I checked the text message first.

FELIX

BE AT THE MOTHER CABRINI SHRINE THIS WEDNESDAY AT 3 P.M.

ARANEUM

Sounded like a trip to the woodshed. Not good. I erased the message.

The Cabrini Shrine stood west of Denver on I-70. An unlikely place for a meeting.

I balled the parchment and tossed it out my window. When the parchment flew out of the shadow of my car and into the sunlight, the note immediately flared into a burst of fire that darkened into a puff of black smoke.

The crow stared at the vanishing smoke and blinked its eyes. Then it turned around on the windowsill and tapped against the capsule in my hand. I screwed the cap back on and fit the capsule on the bird’s leg.

I tried to shoo the bird, resentful of the news it had brought. When it didn’t move, I scrolled the window up. The crow jumped away, startled by the glass pane rising against its tail feathers. It flew to the hood of my Cadillac.

I honked the horn to shoo it again. The crow wouldn’t scram.

I checked my voice mail. Jolie left a message wishing me a safe journey and telling me that she missed Carmen.

She signed off: “Call me.”

There was a lot of sadness in her voice. I could wait for that conversation.

The other calls were from human clients asking when I’d return to my office. When I got there.

I started the car. The crow hadn’t moved. When I got to the highway, the crow centered itself on the front of my car and faced ahead like a hood ornament. I accelerated to ninety miles an hour. The crow hunkered down and squinted into the slipstream.

Was this bird going to freeload a ride all the way to Denver? Fat chance.

I slammed on the brakes. The crow shot from my car like it’d been catapulted from an aircraft carrier.

Hasta la vista, you little feathered bastard.

The crow sailed over the concrete lane for a hundred feet. It spread its wings and wheeled upward to arc over my car.

Bird poop splattered on my windshield.

The crow gave a laughing caw. Hasta la vista, back at you.

I waited at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, better known locally as the Mother Cabrini Shrine. The Catholic Church built the shrine to commemorate the first American saint, Maria Francesca Cabrini, Patroness of Immigrants. Her twenty-two-foot-tall statue stood on a commanding hill overlooking the Colorado plains to the north and the town of Golden straight east. Close by, I-70 snaked westward through the foothills into the Rocky Mountains and over the Continental Divide.

If anyone believed the myth that the Christian cross was as feared as garlic by us vampires, then a stroll to this shrine would destroy that fiction.

The Stations of the Cross bordered the concrete steps leading to the shrine. The dozens of crucifixes here-imbued with Resurrection juju, no less, should’ve been enough to incinerate any undead bloodsucker. But the only way to hurt a vampire with a cross would be to either bonk him on the head or sharpen one end and stab him through the chest.

Here I stood, at the top of the shrine, waiting for the Araneum. I didn’t know their agenda. I was only told to show up. I’m sure they were pissed over what happened to Carmen. So was I. I’d be surprised if I didn’t get a major ass-chewing…or worse. The worse part unsettled me. I didn’t want my skin used for undead Post-it notes.

The sun warmed me and I touched up my sunblock with a tube I pulled from my pocket.

Mother Nature had given the Front Range one final arctic blast as a going-away present. Smudges of snow lingered in the shadows. Cirrus clouds traced across the distant sky like scrawls of chalk against cerulean blue. A brown haze ringed the horizon.

Two women in their mid-thirties, both wearing fleece vests over black jogging tights, leaned forward against the base of the shrine and stretched their legs. They chatted about tax law and money, so I guessed they were lawyers or accountants playing hooky from the office.

I peeked over my sunglasses to study their auras. Neither seemed interested in me. Good. I didn’t want to be so far down on the vampire pecking order that the Araneum sent humans to interview me.

The two women turned from the shrine and bounded down the steps.

Coming in the opposite direction, another woman jogged up the stairs. Her skin was the color of a roasted coffee bean and she had short, black, nappy hair under a red head-warmer band. She held the leash of a large dog, some mutt with a blue-gray coat with yellow tufts around its neck and down its long, skinny legs.

I read her aura.

Orange.

Vampire.

The time was three on the dot.

An uneasy feeling ran through me. My kundalini noir shifted like it wanted to relieve a sudden kink.

Her aura had the even glow of a bulb filament, not betraying any hint of emotional turbulence. The Araneum had sent a real composed one to interrogate me.

The vampire crested the top of the stairs and halted. She stood a bit over five feet and wore sunglasses with rhinestones and a green jacket over a navy blue jogging suit. She carried a messenger bag over one shoulder. In human years, she looked in her early forties.

The dog had a red aura, so I knew it wasn’t a supernatural in disguise. With its tail wagging and ears perked, the dog lunged playfully for me. It was a cross between a blue heeler and a golden retriever, hence the unusual coat. The vampire pulled the dog back, patted its head, and unclipped the leash. The dog bolted for me, sniffed my crotch, and turned away to explore the garden around the shrine.

The vampire wound the leash around one wrist. “Felix, good to meet you.” She kept her distance, about six feet away, and didn’t bother to extend her free hand to thaw her frosty greeting. “Phyllis.” All business, she was. No point in asking her favorite color or taste in music.

I didn’t recognize her face or name. “I know most of the vampires in the Denver nidus but not you. Where are you from?”

“You have a way of contacting Carmen Arellano?” Phyllis didn’t waste time with prolonged introductions.

I didn’t want to discuss Carmen but I knew we would. Thinking about her only uncovered the loss and deepened the scar.

I started with my story, beginning with my acquaintance of the alien impostor Gilbert Odin.

Phyllis raised a hand to stop me. “I’ve read Jolie’s report.”

How should I handle confessing my failure to protect Carmen? What fate awaited me? Was the Araneum going to tear off my skin? The Araneum should have shared more information, preparing me to better deal with Goodman and Clayborn. Still, the fault was mine. Anything I had to say in my defense remained clotted in my throat.

“Sorry to hear what happened to Carmen,” Phyllis said. Her admission surprised me.

“We would have told you more,” she continued, “but we were afraid that you might get captured and talk. You didn’t fail, considering the circumstances.”

The words didn’t make me feel any better. I was supposed to prevail regardless.

“What we want to know is, is there a way to get Carmen back?”

The question seemed absurdly simplistic. “If I knew where she was and if I had a flying saucer. You got one handy?”

Phyllis’s stony smile meant of course not.

“I know the rules,” I said. “No vampire can be held prisoner in a situation that threatens the Great Secret.” The existence of the supernatural world. “If we couldn’t rescue Carmen, we’d have to destroy any and all evidence of her existence. Jolie and I were ready to do that.”

“I don’t doubt you, Felix. But the situation has reintroduced a level of tension within the Araneum.”