A cold wind whipped past my ears, muffling all sound except for the banging shutters on a house across the street. Clouds devoured most of the light from the moon. Bursts of lightning pulsed reflections over the sidewalk leading to the cemetery, making the ground come alive with movement where there wasn’t supposed to be any, and then thickened the shadows once the lightning faded.

I didn’t much like patrolling during storms. My senses were too overwhelmed with all the trickery in the light and sounds. Pair that with three hot vamps, a marriage proposal, and a dark unknown tangling up my mind, and it took every ounce of focus to discern the mundane from a threat. But now more than ever, my life depended on it.

Jacek’s bite on my neck tingled with slight pain when I turned my head just right, and an answering twinge echoed from Eddie’s bite between my legs, a gentle reminder that they could be here with me if needed. The thought both soothed and roughened my nerves, because I shouldn’t have to need them. Yet I wasn’t stupid enough to admit I could do this on my own, either.

I was only slightly less clueless about my slayer abilities as I was when I was nine, so if this Paul shitstorm was going to happen, I was glad it was now, not then. I’d been terrified then, a kid with zero guidance except for the few lines within the golden letter. It seemed like ages ago when I would tiptoe past Mom’s bedroom, unable to resist this compulsion scratching underneath my skin and cramping my stomach, slip out the front door, and wander through the dark streets until I’d arrived at the graveyard. That first night, my heart had tattooed my ribs the whole way until I grew used to it, completed my first kill, and settled into my new role. That kind of gripping fear had taken months to subside, and now it had come back. Tenfold. Twentyfold, even. It felt like my role as slayer was slipping from my grasp, on a steady timer toward my death and the selection of a new slayer. On a normal day, I might not have minded giving up my slayer duties. Minus the death part, of course. But these were not normal days. I was the slayer, which I’d learned to take very seriously, except, you know, when I was staking myself and screwing two vampires.

Those were details, though. Jacek had said the older vampires gave me a wide berth, and not just because I would stake them. Most of them feared me. Paul should fear me, too, be quaking in his stolen bowling shoes, not the other way around. I just hadn’t given him a reason to yet.

I swung the unlocked gate open, keeping a tight grip on it so the wind wouldn’t tear it from my fingers, and stepped inside. Somehow it seemed less familiar to me tonight, the shadows thicker, the statues’ eyes more aware. I fought back a shiver as I closed the gate to the graveyard and to my overactive imagination. This was a test, only with higher stakes than I was used to. Like every other test I’d taken, I would make it my bitch and ace it. End of story. Time to throw down. I turned, and just about lost all control of my bladder.

An orange tabby darted into my path, ears back, tearing across the cemetery as if it couldn’t get out of here fast enough. I sagged against the gate, my pulse crashing in my neck. So much for making anything my bitch.

With a deep breath, I plucked the stake from my bun and forced myself to get this patrol over with so I could go back to the nest, back to where I felt safe and cherished. What woman didn’t want that?

I honed my senses as I walked down the path, separating the low thunder from my footsteps from the dead leaves rattling over the path. I kept my eyes sharp during the flashing moments of lightning and searched around every corner usually hidden in shadow.

The next gust of wind tugged my jacket around my Kevlar vest. It carried a touch of static noise, just enough to taunt me. A shiver chased up my back.

Paul was sizing me up, it seemed, feeling at my vest and strategizing his plan of attack since it would be harder to make me stab myself in the chest again. Of course I had no idea if that were true. I couldn’t feel him watching me. Not yet anyway. But he was close. He was likely always close, and would be for the next three hundred sixty-six days unless I did something about him. Tomorrow was Halloween and my twentieth birthday at 11:59 p.m. First I had to make it until then, and then I had to make damn sure I saw twenty-one.

Movement shifted up ahead, behind a couple of tall gravestones. I pivoted toward them, my lips pushed tight in an attempt to control my erratic breaths. Was that Paul? The wind swept the moisture from my mouth while my stake hand grew slick with nervous sweat.

As I drew closer, the static noise sounded again, louder this time, a sinister warning. My body jolted, but I didn’t let the surprise slow me down.

Out came two vampires from behind either side of the tallest headstone. Lightning glinted off their fangs and shone in their red eyes as they stalked toward me.

“I’m almost happy to see you,” I said.

Vampires I could do. Double meaning totally intended.

Trying to bend over the bulk of the Kevlar vest cost me the moment I needed to grab a second stake from my boot. But no worries. One would do just fine. I kicked one of them in the stomach hard enough to leave me alone for the second I needed. Then I buried my stake into the heart of the other. When he disintegrated into a shower of bloody mist, I turned on the first vamp, just now standing up straight again. Boom. Staked him too. I was so much better at handling situations I was familiar with, especially when those situations wanted to kill me in a nice, straightforward way, rather than trying to make me do it myself.

“Are you lazy, Paul?” I asked the night as fat raindrops began to plink down. “Is that it?”

“Lovely...”

I whirled at the sound of his voice. The rain fell harder, dripping into my eyes and warping the graveyard into a dark blur before I blinked. My ears burned for another sound over the rush of water and thrashing tree branches blowing in the wind. I started forward, back the way I’d come in the direction of the shorter gravestones so I’d be able to see if something lurked behind them. My stake grew slick with the remnants of blood and rain, so I dug my fingernails into the wood to keep from dropping it like an idiot.

And then I stopped. Something was different. I’d been here literally thousands of times, even in the rain, and I’d memorized every curve in the path, every dip between the graves, every flower and trinket left for the dearly departed. It wasn’t a new gravestone, not in this older part of the cemetery, but something I couldn’t immediately place.

My gaze skipped over a stone bench farther along the path and then sliced back toward it. Was that...? I blinked through the sheets of rain plummeting from the sky. Was someone sitting there? They sat hunched over, almost bent in half so their head hung between their knees as if they’d dropped something on the ground. Their sanity, maybe? This was not a night to lose something in the middle of a graveyard.

From this distance, I couldn’t tell if it was a vampire, Paul, or some homeless person who’d followed me through the unlocked gate. The latter had never happened before, but this week had been filled with firsts.

I started forward again, my stake gripped tight, all of my senses on alert. Whoever it was wore a bulky coat with the hood hiked up over their head. Beyond that, they were a shapeless, sexless, rain-soaked mass that was bent double. I skated my gaze over my surroundings, blinking the rain from my eyes, as I drew closer to the figure. Just like the cemetery itself tonight, this didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t as if I could just run away.

It didn’t even look right. Not just the bent-in-half position, but also the way the figure’s back jerked spastically, as if something inside the coat wanted out. Not the best thought to have at a time like this.

My stomach tightened, and I forced down a loud gulp. “Hello? Are you all right?”

The wind chose that moment to whip everything sideways, scattering my voice and pluming an odd smell toward my nose. Something hot and coppery. The breakfast-for-dinner I’d had at the vamp nest made a steady climb and kicked at the back of my throat. I breathed through it, burying my nose into my jacket collar, and willed it back down. If that stink was coming from this figure, then this whole scenario couldn’t be good.

“Hello?” I marched toward the bench, determination quickening my steps until I stood in front of it.

The hot smell intensified, so I breathed through my mouth instead. Lightning zippered across the sky and reflected off a silver thermos by one leg of the bench. And next to it...

My lungs congealed. I stumbled backward as a violent tremor ripped down my back. What...? What...?

Bloodied hands fumbled at the pile next to the thermos between a man’s work boots. They scooped up entrails and then pressed them to his middle. Tim’s entrails. The cemetery grounds man. The man who unlocked the gate for me. The man who’d forgotten his thermos and had come back to get it.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

I stepped closer, as if there was some way I could help, but it was too late for him. Even with the rain slanting down in sheets, it couldn’t wash away the rush of his blood. There was too much. It drenched the legs of his pants and streamed from his fingertips. His hopeless attempt to pick up his own organs jerked his back as the life oozed out of him.

Which begged the question—where were the vampires? The two I’d just dispatched hadn’t acted like they’d scented blood, so this... this violent assault must’ve just happened.

He nodded as if agreeing with me, and then he froze. A sound like a whimper sliced through the wind and rain, chasing a shiver across my shoulders. One panic-stricken eye peered out from underneath his hood, to a point just over my shoulder.

I whirled, but an unseen force slammed into me from my left, not behind me. Rough hands righted me and twisted my head around to stare up into Paul’s watery blue eyes. His fingertips dug into my jaw with brutal strength, and I wondered briefly if he could snap it as easily as he had disemboweled Tim.

“Lovely night for a stroll, isn’t it?” he hissed and then shoved me away.

Like a horrible song, the static noise began and swelled, crushing out everything until there was nothing left. The cemetery melted. Gravestones folded in half much like Tim, and angel and cherub statues leaned forward off their perches, their heads tilted unnaturally. Their features sagged off their faces into a nightmare. They wept blood, and somewhere...somewhere far away, I sensed someone else crying too.

My thoughts circled, trapped in a thick fog inside my mind. I stumbled up the path, deeper into the cemetery, away. Away. My vision tunneled to the stake in my hand, and without my consent, I stabbed myself with it, straight through the heart. Only there was something blocking it, and it bounced off harmlessly.

“Lovely night...” Paul growled from inside me.

I shook my head, trying to clear him out. No. Someone sobbed nearby, and it sounded a lot like me.

“...for a stroll...”

My gaze zeroed in on a metal staff gripped in an angel statue’s hands on the path a few feet in front of me. Then to the sharp points on top of the fence bordering the cemetery. Then to the lightning streaking across the sky. So many ways to— no means no means no—die.

The statue leaned over as if to offer the staff to me. No. Her twisted mouth gaped open wide enough to devour my head, and two monstrous fangs melted down to her bottom lip.

Away. Away. I needed—

The static noise spiked.

“...isn’t it?”

My hands, connected to me but not controlled by me, snapped the staff from the statue’s grip. I lifted it like a horizontal spear aimed directly at my eye.

The static noise intensified even more, vibrating through my whole body and scratching out rational thoughts from inside my skull.

I stumbled backward, desperate to get away from myself. The static noise faded some, especially when the mausoleum door behind me yawned open into darkness. But then it slammed closed again in a burst of wind. I tightened my grip, the rain splashing down from the sky making it difficult, and stared down the length of the staff. One shove and that would be—

The door crashed open again, somehow muffling the static and carving out one thought: No!

I forced one hand free from the staff and slapped the wrist of my other, knocking it out of my grip. Then I threw myself backward into the Alpert mausoleum. My fingers scrabbled over the stone to shut the door behind me. A pale hand zipped through from outside at the last second. It snatched at the bun on top of my head and jerked me forward, tearing loose large chunks of hair. My scalp screamed in pain.

“LOVELY NIGHT FOR A STROLL, ISN’T IT?” Paul howled.

The static noise swelled again as my head almost cleared the door, ripping steel claws through my mind. He released his hold on me because I was still shutting the door. Fast. Slamming it down on my own head next to the door frame. But at the same time, his rough release propelled me backward, and I was tilting, tilting toward the stairs behind me. The door slammed closed without me in it. I shot my arms out to catch my fall and wound up with fistfuls of empty air.

My stomach dropped. A cry tore loose.

Something hard caught me at the back of my knees, something that shouldn’t have been on the stairs. I flipped backward even faster then smashed my back into concrete. All of my oxygen fled my lungs in a painful rush. Before I could move, before I could even take a breath, a long, low creaking sounded just to my left. Then a boom right on top of me that rattled my bones.

What was that? I dragged in a breath, so loud in the complete darkness. In the silence. The static noise had stopped. My thoughts were my own again instead of a loaded weapon meant to take my own life. While I focused on that bit of good news and concentrated on breathing damp, musty air, I spread my arms to feel at my surroundings. I couldn’t see a thing. A satiny wall just to my right. To my left, a piece of paper that crumbled between my fingertips. No, not paper. Fabric...and the unmistakable feel of bony digits on a hand.

I yelped and jerked away from it, crushing myself against the opposite wall. My hand shook badly as I crept it upward, so slow it seemed to take years, and felt a solid stone lid over my head.

My breaths grew ragged, filling the tight, confined space with the sounds of panic. I was inside a coffin with a dead person, but I almost preferred this than outside with Paul and...Tim. This person was already dead. Had been for a long time. I could handle already dead, but that didn’t mean I wanted to live inside his coffin with him.

I slammed my fist upward and brought a hailstorm of jagged wood and rocks down upon me. It took several tries before light tunneled through, and not the heavenly kind either. I was very much alive, and for that, I couldn’t have been happier. Eventually I hauled myself up through the broken lid of the coffin, but nearly stumbled back in again. The coffin was halfway up the stairs as if Mr. or Ms. Appelt had been seeking an escape out the door. Or as if someone was capable of dragging a stone coffin out of the way. But out of the way of what?

The lightning flashing outside the stained glass window threw multi-colored geometric patterns all over the walls and floor in vibrant pulses, almost like flashing arrows. And all of them pointed to where Appelt’s coffin had originally been in the middle of the mausoleum. I leaped out of the coffin to the floor as softly as I could, checking to make sure the door of the mausoleum was still shut. Why hadn’t Paul come in here? Or was this just part of his nightmare plans for me?

Taking a deep breath that did absolutely nothing to calm my nerves, I knelt to the floor right next to a small and thin raised piece of stone that looked suspiciously like a handle. Faint lines formed a square around it, filled with years of dirt. A trapdoor.

My shaky breath hissed through my teeth as I glanced once again at the mausoleum door up the stairs. Still shut, but what if I opened this trapdoor to a whole new kind of horror. I couldn’t deal. Not tonight. Not all doors were meant to be opened.

But I was the slayer, and Appelt’s coffin had been moved for a reason. It was my job to find out why, even if I’d really had enough for the night. Dead people weren’t supposed to travel, even inside their own coffins. If this had anything to do with Paul, then I didn’t have much of a choice to make it my business.

I wrapped my hands around the handle, its cool temperature peppering goose bumps up my arms, and pulled. And pulled again and again. All that build-up for nothing. Still, with my slayer strength, I usually didn’t have trouble opening doors.

With a frustrated sigh, I pushed to my feet and stared down the door that led out of the mausoleum. I had to go back outside at some point. Yet the thick stone walls muffled the storm outside just enough to make it sound separate from reality. Right this second, I needed that little bit of comfort in order to walk out of here.

I hauled myself up the stairs, careful of the coffin, and settled my hand against the door as if that might open a hole inside it and I could peer through. Was Paul still out there? Waiting? I thrust my hands into my pants pockets and ripped out all of the fabric. Then I rolled it up into two tight balls and stuffed them into my ears. I had no idea if that would work against his voice and the static, but it was better than nothing.

On the count of three, I touched my fingertips to the heavy door and pulled. Nothing happened. Pulled again and still nothing.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I muttered. What was it with me and doors all of a sudden?

I fumbled at my back pockets for my phone only to discover it was gone. Sealed up tight inside a mausoleum without a phone and no grounds keeper to come the next morning to let me out.

“Eddie? Jacek? I need help,” I whispered and squeezed my eyes shut.

I hated to do that. To ask them for help with Paul roaming out there and the terror he’d already wrought. But I didn’t have a choice.

The tree branches tapped out an uneven rhythm around the pounding rain on the roof. Lightning flashed through the stained glass window behind me.

Several minutes passed, and I had to wonder if they could even hear me. They’d be here in the next heartbeat if they could, so maybe whatever was blocking Paul and his static noise out was also blocking me in.

Well, this was one way to get rid of me. I turned and eyed the stained glass window. But it wasn’t a good way to get rid of me.

Seizing my will to live inside my clenched fists, I let it burn through me, filling every cell, fueling the next several steps I needed to take to get out of this graveyard.

I leaped onto the broken coffin, scrambled into a run on the sides of it, and hurled myself at the stained glass window. The hard pane smashed against my hip first, my head second, and then it burst. Glass rained down, cutting at my arms, slicing at my face. Adrenaline whisked the pain away. I dropped to the ground in a crouch, then ran harder than I had in my entire life for the gate.

But first, Tim. I needed to make sure there was nothing I could do for him before I left him here.

I couldn’t hear much over my stuffed ears—both a blessing and a curse—but I felt the static noise scratching up through the soles of my boots and biting into my nerves. Angel statues and cherubs melted into my path, their fanged mouths stretching wide. Gravestones folded over at the last second to trip me up. I dodged them all, somehow keeping my footing in the slanting rain.

Tim was still there, slumped to the ground now beside the bench, staring up at the pouring rain with empty eyes. Gone.

Tears burned down my cheeks. There was nothing I could do for him.

As soon as I reached the gate, I threw it closed, leaving it unlocked, then rubbed the sleeve of my coat over it to smudge my fingerprints. Because even though my stake and maybe even my phone were still inside, I had to call the police first thing in the morning. They needed to find Tim’s body.

More tears brimmed, and I immediately turned to the house next door, magnetized by the comfort it offered when I was so desperate for some. But I couldn’t go there. Jacek had students. They probably wouldn’t react well to my dropping in.

No, this was on me. Tonight was all on me. Even Tim’s death. Especially Tim’s death. I should have offered to take his thermos to him when he forgot it.

I started home, drenched to the bone and freezing, with a worried knot tangled in my gut and the feeling of eyes drilling into the back of my head. One glance back and the cemetery looked as it should, with the statues and gravestones in normal positions. The static had stopped stabbing up through the ground. But Paul was still out there somewhere, watching, planning tomorrow night’s games, and the next night and the next night until he wore me thin enough to end me.

The devil’s marriage proposal was starting to sound better and better.

I frowned and shook my head, speeding my pace toward home and the last twenty-three hours of being nineteen years old.