My eyes fell shut as I slowly drew in a deep breath. I wasn’t human. I technically never was a human, though I had believed I was for at least the first couple decades of my existence. But now, I wasn’t like anything else that existed. I wasn’t human, vampire, lycanthrope, or warlock. I wasn’t truly a bori, but some kind of half-breed that was too dangerous to be left alive, and yet Mira protected me at the risk of her life and her people.

Mira laid her cold hand against my cheek, letting her thumb run across my cheekbone in a gentle caress. “You’re not alone,” she whispered. She was close enough that I could feel the breath from each word skim across my lips. “You’re never alone.”

“It’s better than I am,” I murmured, afraid to move or open my eyes because it would shatter this moment.

“You’re not alone. I won’t allow it,” she said before pressing her lips to the tip of my nose in a quick kiss. I opened my eyes and stared into her, locked frozen in a moment that I thought would never happen again. The world had slipped away and there was only Mira’s hand on my cheek and her parted lips inches from mine. She stood before me like a bundle of unspoken promises; promises of compassion, affection, laughter, and unwavering strength and loyalty. I just needed to lean in those few final inches…

Behind us, a car rumbled down the cobblestone street, snapping Mira’s head around and shattering the moment. I stood a little straighter, while her hand slid down my face to rest on my chest over my heart. Reaching up, I covered her hand with mine and gave it a little squeeze, needing to hold on to that moment just another second longer. If anyone knew what it meant to be alone and an outcast, it was Mira. She was my enemy. She was my friend. She was the only one who would understand that chasm of emptiness that threatened to consume me each night when I awoke. Hunting her kind was all that I had to keep me sane through the endless years. But standing there, holding her hand, I knew that those days were slipping from my grasp. The time was coming when I would have to choose between killing her or facing the life that she was offering me.

I could feel the excitement rolling off her in massive waves as she stared down the empty street. She was up to something and I knew that I wasn’t going to like it. I released her hand and shoved mine back into my jacket pocket. Mira rubbed her hand over my chest one last time as she smiled up at me before threading her arm back through mine.

“What have you done?” I asked in a low voice, trying not to attract the attention of anyone else standing near us.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, looking up at me with what I’m sure she meant to be an innocent expression, but she couldn’t even manage that as she quickly broke into a smile.

“We’re going on an evening tour of the city?” I pressed, arching one eyebrow at her, which only sent her into a soft fit of giggles.

“Nate is a tour guide.”

“How are we going to talk to him if he’s giving a tour?”

Mira shook her head at me, her smile slipping a little bit. “Part of the tour goes through this house, but that section of the tour is given by the actual homeowner, so Nate will have a fifteen-to twenty-minute break. We can grab him then.”

“I don’t understand why a nighttime tour of the city is so popular,” I grumbled. “You can hardly make out all the amazing architecture that blankets this city. It makes more sense to do this during the day.”

Mira’s hand tightened on my arm and her smile had completely disappeared when she looked up at me again. “Is the city that much more beautiful during the day?”

For a moment, I had forgotten that Mira had never seen her city bathed in sunlight. She had never seen Forsyth Fountain glistening in the summer sun or the way the light cut through the thick leaves of the live oak trees that filled each of the squares. She had never seen the bustle of tourists through the city market as they prepared to grab one of the carriages that crisscrossed the historic district of Savannah.

“You have a very beautiful city,” I found myself saying, one corner of my mouth quirking in a smile. “Both in sunlight and by the moon.”

“Thank you,” she whispered as she looked back down the street. “Oh, look! Here he comes!”

I turned my attention from the nightwalker that was clinging to my arm as if we were out on a date to the vehicle that was rumbling down the street we had walked down just a few minutes earlier to reach River Street. It was not a tour bus like I was expecting. No, it was a trolley. A black trolley with a black light glowing from its undercarriage. Tattered lace and fake spider-webs hung in the rounded windows. And across the side in white letters was written GHOSTS & GRAVESTONES. That explained the nighttime tour; it was a ghost tour.

Laying my hand over Mira’s, I pulled her a couple steps away from the rest of the crowd and hunched down so that I could growl in her ear. “A ghost tour? Is that what this is?”

“Of course! Why else would you see the city at night?” she asked, looking up at me as if I were the one who had lost his mind. “Savannah has a reputation of being the most haunted city in America. Of course we’ve got ghost tours.”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to want to do this! I mean, this is ridiculous. There are no such things as—”

“Finish that thought and I will drain you, Danaus,” she said in a low, dark voice. “You of all people should know better.”

Yes, I knew better. There were such things as ghosts. I couldn’t see them or talk to them, but there had been a few occasions where I had felt them. However, it was nearly impossible for most humans to detect the presence of a ghost. It just didn’t work that way. In most cases, sightings could be explained away as an overactive imagination, while pictures were generally nothing more than dust on a lens.

“I do, but this…” I said, motioning toward the black trolley, which people were now boarding. “They can’t possibly expect to see a ghost.”

Mira lifted her chin at me and gave a little sniff. “You’d be surprised,” she said, then turned back to the trolley. “Besides, we’re not here to see a ghost. We’re here to talk to Nate. And there he is.”

At that moment, a man in baggy brown pants and white shirt stepped off the trolley. In his hands were an old-fashioned lantern and a shovel that clanged when he set the tip on the sidewalk. He was dressed as a gravedigger, which seemed only fitting, since I was sure that I was going to put Mira in her grave if she tried to pull me onto this trolley.

“Nate!” Mira cried, pulling me along as she walked over to him.

“Mira?” The gravedigger spun around at the sound of his name. When he turned, I found a youthful face covered in a white and gray theatrical makeup to give the effect that he had spent more time with the dead than the living. Mira released her hold on me when Nate scooped her up in a bear hug. I jerked out of the way just in time as the spade of the shovel came close to taking off my nose.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length.

“I was hoping to talk to you about a couple things,” she said, then motioned toward the trolley. “Couple work-related items.”

Nate set his lamp down on the sidewalk and scratched his chin. “Yeah, I guess I should have been expecting you. I think a part of me was hoping that I was overreacting.”

“Has it been that bad?”

“No, not like you would think,” he said, then shook his head as he shoved one hand through an unruly crop of brown curls. “Actually, can we talk more later? I’ve got another tour to start in a few minutes.”

“We’re actually on this tour. Already cleared it with Emmy. Can we talk at Sorrel-Weed?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Who’s with you?”

To my surprise, Mira actually blushed, though it was almost impossible to make out in the faint lamplight. She reached over and pulled me back to her side. “Danaus, this is a friend of mine, Nathaniel Mercer. No relation to Johnny Mercer. He’s a grad student over at SCAD, specializing in historical preservation. By night, he’s a gravedigger tour guide for Ghosts and Gravestones.”