Ramirez shook his head. “No evidence of a gunshot so far.”

“How did she die then?” I asked.

Ramirez looked past me to the crime scene. “We’ll have to wait for the M.E.’s report to be sure. But it looks like exsanguination.”

“She bled to death?” I clarified.

Ramirez nodded.

I felt a frown pull between my brows. “But there didn’t seem to be that much blood,” I pointed out, remembering the thin trickle I’d seen earlier. “I mean, I saw a little on her dress, but not much.”

He nodded. “I know. We’re looking into it. It’s possible she was killed elsewhere then dumped here.”

I felt my frown deepen. Sure, that might have been possible… but only half an hour earlier she’d been at the bar insulting me. That didn’t leave a lot of time for the killer to rush her somewhere else, bleed her to death, then rush her body back.

“What makes you think she bled to death?” I asked, wondering if maybe their theory had some holes in it.

Ramirez pursed his lips. “There were lacerations on her neck.”

“Lacerations?” I asked. “Like, cuts? Stab wounds?”

He frowned. “Sort of. More like puncture wounds.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Puncture wounds. On her neck. How many?”

Ramirez cleared his throat. “Two of them.”

“Wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “Are you telling me that she has bite marks on her neck?”

Ramirez’s mouth took on a pinched look. “Puncture wounds.”

“Holy shazbah, she was killed by a vampire bite?”

Ramirez shot me a look. “That’s it. No more Moonlight for you, Springer.”

“But you just said she was drained of blood.”

“She bled out. I didn’t say she was drained.”

“And she had bite marks.”

“Puncture wounds. And beyond that, I’m waiting for the M.E.’s report before speculating further on how or why the marks are on her neck. And,” he added giving me a stern look, “I suggest you not speculate either.”

Right. Only, how could I not? Pale skin, long black hair, bite marks, and death by blood sucking. It all added up to one thing as far as I was concerned.

Death by vampire.


* * *

“No way! Skinny Bitch Chick was a vampire?” Marco gaped at me across my kitchen table the next morning, almost spilling his mug of coffee.

I shifted in my seat. “I’m not sure we should continue calling her that now that she’s dead. And, no, she wasn’t a vampire, she was bitten by a vampire.”

“Lord have mercy, this is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me,” Marco said. “Real life Moonlight hotties walking among us.” He practically drooled at the thought.

Dana scoffed. “Come on. You don’t really believe the vampire thing, do you?”

Marco shrugged. “A boy can dream,” he answered.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t really believe there are vampires roaming among us. But here’s the thing: even if there is no such thing as a vampire, someone clearly tried to make it look like she was bitten by a vampire. Bite marks, blood drained. Someone either thinks they are a vampire or wants us to think they are.”

“What do we know about Bit-” Marco paused, catching himself just in time. “About the victim?” he amended.

“Her name is Alexa Weston,” I supplied, rattling off the stats I’d dragged out of Ramirez last night. “She’s twenty-four, lives in Burbank, no record.”

“You just described half the women in this town,” Marco pointed out, sipping at his cup. Then he made a face, scrunching his nose and pursing his lips. “Honey, what is this stuff?” he asked me.

“Um, coffee?” I answered.

“You call this coffee? Mads, my baby bottle had stronger stuff than this in it.”

“Sorry. I’m not supposed to have caffeine because of…” I gestured down to The Bump.

“So the rest of us have to suffer, too?” Marco whined, pushing his cup away.

“Well I just hope,” Dana jumped in, “that Ramirez finds the killer – immortal or otherwise,” she said shooting a look Marco’s way, “quickly, and this can all just go away. Do you know what this has done to Crush?”

I shook my head.

“Ricky told me that they’re closed until further notice. They’re losing money like crazy every day that the doors are closed. Not only that, but a club closes down for a week in this town, and no one will remember it again.”

Marco waved her off. “Sure they will. Someone was killed there.”

“Great. I can only imagine what that will do to sales.”

“It’s Hollywood, honey. Every vampire wanna-be in town is going to be flocking to it hoping to get the bite,” he argued.

Dana shot him a look. “Or it will go under because no investors will have anything to do with it, and there goes Ricky’s slowing down. He’ll be out of town filming more Moonlight movies.” She grimaced. “With Ava.”

“Come on. She can’t be that bad,” I jumped in.

“She posed nude for Playboy last week.”

“I stand corrected.”

Dana pouted again.

“Well, then we just need to make sure this case gets solved quickly,” Marco decided, patting Dana sympathetically on the arm.

“I’m sure Ramirez is on it,” I said. In fact, he’d been so on it that he’d come home only to change clothes and slip back out into the night again. A fact that had left me mildly disappointed, as I’d kinda hoped we could do a little under-the-covers making up after the not-so-fabulous encounter at Crush. Unfortunately, as I well knew when Ramirez had a case, he had a one track mind. Sleep, food, and wife fell out of the equation faster than you could say “homicide.”

But Marco shook his head. “Sure, he’s all over the fingerprints and DNA and witnesses. But what about the vampire angle? Is Ramirez really investigating that?”

I bit my lip. Not likely. In fact, he seemed pretty defiant that there was no angle. “I’m not sure he’s really convinced about the vampire thing…”

“Right,” Marco said. “But you said so yourself that someone went through some trouble to make it look like a vampire death. I’d say that makes it a pretty relevant angle.”

I had to admit, I agreed.

“And who better,” Marco went on, “to track down a vampire killer than us? I mean, how many times have you seen Moonlight?”

“Seven,” I admitted. “This week.”

He turned to Dana. “You?”

“Way too many,” she answered rolling her eyes.

“I rest my case,” Marco said. “We are totally vampire experts.”

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask a few questions…” I hedged.

Famous last words.

Marco squealed and clapped his hands. “Ohmigod, I’ve got the perfect pink trench coat for vampire slaying. I’ve always wanted to go Buffy all over some evil undead hottie!”

I rolled my eyes. I hoped for all our sakes that Ramirez was making more headway.

Chapter Four

Marco made himself a cup of real coffee while I took a shower, did a quick blow dry, mascara swipe and lipgloss application. Then I tried to wedge myself into a cute pink top and my favorite pair of jeans. Which almost fit. If I looped a rubber band through the button hole and around the button. But the top was a no-go. My belly stuck out beneath the hem like a giant white bowling ball. I conceded defeat and grabbed a long, skinny-tank to layer beneath it. Then I thrust my feet into a pair of sequined wedges from my summer collection.

“Okay, so where do we start?” I asked as we all piled into Dana’s red Mustang.

“Um, duh, clearly looking for a vampire,” Marco said.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at him from the backseat.

“Hey, are you rolling your eyes at me?”

Okay, I almost resisted. “Look, we can’t just roam the streets looking for some guy with fangs. We need a real plan.”

“Well, what about the friend?” Dana asked. “The girl Alexa was at Crush with. I think we should talk to her.”

I nodded. “Perfect. Let’s go back to Crush. Maybe someone there knows who she is and where we can find her.”


* * *

Hollywood was quieter at this time of day, mostly filled with tourists and sightseers as opposed to the club crowd from yesterday. The outside of Crush looked a lot less interesting in the daylight – the steel grey door a nondescript opening, the sign above it dark, though the door was unlocked as we pushed through it.

While the swarm of police officers was gone, a few crime scene techs still lingered, dusting down tables and doorframes for fingerprints. I hated to break it to them, but they were going to find about a million of them on every surface. If this was the process of elimination the cops were employing, I had to agree with Marco that we had a fighting shot at catching the killer first.

To the right, the glass bar looked duller and decidedly more sticky than it had last night, a lone bartender standing behind it drying glasses with a white towel. He looked up as we approached, and I recognized him as the guy who’d poured our drinks the night before.

“We’re closed,” he said, spotting us.

“I know. We were actually hoping to ask you a couple questions,” Dana responded, putting her elbows up on the bar.

The guy raised an eyebrow at her. “And you are?”

“Dana Dashel,” Dana said, extending a hand across the bar to him. “My boyfriend, Ricky Montgomery is a part owner in this place.”

The bartender looked from Dana’s hand to her, then back at the hand. “Darwin Watts. But we’re still closed.”

“We were in here last night?” I jumped in, hoping to jog his memory into more friendly territory.

His gaze pinged to me, then narrowed.

“Yeah. I remember you. Cranberry juice.”

“Right” I said, pointing to The Bump. “Anyway, we’re looking into the death of Alexa Weston,” I supplied. Then added, “For the owners.” Or at least one-sixteenth of them.