"You threatened the Sire." William continued to talk to the female. "So he sent us here."

"Arthur, I'm going to call the police," the woman finally said. She was upset now, the nubs of her breasts rising and falling against her shirt. She had a small cell phone in her hand, and William wondered if she had pulled it out of her ass. The thought made him smile.

He was on her in an instant, and Michael took down the husband almost as easily. The brothers were incredibly fast and strong, and they knew it.

They growled loudly, but that was only a scare tactic.

"We have money in the house. My God, don't hurt us," the male shrieked loudly, almost like a woman.

"We're not after your obscene money — we have no use for it. And we're not serial killers or anything common like that," William told them.

He bit down into the struggling woman's luscious pink neck — and she stopped fighting. Just like that, she was his. She gazed into his eyes and she swooned. A tear ran down her cheek.

William didn't look up again until he had fed. "We're vampires," he finally whispered to the murdered couple.

On my second day in San Francisco, I worked out of a small cubicle near Jamilla Hughes's desk at the Hall of Justice. I attended a couple of her briefings on the Golden Gate Park murders, which were thorough and highly professional. She was impressive.

Everything about the murder case was weird and wrong-headed, though. No one had a fix on it yet; no one had a good idea, at least none that I'd heard so far. The only thing we knew for sure was that people were being murdered in particularly horrible ways. It happens more and more frequently these days.

Around noon, I got a call on my cell phone. "Just checking in," the Mastermind said. "How is San Francisco, Alex? Lovely city. Will you leave your heart there? Do you think it's a good place to die?

"Or how about Inspector Hughes? Do you like her? She's very pretty, isn't she? Just your type. Are you going to fuck Jamilla? Better hurry, then. Tempus fugit." He hung up.

I went back to work. Lost myself for a couple of hours. Began to make some minor progress.

Around four o'clock, I was staring out at the start of rush hour, San Francisco style — pretty mild, actually — while I talked to Kyle Craig. He was still at Quantico, but he was definitely heavily involved in the case.

Kyle was in a position to choose the cases he became personally connected with, and he told me this was going to be one of them. We'd be working together again. I looked forward to it.

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and saw Jamilla approaching my desk. She had her leather jacket half on and was struggling into the second sleeve. Going somewhere? "Hold on, Kyle," I said into the receiver.

"We have to go," she said, "to San Luis Obispo. They're going to exhume a body. I think it's related."

I told Kyle that I had to leave right away. He wished me happy hunting. Jamilla and I took the elevator down to the parking garage beneath the Hall of Justice. The more I saw of her work, the more I was impressed, not just by her savvy but by her enthusiasm for the job. A lot of detectives lose that after a couple of years. She obviously hadn't. Are you going to fuck Jamilla? Better hurry, then.

"Are you always this pumped up?" I asked her once we were inside her blue Saab and heading out toward 101.

"Yeah. Pretty much," she said. "I like the work. It's tough but interesting, honest most of the time. I could do without the violence."

"This case in particular. The hangings give me the creeps."

She looked over at me. "Speaking of life-threatening situations, you'd better buckle up. We've got a hike ahead of us, and I used to drive funny cars as a hobby. Don't be fooled by the Saab."

She wasn't kidding. According to the road signs, it was about 235 miles to San Luis Obispo. Heavy rain peppered the Saab most of the way. She still got us there by eight-thirty.

"In one piece too." She nodded and winked as we whisked off the freeway at the San Luis Obispo exit.

It looked like an idyllic spot but we were there to exhume the corpse of a young girl. She had been hung and her blood had been drained.

San Luis Obispo is a college town, very pretty, at least from the outside looking in. We found Higuera Street and drove down it to Osos, past small local shops, but also Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, the Firestone Grill. Jamilla told me that you could always tell the time of day in San Luis Obispo by the scents and aromas: like barbecue smoke in the afternoon on Marsh Street, or the aroma of wheat and barley at night outside the SLO Brewing Co.

We met Detective Nancy Goodes at the police station in town. She was a petite, attractive woman with a nice California tan, very much in charge of her homicide investigation. In addition to contacting us about this exhumation, she was the lead on the murders of two students from Cal Poly that didn't seem related to our case, but who could tell for sure? Like most homicide detectives these days, she was busy.

"We've got the permissions we need to exhume the body," Goodes told us on the way out to the cemetery. At least the rain had stopped for now. The air was warm, thanks to Santa Ana winds.

"What can you tell us about the murder, Nancy? You worked the case yourself, right?" Jamilla asked.

The detective nodded. "I did. So did just about every other detective in town. It was very sad, and an important case here. Mary Alice Richardson went to the Catholic high school in town. Her father's a well-liked doctor. She was a nice kid, but a bit of a wild child. What can I tell you? She was a kid. Fifteen years old."

"What do you mean she was a wild child?" I asked Detective Goodes.

She sighed and worked her jaw a little. I could tell this case had left a wound. "She missed a lot of school, two or three days a week sometimes. She was bright enough, but her grades were just terrible. She hung with other kids who liked to experiment — drugs like ecstasy, raves, black magic, heavy drinking, all-night parties. Maybe even a little freebasing. Mary Alice was only arrested once, but she was giving her parents a lot of gray hairs."

Jamilla asked, "Were you at the crime scene, Nancy?" I noticed that she was respectful of the other detective at all times. Very nonthreatening toward her.

"Unfortunately, I was. That's one of the reasons I worked so hard getting the permissions we needed to dig up her body. Mary Alice died a year and three months ago, but I will never, ever forget how we found her."

Jamilla and I looked at each other. We hadn't heard all the particulars of the murder yet. We were still playing catch-up.

Goodes continued. "It was pretty clear to me that she was meant to be found. Two kids from Cal Poly were the ones who actually discovered the body. They were parking out near the hills. It's a popular spot for submarine races. They went for a little moonlit stroll. I'm sure they had nightmares after what they saw. Mary Alice was hanging from a tree by her bare feet. Naked. Except the killers left her earrings and a small sapphire in her belly button. This wasn't a robbery."

"How about her clothes?" I asked.

"We found the clothes: UFO parachute pants, Nikes, Chili Peppers T-shirt. No trophies were taken to our knowledge."

I glanced at Jamilla. "The killer trusts his or her memory. Doesn't need trophies for some reason. Or so it seems. None of this follows any of the usual paths for serials."

"No, it doesn't. I agree with that one hundred percent. Do you know what scarification is?" Detective Goodes asked.

I nodded. "I've come across it," I said. "Scars, wounds. Most often on the legs and arms. Occasionally the chest or back. They avoid the face, because then people might make them stop. Usually the scars are self-inflicted."