“Rested enough, luv?” Bones asked.

“Um hmm,” I murmured, stretching. I’d fallen asleep shortly after dawn, but it hadn’t been the instant unconsciousness that had plagued me for my first weeks as a vampire. I’d grown out of that, to my relief.

“We’d best get moving, then,” he said.

Right. We had places to be, as usual.

“The only thing I regret about stopping to catch some sleep here is the lack of a normal shower,” I sighed.

Bones snorted in amusement. “Come now, the river’s very refreshing.”

At forty degrees, “refreshing” was a kind way to describe the cave’s version of indoor plumbing. Bones moved the stone slab out of the way so we could exit the alcove, putting it back before my kitty could leap out, too.

“The trick is to jump in,” he went on. “Taking it slow doesn’t make it any easier.”

I swallowed a laugh. That advice could also apply to navigating the undead world. All right. One leap into a freezing river, coming up.

Then it was time to get to the real reason why we’d come to Ohio. With luck, nothing was going on in my old home state except for a few random cases of fang-on-fang violence.

I doubted it, but I could still hope.

The afternoon sun was still high in the sky by the time Bones and I arrived at the fountain of the Easton mall. Well, a street away from it. We had to make sure that this wasn’t a trap. Bones and I had a lot of enemies. Two recent vampire wars will do that, not to mention our former professions.

I didn’t sense any excessive supernatural energy except a smaller tingle of power in the air that denoted one, maybe two younger vampires mixed in with the crowd. Still, neither Bones nor I moved until a hazy, indistinct form flew across the parking lot and into our rental car.

“Two vampires are at the fountain,” Fabian, the ghost I’d sort of adopted, stated. His outline solidified until he looked more like a person and less like a thick particle cloud. “They didn’t notice me.”