“Don’t move, Kitten!” Bones shouted. A brutal rip from his knife sliced open X’s chest, oddly to the right of X’s sternum. Bones twisted the blade so hard it broke off, and then he was next to me, his hand pinning my wrists above my head.

“Kitten.”

As soon as I saw his face, I knew how bad it was. That should’ve occurred to me before, considering I had a silver knife with shriveling hand still attached to it in my chest, but somehow, the pain had blinded me to reality. Now, however, I realized these were my last moments on earth.

I tried to smile. “Love you,” I whispered.

A single pink tear rolled down Bones’s cheek, but his voice was steady. “Don’t move,” he repeated, and slowly began to tug on the knife.

My chest felt like it was on fire. I tried not to look at the knife. Tried to focus on Bones’s face, but my own gaze was blurred pink, too. I’ll miss you so much.

The blade shivered a fraction, and a spasm of pain ripped through me. Bones compressed his lips, letting my wrists go to press on my chest with his free hand.

“Don’t move . . .”

I couldn’t stand it. That burning from my chest felt like it had spread all through me. A scream built in my throat, but I choked it back. Please, don’t let him see me die screaming . . .

The agony stopped just as abruptly as it started. Bones let out a harsh sound that was followed by a clatter of metal on the ground. I looked down, seeing a slash in my chest that began to close, the skin seaming back together as it healed.

And then Bones spun around. A vampire stood behind him, holding a big knife and wearing the weirdest expression on his face. He dropped to his knees and pitched forward, a silver handle sticking out of his back. My mother was behind the vampire. Her hands were bloody.

“Rough, quick, and thorough, or you won’t get a second chance,” she mumbled, almost to herself.

Bones stared. “That’s right, Justina.” Then he began to laugh. “Well done.”

I was stunned. Bones swept me up, kissing me so hard I tasted blood when his fangs pierced my lips.

“Don’t you ever frighten me like that again.”

“He didn’t die,” I said, still stunned by the recent events. “I twisted a blade in his heart, but he didn’t die.”

“Like he said, situs inversus.” At my confused expression, Bones went on. “Means he was born with his organs backward, so his heart was on the right. That’s what saved his life before, but he shouldn’t have admitted it while I could hear him.”

I hadn’t known such a condition existed. Note to self: Learn more about anatomical oddities.

Bones scanned the parking lot, but the only vampires out here were the ones gathered around the side of the nightclub. Onlookers, I thought in amazement. Had they stood there the whole time and just watched?

Fear leapt in me. “Where’s Tammy?”

“I ran her inside after the car blew up,” my mother said. “She’d be safe in there, you said.”

And then she’d come back outside to face a pack of hit men. Tears pricked my eyes even as Bones smiled at her.

“You saved my life, Justina.”

She looked embarrassed, and then scowled. “I didn’t know if you were finished getting that knife out of Catherine. I couldn’t let him sneak up on you and stab you until my daughter was okay.”

Bones laughed. “Of course.”

I shook my head. She’d never change, but that was okay. I loved her anyway.

Verses walked out of Bite with Tammy at his side. From her red-rimmed eyes, she’d been crying.

“It’s over,” I told her.

Tammy ran and hugged me. I wanted to say something profound and comforting, but all I could do was repeat, “It’s over.”

At least Tammy wouldn’t remember any of this. No, her memories would be replaced with one where she’d been sequestered by boring bodyguards provided by her father’s former friends. Tammy would go into adulthood without the burden of knowing there were things in the night no average human could stand against. She’d be normal. It was the best birthday present I could give her.

“You fought on the premises,” Verses stated.

Bones let out a snort. “You noticed that, did you, mate?”

“Maybe if you hadn’t stood there and done nothing while we were am-bushed, your precious premises would still be in one piece!” my mother snapped at Verses. “Don’t you have any loyalty? Bones said you were a friend!”

Verses raised his brows at her withering tone, then cast a glance around at the parking lot. Vampire bodies littered the area, one of the cars was still on fire, and various others were smashed, ripped, or dented.

“I am his friend,” Verses replied. “Which is why I’ll let all of you leave without paying for the damages.”

“He doesn’t sound like we’ll be welcomed back,” I murmured to Bones. “So much for coming here during the rest of our vacation to explore all those private areas.”

Bones’s lips brushed my forehead. “Don’t fret, luv. I know another club in Brooklyn I think you’ll really fancy . . .”

Meanwhile, Far Across the Caspian Sea . . .

DANIEL STASHOWER

Daniel Stashower is a two-time Edgar® Award winner whose most recent nonfiction books are The Beautiful Cigar Girl and (as coeditor) Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Dan is also the author of five mystery novels and has received the Agatha and Anthony awards. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories and The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and their two sons.

IN those days LifeSpan Books had offices in a three-story garden atrium building in Alexandria, Virginia. The building is still there. Across the street—in the middle of the street, actually—is a Civil War statue called Appomattox, marking the spot where seven hundred young soldiers marched off to join the Confederate cause in 1861. The statue shows a Confederate soldier with his hat off, head bowed and arms folded, facing the battlefields to the south where his comrades fell. Originally there was a perimeter of ornamental fencing and gas lamps, but over the years, as South Washington Street grew into a major artery, the fence came down and traffic in both directions simply jogged outward a bit to avoid the base of the statue. Every so often somebody clipped a fender, but the soldier stood his ground.

One night a van plowed into the base of the statue and knocked the soldier facedown into the street, opening the door to a vigorous public debate about whether a busy intersection was really the proper place for a symbol of the Confederacy. The city fathers ultimately fell back on a musty piece of legislation that the Virginia House of Delegates had passed in 1890. It stated, in part, that the monument “shall remain in its present position as a perpetual and lasting testimonial to the courage, fidelity and patriotism of the heroes in whose memory it was erected . . . the permission so given by the said City Council of Alexandria for its erection shall not be repealed, revoked, altered, modified, or changed by any future Council or other municipal power or authority.” So the statue went back up. Motorists beware.

I know all this because Thaddeus Palgrave told me. He was a senior editor for LifeSpan Books, and he made a point of knowing such things. Actually, Palgrave didn’t tell me directly, he just let it bubble out of him when I happened to be in the room. He had a way of leaning up against the tall window of his office, with his head resting against his forearm, giving impromptu disquisitions on matters of art, commerce, and history. He would usually wrap things up with a pithy moral, sometimes in Latin. Aquila non captat muscas. The eagle doesn’t capture flies. Don’t sweat the small stuff.