“Little,” Diantha said.

“Was anyone else here?” Katamori said.

Diantha shook her head.

The two vampires glanced at each other, eyebrows raised in query. Dahlia couldn’t think of any more questions to ask. Evidently Katamori couldn’t, either.

“Diantha, in a second you can move.” Dahlia and Katamori closed in on each side of the body. “All right,” Dahlia said. “Step out of the blood. Take off your shoes and leave them.”

The half-demon girl followed Dahlia’s instructions to the letter. She perched on the wooden table to remove her red high-tops. She placed her stained shoes neatly side by side on the floor. “Stayorgo?” she asked, looking much more cheerful now that she wasn’t so close to the corpse. Demons didn’t often eat people, and proximity to the body hadn’t been pleasant for her.

“I think you can go,” Dahlia said, after a moment’s thought. “Don’t leave.”

“Gobacktotheparty,” the girl said, and did so.

By silent agreement, the two vampires bent to their task. With their excellent vision and sense of smell, they didn’t need magnifying glasses or flashlights to help them analyze what they saw.

“The human donors came into the kitchen and ate and drank,” Katamori began. “A vampire shepherded them.”

“As always,” Dahlia said absently. “And that’s a vampire we need to talk to, because somehow this human got left behind, or he hid himself. Obviously, the shepherd should have noticed.”

“A werewolf came through here, probably after the death. Perhaps more than one werewolf,” Katamori continued. He was crouched near the floor, and he looked up at Dahlia, his dark eyes intent. His black braid fell forward as he bent back to examine the floor, and he tossed it back over his shoulder.