Page 77 of How to Stake a Vampire

“The ghost.” Mindy met our puzzled gazes, her eyes wide with fear. “That vampire is forcing a ghost to help him. A wraith. That’s why the cameras have been going dark. This wraith—she’s been dead a long time but she’s bound to him, somehow.” Her expression crumpled. “I could feel her pain. Whatever he’s doing to her, it’s hurting her badly.”

“He must have an object of hers,” Barney said flintily. “Something her soul is chained to in the mortal realm.”

Dread squeezed my heart as Didi and I did our best to comfort Mindy.

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but do you think you can track her?” Samuel asked the ghost quietly.

Mindy sniffed and nodded reluctantly. “I’ll try. It won’t be easy.”

“Just do your best,” Samuel said.

I looked around. “Where’s Bo?”

Our earpieces crackled to life before anyone could answer.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news but we have another situation,” Nigel said cagily.

We traded another round of fraught glances.

“What kind of situation?” Samuel asked warily.

“The kind that involves Abby’s dog trying to arrest a vampire.”

23

DOMESTIC INVESTIGATIONS

“I’m telling you,that vampire was definitely up to something,” Bo insisted from the back seat for the fifteenth time since we’d left the Hawthorne mansion. “He had shifty eyes.”

He had his nose stuck to the Bentley’s window again and was leaving marks on the glass that would probably involve some kind of detailing to get off, judging from the way Samuel’s fingers kept twitching on the steering wheel every time he looked at my dog.

“All vampires have shifty eyes,” Pearl said from her permanent perch on Victoria’s lap. She swished her tail lazily. “It comes with the territory of being a predator.”

“This was different,” Bo protested. “He kept looking around like he was casing the joint.”

“He was probably trying to figure out why a Husky was interrogating him about his grocery habits,” Samuel said darkly.

“What exactly did Bo do?” Victoria asked. “Wait, never mind. I don’t want to know.”

I swallowed a sigh. The Hawthornes were getting the full Husky experience, whether they wanted it or not.

“I was being thorough,” Bo huffed. “Real detectives ask follow-up questions.”

“Real detectives don’t corner random vampires and demand to know why they’re loitering near blood banks,” Samuel retorted.

“I’m telling you, he kept circling the block,” Bo insisted. “Nobody needs to drive past a blood bank three times unless they’re casing it.”

Samuel’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

“Maybe he was lost,” I intervened hastily.

“Vampires do have a bad sense of direction,” Victoria observed.

Pearl’s whiskers twitched. “I’m impressed the mutt can count to three.”

“I can count much higher than that,” Bo said proudly. “I know all the numbers up to—well, lots of them.”

Samuel muttered something under his breath.