I preferred to be called by the abbreviation of my real name.

Tammy gave Trixie a frank stare. “Is she dead, too?”

Trixie grinned, showing off the gold plating on her fangs. “Does that answer your question?”

“Ew,” Tammy said.

I rolled my eyes and mouthed Sorry to Trixie, but she didn’t seem to care about Tammy’s comment.

“No fireworks inside,” Trixie said, giving my hand a last, friendly squeeze.

I glanced at my hands and suppressed a shudder. One of my new tricks as a vampire was that when I got really pissed, flames shot from my hands. Guess word of that had spread. It shouldn’t surprise me. Nobody loved gossip as much as people who’d had centuries of experience spreading it.

“We’re not here for trouble,” Bones said.

Trixie laughed. “That’ll be the day when you don’t leave trouble in your wake, Bones. Just keep it away from here.”

“She knows you pretty well, huh?” I asked once we’d come inside.

Bones’s mouth quirked. “Not as well as you’re implying, Kitten.”

It was a valid guess. Bones looked like temptation incarnate, and he’d been around the block for hundreds of years before he met me. If I assumed he’d slept with every female vampire he introduced me to, I’d be right more than I was wrong.

I pushed that thought away with all the other things I didn’t like to dwell on. “Come on. I can smell the gin and tonic up ahead.”

It was true. I smelled the different alcohols as the bartenders poured them, the myriad of other people’s scents mixed with different perfumes, aftershaves, and the tang of blood. Add that to the pulsating music, the muted strobe lights, the crush of people, and the energy wafting from everyone without a heartbeat, and I felt almost drunk from sensory overload.

“You couldn’t feel it the last time, but you can now, can’t you?” Bones whispered. “How thin the line is here between the normal and the paranormal. I told you Ohio was a supernatural hotspot. This club was built on an even bigger one. Feels like a charge in your blood, doesn’t it?”

It did. No wonder the undead flocked to hotspots. Alcohol and drugs couldn’t affect me anymore, but being surrounded by all the inhuman occupants, where magic seemed to throb just below the surface, was sensual and exhilarating.

“Forget the drink. Let’s dance.”

My voice came out lower than I intended. Green appeared in the dark depths of Bones’s eyes.

“Are you guys going to let me dance and have a little fun for once?” Tammy grumbled.

Bones swept out his hand. “By all means. Only don’t leave the dance floor for any reason, or I’ll lock you in your closet for a week.”

Even if Tammy didn’t know from experience that Bones never bluffed, his expression must have convinced her, because she gulped.

“Stay on the dance floor. Got it.”

“Right, then. Off you go.”

Four

BONES was pressed to my back, his hips swaying against mine while his hands slid down my sides with a slow caress. Our recent celibacy combined with the brush of his lips on my neck, the coiled power pushing at his aura, plus all the mystic energy swirling around us, made me want to find the nearest corner and commit unspeakable acts on him.

But even the headiness of the atmosphere and the sensuality of dancing with Bones couldn’t make me endanger Tammy—or have sex in public, like some people did at these clubs.

“After this is over with Tammy, we’re coming back here,” I murmured. “I bet you know where the private spots are in this place, and I intend to molest you in every one of them.”

He laughed, sending tingles down my neck where his breath landed. “What a scandalous notion. I vow I’m blushing.”

I doubted Bones had blushed since the Declaration of Independence was signed. In 1776, Bones would have been ten, I thought hazily, shuddering as his fangs grazed my pulse in a tantalizing way. Close. At seventeen, he was prostituting himself to the women of the English ton in order to survive.

“Ready for that drink, luv?” Bones asked, turning me around to face him.

Yeah, I was ready for a drink, but not gin and tonic. I wanted to bury my fangs in Bones’s throat and drain him until there was only enough blood left in him to keep him hard.

Hunger swelled in me at the thought. Changing from a half-breed into a vampire had had unexpected side effects. I was only mostly dead, as my occasional heartbeat evidenced, and I drank vampire blood instead of human blood.