had our suspicions, but this just about confirmed it. It had to be Rosemond Lily was trying to contact... Rosemond, the murderous ghost. Hell, I couldn't believe I was even thinking it, but I needed to question Isla more over just how successful this séance really was.

"And stole your money!" yelled Julian with an exaggerated gasp, voice straining to keep the pain out. His eyes fluttered in a moment of... ah, that might not be entirely pain he was feeling. "Oh wow! I can't believe she'd do the exact thing I'd been warning you about, my Liege."

"You disgusting thief," Sloane spit at Julian, nonplussed about my latest announcement. She crushed his own little finger in her fist. "The bitches telling the truth?"

"Of course, they are," I said, keeping an eye on Isla, making sure she didn't float away like a neglected balloon. "Julian was at Lily's home the night she disappeared. Lily's neighbor saw him."

"Swine! Ungrateful rat! After all I'd done for thee!"

Squirming under the clutches of his enraged masters, Julian groaned. Deep and guttural and frustrated. "It was supposed to be me getting turned, you discount Dracula! You promised me you'd grant me the gift of eternal unholy life as reward for my years of service. Years. My whole life since my teens all I've wanted was to live forever and then you let that obvious con artist jump my place! I've served my time. Longer than the others out in the yard, my Liege, Lord of Darkness and Terror, and you haven't done shit for me."

"My father and brothers didn't become vampires either," sniffled Agatha. "Nor did their spirits linger in this realm, out of the shame for being fooled into thinking they were more than a vampire's slave."

"But I worked so hard. Eternal life supposed to be my reward! You said you'd turn me years ago!"

Sloane and Dmitri cackled together, a dark, gruff harmony not unlike that of the ghosts. Eternally linked. Eternally damned. They didn't need to say anything. It was clear to us all Julian'd was the one who'd been duped. A long con. They never intended on turning the help.

Well, this was awkward.

"She wasn't alone that night either!" shouted Julian, in what seemed like one last attempt at spite. "One of her other johns was at her apartment, drinking wine from the glass you gave her, my Liege. Her partner in the scam, no doubt."

I straightened. An open bottle. Two glasses. One shattered. "Who?"

Dmitri hissed. His eyes blazed red. Black, gooey tears trudged down crusty cheeks. Fangs glistened with drool. His arms began to fuse with his cape, fingers slipping from Isla's deadened grasp.

Her body slouched more to one side. The ladies inside her hummed softly, like they weren't borrowing the body of an illuminated, weakening, levitating spiritualist who tasted like red wine and smoke—

Dmitri's hiss morphed into a roar.

"Hold up, pal, don't—"

"Break the witch's hand, yes, of course, Gregorio," he did not hold up. Dmitri transformed. Leathery skin distended into wings. Nails elongated into razor talons. His wrinkled face took on the shape of a massive, fanged, snarling bat. Voice rough and garbled. "We have much to discuss. But I can smite thy betrayer one handed!"

There it was again. That pull on my neck. A soft warmth. An almost whisper. The mere hint of a husky voice in the wind. Break it.

"Never mind that, Dmitri," I said.

And let go of Isla's hand.

Son a fat cow that better have been the right move.

"Oh, shoot," chirped Pearl. "I was starting to have fun, too."

In a single pump of Dmitri's wings, I was knocked backward, off my chair. Vampires hissed and spat and lunged. I watched from under my own ass the creature Dmitri became practically unhinge its jaw to reveal its long, razor teeth.

Sloane too leapt up, throwing her chair across the room, showing off her own pearly fangs.

Now released, Julian dropped to his knees. He struggled to tear up his shirt sleeves with his limp and broken hand and bore his wrists. His, ah, trousers were fairly constricting as well. Almost impressive, given the amount of blood he was steadily losing. And skin.

"Do it!" he yelled, his voice high and euphoric. "Turn m—"

The vampires tore into Julian's throat.

Arterial spray soaked them. His tangy, yet saccharine, odor clouded the room. My mouth watered. The hunger that had been gnawing in my veins flared with a painful severity, sending prickling and itching pains rushing through my body. My stretching fangs poked into my lower lip. And yet my muscles were weak. The ugly toll of fasting. I couldn't get up. Couldn't move quick enough to dive into the buffet. Just to have a sip. Just one long drag from his freshly broken arteries just to hold me over till—

Isla's body thumped against the wall.

In the same moment as our circle broke, only milliseconds ago, she'd been thrust backward. The chandelier bulbs shattered, and the candles extinguished in a haze of smoke. But even in the darkness I saw how Isla smacked against the wall—the itch in my veins and the tang of blood weaving into my nostrils ignored—and willed my muscles out of paralysis.

I caught Isla as she fell forward. Before she could crack her head on the glass table.

Already, the warmth in her soft body was returning. She no longer glowed. No bones were visible under her opaque skin. I clutched her close to my chest and she sighed, unconscious. And, I think, drooled a bit into my shirt.

I stroked the hair away from her face. She was out of it, yeah, but pulse steady. Her head was saved from another bruise, or worse, for now.

Oh, but it seemed glass shattered anyway. Not from in this room. Elsewhere in the house.

"Mistress!" A distant voice screamed. One of the bloodbags in another room. "The graveyard!"

The dual suckling sounds of the vampires molar deep into their familiar's flesh ceased. Sloane, chin bloody, eyes glowing golden, ripped herself away. A thin bit of Julian's skin dangled from one fang. She didn't bother to wipe her chin as she bound out the room and to the aid of the other bloodbags as they screamed.

A scuffle was happening. I could hear the house being rifled through. Furniture moving. Things breaking. Flesh tearing. Bones fracturing. The scents of sweat and fear were strong. A gust of cold air suggested a window or door had been opened or broken.

Sloane shrieked.

Shifting Isla against my shoulder, I tore a curtain aside. This room faced the backyard, which, like the ghosts had told us, was a decently size graveyard (must be spiffy to have this much property smack in the middle of the city, but that's what happens when you get in early and don't accept a buyout for two hundred years). The darkness was deep this time of night, but out beyond the weeds and fragile headstones was a mausoleum.

And an unfamiliar body running from it, a sack or large, full bag swung over its shoulder.

"Dmitri!" I yelled. "You're being robbed."

Old vamp muffled some noncommittal reply between sucks on Julian's neck. He'd been starved for months. No way the vampire would have the focus to unstick himself from a fresh body in his state. I wouldn't look but could hear Julian's faint gurgles and pleas to be turned as Dmitri drank with hectic fervor. It mostly sounded, and smelled, wet and sloppy.

I gave Isla a gentle shake. Nothing. Sound asleep. Deadweight in my arms. Helpless. And yet... a body snatcher was getting away.

Oh hell.

"Dmitri."

"What!" snapped Dmitri, tearing flesh off his servant.

Carefully, I laid Isla on the carpet, away from the broken chandelier bits. "Don't. Touch. Her."

Dmitri snorted. It turned into a burp midway through. "I am not uncivilized, Gregorio. As you have reminded me. Tis rude to touch another vampire's paramour."

"We're not—good, just, finish your meal."

He was already back at his feast before I finished my sentence.

I pressed my lips to Isla's ear. "Be right back, darling."