An Apple for the Creature

VSI NANCY HOLDER

Nancy Holder is a New York Times bestselling and multiple Bram Stoker Award–winning author, and a short story, essay, and comic book writer. She is the author of the Wicked, Crusade, and Wolf Springs Chronicles series. Vanquished, in the Crusade series, is out now; Hot Blooded, the second book in the Wolf Springs Chronicles, will be out soon. She has written a lot of tie-in material for “universes” such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Teen Wolf, and many others, and recently won the Scribe Award for Saving Grace: Tough Love, based on the show by the same name. She lives in San Diego.

Birds trilled through Boston, and jocund dawn was on its way. Claire and Jackson had already been well into overtime when their informant placed their fugitive here, now; and in the grab-game, it was arrest while the iron was hot or give the glory to someone else. And so.

“I have her at the door. She’s A and D. She’s going upstairs; she’s out the back door; I am in pursuit!” Jackson told Claire via earpiece. He was laughing.

“What the hell?” Claire shouted into her mic. He’s telling me she’s armed and dangerous and he’s laughing?

Positioned behind a dead apple tree in the weed-choked yard of the duplex, she stepped on a dollop of dog poop—nice—with her service weapon out just as a completely naked woman of a certain age (and size) soared over the balcony railing, which was decorated with a set of jumbo Christmas lights, and landed ten feet away from Claire.

Bingo. Claire would have to thank the police sketch artist who had provided them with Linda Hannover’s likeness. He had captured every nook and cranny of her tired, doughy face.

Ms. Hannover’s landing stuck, although she wobbled. Claire was amazed the woman hadn’t broken an ankle. In her right hand, the suspect clutched a turkey baster. The baster didn’t look loaded but you could never be too sure.

“FBI. Don’t move,” Claire said.

The woman teetered a moment as Claire approached. She was very large, and very naked.

“Oh, Jesus, oh, sweet Jesus,” the woman said, taking in Claire’s FBI vest, helmet, and, presumably, her gun.

“Drop the baster,” Claire said.

Ms. Hannover did not comply. Instead, she wheeled around to an open side gate—Claire’s original ingress—and zoomed through it. Whapping it shut behind her, the suspect took off like a bat out of hell. Claire was astounded. The lady was hauling. She had to be on drugs.

“FBI! Freeze!” Claire bellowed at her. She always said “FBI” as much as possible to give it as many chances to sink in. Resisting arrest always added so much more paperwork.

Ms. Hannover did not freeze.

Claire vaulted over the gate, nearly landing on a rusted, broken tricycle. Claire gave chase—hell, she wasn’t even thirty, and she was in fighting trim—but she watched with awe as her naked criminal made it to the sidewalk and hung a left. Ms. Hannover’s bare feet slapped on the pavement.

Somewhere, a dog barked and a car engine started up. In a second Bureau car, Santos and Park, their backup, threw open their doors and aimed guns at Claire’s bad girl.

Still, Ms. Hannover ran. She might have made it as far as the crosswalk if Claire hadn’t tackled her. Claire’s face smacked against Ms. Hannover’s naked behind and her left elbow ended up in more dog poop. Didn’t these fine citizens curb their dogs? Or wear anything?

Then she saw the spotless boots of Jackson approaching, stopping at Claire’s eye level and madame’s ass.

“FBI. Don’t move, ma’am,” Jackson said, so much more professional than laughing. Claire was going to chew his balls off for breakfast.

“Oh, Jesus,” the woman said, as Claire extracted herself and whipped out her handcuffs. Then Claire read Ms. Hannover her rights, and together they hauled her to her feet. Ms. Hannover remained silent until Claire was finished. Then she started panting and said, “Jesus, who’s going to cook my goddamn Thanksgiving turkey?”

Claire and Jackson traded incredulous looks. “You should have thought about that before you started cooking methamphetamines in your spare bedroom,” Jackson said.

“Yes, unfortunately, it’s your goose that’s cooked,” Claire added, with a straight face.

“It’s not cooked. And it’s a turkey. It’s going to spoil,” the woman said, sounding confused. And high. Higher than the rising sun.

The backup team approached with a double-extra-large FBI Windbreaker and Special Agent Santos wrapped it around Ms. Hannover with some difficulty, trying to snap up the front without getting sued for sexual harassment.

“My son was messing around with that stuff,” Ms. Hannover argued as they walked her to their car. “That’s his room.”

“Your son is serving twenty-five to life for murder,” Jackson said.

“My nephew is staying in Sweetie’s room while Sweetie’s in prison,” Ms. Hannover prevaricated. Her teeth were very pointy, as in maybe filed down on a whim or for some trick’s big bucks, or as a result of some pimp’s payback back in the day before Ms. Hannover lost the will to limit her caloric intake to only three double cheeseburgers at a single sitting. Claire realized that lack of sleep was making her snarky. As a rule, she had nothing against people who liked their food.

“Sweetie told his cell mate that you committed the murder,” Jackson added. She’d been read her rights. She hadn’t asked for a lawyer. Things were looking good.

“I’m going to be in jail on Thanksgiving.” She chuckled and grinned at Claire with those freaky teeth. “I won’t have to cook but you will, honey.” She broke wind against the Windbreaker.

“She’s riding with you guys,” Jackson told Santos. He wrinkled his fine freckled nose at Claire’s assorted dog poop stains. “Maybe she should, too.”

Santos narrowed his eyes at Jackson, promising payback, and escorted Ms. Hannover to the backup car. When Jackson and Claire got back to their own government-owned vehicle, Claire folded a towel and sat sideways with her feet on the ground as she scraped off her shoe. Behind the wheel, Jackson pulled all kinds of little-boy “ew” faces that she ignored entirely. She started cleaning her elbow with a fresh wet wipe.

“You were laughing,” she said to him.

“She caught me unawares,” he said. “Door opens, I see her in the buff, she bolts.”

“And you’ve been an agent for what, six seconds?” In truth, he had more time in the Bureau than she did. They’d partnered up in fugitives three years ago, and before that, he’d done years and years in white-collar crime—while she’d had just a handful of assignments as a new agent.

He shrugged unapologetically. “Whatevah,” he said, in his Southie accent.

“I wonder if she thought no one in the neighborhood would see her running naked down the street? Was she hoping to blend in?” Claire said.

That set them both to laughing.

“Did you see her teeth?” Claire asked. “Maybe she used to be a goth.”

“When—1953?” Jackson shot back.

Claire shook her head. “A woman that size, leaping off a second-story balcony. I’d think she’d break an ankle. And she was so fast.”

“PCP. It’s a beautiful thing,” Jackson replied. “So, you all packed?” he asked, changing the subject only slightly.

Claire’s merriment faded. “This is bogus. Advanced evidence collection techniques on Thanksgiving? For two weeks? It’s got to be code for something else.”

Jackson rolled his eyes heavenward. “The aliens have landed. Finally.”

“What about people with kids?” she pressed. “Or elderly parents? What was the Bureau thinking, scheduling this now?”

“Maybe they’re only taking people who won’t be missed.”

“Oh, thanks,” she snapped.

Jackson was quiet a moment. Then he slid a glance at her. “Maybe a couple of weeks apart will help. Have you given any more thought to the therapy idea?”

She pulled another wet wipe from the pack—they bought them by the case at Costco—and scrubbed at her ick-encrusted elbow. Then she wadded the towelette and slipped it into their little black trash holder.

“Peter and I don’t need couples counseling. And we don’t need ‘help.’ Things are fine.”

“It really helped Santos and his third wife. Or was it his fourth?” Jackson deadpanned.

“We’re fine,” Claire said through gritted teeth.

“Claire, I’m your partner,” Jackson said gently, and his voice slid perilously close to the edge where they should not go. She was married to Peter, and even if she hadn’t been, fraternization was not cool. There was no way she wanted to jeopardize her career because Jackson was handsome and funny and observant. And tall with lanky legs and blond hair shot with silver. And had periwinkle blue eyes, periwinkle being her favorite color. They were both superstars on the fugitive task force—which was why they were the “lucky” ones being dumped with Advanced Forensics Techniques over Thanksgiving—and for kids like them who got all A’s in The Job, the straight and narrow was the only way to fly.

“I’m all packed,” Claire said. “I’m ready to go.”

“I’ll miss you,” Peter said, kissing Claire good-bye the next evening. Her assignment was all very cloak-and-dagger: Night before Thanksgiving, car at eight, not to take her to the Boston field office but to an undisclosed location.

“I’ll miss you, too,” Claire said, but she was still focused on his forced tone of voice. His fakey-fake smile. She was an FBI agent. She knew lying when she saw it, heard it. He was actually happy that she was leaving. Not simply relieved, the way people are when things are not great at home and a business trip gives you both a break. He had something planned. He had dark brown curly hair and big coffee-colored eyes, and he worked out. Maybe some hottie grad student at MIT, where he taught physics, was coming over to cook a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey for poor Dr. Anderson, whose careerist wife was abandoning him at such a special time of year.

Peter didn’t even like turkey.

Their kiss left much to be desired, and then the car slid up to the curb like a shark. Jackson was in the back, in a really great black suit, white collar, and tie. Blond hair, tanned, he took the FBI look to a whole new GQ level. Claire had on a killer black jacket, white silk blouse, black wool pencil skirt, black heels—not too high for the job, very flattering.

“You okay?” Jackson said by way of greeting. She didn’t bother answering. One lie today was enough.

“This is all very drama-drama,” she said. “We could drive ourselves. We both have take-homes.” As in, Bureau cars they could drive home when they went off-duty.

“Which makes it even more mysterious and, therefore, cool,” he replied. Then he nodded knowingly as they glided away. “Aliens.”

Not aliens.

“Holy shit, are they kidding?” Jackson murmured, as the next PowerPoint slide popped up on the screen. In the image, the vic, who in life had been very beautiful, was lying on her side in a room with ugly beige wallpaper. She was wearing a pink turtleneck sweater and blue jeans, and clutching a copy of Thoreau’s Walden. Fingertips in blue latex had moved the sweater neck away from the vic’s skin, revealing two deep punctures. Next slide: Luminol had been applied to the punctures, and the long-exposure shot revealed the telltale glow of blood, also showing a few droplets on the floor beside her. Only instead of glowing blue, as it should have, the blood was a brilliant purple. “We surmise that when the vampire attacks, it deposits something into the victim’s bloodstream that causes this reaction to the Luminol,” Dr. Alan DeWitt, their forensics instructor, explained in a flat monotone that boggled Claire’s mind. How could anyone sound that detached when they were discussing an attack by an actual bloodsucking vampire?

Until the car had arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, Claire hadn’t known that the Bureau had a Special Forensics Unit located there. Jackson hadn’t, either. The nondescript brick building was situated near a Walgreens. According to some last-ditch, furtive net searching on her non-Bureau smartphone, the Walgreens was not too far from the correct location of Gallows Hill (as opposed to the recreational area that was still listed as the actual site). Nineteen people had been hung for witchcraft on Gallows Hill in 1692. Her first thought had been that maybe their secretive little group was going to do some kind of forensics on the bodies of the victims. Learn historical forensics techniques or something like that.

She sure hadn’t thought they were going to learn how to detect vampire activity.

After being welcomed to the SFU by Mark Nash, the Special Agent in Charge, they’d been sent to a classroom with individual, college-style desks in two rows of six. Claire wondered at all the rush, as if there was some pressing need to learn vampire evidence collection as fast as possible—as if the information would spoil if left out too long, like Ms. Hannover’s goddamn turkey.

Told not to eat or drink anything, Claire and Jackson made sure to sit in the first row, dead center. First impressions were everything.

Dr. DeWitt didn’t spend a lot of time on preamble. All he had said was that the Bureau had conclusive evidence that vampires walked among the living; that there had been three attacks from Boston to Portland, Maine; and that it seemed to be the work of an individual vampire, classified, therefore, as a serial killer. And that they were there to get trained in evidence collection so they could figure out his pattern, apprehend him, and process any additional vampire-related crime scenes that presented themselves. Such evidence collection being referred to as VSI. Vampire Scene Investigations.

A vampire. A goddamn vampire. That was pretty much the consensus of the entire class.

“You owe me fifty bucks,” Claire said to Jackson.

“I think vampires count as aliens,” Jackson retorted.

The PowerPoint kept going. They saw another vic with telltale puncture marks. Another pretty girl. Third vic, cute girl again. Same type of holes, luminous with Luminol. They watched a computer simulation of how the fangs must be shaped, how they would enter the body. The closest analogy was a rattlesnake. Which, bleh.

They discussed the process of exsanguination—having all your blood sucked out of you. Dripping. If you lifted vampire prints, they would glow, too. However, there were no prints found at any of the crime scenes, so Claire raised her hand and asked how they knew that prints glowed. DeWitt told her to hold that excellent question. There were theories as to why so much glowing, but that would also wait for when they got into blood chemistry. As well as profiling the perp, who clearly had a thing for beautiful girls.

They were going to stay on-site, the male agents doubling up. Claire, as the only female, would have a room to herself.

“Now we have a body to examine,” DeWitt announced, as he turned off his projector.

He didn’t say which body. There seemed to be an assortment of them—at least three victims. Claire was eager to see any and all of them.

“Before we do, I want each of you to provide a buccal swab,” he went on.

Claire and Jackson traded frowns. Buccal swabs provided personal DNA. Of course they’d both had extensive physicals, bloodwork, and even drug tests for the FBI, but here, now, requesting a swab rang an alarm bell. She also realized why they hadn’t been allowed to eat or drink anything, and why class had begun that night—so their first swabs would be valid control samples. Still, Claire raised her hand.

“The purpose for this, sir?” she asked.

“Health precaution,” he replied. “Since we’re not certain how vampirism is transmitted, we want to monitor the well-being of everyone on the team.”

Transmitted? Her mind ran ahead to the possibility that vampirism might be a communicable virus, and so their vics might contain said virus, that being why the blood glowed purple.

While she pondered that, DeWitt handed a box of swab kits to the agent at the end of Claire’s row. The agent hesitated. There were a few cases before the courts of police officers refusing to comply with requests for DNA samples by their departments. Civil liberties, violation of privacy. Not everyone wanted everything in an accessible database.

But the hesitation was two seconds at best. He took one and passed it on. The next guy did, too.

And then it was her turn. DeWitt was watching her. She grabbed one and handed the box to Jackson, who did the same. All the agents opened them and performed the six swipes inside their cheeks, repeated on the other cheek. They put the swabs in the sterile vials and closed them.

“Last name, first name, please,” DeWitt instructed them. Claire wrote ANDERSON, CLAIRE and Jackson wrote JACKSON, BRIAN and she and he passed them in.

“Now we’ll examine the body,” DeWitt announced.

Everyone rose from their spotless government-issue desks. Note-taking had not been permitted. Nor were cell phones, which had been locked up in a safe until their owners were driven back to their homes. Apparently, everything the agents would be learning would be kept in one place and one place only—their heads. That posed no problem. FBI agents were used to memorizing lots of information and keeping secrets. They knew things that might break civilians, cause widespread panic. Biochemical warfare, terrorist plots, close calls with nuclear power plants. Maybe it was just as well that Peter seemed disinterested in what she did when she wasn’t with him.

Almost as disinterested in what she did when she was with him.

In a little rush of anger, she was glad she wouldn’t be able to tell him about vampires. She hadn’t realized just how angry she was with him. How not fine they actually were.

By tacit agreement, Claire and Jackson scooted directly behind DeWitt as he left the classroom, as close to Source Vampire Data as possible. Other, slower, perhaps less enthusiastic agents queued behind them. Then the thirteen of them walked down a chilly hall, and passed a door with a sign that read HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE. That was the traditional Latin phrase often seen on plaques in autopsy rooms: “This is the place where death rejoices to help those who live.” So one would assume that was where the body was, but they weren’t going in there.

“We’ll get to that later,” DeWitt announced.

He turned a corner and Claire saw two federal marshals standing on either side of a fire door. DeWitt showed them his badge and used a card swipe. Although everyone had been checked in at the main desk when they’d arrived, the marshals studied each ID card as each agent in turn waited at the door.

There was a concrete staircase on the other side of the threshold. After DeWitt, Claire and Jackson started down, Jackson making no effort to conceal how excited he was, like they were going on an amusement park ride. Claire found that she was kind of tense. That was how it often was between them on cases—Jackson all yippi-kai-yai-oh and Claire pondering, speculating, absorbing. She wondered if Peter thought she was a drag because of her reserve. But really, all he liked to do was go to wine tastings and read. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Excitement. That had always been okay with her. Her job was excitement enough.

She didn’t want to be thinking about Peter right then. A real vampire was a game-changer. This was history in the making.

Cement stairs gave way to uneven cobblestones, and the walls changed from modern brick to very old, pitted blocks of stone that smelled of mold and dust. They moved into a tunnel, and Claire saw a metal door painted black at the other end. Also, two more marshals and another card reader. The marshals were impassive, and all the VSI students had fallen silent. Claire could feel the tension building in the air.

As DeWitt took off his ID badge and swiped the lock, Claire glanced over at Jackson. Her partner bared his teeth and mimed biting her. Everything was a joke to him, except her happiness. He became unhappy when he sensed that things were going even less well than usual at home. She knew that deep down in her heart, where she kept her secrets. And she also knew, right then and there, that she was very close to telling him that she loved him for it. In the icy hall at their very bizarre forensics school. Or maybe this impulse was just an extra little splash of adrenaline kicking into her system. Because all this was pretty goddamn incredible.

The door fwommed open and DeWitt stepped outside. Claire went next, into another world of ivy, tombs, weeping angels, and headstones. A cemetery. And more marshals, planted like statues around the graveyard, dressed for trouble in raid jackets. An owl hooted. She saw her breath.

There were some murmurs throughout the ranks, but Claire kept quiet. DeWitt walked purposefully along a gravel path. On the nearest headstone, the name written there was illegible but the date was 1692. If she remembered her hasty phone search facts, that was the year of the Salem witchcraft trials. Maybe the occupant had been hung by the neck until dead because her next-door neighbor’s cow stopped giving milk.

Claire didn’t know what all this had to do with vampire forensics, but DeWitt was on the move now, like a bloodhound. Sure enough, about twenty seconds later, he stopped in front of an aboveground tomb the size of a potting shed. Klieg lights blazed around it, and guards formed a living wall around it. With a bit of a flourish, DeWitt turned and faced the expectant group.

“We’ll be going down into the crypt in groups of four. Count off, please.”

“Crypt,” Jackson said, raising his eyebrows. “I don’t know about you, Claire, but this sure beats mashed potatoes and stuffing.”

Jackson was observer number one, and he snickered when Claire announced that she was number two. Numbers three and four were two agents from Maine. After donning gas masks—DeWitt slapped one on, too—the five entered the illuminated interior of the tomb. The floor had been swept clean. Klieg lights and what appeared to be battery-operated air filters were whirring away. There were four old stone sarcophagi, sitting about waist-high, which had been opened, and Claire glanced inside the nearest one. Stove-in wooden planks, bones, fibers, from a long time ago.

“We tested the contents of these coffins,” DeWitt said through his transmitter. “Bodies are fully human, and appear to be seventeenth- and eighteenth-century. The sarcophagus you’re examining, Agent Anderson, was the one concealing this trapdoor.”

She followed his pointing finger, spotting the trapdoor in question. It was open, and on the exposed underside of the access hatch, a cross had been inlaid with iron, now very rusty. The cross would have been flush with the ceiling of whatever lay beneath it.

DeWitt climbed through the hatch and clanged down a contemporary set of portable metal stairs. Claire and Jackson followed after, Claire in her skirt and heels, and then the two guys from Maine. The walls of the tiny chamber were pitted and limey. More super-bright lights illuminated a wormy, weather-beaten wooden coffin perched on top of a stainless steel sheet, on top of another sarcophagus. Its lid sat across the tiny room on several pieces of what appeared to be linen, on a metal cart.

“We’re unclear about pathogens, so make sure your masks are secure,” DeWitt said through his mic.

“Before securing the masks of any children traveling with you,” Jackson murmured, as he, Claire, and the Mainers walked to the side of the coffin and peered inside.

A man who appeared to be about forty years old lay as if sleeping. His cheeks were ruddy and his face was full. He was covered up to his neck in the same linen as the coffin lid rested on, but something protruding from his chest tented the fabric. DeWitt lifted the linen, and Claire saw old-timey clothes in tatters and a wooden stake plunged through the chest, exactly where the heart should be.

“Vic number four?” said the taller of the Maine agents.

DeWitt shook his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled on blue latex gloves. Then he approached the body and gently pulled back the left side of the upper lip. The canine was long, and very sharp, as if it had been filed.

“We believe that this is a vampire,” he said.

For a few seconds, Claire’s mind went blank, as if it simply couldn’t process what he had just said. Then errant thoughts filtered in about naked Ms. Hannover and her pointy teeth. Leaping over a balcony railing, flashing—literally—down the street.

“I smell money,” Jackson said. “Fifty bucks.”

“How did you find him?” Claire asked, ignoring Jackson.

“It was an accident. A lucky one,” DeWitt said. “About five years ago, there was an incident in the graveyard—kidnapping across state lines, murder—so we had jurisdiction. We were collecting evidence. In addition to the blood of the human kidnapping vic, we got a faint purple glow in the cemetery dirt. We didn’t know what it was, and we sprayed the cemetery down. The glow was strongest on the ground around the sarcophagus on top of the trapdoor. We kept following the trail. And habeas corpus.”

“Damn,” Jackson said.

“We took fingerprints, too,” DeWitt said. “There were two distinct sets on the trapdoor, and on this coffin, with the purple glow. We’ve documented them with long-exposure photographs, same as the punctures.”

“So these were the prints you were talking about in class?” Claire asked.

“Yes,” DeWitt said.

“But there were no fingerprints at the crime scenes,” Jackson said.

“Yes. Our serial killer vampire is very careful. He cleans up after himself. Except he doesn’t know about the Luminol.”

Claire stared down at the vampire. “So back to this body. You conjecture that Vampire One came down here with Vampire Two and, what, staked him?”

“I thought when you staked vampires they turned into dust,” said the shorter agent from Maine.

“There’s no evidence to support that,” DeWitt said with a straight face. “We’ve drawn some blood and taken tissue samples. We don’t have the proper language to describe the results. You’ll be going over those samples tomorrow.”

“Is he alive?” Claire asked, grimacing down at the vampire. The tent of linen was neither rising nor falling, so it didn’t appear that he was breathing.

“Again, that’s open to interpretation,” DeWitt said.

“What happens if you remove the stake?” Jackson asked.

“We don’t know. We haven’t done it. We debated for a long time about if we should remove the body from the crypt. We ultimately decided against it.” He stared down at the vampire with a little smile on his face and shook his head as if to say, You rascal. “We don’t know why he’s here.”

“Why are we here?” Claire asked. “Why were we selected for this case?”

“’Cause FBI fugitive task forces are a dying breed,” Jackson said. Which was true. Marshals had the corner on the fugitive biz these days.

“KSAs. Knowledge, skills, abilities. Each of you has been selected to be here because of your stellar performance records,” DeWitt said. “We’re hoping that once we show you everything we’ve learned so far, you’ll come up with some theories about the perp. The vampire at large,” he elaborated. “We’re wondering if our perp is the same vampire who accompanied our friend here. Maybe he staked this vampire to put him in some kind of stasis. To immobilize him. Maybe this is a vampiric coma, or imprisonment. We conjecture that the stake acts as a kind of restraint.”

“So maybe this vamp is a vic,” Jackson said.

DeWitt cracked a small smile. “That’s a theory. There’s so much to learn, wouldn’t you agree? Two weeks isn’t nearly enough time.”

Claire and Jackson went back up tombside and talked to the Maine agents while the other two groups took their turns discovering that the Truth wasn’t out there; it was about ten feet below. By then it was nearly midnight, and they were dismissed and sent off to their quarters. Jackson asked to come to Claire’s room after they both got settled in to talk for a while, and she figured they weren’t in high school and they did have a lot to talk about, so she said yes.

“Damn,” he said, as he shut the door. Her room had a bed, a small dresser, a desk and a chair, and an overstuffed chair. He sat on the desk chair and she took the more comfortable one. “Vampires.”

They shared a look. And Clare got nervous, because not only was she really glad he’d asked to come in, but she’d been hoping that he would.

“Vampires,” she concluded. “Can you believe it?”

“Just watch. We’re going to end up as a task force,” he said. “We twelve. We’re going to have T-shirts that say VSI. They’re going to transfer us to the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in D.C. like those guys in The X-Files. People will laugh at us.”

“That should pose no problem for you. You’re already big on laughter,” she pointed out.

“She had a baster,” Jackson said.

“I might have shot her.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry, Claire. It’s been a weird time in my life.”

Her ears pricked up at that and felt an unsettling little blip in her chest. “Girlfriend?”

Steadily gazing at her, he replied, “You know I don’t have a girlfriend.”

It was stupid to be relieved. Stupid, and wrong.

“Is your grandma sick?” she probed, trying to get him to share.

“It’s just family stuff,” he said. “My sisters and I inherited a house in California from our aunt and we’re trying to decide what to do about it.”

He’s thinking about moving, she translated. She hadn’t known about all these feelings for him—okay, she’d known she had feelings, just not that they ran this deep.

“Hey, so how’d you meet Peter?” he asked, naming the elephant in the living room, and she blessed him for it.

“A party. Engagement party, actually.” She looked off in the distance, remembering. “He knew the groom. I went to college with the bride. I almost didn’t go.”

There was a pause. She looked back over at him, to find him staring at her with undisguised longing. His cheeks reddened and he got up.

“I’d better go to bed.” He pulled a face. “Two weeks is a long time to sleep with some guy you don’t know.”

“You have my sympathies,” she said lightly.

“Which I’ll keep in a jar on my desk,” he said. He walked to the door and put his hand around the knob. Then he paused. “Ms. Hannover today. Do you think she was a vampire?”

“Daylight. They can’t walk around in it,” she reminded him.

“The Cullens can walk around in it,” he said. “It makes them sparkle. And Dracula went out in daylight in the original novel, too.”

She blinked. “You know a lot about vampires.”

“We all have our fetishes. Isn’t yours Orlando Bloom?”

She reached over to the bed and made as if to throw a pillow at him. He laughed and opened the door. “Actually, I was just speed-reading the material on vampires they left on our pillows. Me and my snuggle buddy.” He looked at her bed. “Didn’t you get yours yet?”

“No,” she said. “Maybe they forgot me because I’m in here by myself.”

“Agent Anderson?” a voice said in the hall. He came into the doorway. Young, agent-y or clerk-y looking. “I have a file for you.”

He held out an interoffice memo jacket, and Claire took it. Signed for it.

“Thanks,” she said, as the guy hovered.

“Yes, ma’am.” He gave Jackson a look, turned, and disappeared around a corner.

“That’ll be your vampire dossier,” Jackson said. “Don’t forget to hang up your garlic and crosses,” he added as he headed out, too. “Perhaps ze count vill walk tonight.”

That creeped her out, but she didn’t show it. Then she shut the door and stared at it, and wondered what Peter was up to tonight. For someone so diligent about her career, she’d been very sloppy about Peter. They’d just kind of ended up together. She was pretty sure the reason they’d gotten married was to make her conservative Catholic father happy. Which was a pretty weak reason.

We were in love, she insisted. We are in love.

Then she got ready for bed, climbed in, and started reading about Nosferatu, Sookie Stackhouse, and Vlad the Impaler. And despite how wound-up she was, she fell asleep.

She dreamed about waking up because someone was in her room, but she couldn’t make herself open her eyes. So she drifted in a sea of apprehension for most of the night, and woke in the morning to nothing new but the reflection through the window sheers of steady rain. But as she lowered her gaze and studied the ground, she couldn’t shake the sensation that the rain had just washed fresh footprints away.

Footprints pointed straight at her window.

“Blood type AB. I guess that makes sense. ABs can get blood transfusions from all four blood types. Lower than average levels of serotonin,” Claire read to Jackson, as they studied their blood sample readouts. It was their fourth day of training, and they were sitting in a lab off the autopsy room. The agents had been paired off, and everyone was discussing results. It was still raining, and gloomy.

The three vics were in cold storage in that room, but today the VSI students were analyzing vampire blood that they themselves had drawn. The vampire in the coffin had not appeared to feel anything when the needle went in, and no one had any reasonable theories about why his blood hadn’t coagulated inside him long ago. Also, about whose blood it actually was that they were studying. If the vampire drank the blood of his victims, what happened to it?

“Lower levels of serotonin have also been found in the brains of murderers on death row, accounting for increased aggression,” Jackson said, reciting from their class lecture.

“There are caps on short tandem repeats of DNA strands,” Claire continued.

“Which suggests increased life span,” Jackson said. “Caps allow for little to no unraveling of the strands.”

“Time for swabs,” DeWitt announced, holding the box out to them. They’d had one swab a day since arriving. Claire was becoming increasingly apprehensive. Was there concern that something was happening to them?

“I don’t like this,” she murmured to Jackson as she unwrapped the swab. “Do you think they’re withholding information from us? Even experimenting on us? I mean, we didn’t even volunteer for this. This could be construed as a form of coercion.”

“It could,” Jackson said. “You want to see Nash?”

“Yes,” she said. “Absolutely.”

Then the lab door opened and Nash himself poked his head in. He looked straight at DeWitt and then the class and said, “It’s time.”

“Let’s roll,” said DeWitt. “I’ll brief you all while you’re suiting up.”

In near-unison, the ten other agents in the room rose from their chairs and made for the exit. DeWitt went with them. Claire looked around in confusion, then began to get up, too.

“Claire,” Jackson said in an odd tone of voice, “you and I are staying behind.”

“What? What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Jackson, Anderson, in five,” Nash said, closing the door.

“Do you trust me, Claire?” Jackson asked, locking gazes with her. “Please, trust me.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” she insisted. “Why are we staying behind?”

“You’ll find out everything in a few minutes,” he said.

“You bastard. I don’t trust you. You’ve been holding out on me.” She glared at him. “You’re my partner.”

He looked upset. “I know, Claire. I know and I’m sorry, but it’s going to be okay now.”

“Okay now?” she asked, her voice rising. “What hasn’t been okay?”

Jackson stood up. He said, “Let’s go see Nash.”

They went down a hallway and faced Nash’s door. Jackson rapped on it sharply. Nash opened it, and Claire did a quick sweep of the interior. American flag, portrait of the POTUS, commendations.

“Take a seat, please,” Nash said to Claire and Jackson as he sat down behind his desk. Nash picked up the folder. “Agent Anderson, I need you to stay calm.”

She sat down. A million scenarios ran through her mind: She had done something to cause a civilian’s death. She had a fatal illness. She was becoming a vampire. The vampire had risen and was terrorizing Salem.

And: By his demeanor, Jackson knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on than she did.

“The perp,” she said. “The vampire. He’s struck again?”

Nash nodded, his expression somber. “Yes. He has.”

Then why are we in this room? she thought. Why aren’t we with the rest of the team? “Let’s roll” obviously meant lights and sirens. As in, get your tail to the crime scene. “Suit up” meant vests and helmets. A violent confrontation.

Jackson gave her a look and she kept her mouth shut.

Nash flipped open the folder. The topmost picture was the first vic they’d seen onscreen, the one in the pink turtleneck sweater. Second vic. Third vic. Purple glow at the puncture sites. And then a form she recognized as DNA test results.

Like any decent bureaucrat, she was a champ at reading upside down. In one box, MATCH was typed and in the “subject’s name” box, ANDERSON, CLAIRE.

“Match? What’s this?” she demanded, reaching for the document. Nash kept his hand splayed over it, preventing her from taking it. Her blood pressure spiked. Bad news. Frame-up, she thought. Setup. But how or what, she had no idea.

“Listen to him,” Jackson said, his voice that gentle voice he used, connecting with her, helping her focus.

“I’m going to be blunt,” Nash said. “We’ve had a prime suspect in this case for some time.”

“Not me,” she said, reaching again for the piece of paper. Nash kept a firm hold of it.

“The suspect had access to your DNA and planted it at each of the three crime scenes your class has discussed,” Nash told her. “Hair follicles. To make you look like the guilty party.”

Stunned, she looked at Jackson. “The swabs—”

“We’ve been taking swabs so we could ensure that you are not a vampire, and we arranged this school so we could keep you under observation if and when he killed again,” Nash said plainly. “If he hadn’t struck within the two weeks, we would have extended the duration of your training.

“You’re not a vampire,” he added.

Dumbfounded, she could only sit and listen. A terrible feeling was spreading throughout her body—Claire was smart and she could piece things together, which was why she was so good at what she did. But she couldn’t fathom that she was drawing the correct conclusions.

“The perp was careful. He wore gloves and booties, and he wiped down the scenes. But he obviously did not consider that when he bites his victim, he leaves behind a vampiric marker we can catch with Luminol. And he didn’t do a perfect cleanup job. He’s not a professional criminal, just a killer. But we had to be sure of you.”

She looked from him to Jackson, handsome, kind Jackson, whose cheeks were blazing, and who looked ashamed.

“Be sure of me,” she said.

“Because you know the vampire in question,” Nash said.

“No,” she said, feeling dizzy.

“We think the reason he’s been killing these women is because they resemble his mother. We have cause to believe that the vampire in the tomb is his father, and that he killed his father after his father killed his mother because she was unfaithful to him. In the seventeenth century.”

“He,” she said, swallowing hard, not wanting to think about who had easy access to her hair follicles.

“The perp—the son of the vampire in the crypt—began his attacks approximately two and a half years ago—after he became convinced that you were being unfaithful to him.” He looked at Jackson.

“I discussed our relationship with Agent Nash,” Jackson said to her. “We’re partners. Nothing unprofessional has passed between us.” He leaned toward her. “I went along with all of this to clear you, Claire. And to make you safe.”

My husband is a vampire. My husband is the vampire. My husband is a serial killer.

She didn’t know how long she sat there. She became aware that Nash was holding out a shot glass of whiskey to her. She took it and tossed it back.

“The ten other agents in your class know all this,” Nash said. “DeWitt is the agent in charge of the task force.”

“This was a sting operation,” she said shakily, “in case I was the guilty party.”

“We got a search warrant for your condo,” Nash continued. “We found a diary your husband’s been keeping. It’s written in Romanian, which, as you know, is not a problem for the Bureau. The entire document has been translated. If what it says is true, Peter Anderson has had several dozen aliases, and he’s hundreds of years old.”

“I need a moment,” she said, feeling ill. “I need a bathroom.”

Jackson moved to help her up. She waved him away and pulled herself to her feet. Then she swayed out of the room and made it down the corridor to the bathroom. On her knees, she threw up. Then she tumbled against the cold metal of the stall and began to hyperventilate.

“Claire,” Jackson said, opening the door and hoisting her up. He wrapped his arms around her. “They’ve gone to get him.”

“Oh God, oh God,” she murmured against his chest.

“They recruited me a month ago,” he told her. “All they told me was that they thought your husband was involved in a crime, and that he was planting DNA evidence to make you look guilty. But they didn’t tell me it was murder, and they sure as hell didn’t tell me anything about goddamn vampires. If they had, I would have staked that son of a bitch first chance I got.”

She hitched a breath, and he leaned his cheek against the crown of her hair. He did not kiss her. “As soon as we arrived here at FSU, and I found out what exactly was going down, I pitched holy hell. Nash and DeWitt came down on me hard. You were under surveillance before we got here, and it’s been going on here, too. Hell, I’ve been standing outside your window at night myself, to protect you.”

“You faked me out,” she said accusingly, pulling out of his arms.

“I’m a hell of an FBI agent,” he affirmed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “But I’m an even better . . . friend.”

“Did he kill someone tonight?” she asked. Her voice sounded as if it belonged to someone else. It sounded like someone who was about to completely lose it.

“An undercover cop has been posing as a coed at MIT,” he said. “She fits the resemblance pattern of his victims, and he moved in fast. She was supposed to go over there tonight. I’m guessing he made his move, and that’s why the team went out.”

Anger surged through her, burning away some of the trauma. “So, what, was he building up to murdering me?”

“Escalation is consistent with what we know about serial killers,” he said.

“Is it consistent with what we know about vampires?” she countered.

He held her. “I don’t know, Claire. Life was simpler when it was just basters.”

“I want to be there,” she said. She swallowed down all her emotions except for grim determination. “For the takedown. I have to be there.”

They got him.

They didn’t kill him.

They dragged him out of her condo in the pouring rain. He was hissing like a rattlesnake, his fangs protruding, hands cuffed, manacles and chains around his ankles, but otherwise he looked like Peter. Handsome, not evil, not a supernatural creature. MIT, red wine, and reading, and with a little cheating on the side.

“Murderer,” Claire said, keeping to the shadows beneath an eave as they fitted a hockey mask over his face and forced him into a van. The growing neighborhood crowd was being held back, prevented from seeing anything. Acting as a curtain, the rain aided and abetted. She was sick, and livid, and a tiny bit ashamed. It was because of her feelings for Jackson that he had been triggered. Triggered this time, Jackson had reminded her. They’d translated his entire diary. She was only one of many wives, and he had wound up murdering most of them.

“I’m sorry I had to lie to you,” Jackson said.

Half an hour later, when they brought Peter into an interview room at the Boston field office, Claire insisted on standing behind the one-way mirror as Jackson and Nash interrogated him. DeWitt was with the team. Jackson had asked to be there, and Nash and DeWitt had thought it was a good idea. See if they could shake up the enraged, jealous, psychotic husband.

Peter was no longer wearing his hockey mask. Claire was alarmed. She didn’t know why they’d removed it. Jackson had taken off his wet FBI raid jacket. Raindrops clung to his silvery blond hair.

Claire stood beside Lisa Shiflett, the undercover cop who had posed as Peter’s winsome Thanksgiving feast. Shiflett was trying very hard to appear unfazed, but it was clear her near-miss of dying at the hands of a vampire had unnerved her.

“Crosses don’t work on them,” she said quietly to Claire. “At least, they didn’t work on him.”

Claire remembered the iron cross in the ceiling above Vampire Number Two. Peter’s father. Maybe in the old days they had worked. When people had faith.

“Why were you planting evidence to frame your wife for murder?” Jackson asked Claire’s husband as Nash looked on, seemingly oblivious to the one-way mirror where Shiflett and Claire observed. Jackson leaned across the table and glared at Peter. Peter was still cuffed, his ankles still manacled.

“I want a lawyer,” Peter said to Nash. Ignoring Jackson.

“Dream on,” Nash said, moving toward him. “You’re not even human. You have no rights.”

“Escalation is consistent with serial murder,” Jackson said, still looming over the perp. “I would assume you were building up to killing Claire.”

Peter—the vampire—looked up at Jackson and smiled thinly, and Shiflett caught her breath.

“I can’t believe it’s the same guy,” she said. “He was so . . . elegant, you know. He just charmed me. Like in those Stookie Stackhouse books.”

“Sookie,” Claire said faintly, her eyes riveted on Jackson as he gazed levelly at Peter. He was too close. Being in the same room with Peter was too close.

“Maybe you were going to make it look like a suicide,” Jackson continued. Knowing him as well as she did, Claire detected the tremor of fury in his voice as it crackled through the interview room speaker. “She murders all those girls out of, say, jealousy, then takes her own life.”

Peter just chuckled. Then he said, “I could rip out your throat right now, if I wanted to.” He looked at Nash. “Both of you. You’d be dead before you knew I’d done it.”

Shiflett took an involuntary step backward, but Claire moved protectively toward the mirror.

“I don’t think you can,” Jackson retorted, remaining where he was. “I think that vampire super-strength thing is just a myth.”

“One way to find out,” Peter said, and Claire thought about her weapon. Nash and Jackson were unarmed. For obvious reasons, you didn’t take guns into interview rooms. But she could shoot Peter through the mirror.

And if it came to that, she would.

“Maybe younger vampires are stronger than older vampires,” Jackson said, still not backing down. Claire wanted to press the speaker button and tell him to move away. “You were pretty young when you staked your father. But it’s been a few centuries since then. Since you’re so old now yourself . . . maybe you don’t have it anymore, Count Dracula.”

Peter shifted in his chair, guilt and rage pouring off him. That was the crime he was upset about—killing his father. “My father? I don’t know what you’re—”

“We read your diary, scumbag,” Jackson said, holding up a photograph of the cover of a plain brown leather journal.

Peter quietly stared at the picture in Jackson’s hand. Claire considered that Peter’s prints on it probably glowed after an application of Luminol. The thought made her tremble.

“And we’ve got custody of Daddy Dearest in the Salem crypt,” Jackson said.

Peter visibly reacted, looking frightened.

“I’m so freaked out,” Shiflett muttered. She looked at Claire. “Not meaning to be rude, but was anything different . . . anatomically? I mean, was there anything about him that struck you as odd?”

Claire shook her head. That answered one question: The cop hadn’t slept with Peter. Claire was glad . . . for Shiflett’s sake.

“So the stake, Peter. If we pull it out, does your dad come back to life?” Nash asked, walking toward him. Adding a little pressure.

And Claire cracked a little smile. Because the question coming as it did after the cop’s question, plus Peter’s name, made it a doozy of a triple entendre.

“Why should I tell you?” Peter asked.

“Because we’re going to shove one into you,” Jackson said. “As big as a goddamn turkey baster.”

Claire snickered. Shiflett looked at her with astonishment. Claire shrugged.

“FBI humor,” Claire said.

“But how can you laugh? You’re married to him,” Shiflett said. “You lived with him, and had sex with him, and all that time, he was a vampire. And he was murdering girls. Sucking out their blood.”

“You don’t need to remind me,” Claire said. “Anyway, we hardly ever had sex.”

“Good.” The cop blanched. “If anything like that ever happened to me, I don’t think I’d come out of it okay.”

“Then you’d better not ever get married,” Claire said, and this time she chuckled.

“Ha-ha,” the cop said weakly. “Wow.” Then, “So, you want to go out for coffee once this is done?”

“Sure, but I need to make it a quickie.” Claire actually winked.

This time the cop smiled back, just a little. A little was good.

“I’ve already made calls,” Peter said. He lifted his chin and looked straight at the mirror. “I have relatives, Claire,” he said. “I have brothers.”

“Love the flaccid posturing,” Jackson said.

“Bring it, sucker,” Claire said back at Peter, wondering if he had super hearing or eyesight. Maybe he could see her standing there. She hoped he could. “I’ve got eleven VSI agents backing me up.”

And as soon as Peter was history, and forensics school was over, damn straight they were all moving to Washington, D.C., to work in the basement of the Hoover building. Laughter and all.

And somehow . . . Jackson.