I felt my spirits sinking faster than the Titanic. “He took my phone.”

“Same here,” I heard Dana say, rustling to my right. “He left a nail file, though. Think that might help?”

“It’s worth a try.”

We held hands, feeling our way in the dark back toward the knob-less door, and stuck the metal file into the crack between the door and the jamb. Dana wiggled it, twisted it, moved it up and down.

But the door stayed shut.

I’m not sure how long we stood there jiggling, but my right foot was just starting to join my left in dreamland when I heard a sound on the other side of the door.

I froze.

I felt Dana go still beside me. She’d heard it too.

We both jumped back, and I bit my lip, uncertain if I should try to hide or call for help.

“Help!” Dana yelled, apparently not having the same dilemma. “Someone help! We’re stuck in here!” she yelled.

A second later the door swung open, the sudden light blinding me. Instinctively I ducked my head, shielding my eyes from the onslaught of brightness.

“Marco!” I heard Dana yell beside me.

I blinked against the light, making out two forms silhouetted in the doorway. One was slumped forward, limp as a ragdoll, and wearing skintight pants. The other was tall, holding form number one up, and holding a gun in the other hand.

I did an involuntary yip that echoed in the corridor as the form with the gun unceremoniously dumped Marco at our feet.

“Marco, can you hear me?” Dana asked, quickly crawling toward him.

“Don’t move,” the figure holding the gun informed her.

Dana froze.

“Either of you,” he said, swinging the weapon my way.

I wisely froze, too.

The figure reached behind himself and shut the door again, closing off any means of escape, then switched on a flashlight, bathing the room in soft light.

I looked up at our attacker, expecting to see icy blue eyes and a pair of fangs gleaming at me.

Instead, I saw a thick head of hair, thick glasses, and a thick dimpled neck.

Bill Blaise.

I blinked, feeling a frown form between my eyebrows as I took in his black slacks, black jacket, and costume-store fangs. “I don’t understand,” I mused out loud. “What are you doing here?”

He turned the gun my way. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here, is the question,” he countered. “What are you doing nosing around where you don’t belong. Stirring up trouble where there was none. Digging into people’s personal lives that should be left alone.”

Honestly? I did have a habit of doing that. But I didn’t think now was the time to admit it.

“Against the wall,” he said, motioning Dana and I to the far side of the corridor.

We scuttled backward, crab-walking until I felt the concrete of the wall hit my back.

“You killed Alexa?” I asked, puzzle pieces slowly falling into place.

He spun on me. “Brilliant, Sherlock,” he said, heavy on the sarcasm.

“But why?”

“Why? Because the bitch was blackmailing me, that’s why,” he spit out, just this side of foaming at the mouth.

“So this never did have anything to do with vampires,” Dana mused.

Blaise shot her a look. “Of course it did. What do you think she was blackmailing me over?”

“Wait,” said, my little mental hamster jumping on her wheel as I took in his outfit again. “You mean, you are a vampire?”

“Oh, don’t be so Moonlight. Of course I’m not. There is no such thing as a real vampire. But, once a month I played vampire at one of Sebastian’s parties. Goldstein turned me on to them one night while I was in town signing some documents. He said they were a great way to unwind.”

“And when Alexa started working here, she saw you at one,” I finished.

He nodded. “Yes. Yes, she did.”

“And she threatened to tell your wife about your dress-up fetish?”

Again he shot me a look like I was denser than a fruit cake. “No. She threatened to tell my wife that I slept with Becca after the party.”

Mental forehead smack.

“So these are hook-up parties?” Dana asked.

Blaise nodded. “Nothing happens here, but if you want the fantasy to continue after hours, the girls are usually wiling to accommodate.” He paused. “And I couldn’t have Phoebe knowing that. She’s a very sensitive woman. It would have killed her.”

“So Alexa saw you here, watched you leave with her friend, then used that information to blackmail you,” I said.

Blaise nodded. “Stupid whore thought I would actually pay her. Do you know how much money I’ve given her over the last three years?”

I shook my head. Not that I cared. But I realized that the longer we kept him talking the longer he wasn’t shooting at us. I knew from many hours of CSI watching, that the bad guys never confessed unless they planned to get rid of the witnesses. The fact that he was spilling all didn’t bode well for our future.

But it could buy us some time.

“Thousands,” Blaise spit out, answering his own question. “Every month she came to us with her hand out, expecting me to empty my bank account. And then she had the nerve to ask for more to keep her mouth shut? Ha!” he laughed, though there was zero trace of humor in it. “No way.” He paused, his demeanor changing. “My poor wife,” he said, his voice low. “She is such a generous creature, and that Alexa just ran right over her. Exploited their relationship for everything she could. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let Alexa ruin us that way. I had to protect my wife.”

“So you killed Alexa,” I said, trying to keep him talking. I heard Marco moan at my feet, coming to. He shifted, and I noticed that Blaise hadn’t had time to disarm him of his vampire hunting kit yet. Which might have come in handy if Blaise were a real vampire. As it was, gun trumped barbeque skewer any day.

Blaise nodded. “It was too easy, really. I followed her to Crush, then slipped a little something into her drink and waited. As soon as I saw her start to stumble, I jumped in, ‘helping’ her to the ladies’ room,” he said, doing an air quote with his free hand.

“Then you staged it to look like a vampire had killed her?” Dana asked, her eyes going to Marco and his bag. She noticed the same thing I did. She looked back up at me, and raised one eyebrow in a silent question.

Sadly, I couldn’t think of any way to disarm a killer with Evian. I slowly shook my head in answer.

“I knew the vampire bite would keep the authorities guessing,” Blaise continued, oblivious to our silent exchange. “There are enough shady things going on here, enough people with secrets, that the police could be chasing their tails for weeks trying to figure out which one of Sebastian’s guests did it.”

“And that’s all you needed,” I said, a light bulb going off as I remembered our last conversation with him. “Just some time. You were stalling until after the funeral, when you were going away with your wife.” I paused. “You’re not coming back are you?”

Blaise grinned, his face a spooky jack-o-lantern imitation in the pale flashlight beam. “No. I believe an extended vacation in the Bahamas is just what my wife and I need to reconnect.”

“But what about Becca?” Dana asked. “Why kill her?”

“Because she had the nerve to pick up where Alexa left off,” he spat out. “She said she knew I’d killed Alexa. That she’d seen me take her into the restroom at Crush, and she would tell the authorities if I didn’t pay her off.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

He grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “I told her to meet me at the next party. That I’d have her cash for her then. She did, I got her a drink, and then I told her I wasn’t paying up. That she could go to the police if she wanted, but she had no proof, and I’d just tell them that she did it.”

“But you knew she wasn’t going to the police,” I pointed out. “Because you spiked her drink.”

He grinned. “I did. Two hours and she’d be showing her mortality.”

“And you’d get away with everything.”

“Right.” He paused. “As long as no one else came nosing after the truth before I had a chance to get out of town.”

I gulped. “Like us?”

“Exactly.” He took a step toward us, his eyes narrowing. “Goldstein called me after you left his office yesterday. Asking all kinds of probing questions. I can’t have people asking questions, Maddie,” he said, pointing the gun at me. “Least of all, you.”

Instinctively, I pushed back against the wall, but there was no place left for me to go.

And he knew it.

I looked down at Marco, who was awake now, his eyes blinking furiously, his mouth drawn into an “O” of surprise. If waking up in the dark had been disorienting, I could only imagine what waking up to a gun being pointed at you was like.

“So now you’re going to kill us?” Dana squeaked out, making herself as small as I was attempting to do.

Blaise nodded, slowly. “I’m sorry. Really I am. I’m not a bad guy. But I can’t have all of this coming out. My wife can’t be hurt anymore. If she knew all of this, it would devastate her. You understand, right?”

What I understood was this guy was seriously unhinged.

I watched as he took one more step forward and aimed the gun at me. I froze, feeling time stand still as I watched him wrap his fingers around the trigger.

What happened next was a blur of motion.

I acted on pure instinct, doing what every urban girl has been trained to do in the event of an attack. I grabbed my purse, closed my eyes, and flung it at the bad guy, screaming as loudly as I could.

I heard the gun go off, the smell of burnt powder filling the room.

Then I heard Dana scream, “No!”, and I opened my eyes to see her lunging at Blaise. He pointed the gun her way, but Dana had the element of surprise, tackling him from the side, wrapping both arms and legs around his middle in a wild piggyback motion.