Page 46 of Let Sleeping Vampires Lie

I sighed. “Because of everything. You’re not the only thing getting on my nerves.”

A humorless sound escaped him. “Good to know I’m not special.”

“Oh, you’re special,” I said. “You’re just not the whole problem.”

His eyes flicked to my profile. “You shouldn’t be out here without backup.”

“I have backup,” I said. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

His posture eased by a fraction. “Not the point.”

“Then what is the point?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t answer right away. The breeze tugged gently at my hair, lifting a few strands from my cheek. Somewhere in the trees, a bird decided it was close enough to morning to start complaining.

“The point,” Con said finally, “is that our enemies know where we are. Valerian laughed in our foyer. Enhanced humans attacked our teams in the field. The cemetery is open ground. If they want to send a message, this is where they’ll do it.”

I considered that.

He wasn’t wrong.

“Funny,” I said, “I was thinking this is the one place they wouldn’t dare. Too many of our dead are buried here. A lot of them died ugly. If their ghosts linger, they’d be on our side.”

“Ghosts don’t fight enhanced humans,” he replied.

“Maybe they should start.”

A small sound left him that might have been the beginning of a laugh, but it never quite formed.

He moved a step closer, eyes still sweeping the shadowed rows of stones. “If you need air, next time you get me and I’ll come with you.”

“You were already there,” I pointed out. “You left.”

He tensed, then turned his head toward me. “You wanted me to go.”

“I implied,” I corrected. “You decided.”

His mouth twitched. “Semantics.”

“Always.”

The tension between us hadn’t faded. If anything, the quiet and the grave markers made it feel more intense. We weren’t shouting anymore, but the argument still lived under our skin. His worry. My defiance. Everything we’d admitted. Everything we’d danced around.

I pushed away from the statue, boots crunching on the gravel. “I didn’t come out here to fight with you again.”

“Neither did I,” he said. “I came because I knew you would.”

“I’m predictable now?”

“In some ways.” His gaze softened. “In others… not at all.”

Something rustled at the far edge of the cemetery.

We both heard it.

The sound was subtle, a scrape of stone, the soft thump of disturbed earth, like a boot dragging across grass.

I stilled.