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Chapter 1

I kneas in trouble as soon as I saw the obituary The fact that it had my name on it was sort of a clue What I didn’t knoas how they’d found uy ith the sense of huured out if that has so dead, or if he’s always been a morose son of a bitch

The obit was on o It looked like part of a newspaper page had been scanned and then set as the coone to get a salad half an hour earlier If I hadn’t been so freaked out, I’d have been ioons even knehat a computer was

I scraun while I read the joker’s description of un atback there probably wasn’t h trouble toI kept in ers After more than three years of relative safety, I’d started to question the need for even that I’d gotten careless and could only hope it wasn’t about to get me killed

Underdescription of an unfortunate incident involving h the head The paper had toht on Peachtree Street I glanced at iven an hour’s head start That seeuess for why I wasn’t already dead was that killing uy who had people killed all the ti special

I finally found my Smith & Wesson 3913 under a flyer for a cruise to Rio I wondered if it was a sign No way did I have the kind of cash to get out of the country, though, and a chubby-cheeked, blue-eyed blonde ht look a little obvious next to all those sloe-eyed senhoritas Plus, I didn’t know if Tony had associates in Brazil, but I wouldn’t put it past hi Michelangelo under the table, you make a few contacts

I fished a pack of guun compartment in my purse and shoved the Smith & Wesson in It fit like it had been un, o on the recommendation of a Fed naht I was a nut case, but since I’d helped to cripple one of the biggest criive me some free advice He helped rip s on two legs “Except for the ghosts and ghoulies,” he’d said with a grin “You’re on your oith thee every day for teeks, and got me to the point that, even if I still couldn’t hit the side of a barn, I didn’t miss it by much I’d kept up the practice sessions whenever I could afford the one and I was standing within about ten feet of it I was secretly hoping I?

?d never have to shoot anything besides a target It wasn’t my fault it didn’t work out that way

I think Jerry sort of liked o straight He thought I’d got in with the wrong crohen too young to know better, which was truer than he knew, then wised up and decided to turn state’s evidence How he explained the fact that a twenty-year-old orphan knew all about the inner workings of a major crime family I’ll never know, but it sure wasn’t faith in “that witchcraft crap,” as he put it Jerry didn’t believe in the supernatural—any of it Since I didn’t want him to lock me in a small padded cell somewhere, I didn’t hosts and ghoulies comment

I’ve always been kind of a ghost ; I don’t know Tony was always careful about what he let ure out soainst hieable about ht be that my attractiveness to the spirit world is si someone who doesn’t even know you’re there Not that they hauntoff when I’m around

So, like with the old wohosts as solid much of the time, especially if they are new and powerful, so it took me a while to realize what she was She was there to act as a sort of guardian angel over her grandson, whom she’d helped to raise She died when he was ten, and her daughter’s boyfriend started beating him as soon as he went to live with them The boy ran away in less than aover him to abandon hi on her a bit At her request, I gave hiet on a bus to her sister’s place in San Diego before Ito Jerry He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, touch or put a bullet in, kind of li subjects for conversation Needless to say, he also didn’t believe in vaht up with hiht and tore his throat out

I kneas about to happen to Jerry because I Saw his last few seconds as I was getting in the bath As usual, I got a vivid, full-color, up-close-and-personal ticket to the carnage, which almost made me slip and breakenough to hold a phone, I called the Witness Protection Prograot suspicious when I wouldn’t say how I kneas about to happen She said she’d get a e to Jerry but didn’t sound too enthused about disturbing his weekend So I called Tony’s lead thug—a vamp named Alphonse—and reovern hu Jerry was useless to them because his information was about to be old news

I’d never been very successful in alteringthat use of the Senate’s nah to roup of really old vamps who pass laws that the less powerful ones have to obey While they don’t think anyonly a o to a lot of trouble not to drawthat tends to piss theive me the usual runaround while his boys traced the call In the end, the only thing I could do was ot to ured that since the government won’t even ad ht my odds were better on ht Until now

I didn’t bother to grab anything fro for your life—it really narrows your priorities Not that my 9 s for htin actual talent I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of taking a few bullets to the brain, but I liked even less the prospect of ending up as one of his permanent acquisitions He’d never let me be turned because he’d had a psychic once who became a vaht ift too useful to risk Noorried that he’d take the gae, he could stake et payback for some of the hell I’d caused hiuaranteed loyalty, since it’s really hard to go against the wishes of the vamp who made you It was a in situation froh to figure that out I checked the gun and oing doithout a fight, and if worse came to worst, I’d eat the last round before I called that bastard master

Unlike last tiht a ride to yet another new life I slipped out of the agency ASAP, just in case Tony’s boys decided to fudge a little on the deadline, and avoided the front door by squirh the bathroomIt always seems so easy when people do that on TV I ended up with a scraped thigh, torn hose and a bitten lip froy side street to a parking garage and cut across to a Waffle House The trip was short but nerve-racking Fa places for Tony’s thugs, and every noise sounded like a gun being cocked

The Waffle House had bright halogen lights in the parking lot,me feel terribly exposed as I crossed it Mercifully, the bank of phones was in shadow near one side of the building I parked e out of my purse, but no one picked up at the club I let the phone ring twenty ti It was Friday night—probably no one was able to hear a phone over the din, or had time to answer if they did