Pining for a taste of freedom, I ran my fingers across the closed garage door on our way past. “I miss riding Jolene.” I fluttered my lashes at Linus. “I have a pristine driving record, and Boaz left his riding leathers in my garage.”

His pace slowed as he wavered, but his resolve firmed up again. “I’m not comfortable with motorcycles.”

“You’ll never know until you try.” I walked on with a sigh. “You might love the wind in your hair.”

With a deft twist, he drew the auburn length into a tail at his nape. “What about the bugs in my teeth?”

“Hey, if you’re smiling big enough for your mouth to double as a grille, you’re doing something right.”

“Maybe one day.”

“Maud fed me the same line with the exact inflection a million times. Your one day means never.”

He ducked his head to hide his grin at being caught. “I was being polite.”

“Who’s our ride?” I scanned his hands for his cell. “You don’t have the ride-share app up yet?”

“We don’t need it.” Hood strolled past us. “I’m playing chauffeur tonight.”

I did a double-take. “I thought your mate left you passed out in bed.”

“I don’t kiss and tell.” He clicked his tongue. “I also don’t drink or eat food that makes my nose burn.”

Lethe was not going to be happy when she realized Hood had pulled the wool over her eyes.

“Stay put.” He opened the gates then checked both ways. “I’ll be right back.”

Minutes later, a black van pulled up to the curb and parked.

Linus glided the side panel open, revealing its custom interior. The standard three rows of seats had been mounted in a nonstandard U configuration. The longest bench ran along the backside of the driver and front passenger seats. A shorter one sat before us, and an even stubbier one—basically one oversized seat—fit in the space not occupied by the rolling door. Built-in cabinets filled the rear of the van, and I bet the obvious seam meant the doors were still functional. There were even refrigerated trays tucked under the seats.

“This is new.” I smoothed a hand over the buttery-soft leather seats, black with red piping. “How many cows sacrificed their lives so that we might lounge in comfort?”

“I didn’t ask.” Linus appraised the interior with a critical twist of his lips. “Leather is easier to clean.”

The man had a valid point. “You bought this?”

“I did.”

For me? Unable to ask the question, I let my eyes do the talking.

He read me like a familiar book highlighted with his favorite passages. Who else?

“He placed the order after Atlanta,” Hood explained. “I oversaw production myself.”

“Tony was past his expiration date even then.” I climbed in and sank onto the far bench. I liked the idea of having an exit right in front of me. I sat there, waiting to see if the new environment stirred any anxiety, but it was spacious, and Linus was with me. “I should have checked his throat for a barcode.”

Linus chuckled, and I flushed scarlet when I caught the drift of his thoughts. “It’s not that funny.”

Despite the fangy half of my parentage, I wasn’t a vampire. For one thing, I didn’t sport canines of unusual size. For another, I didn’t have a fridge stacked with blood bags or a snack lounging in the guest room.

But I did have one following me into the van.

Linus was my friend, not food.

Dang it.

He was kind of food.

Picturing Linus cling wrapped did it. I chuckled at the mental picture, and then I laughed out loud.

“The joke wasn’t that good.” Hood twisted around in his seat. “What am I missing?”

Linus left me to enlighten Hood or not. “Turns out the reason I’m so puny is I require blood in my diet.”

“Makes sense if you’re half vamp.” He slid his gaze to Linus. “That your chew toy?”

Fire engines rolled off the production line in paler shades than my cheeks just then. I searched out Linus to commiserate with him, but he wasn’t blushing. He sank on the short bench opposite me, his knees an inch from brushing mine, and he locked stares with the bigger predator in the van in obvious challenge.

“I’m her donor,” he acknowledged, his chest puffing out an infinitesimal amount. “It goes without saying that no one outside our circle can know this. Share with the pack. Make them aware it’s a dietary requirement for her in case…” he made a point not to look at me, “…I’m ever indisposed.”

Tightness spread throughout my gut. “As in you have to go to Atlanta on business?”

He was on loan, only here for as long as he required to train me up for the Grande Dame’s use.

“That’s one possibility,” he allowed. “We have to make arrangements.”

Feeding arrangements. I swallowed when I found myself staring at the column of his throat.

Hood decided the road in front of him was five times more interesting than the conversation behind him and pulled into traffic.

“Six months,” I blurted. “We’ll try weening me off then, so I don’t turn connoisseur on you.”

“All right.” The set of his mouth tightened. “We can do that. I would recommend we start cutting my blood with other donors after that point.” He strapped in with more force than necessary. “You could be fully transitioned within a year.”

“Call me crazy, but you don’t sound relieved.” I gestured toward myself. “I’m a parasite, Linus.”

“You’ll be free of me in twelve months,” he repeated. “Will that suffice?”

“You wounded his ego,” Hood informed me. “Necromancers are only as good as their blood. He’s willing to provide, but you’re turning down his offer. You’re telling him he’s not good enough for you.”

“That’s enough,” Linus said coldly. “Grier can make her own decisions.”

“Lethe reacted the same way,” he confided to him. “She was a huntress, and when I brought her a deer carcass as a courting gift, she squatted over its head and urinated on its face.” He shook his head. “She ruined all that good meat to make the point she didn’t need me to provide for her.” He sighed. “The things I admired most about her—her strength, her ferocity, her independence—I insulted with a single thoughtless act.”

“I do need him, though.” I twisted my hands on my lap. “I can’t figure this out alone, and I can’t stomach anyone else’s blood. I’m not pushing him away.” Hurt throbbed in my next words as I turned them on Linus. “You’re the one with a life outside Savannah. You have a home, a career, friends. You’re going to leave, but I never will. I have Woolly.” And now I had Oscar. “I have to stay. That means learning to be self-sufficient. You can’t drive down from Atlanta every morning to blend me a protein shake.”

“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for,” Linus told me. “You’ll be fine without me.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from disagreeing with him. Independence was the goal. I couldn’t let him become a crutch. Those got kicked out from under you sooner or later. I had to be able to stand on my own. That was the point of the self-defense classes and the reason for my dedication to the education he was providing. I wanted to be able to function within the Society, yes, but I wanted to live my own life more.

“We’re here,” Hood announced. “I’ll park then walk the block while you do your thing.”

“A cemetery?” I scooted to the edge of my seat. “What are we doing here?”

“Knollwood Cemetery.” Linus opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Reaching back for my hand, he guided me out into the pleasant night. “We’re collecting grave dirt.”

The van pulled away, leaving us alone in the dark with a single streetlamp to light our way.

“I haven’t been here in ages,” I admitted. “Maud hated cemeteries.”

Linus knew all this as well as I did, but it still felt good talking with someone who had loved her.

“Five hundred years is a long time to live.” He unhooked the simple wooden gate and let me enter ahead of him. “We have no concept of how it will feel to find ourselves counting our final moments in what feels like a timeless existence to us now. I suspect, as we age, we’ll find ourselves less inclined to visit reminders of our mortality either.”

“Graves reminded her that no amount of money could save you in the end,” I mused. “The one thing she hated more than a problem magic couldn’t solve was one money couldn’t fix.”

We shared a laugh, and I almost felt her standing there, between us.

The sensation intensified until I tipped back my head and spotted Cletus hovering above us. From this angle, he resembled Spanish moss dripping from the old oaks as they forked their limbs protectively over the dead.

“Hey, Cletus.”

The wraith twitched his fingers in what might have passed for an attempt at waving.

“We’re going to have to talk about him.” Linus eyed his wraith with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. “This level of awareness isn’t natural. We’re taught that wraiths are unthinking, unfeeling entities, but he’s too familiar with you for me to believe that’s the case any longer. You’ve altered him.”

“For the good.” I watched the wraith retreat into the shadows. “He was creepy. Now he’s friendly.”

“Toward you,” Linus emphasized. “Heightened awareness means he will start making his own decisions about others, how he behaves toward them, what actions he deems is a threat to us, and that means he’s an increased risk in public. We can’t guess how he’ll react in dangerous situations, and that makes him rogue.”

“The Society puts down rogues.” The reality of what I had done, however accidental, sank in and left me dragging my feet. “What can be done about a wraith once it’s bonded?” A worse thought occurred to me. “What will happen to you?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I can’t recall a case where a wraith was unbonded.”

“Please tell me it’s not because the wraith became a moot point after the necromancer involved died.”

His eyes crinkled with amusement. “I believe I can control Cletus, with your help.”

“You’re not comforting me here.” I gripped his forearm. “What will happen to you if he’s put down?”

“Bonding with a wraith is a life sentence. They’re bound to their master until death. Practitioners have been executed for misusing their wraith or wraiths, but this is a first.”

“I doubt that.” I reflected on all I had learned about my condition so far. “The Great Library was probably chockful of incidents like this one.”

“That resource is gone. We’ll have to start our own.” He cast his gaze around the gloomy acreage. “One perk of the modern era is I can keep notes in my grimoire as well as in a cloud to access from my computer or phone. Any research we collate on your condition will be preserved for future generations. Maud’s notes will prove invaluable once we locate them.”

And there it was. The first subtle hint he still wanted access to the basement since moving in with me.

I had hoped it would take him longer to circle back around to the topic, but I wasn’t all that surprised.

What he lacked in caloric intake, he made up for in the sheer bulk of knowledge he consumed.

“We need eight ounces of old grave dirt and eight ounces of fresh.” He plowed ahead, on to a new topic. I could have hugged him for letting me off the hook before I got the chance to writhe. “I brought plastic baggies and bone scoops for each. Do you have a preference?”

“I’ll take the old dirt.” I accepted the sandwich bag he passed me as well as the whittled scoop made from a human femur. “I like reading the inscriptions on the headstones.”

“Cletus.” He waited on the wraith to appear. “Stay with Grier.”

The wraith billowed acknowledgment and drifted toward me.

“A funeral was performed earlier today.” He readied his own supplies. “It shouldn’t take me long to collect a sample.”

“Be careful.” His preventive-measures chat with Hood rang in my ears. “Call if you need help.”

Warmth filled his eyes, a startling counterpoint to the chill of his skin. “I will.”

Embarrassment flooded me once he turned his back. Linus could protect himself, on all fronts. Worrying about him was silly. Except…I could still picture him limp in the front passenger seat of the van we borrowed from Mary Alice after he got cut with a poisoned blade. Proof none of us were as invulnerable as we imagined ourselves to be.

“Thank you,” he tossed over his shoulder, as if the waves of mortification crashing against him demanded comment. “For caring.”

“No problem.” I hesitated when a glint in the bushes forming a neglected hedge around the oldest graves caught my eye. I watched as a pattern emerged and suppressed a growl of frustration. “First one done buys the other dinner.”

“Deal.”

The illuminated message repeated, broadcast in bright spurts. I considered ignoring it. I considered pointing it out to Linus. I considered pivoting on my heel and running the whole way home. Instead I did the worst possible thing. I walked toward it, moth to a battery-operated flame, like an idiot.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.” Boaz clicked off his flashlight then sheathed it in a loop on his utility belt. “I’m glad you did.”

Moonlight warmed his milk-chocolate irises. Lighter bands, liked swirled caramel, brightened them even further. White scars stood in stark contrast against his tanned skin, almost as pale as his platinum-blond hair. Whiskers covered his square jaw, and his features came across harsh without his trademark charm softening them.

I refused to acknowledge the uptick in my pulse at the sight of him. “What do you want?”

“To see how you’re doing.” He noticed the implements in my hands and started scanning headstones. “I worry about you.”

“Please don’t go there.” I planted my feet. “You lost the right to worry about me when you got engaged behind my back.”

“I don’t see another way out,” he confessed. “There’s no happy ending no matter how hard I squint at things.”

“You did this to yourself.” The hateful words hurled from my mouth before I could censor them. “You chose your match. You picked another woman over me. You should be thrilled you got who and what you wanted, that your parents didn’t resort to playing matchmaker for you.”

“I chose my family over you.” He clenched his jaw. “I didn’t pick her. I don’t want her.”

But he needed her, which was just as bad. “That doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

“Amelie—” he began.

“Amelie is a grown woman who made her own choices. Bad ones. Vampires lost their lives, and she almost cost me mine too.” I tightened my mouth into a grimace to keep my bottom lip from trembling. At least it wasn’t sadness about to cave me in. I was pissed, vibrating with rage. “I don’t need a lecture on your sister.”

“All you need is him,” he snarled. “Linus Fucking Lawson.”

“His middle name is Andreas, actually.”

“He’s waited for this since his balls dropped, Grier. You’re an ideal to him, not a person.”

“Really?” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Given our history, that’s the best you’ve got?”

The Boaz I had panted after since I sprouted armpit hair was a pipe dream. He was smoke. All it had taken was a strong breeze to blow him right out of my arms.

His shoulders cranked tighter. “He doesn’t know you like I do.”

“The people who know you best always wield the power to hurt you the worst.”

“Is that the appeal?” A fraction of his tension ebbed. “Is he the safer option?”

Boaz was wrong. On so many fronts. This argument only highlighted the myriad flaws in his reasoning.

There wasn’t a single thing safe about Linus. Not one. The bookish exterior provided camouflage for the predator lurking under his skin, and few suspected what prowled through the chambers of his heart.

The most lethal thing about Linus wasn’t his power, his wealth, or his connections. His family name and his mother’s position made him a force, true, but none of those frills appealed to me when I possessed those same advantages.

I was Dame Woolworth, the Woolworth heir, Maud’s chosen daughter. I was goddess-touched, destined to become a power in my own right, and I was gathering dangerous allies to me. Honestly? I counted him among them.

“I have work to do.” I shouldered past him. “You should get back to selecting your china patterns.”

“Grier.” He closed his hand over my upper arm. “You aren’t safe with him.”

“Yes—” I pried him off me, a tremble in my limbs, a trauma that still reared its head in inopportune moments, “—I am.”

Unhurried footsteps strolled the path I had taken, heading straight for us, and I suppressed a groan.

Thanks, Cletus.

“Have you had a chance to collect your sample?” Linus tossed a bag of rich soil and caught it in his hand. “I can take over if you need another moment.”

“I’m on my way to do just that.” I sidestepped the pissy Elite in my path for the last time. “Good night, Boaz.”

“This is not goodbye,” he gritted out from between clenched teeth. “I’m not letting you go.”

“You let me go when you asked for another girl’s hand in marriage.” I gripped the scoop until my bones smarted. “You can’t have it both ways. I’m not interested in being the other woman, and your future wife deserves better than to enter into a marriage contract with a man who has no interest in making a life with her because he already has one with someone else.”

“Christ, Grier.” Boaz stumbled back a step. “I’m not asking you to be my mistress. I would never—” He wiped a hand over his lips like he wanted to wipe the word from his mouth. “You deserve better, you deserve everything. I would never expect you to settle for less than marriage, less than love.”

“Why are you here?” Exhaustion dragged on me. “What do you want?”

“I heard about the archer.” The firmer conversational ground helped him recover. “Reports are coming in hot and fast from the Cora Ann. Your old boss is making a stink about your disappearing act. She gave a description of Hood to the police.”

“I was going to call her.” I sought out the moon. “I had no idea what to say, what lie to tell this time.”

“Your skirt was ripped off, and there was blood on the railing. People heard you hit the water. It doesn’t look good.” He expelled a long breath. “Savannah is your home. You can’t burn this identity, or you’ll be a shut-in for the next fifty years waiting on this generation of humans to forget they ever knew a Grier Woolworth.”

A lightbulb moment flashed, blinding with its clarity. “You’re here on official business.”

The twang of my heartstrings indicated a direct hit, but I didn’t feel the impact. Numbness wrapped my shoulders like a shroud as it sank in this hadn’t been some misguided attempt at mending fences with me. The opportunity had simply been a bonus.

“I’ve been assigned to you,” he admitted. “We share history, and my superiors like that.”

“Assigned to me?” A shrill note ratcheted my voice higher. “What does that mean?”

“All the key political figures within the Society have a shadow.” Furrows gathered across Linus’s brow. “Mother has one, and I do too.” He measured Boaz with a frown. “Protocol dictates the watcher must not reveal their identity. The potential for abuse is too great when you’re talking about wealthy, influential necromancers with secrets to keep.”

Boaz smiled, all teeth. “Skeletons in your closet got you nervous?”

“I accept full responsibility for my actions,” Linus said plainly.

The barb struck home, and Boaz failed to conceal his flinch. “I don’t trust you, Lawson.”

“The feeling is mutual.” He cut his eyes toward me, and another layer of Boaz’s armor dented. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend.”

Here was more proof that Linus got me. He was speaking for himself, not for me. He was letting me choose to linger with Boaz or extricate myself from the situation. If he kept this up, kept treating me like an equal, I just might find my own voice, discover who I am when I’m not being told who I ought to be.

“We have business to attend.” I prepped the plastic baggy with more attention to detail than the press-and-seal seam required then turned my back and started walking. “Enjoy the rest of your night, Sentinel Elite Pritchard.”

Linus fell in step beside me, and we walked in silence for a long time. “Was I wrong to interrupt?”

“You got me out of there before I made a total fool of myself.” I brushed my shoulder against his. “I appreciate the save.” A crumbling headstone with letters erased by the elements caught my eye, and I knelt. “Do you think he was telling the truth about being assigned to me?”

“I can ask Mother.” He angled his face away, but not fast enough to conceal his amusement. “I doubt she knows who’s in charge of the program. Even though the Elite share the same resources as the sentinels, they’re a separate entity. They police us.”

Hearing the Elite framed that way, and knowing Boaz was one of them, unsettled me. Given his reaction to my incarceration, he wouldn’t move against me in any official capacity unless I had done grievous harm. But, I wondered as Linus joined me on the cool earth, would that same clarity of duty keep those around me safe or merely tighten the noose the Grande Dame had fit around my neck?

“Look at this.” The grave I had chosen appeared to be a popular one. A hole had already been dug. “Someone helped themselves to more than eight ounces.”

Linus scanned the area, his frown growing, then stood and crossed to another grave. “This one’s been disturbed too.” He walked farther. “There’s another one.”

I shoved to my feet and set off in the opposite direction. Almost every grave within the hedges had been visited prior to our arrival. “What do you think it means?”

“It’s possible one of the local instructors brought a class of fledglings out to stock their inventory.”

“The first rule of collection is leave no trace where humans are concerned. An instructor would get their butt handed to them by the Grande Dame if this was discovered by the deceaseds’ relatives.”

Graverobbing was sensational, headline-grabbing. In other words—it was bad news.

In a historic town, where folks got it in their heads to dig for buried pirate gold, stranger things happened on a nightly basis. But random holes being dug in the oldest cemetery in town might rate a story on a slow news day. Or a tweet or a blog post or a mention on other social media platforms.

“That’s not the biggest concern in an area like this one. We’ll have to circle back and check the active plots.” He indicated I should take what I needed while we were here. “I didn’t notice if there were any other disturbances in the area.”

After I filled my baggy, I pulled out my phone. “I’m going to snap pictures of the headstones. I doubt this has anything to do with which graves got hit, but we won’t get this opportunity again.”

“Good idea.” He removed his cell from his pocket. “I’ll start on this end. We can meet in the middle.”

The sentinels would have to be notified, and they would quarantine the area to perform their own investigation. Grave dirt was a common resource, but a necessary one. Necromancers observed a code of etiquette when gathering supplies to ensure the person who came after them could also collect.

The pattern grew as I made my search, and the piecemeal design it created bothered me.

“There are just enough gaps to convince me it’s intentional,” I told Linus when I rejoined him. “I can’t spot any correlation between the birth dates, death dates, or names of the deceased.”

“I don’t see any connections, either.” And that tweaked him as much as it concerned me.

We kept an eye out as we crossed to the portion of the cemetery still in use. Cletus joined us, sticking close to me, his cloak tickling my arm.

“This is where I was when Cletus informed me of your guest.” He indicated a grave topped with freshly tilled soil. “I’ve waited all week for this funeral. The next freshest grave ought to be over there.” He pointed toward a small hill riddled with plastic flowers. “The woman died in a car accident nine days ago.”

A dull ache, a kinship with the dead, throbbed in me. “You passed on her because of me.”

“I wanted this field trip to be as painless as possible.” He set out toward the new plot, its fresh sod green and vibrant against the wilting roses overflowing the vase at the base of the headstone. “I wouldn’t have told you how she died, but you would have found out when you started cross-referencing the graves.”

“Mom died a long time ago.” I acknowledged his small kindness with a smile. “I can handle this.”

We drifted apart, each of us taking an opposite corner of the lawn. Working toward one another, we mapped out the disturbed graves. The ones on this side of the cemetery all fell in the nine to sixteen day range, according to the dates on the headstones. The light rain from this week had tamped down the fresh dirt, making the job of identifying them that much easier.

Carrying my phone jammed with evidence, I waited on Linus to join me beside a mausoleum guarded by an angel with tousled curls. His tunic slipped off one dipped shoulder while his hem rose up his muscular thigh into the danger zone. The symbolism of the wide sword gripped in his hand was plain.

I ran my finger along the dull edge of the blade. “Promise you won’t bury me under a phallic symbol.”

Linus jerked midstride, snapping his attention to the angel. “Statistically, women outlive men.”

“You just volunteered to proofread my will.” I ambled down to join him. “You’re welcome.”

“I can do that,” he agreed, still pondering the figure. “Though I’m not an attorney.”

“Give it time,” I kidded, leading the way toward the exit. “You will be. What’s another four years?”

“Nothing in the span of our lives.” He fell in step with me. “What about you?”

“I’m not interested in law school. I have a healthy disrespect for the system that wouldn’t translate well.” I noticed him staring and understood. “Oh, you’re asking what I want to be when I grow up.”

“You had your heart set on college,” he pointed out. “What did you want to study?”

The truth left me vulnerable next to him. “Anything. Everything. I was hungry to prove myself to Maud.”

Low Society members often went on to become doctors or nurses. Lawyers were a popular option too. Accountants. Research and development, which Linus dabbled in with his inventions on a scale nonpractitioners could only dream about achieving. Any field earmarked as useful by Society standards, any career that made them valuable commodities, was the goal.

Assistants made bank depending on their specializations, but Maud had trained me with a common specialty that required little talent and less magic in the blood. Any hope I had of distinguishing myself would have come from accolades lavished on me by the outside world.

“Amelie is taking online classes.” He studied my reaction, testing the edges of a tender wound with careful fingers. “You could do the same if you’re not interested in attending on campus.”

“I’ll think about it. Maybe when things die down I can audit a class, get a feel for it.”

“Test your limits.” His mouth drew to one side before he hit me with more teacher logic. “How else will you discover what they are?”

“You could just tell me?” We reached the sidewalk and stood there under the moon. “You’re pushing me pretty hard. You’ve got to have a goal in mind. A finish line you’re nudging me toward with all this.”

“I can’t do this for you.” The softness in his tone implied he would if he could, even if he abhorred cheating. “You have to make some discoveries on your own.”

I clucked my tongue at him. “And here I thought that’s why you earned the big bucks.”

“I won’t always be here,” he reminded me, chin lowered, eyes downcast.

And just like that, I made my first discovery.

I didn’t want him to go.