The drive to New Mexico was almost twenty hours. I spent almost all of it obsessing over how I would make my entrance back into my family’s life.

I had heard stories growing up about how, when people turned into vampires, they turned into different people. The image of the bloodthirsty, soulless vampire wasn’t just something that humans made up. It was something magics believed, too.

My experience had blown all of that out of the water. I wasn’t any different than I had been.

But how would my family know that? Mira read minds so she should know, but I also wasn’t super confident in her ability to be objective right now. Our family was falling apart, and she was the lone person left to face it.

Mikko, Mira, and I had always been the pillars that supported the family. I had left, but Mikko and Mira could handle it together. One less mouth to feed and one less body to keep track of.

But now Mikko was missing. The voice of reason in a group of highly emotional people. The person I could have had a hope of being on my side and making the others see it.

Now I had to go in by myself and try to justify my existence.

I knew off the bat that Annie was going to have A Problem with me being a vampire. Annie was a shapeshifter; they were practically bred to hate vampires.

Frankie would probably also have a problem. He hadn’t grown up with a magical family, but he tended to take Mikko’s lead. And when Mikko wasn’t there, he took Annie’s. Little fucker had never followed my lead.

Genie . . . I had always been closer to her than Frankie, and she never went in a direction that you expected. I had no idea how she would fall.

Entering Albuquerque finally forced me to focus on something else. I hadn’t wanted to stop off during my trip to Phoenix, but Albuquerque had someone I needed who could make my car a little less hot. While I felt I hadn’t stolen it because Karhi let me use the car whenever I wanted, I suspected he wouldn’t feel the same way, and I didn’t really plan on giving the car back. I also didn’t want him to track it.

Maybe I did steal it.

It took me a bit longer to find the chop shop than I would have liked. I got into New Mexico at four AM and finally pulled into the shop at five. I hadn’t been there since I was fourteen and I hadn’t been too good with directions at that age.

The building was behind a decommissioned train depot. It was dishwater grey with a couple windows on the top. The front had three garage doors and there was a scattering of cars parked outside.

There were no lights outside except for some security lights. I saw a couple of homeless people sleeping on the platform at the train depot. It was quiet outside, early dawn where there was just a hint of pink and grey on the horizon. The whole area seemed dead.

But I could hear the buzzing of saws and whirring of drills inside. Davie J’s was busy and alive.

I didn’t really know the best way to get in. I could pull one of the doors leading into the building off the hinges, but that seemed overt and unnecessary.

I chose to pull up in front of the garage doors and purposefully parked skewed, blocking two doors. I clocked two security cameras mounted on the wall. Perfect. I settled in to wait, leaving all my lights on.

I only waited about five minutes before a man came out of a door a few yards from where I sat.

“Lady, you can’t park here,” the man said as I got out of the car. He was a short Latino man in his early thirties. He looked cranky and tired.

“I’m looking for Davie J,” I said.

“That’s nice, but if you want him to do your car, you’re going to have to wait until we open or leave your key with us.”

“I’m not real interested in getting the car fixed so much as . . . fixed.” I raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for the penny to drop.

The man looked from me to the car. It clicked. “That car’s nice,” he said. He reached out to touch the hood.

“Put your hand on it and lose the hand,” I growled.

Humans don’t respond well to threats from a vampire, even if they don’t actually know you’re a vampire. Survival instincts or something, I guess.

He stopped short of touching the car and glared at me. “What do you want, lady?”

“Davie J,” I said.

He scowled at me until finally, “Come in.”

He led me back in the shop. I locked the car before following him.

The garage stank of gas and sweat. Men blackened with oil and grease worked with disassembled car parts. Two cars raised in the air were missing pieces.

No one paid me or the man any attention. He took me to the back and up a set of stairs. At the top was a door with a window that overlooked the shop. Light from behind illuminated the blinds that covered the window, revealing grease and dust caking the plastic.

The man knocked on the door.

“What?” The voice in the room behind the door was gruff from years of smoking.

“Davie, there’s a woman here to see you.”

“Come in.”

The man opened the door, and I walked in. He closed the door behind me and left me in a small office.

It was an office and, dirty blinds aside, it was surprisingly clean for being in a chop shop. There were tan filing cabinets along the back wall. A man in his mid-forties sat behind a desk with a computer, arms behind his head, revealing a truly impressive amount of black armpit hair. He had a mechanic’s hat on his head and wore a white tank top. His face was lopsided, like someone took a frying pan to it. He really embodied the ideal of a seedy car shop owner.

Beady brown eyes focused on me and looked me up and down, trying to get a read on why I was there. He spent an uncomfortable amount of time looking at my chest. I wasn’t even wearing anything that exciting—black jeans and a band T-shirt with combat boots.

“What can I do for you, little lady?” he finally asked, pointing to one of the two seats in front of his desk.

I ignored the offer to sit and leaned against the doorway, crossing my hands over my chest. “I need a VIN scrubbed, new registration papers, Arizona plates, and a GPS thoroughly killed.”

His eyebrows rose. “Very specific requests.”

“I need the car,” I replied. “Don’t need the attention.”

“What type of car?”

“2007 Black Jetta.”

He whistled. “That’ll come pricey. And with time.”

“How much and how long?” I asked.

“7K and two days.”

“Fuck you.”

He stood up straight out of his chair, his ears turning red with anger. “What the hell did you say to me?”

Davie J was maybe five-ten standing up straight. I had been slouching against the door, but I stood up to my full height now, a good three inches taller than him. He took a small step back without even realizing it as I did. “3K and three hours. There’s hardly any hardware, just some forging.”

My counteroffer seemed to give him his courage back and he straightened back up. “Lady, get the fuck out of my office.”

“No,” I snapped. “Tryin’a fuckin’ rip me off. I wonder what Carlos Vasquez would have to say, finding out you were trying to rip off one of his kids again.”

He froze. His brow furrowed, and he squinted his eyes. I saw recognition dawn on his face, and he looked uneasy. “You’re one of those two little girls he brought here a few years back. Someone stole yer friend’s car, and he was gettin’ it back for you two.”

“Someone? If I recall correctly, it was one of the kids that worked here at the time.”

He didn’t have a reply for that.

I remained silent, waiting for him to break the silence.

It didn’t take long. I was much more comfortable with silence than he was. “Alright,” he finally said. “3K and three hours it is. I’ll get my best guys on it. Car in front of the doors?”

I nodded. I pulled the cash out of my back pocket and shelled out two grand there. “I’ll give you the other grand when you’re done,” I said. I handed him my driver’s license. “Spell my name right and make sure it’s all legit as hell.”

“What kind of two-bit place you think I run here?” he sneered, snatching my ID from me.

I leveled a cool gaze at him. “And if I find you used any of my information for anything, I’ll come back and tear you down. Got it?”

“We run a confidential business here,” he snapped. But I could hear his heartbeat from where I stood; it had sped up. I made him nervous, and he didn’t like it. Humans didn’t like angry vampires. They didn’t even like mildly annoyed vampires.

“I’ll be back at eight.”

I was surprised how similar the Swanskin’s in New Mexico was to the one in Minnesota. Dark wood, indigenous art, carved pillars—even the bartender was similar.

I stopped in my tracks when I stepped in. “Niqui?”

The bartender looked up at me. It was Niqui. Except her hair was cut shorter in a pixie cut.

“Naw,” she shook her head, setting down a bar towel on the counter. “Lisa. Her twin.”

“Oh,” I said, sitting down at the bar. “Jesus.” I took off my backpack and hung it up on a hook under the counter.

“What can I get you, stranger?”

“Sloane.”

“Oh!” She clapped her hands in excitement. “The vampire that works for Niqui, right? You were human when she first hired you?”

“Yeah.” She’d never mentioned that her sister was her identical twin, just her twin.

I stopped. Wait, that didn’t make sense. They couldn’t be identical. “Wait . . . Niqui is trans?”

Lisa raised an eyebrow. “And?”

They must have just been those super fraternal twins that looked almost identical, regardless of gender assigned at birth.

I shook my head. “Never mind. I’ll have a blood and tonic.”

“Sure.” She turned to get the gin from the back wall. “What brings you to Albuquerque?” she asked as she worked on the drink.

“I’m headed to Phoenix,” I said. “Just passin’ through. Had to quit my job with Niqui. Family emergency.”

“Ah. Those are my favorite.” The look on her face told me how sincere she was, and I chuckled. She set my drink down in front of me. “How long you gonna be in town for?”

“Until one,” I said. “Then I’m on my way.”

“Hmm,” she said, eyeing me with mock suspicion. “Stuck here for a few hours. Notice you didn’t come in a car.”

I gave her a half smile.

“So, either you ran half the country or you’re having some things changed around for you.”

I shrugged a shoulder. She was a lot nosier than her sister.

She shook a finger at me. “I like you. Stick around ‘till you need to go.” She left to bus a table.

There were only a few people in the room—three mages in a booth together, a catshifter on his own, and a white-haired human in the corner. It was a pretty quiet morning crowd. I smelled eggs and bacon and could hear the clacking of spatulas on a grill top in the kitchen.

I reached into my backpack and pulled out a paperback copy of Catch-22. I’d been trying to find a chunk of time to read it for months, but I could never find the energy to want to read it. I had plenty of time to make a dent in it now.

At seven AM, the bell on the door tinkled. I looked up.

A group of men in their mid-twenties shuffled in. They all either wore or carried yellow hardhats and orange visibility vests. A couple of them wore overalls with reflective tape on the straps.

I looked back down at my book.

I heard footsteps behind me and then the pungent, musty smell of unwashed man and wet dog hit me. One of the construction workers stepped up to the bar. I wrinkled my nose absently and turned a page.

“Do you have a problem?”

It took me a second to realize the question was aimed at me.

I looked up to see the construction worker glaring at me. His brow was heavy over his deep set eyes, and he had several days of stubble on his chin and cheeks. He was some type of dogshifter.

I stuck my finger in my book. “What?”

“You made a face when I walked up. You have a problem with a shifter being around you? Did I offend your delicate vampire sensibilities?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “No, but your stench did.”

He sneered at me. “Look, you—”

“Can I help you?” Lisa interrupted, back at the bar from serving a table.

I turned back to my book and ignored the dogshifter.

“I thought this was a respectable place,” the dogshifter muttered, casting me a venomous look.

Lisa crossed her hands over her chest, a nonplussed expression on her face. “You came to the wrong place if you expected to be isolated from any magic you didn’t like. Now, you can either play nice with my other patrons, or you can get the hell out.”

I smirked, turning a page.

The dogshifter growled something unintelligible under his breath, but he backed down. “We want to order,” he muttered.

Lisa took his order and left to put it in. The shifter glared at me but shuffled back to his table. It was a weird combination of outright hostility and tired movement.

Lisa came back to the bar as I drained the rest of my drink. “You want some more?”

“Can I just have some straight blood? Don’t need to drive with an alcohol level when my car is finally ready.”

“No problem,” she said, pulling out a packet of blood from beneath the bar. As she did, I heard grumbling from the shifter construction workers.

Lisa rolled her eyes as she pulled out her blood warmer. “Ridiculous.”

“Them?”

She nodded, dumping the blood in the pitcher and turning it on. “It’s never been a secret that all the Swanskins’ bars are friendly to all magics. A chain of bars run by a family of former and current bounty hunters? We’re not going to be that picky.”

“I always thought that since most of your family are shifters, you’d hate vampires.” I closed my book, interest piqued.

She shook her head. “I’ve found that the longer you do bounty hunting, the less you care about the individual magics. The hatred for vampires runs strong for shifters, mages, paramortals, et cetera. But when you actually have to work with them, doing bounties, or getting information on bounties—being prejudiced closes far more doors than it opens.”

I tilted my head at her. “I’ve never heard anyone . . . defend vampires?”

She shrugged. “Sure, there’s a hatred of vampires for the supposed centuries they killed and feasted on humans indiscriminately.” She pulled the pitcher off the warmer. “There’s a similar outdated myth that the savage Indians did the same thing.”

I had also grown up around the notion that vampires killed and ate indiscriminately. But . . . save for a couple, I hadn’t really actually met any who did that. At least, not on purpose.

She handed me my blood. “And I’m sure your sire has taught you, if you ever drink from a human, leaving them dead is much more work than just drinking a bit and leaving them alone with a vague happy memory of hooking up with a hottie.”

She wasn’t wrong. The general rules I had been taught were that the easiest way to get blood from a live human was to seduce them. There was a small amount of venom and coagulant in our spit—making humans heal quickly from bites and making them forget that the feeding ever happened at all. If they even noticed. They usually didn’t.

Killing a human to feed just involved so much more work. It was generally understood that if you killed one, you disposed of the body. And on top of that, you were to make reparations to the families of the deceased. It wasn’t a law, but it was a common courtesy.

Karhi had said that human authorities didn’t take well to cause of death being exsanguination. Nor did the vampire courts. Kill too many humans without cleaning up after yourself, and you found yourself on the chopping block by the courts.

Fledglings weren’t really allowed to feed directly from humans alone. The thirst could sometimes be too overwhelming, and the fledgling could hurt the human. I had never experienced that, but I also hadn’t tried to drink directly from a human.

We moved on to other topics and chatted for a while longer. The construction workers left.

My phone buzzed with a restricted number. I let it go to voicemail, in case it was Karhi, and listened when I got the notification that I had a voicemail.

It was Davie J telling me my car was ready.

I drained the last of my blood before putting my book back in my bag. I hopped off my stool. “Thanks, Lisa. I have to head out.”

“Alright,” she said, taking my glass. “Glad I got to meet my sister’s star employee.”

I waved as I left.

Swanskin’s was in a quieter part of the city. There were a few cars here and there, but no real activity. It was a calm day. The sun was about a third of the way into the sky. It was a weekday I was pretty sure. Maybe Monday?

The bar sat at the end of the block. Cutting through the alley behind the bar would save me a bit of time and give me some shade. I didn’t experience warmth and cold like I used to, but the sun was a lot brighter than it used to be. I had left my sunglasses in the car.

Stepping into the shade, it struck me that the odor of garbage wasn’t what I expected. It was there, but the smell of unwashed skin and wet dog overpowered it.

I stopped, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

Two of the dogshifters from the bar stepped out from behind a dumpster twenty yards ahead of me.

I heard feet slam into the ground. I looked back to see two more men crouching behind me. They had jumped down from the building. One of them was the dickhead I had spoken to in the bar.

There was a fire escape between me and the two men further inside the alley. I looked up, ready to take it up to the roof.

There were two more up there looking down at me. For fuck’s sake.

Shapeshifters are just as fast and strong as fledglings. Oftentimes, more so. Vampires don’t get their full powers until they hit their year mark. I had more juice than a human, but full-grown shifters may as well have had the whole bottle of juice.

I backed away from them. “Did you wait outside to six-on-one a fledgling?”

“We had some unfinished business,” Dickhead said.

“Unfinished business?”

“I didn’t much like the way you wrinkled your nose at me when I walked up to order.”

“I didn’t much like the way you seem to think bathing is an optional pastime reserved for other people,” I replied, stopping with my back to the wall. “We can’t all be happy all the time.”

His lip curled, a growl rumbling from his throat. “You’re going to regret saying that.”

The dogshifters from behind the dumpsters launched themselves at me.

I had stopped underneath a fire escape. It was a disadvantage because I was against a wall, but also an advantage because I grabbed onto the ladder over my head and lifted myself up. I kicked out and caught the dogs in the chest, knocking them back.

The dog with the one I’d insulted ducked under my kick, but I pulled back and brought my legs down on his shoulders. I let go of the bars and spun around, tightening my legs around his neck. I jerked back, bracing my arms against his back, and he fell.

I rolled on the ground and came up to the two dogs I’d kicked back.

One aimed his fist at my face, but I moved into his reach, grabbing his wrist and wrapping my arm around his just before he hit. I heaved back and up, his elbow popping. He shouted in pain. I twisted away straight into the arms of another dog.

I tried to drop my weight, but he pulled me up off the ground.

Dickhead came forward, baring teeth that were a little too long and sharp now. “You should’ve just kept to yourself,” he growled.

I spat in his face.

He slapped me, the sting of claws cutting through my cheek. Claws tipped the ends of his fingers. The bastard had partially transformed to slap me.

I brought my knees to my chest and kicked out. He dodged the kick and pain tore through my shoulders with a popping sound. Dislocated shoulders. Fuck.

“Stupid fucking bloodsucker,” Dickhead snarled. There were even more teeth in his mouth.

He said something else, but I didn’t catch it. There was a new player standing behind him that was much more interesting.

The dog was six feet. The man behind him was closer to seven feet.

An absolute unit, he was the size of a house with rippling muscles and hands that looked like they could palm dinner plates. His skin was rough and wrinkled and he had a wicked scar going through his eyebrow, stopping below his eye. His hair was snow white, cropped close to his head in a military cut. I recognized him from Swanskin’s. He’d been sitting in a corner by himself.

The dog behind me must have been staring up, too, because Dickhead spun around to attack what was behind him, but the man caught his arm and twisted it. I heard the crack of bones breaking and the dog howled in pain.

“What are you doing here, whelp?” the man growled, barely opening his mouth. “Cornering a vamp because she bruised your ego?”

“Who the hell are you?” the dog roared. It was a whiny roar, more from pain than any sort of intimidation.

I didn’t have time to warn him as the other two dogs lunged at him. But I didn’t need to. He moved so fast, kicking one and throat punching the other. Was he even human? He didn’t smell like a vampire or shifter.

“Go home,” the man growled, his voice low and dangerous as the shifters groaned on the ground. “You’re not going to want to start this fight.” His eyes were an icy, impenetrable blue. Even I felt cold. He would follow through on his words.

The dogs seemed to catch that, too. The dog that had started the fight glanced at me and then said, “It’s not worth it, guys. Come on.” His voice was strained from the pain of the broken wrist, but he managed to retain a little dignity. Not much, but a little.

“Wise choice, cub,” the man rumbled.

The dogs let go of me and stalked away. They reminded me almost of stray dogs in the rain—sad and pathetic.

I stood up, my shoulders throbbing, and looked up at the man. “Do I have to worry about you now?” The enemy of my enemy was rarely my friend.

“Lisa suspected the ambush coming when you left. She sent me out after you as a favor to her.”

I looked him up and down. “I can see why. Someone’s been eating their Wheaties.”

He didn’t reply to that. “Just don’t get in anymore trouble. It’s not my style to help vampires.”

It wasn’t my style to need help, but I didn’t say anything like that. “Thanks,” I said instead.

The statement of gratitude seemed to surprise him. He glanced at me before nodding and grunting. He left.

I backed up against the alley. This was going to suck.

Bracing myself against the wall, I reached up and grabbed my shoulder, resisting the urge to whimper. Then I shoved it back while leaning against the wall. I hissed over the sound of my shoulder popping back into place. I repeated the procedure on the other shoulder. It hurt less that time.

I’d heal up fast enough. For now, the pain would just be a little less than terrible.