The Ghost Council chamber felt different this time. Less formal, more urgent. Princess Katrina stood at the head of the table, her flame-eyes burning with focused intensity as Garrick and I laid out our plan. The other council members were present: Polina flickering in her ancient sepia tones, Oleksii stern and solid despite being dead for over a century, Mother Leander with her jeweled throat, Evgeny and Martina watching with the wariness of people who'd seen too many plans go wrong.

  "You want to use one of us as bait," Katrina said. Not a question.

  "Yes," I admitted. "We have some evidence that Lord Konstantin Vasile is behind the ghost abductions. Books on spectral binding. Ghost magic grimoires. But evidence isn't proof. Samuel will demand we catch him in the act, or I imagine he'll claim Konstantin was researching on his behalf, trying to solve the mystery."

  "So you want to dangle one of our people in front of a vampire who traps and drains ghosts." Oleksii's voice was flat, unimpressed. "You're asking us to risk the second death for your investigation."

  "I know how it sounds—" Garrick started.

  "Do you?" Oleksii stood, his industrial-era clothing somehow making him look even more imposing. "You're practically immortal. Cosmic-powered by the very fabric of the Astral. Mac here survived a Ghostly Embrace, which is more than most mortals can claim. But we?" He gestured at himself, at the other council members. "We're already dead. We've already lost everything once. If this vampire drains us completely, there's no coming back. No afterlife. No moving on. Just... nothing."

  The room fell silent. I hadn't fully considered it from their perspective. The absolute finality of the second death was chilling. I remember what I had thought of death before I stumbled into the supernatural world. Oblivion, finality. Of course that thought would terrify anyone, but especially someone who had, for whatever reason, held on so tight that their spirit remained after their body was dead. And here I was asking one of them to risk complete annihilation to help catch someone who'd been hunting them.

  "You're right," I said quietly. "We're asking a lot. But Dorota is out there right now, being drained. Every hour we wait is another hour closer to her oblivion. And if we don't stop this, more ghosts will disappear. This won't end with just Dorota and Yulia."

  Oleksii stared at me for a long moment. Then he turned to Katrina. "What do you think, Princess?"

  "I think Mac is correct. This will continue until we stop it." She looked around the table. "But I will not order anyone to take this risk. It must be a volunteer."

  "I'll do it," Oleksii said after a moment.

  Several council members started protesting at once, but he waved them silent.

  "My anchor is the foundation of my old factory," he explained. "The building that now houses the Cross Club in Nové Město. It's a public place, well-lit, with mortals nearby. If this vampire wants to trap me, he'll have to work for it. And I was tough in life. I'll be tougher in death."

  "The Cross Club," Garrick repeated, pulling out his phone to look up the location. "Industrial nightclub, lots of noise and activity. That’s actually perfect. The ambient chaos will give us cover to watch without being obvious."

  "Then it's settled," Katrina said. "Tonight. Nine PM. Oleksii will position himself near his anchor, appearing vulnerable and separated from the council. Mac and Garrick will watch from concealment." Her eyes fixed on me. "Do not let him be taken. Do you understand? If this goes wrong, if Oleksii is trapped—"

  "We won't let that happen," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

  "See that you don't."

  By 8:45 PM, Garrick and I were positioned in the shadows across from the Cross Club. The building itself was a monument to Prague's industrial past reimagined for the modern age. The exterior was all exposed brick and steel beams, neon lights cutting through the darkness, and a sound system that blasted bass so heavy I could feel it in my chest even from across the street. People lined up at the entrance, dressed in black and chrome, eager to lose themselves in music and movement and the kind of controlled chaos that nightclubs specialized in.

  And somewhere beneath all that, in the building's foundation, was Oleksii's anchor. The cornerstone of the factory he'd built in the 1890s, before he'd died in the machinery he'd worked so hard to perfect. "There," Garrick murmured, nodding toward an alley that ran alongside the club.

  Oleksii materialized from the shadows, his form more solid than I'd seen it before thanks to being so close to his anchor. He looked around, playing the part of a ghost checking his territory, then settled against the alley wall in a position that appeared relaxed but left him exposed.

  The bait was set.

  "Concealment?" I asked.

  Garrick nodded and placed his hand on my shoulder. The now-familiar sensation of pins and needles cascaded through my body. It was uncomfortable, but finally manageable now that it wasn’t a new sensation. The world around us shimmered slightly, and I knew we'd become invisible to supernatural senses.

  We waited.

  Nine PM became nine-fifteen. Nine-fifteen became nine-thirty. The bass from the club pounded a steady rhythm that matched my heartbeat. My legs started to cramp from standing still. I shifted my weight, trying to stay focused despite the boredom that came with any stakeout.

  "There," Garrick breathed.

  A figure had appeared at the far end of the alley. Tall, aristocratic bearing, moving with the fluid grace that only a vampire could sport. Lord Konstantin Vasile had arrived. Had we been wrong about him after all?

  My heart rate spiked. This was it. We were about to catch the culprit in the act and (hopefully) get a lead on Dorota.

  But Konstantin didn't approach Oleksii. Instead, he melted into the shadows on the opposite side of the alley, positioning himself where he could watch the ghost without being seen. He was staking out the same target we were.

  "What's he doing?" I whispered, barely audible even to myself.

  "I don't know," Garrick murmured back. "But something's wrong. If he was here to trap Oleksii, he'd have made his move by now, don’t you think?"

  I nodded. We waited. The three of us in the shadows all watching the same ghost. Oleksii continued his performance of vulnerability, occasionally flickering as if his connection to his anchor was wavering.

  Then another figure emerged from the shadows.

  This one was different. Hooded, wearing a long coat that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Their face was covered by a mask. The mask was something dark and featureless that left only the mouth exposed. The figure moved with a vampire's speed and silence, appearing beside Oleksii so quickly that even I barely tracked the movement.

  Oleksii turned, his form solidifying into something more defensive. "Who—"

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  The masked vampire raised a hand, and I saw something glint in the neon light from the club. A bottle. Small, with runes carved into its surface.

  "No!" Konstantin's voice rang out across the alley as he stepped from concealment. "Stand down. Your master Samuel can't protect you from this crime."

  The masked vampire's head snapped toward Konstantin. When they spoke, their voice was toneless, like a feed from a bad walkie talkie. They were disguising it somehow. "You're the one who should stand down, Konstantin. The only criminal here is the one without a mask to hide their shame."

  My mind raced. The masked vampire was accusing Konstantin. Konstantin was accusing the masked vampire. I looked at Garrick, who pointed at me and silently mouthed “left”, indicating Konstantin. I nodded (though I was unsure what the hell I could do against either vampire).

  "Now!" Garrick shouted, dropping our concealment.

  We burst from our hiding spot, running toward the confrontation. "Both of you freeze!" I yelled, aware of how absurd it was for a mortal to be giving orders to ancient vampires but too committed to the moment to care.

  "Oleksii, flee!" Garrick added, his hands already glowing with that familiar starlight.

  Oleksii didn't need to be told twice. He vanished, his form dispersing like smoke and presumably retreating to the safety of his anchor point inside the club's foundation.

  The masked vampire started to turn toward us, their posture shifting into something that might have been surrender. But Garrick was already moving, that cosmic power building in his hands. A beam of pure white light shot across the alley and struck Konstantin square in the chest.

  The vampire diplomat went rigid, frozen mid-step, his eyes wide with fury and surprise.

  "You fool!" Konstantin snarled through paralyzed lips as he headed towards the ground. "I'm not—"

  But Garrick had already shifted his attention to the masked vampire, who'd raised their hands in in submission. Relief flooded through me. We'd done it. We'd caught the culprit and—

  The masked vampire's hand moved. Not toward their face. Toward their coat.

  "Gun!" I shouted, but I was too slow, my human reflexes no match for what happened next.

  The vampire pulled a pistol from their coat and fired.

  The sound was deafening in the narrow alley, echoing off brick and concrete. I saw the muzzle flash, and could almost see the bullet leave the barrel in what felt like slow motion even though it was happening faster than thought.

  And then Garrick was in front of me.

  I hadn't seen him move. One moment he was three feet to my left, the next he was directly in my line of sight, his body between me and the bullet. The impact hit him in the chest and the force of it—the sheer kinetic energy—drove him backward.

  Into me.

  We went down hard. Garrick's weight slammed into me and we both hit the cobblestones with enough force to drive the air from my lungs. I landed on my side, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact, pain exploding through my arm and ribs. Garrick landed worse—his head cracked against a raised stone with a sickening sound that made my stomach turn.

  He went limp. Completely, terrifyingly limp.

  "Garrick!" I gasped, trying to pull air into lungs that didn't want to work. "Garrick, get up!"

  He didn't move. Blood was spreading across his chest where the bullet had entered, and his head was bleeding too, a dark pool forming on the cobblestones.

  The masked vampire stood over us, and I could see a smirk of amusement on his exposed mouth.

  "A mortal," they said, their voice still muffled but carrying a tone of dark humor. "Playing an immortal's chess game. How... quaint." They tilted their head, studying me like I was an interesting insect. "Your piece has been captured, little human. Checkmate."

  I tried to scramble to my feet, tried to run or fight or do anything, but my body wasn't responding right. My shoulder screamed in pain and I could barely shove myself to a sitting position. I got maybe halfway up before the vampire was on me.

  They moved with speed that defied physics, crossing the distance between us in less than a heartbeat. One hand grabbed my injured shoulder sending fresh waves of agony through my arm and slammed me back down against the cobblestones. The other hand pinned my chest, holding me in place with strength that felt like it could crush steel.

  "No—" I started to say, but the word died as the vampire's mouth descended toward my neck.

  The first sensation was pain. Sharp, burning pain as fangs punctured skin and muscle, tearing through flesh with surgical precision. I gasped, tried to pull away, but the vampire's grip was absolute. I couldn't move. Couldn't fight. Could barely breathe.

  Then the pain transformed into something else entirely.

  Warmth flooded through me, starting at the puncture wounds and spreading outward in waves that felt like liquid pleasure. My muscles relaxed. The agony in my shoulder faded to a distant ache. Even the raw terror of being fed upon began to dissolve into a haze of euphoria that felt better than anything I'd ever experienced.

  It was like the time I'd fallen out of a tree when I was sixteen and was brought to the hospital. I'd broken my arm in three places and torn something in my shoulder, and they'd given me Dilaudid through an IV while they worked on my broken arm. I remembered how the pain had just... stopped. How everything had become soft and warm and perfect. How I'd floated in that medicated haze and thought nothing in the world could ever hurt me again.

  This was that feeling multiplied by a thousand.

  My body went slack in the vampire's grip. Not because I wanted it to. But because fighting felt impossible when everything felt this good. My heartbeat slowed, each pulse sending more of that incredible sensation through my veins. My vision started to blur at the edges, reality becoming soft and indistinct.

  And somewhere beneath the euphoria, horror bloomed.

  Because I understood now. I understood why vampires could feed in public, could seduce their victims, could take and take and take until there was nothing left. Because who would fight this? Who could fight this? When every instinct in your body was screaming that this was the best thing that had ever happened to you, that you'd do anything for it to continue, that nothing else mattered except this feeling…

  I thought of Michael. One of my foster fathers, one of the good ones. He'd hurt his back in a construction accident and they'd prescribed him Oxycodone for the pain. I'd watched him spiral, watched him surrender to the high again and again, choosing the pills over everything else. Over his wife. Over the foster kids in his care. Over his own future.

  I'd never understood it. Never understood how someone could make that choice. How they could know something was destroying them and choose it anyway.

  Now I understood. Gods help me, I understood completely.

  The vampire was still feeding. I feel my strength draining away with each pull, each swallow. Feel myself getting weaker, lighter, more distant from my own body. The euphoria remained, but now it was tinged with something else. A floating sensation. Like I was untethered from gravity, from reality, from life itself.

  My vision darkened. Not the soft blur from before, but actual darkness creeping in from the edges. My thoughts became fragmented, dream-like. Garrick was hurt. I needed to help Garrick. But I couldn't move. Couldn't even remember why moving mattered.

  I was dying. Again.

  The thought drifted through my consciousness without much weight. Just an observation. A fact, delivered to a mind that was too far gone to process fear.

  I was dying, and it felt wonderful. I really should have stayed in Salem. What the hell good is a person like me in some great cosmic game of chess? I thought of Javi, and the life he had given me by hiring me. I’d thanked him many times, but damn if I didn’t want to just say thank you one more time.

  My hearing started to fade. The bass from the club became distant thunder. The sound of the vampire feeding, that wet, rhythmic pulling had become white noise. The world narrowed to just the sensation. Just the feeling. Just the slow, gentle dissolution of everything I was.

  Then…a shout. Distant. Male. Angry.

  I was pretty sure the vampire's mouth left my neck, because suddenly my neck went from warm to freezing.

  Suddenly I could breathe again, though each breath felt thin and inadequate. The euphoria remained but began to fade at the edges, where delayed pain wanted to return unwanted and harsh. I tried to open my eyes, managed to get them maybe halfway.

  The masked vampire was standing now, looking toward something I couldn't see. Their posture was tense, alert. They took a step back from me. Then they were gone. Just gone, moving so fast I couldn't track it even if I'd had the strength to try.

  I lay on the cobblestones, staring up at the night sky over Prague. Stars. There were stars up there, though I couldn't quite focus on them. My neck felt wet and cold. My whole body felt wrong, it felt all light, and empty, like someone had scooped out everything vital and left just the shell. I tried to move and I think I managed to twitch one finger.

  Then I felt a new sensation. Not pain, exactly. More like... motion. I was moving. Rising up from the ground. Floating. This was it, I thought distantly. This was death. The final letting go. The moment when the soul separated from the body and drifted away to wherever souls went.

  I'd always wondered what it would feel like. Turned out it felt like floating. The darkness came for me again, and this time I didn't fight it.

  I let go. And drifted away into nothing.