“Vlad,” he corrected.
“What’s a Movementarian?”
Vlad glared at Nina. “We are not Movementarians. We are soldiers of the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement.”
“And that is …?” I tried again.
Nina checked out her cuticles. “It’s a bunch of loony vamps that want to drag vampirism back to the dark ages. Hence”—she gestured toward Vlad—“the castle Drac wear. They always talk about going back to the ‘old ways’—and are especially against humans.”
“Not true,” Vlad said with a hungry grin. “We love humans.” His dark eyes settled on me, and I shuddered.
Nina glared at Vlad, then climbed up on the couch, standing on a cushion so she was nose to nose with him. She began wagging her finger a quarter-inch from his nose.
“Look, Louis, if you even think about drinking the tiniest blood bubble from Sophie, I will stake you and behead you myself.”
“You really frighten me,” Vlad said, deadpan.
“And I’ll turn that human girl who was always trolling around you back home, and you’ll be stuck with her whiney, Hannah Montana countenance for all of eternity.”
Vlad snarled and went back to his laptop. “I wouldn’t have eaten her,” he muttered to the screen.
Nina hopped off the couch and smiled down at me. “Teenagers.” She shrugged. “So, Sophie, how was your day?” She folded her legs underneath her and kicked off a pair of complicated-looking heels, then sunk onto the sofa next to me. I shivered and pulled my robe tighter against the waft of cool air that came from her marble skin.
“Thanks for not letting him eat me,” I whispered, leaning into her.
“I wasn’t going to eat you!” Vlad called without looking up from his laptop. “At least not a lot.”
“So,” Nina repeated, her midnight-dark eyes glittering, “how was your day with Officer Love? Excellent? Wonderful? A freak show of wild, breather sex?”
“I’m sitting right here!” Vlad moaned.
“You’re one hundred and twelve, get over it. Humans have sex,” Nina called back.
“Gross.”
I downed my wine and Nina frowned.
“That bad, huh?” she asked.
“Not with Officer Lo—I mean Detective Hayes. He’s fine—straddles that fine line between obnoxious and wonderfully hot—but fine. It’s this case.” I shuddered. “There was another murder today.”
I saw the top of Vlad’s head poke over his laptop screen as he listened in. Nina looked away, reaching for an out-of-date InStyle magazine on the coffee table. “I still don’t see why this is such a big deal. Everyone kills everyone in this city. Everyone’s either dead, undead, or dying.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. “Nina, this is serious. The crime scene, it was awful. It was a woman our—or, my—age. There was blood everywhere.” I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. “And someone removed the woman’s heart.”
Nina’s eyes flashed. “Removed it?”
“Removed it?” Vlad repeated. “Completely?”
I nodded. “Gone. Hayes is convinced it’s a vampire.”
“Stupid,” Vlad groaned, going back to his computer game.
Nina raised an eyebrow and snapped a magazine page, ignoring Vlad. “Is that so?” She sat forward. “Does this detective even know anything about vampires? Anything at all? Humf.” She snapped another page. “He probably thinks we’re anti-garlic, too.”
“You hate garlic.”
Nina pinned me with a glare. “It gives me bad breath.”
I pinned her back. “You don’t have breath.”
Vlad chuckled from his spot at the table.
Nina rolled her eyes. “Anyway. We don’t do hearts. Or waste blood. Ever. Starving vamps in Africa, you know?” She pointed, her eyes narrowed. “Hobgoblins. That’s what you’re dealing with. They’re sloppy. And into all those weird organ meats.”
I could feel my eyes bulge.
“And they’re more likely to go rogue. Hobgoblins and zombies. They have no respect for the rules.”
“Ghouls either,” Vlad supplied.
“What do you think of me in this dress?” Nina folded a page back and held the magazine up to her narrow cheekbone. “Good?”
I sunk back into the couch, my stomach gurgling. “I can’t think of fashion right now. People are dying. And other people are thinking it’s coming from the Underworld. You know—”
Nina wrinkled her pixie nose. “I know. Delicate balance between worlds, blah, blah, blah.” She tossed the magazine and kicked her legs up onto the coffee table, balancing her chin in her palm. “You don’t think it’s coming from the Underworld?”
“I don’t know. There was veiling and a pentagram, so it’s got to be someone who knows their magics.”
Nina eyed me, the corners of her mouth turning up. “Pentagrams? How very every eighties horror movie. And any demon could learn to veil; it’s magic one-oh-one.”
“Can you?” I asked.