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“Chompy McBitey Face was not small, furry, or fuckin’ cute, Adam,” Zee pointed out, with special emphasis on the small and furry parts.

“I know. Yikes. I really got alligators wrong, didn’t I?” That was the last time I paid attention to any of the hotel’s books.

“I saw my life flash before my eyes—again! I had to drop Sassy Fangs or I’d have died!”

“You dropped me like bait,” Victor snarled.

“What else was I gonna do? Also, you’re like, chewable or something. My skin is precious. Did you see the size of its teeth?”

“Actually, I did, while it was thrashing me back and forth trying to dislocate my arm from my shoulder socket.”

“Pfft, you’re a million years old, and look . . . you’re fine. It probably would have dropped you anyway. Everyone knows vampires taste bad.”

“Actually, they taste like chicken.” Having been the only person here who had eaten a vampire, I could add some perspective to this conversation.

The pair of them fell silent and looked at me.

“As bewildering as this conversation is,” Victor sighed. “Perhaps we should get to dry land so I can tend my arm and my back, which also appears to have undergone some kind of trauma.”

“Yeah, you got shot in the back by a troll and slept through your own murder spree. Keep up.”

Victor stared. “Please, explain everything that has transpired since I lost consciousness.”

“Sure.” Zee waded ahead, toward what appeared to be a gap in the gnarly tree roots we could use to escape. “You used your new superpowers to freeze Toby’s gang, but missed one outside. He snuck in with a gun, shot you in the back. Snap.” Zee clicked his fingers, then clambered up a marshy bank, out of the water. “You killed all of ’em and knocked yourself out cold.”

“Well . . . that’s a development.” Victor took Zee’s offered hand to be hauled out of the swamp water.

Zee dragged me out next. “Thanks.”

“Cops showed up, so we scarpered into this hellscape⁠—”

“Everglades, I presume,” Victor said, looking around.

“Everglades sounds cute and nice, like it should be filled with fuckin’ fluffy bunnies, Disney princesses, and gay rainbows. This fuckin’ hellhole smells like Seb’s lube jar and has slimy fanged things livin’ in it. Also like Seb’s lube jar.”

As if to prove his point, a fat, dangling-legged bug bumbled its way through the air between us. Zee yelped, and swatted it. It plopped into the water somewhere out of sight, then something in that water sloshed, ending the flying thing’s life. Everything here was food for something bigger.

“This is not the tropical paradise I ordered, Kitten.”

“There’s a house up ahead . . .” As soon as I said it, I wasn’t sure house was the right word. A lamp glowed outside its door, illuminating a long deck over the water. Among all the croaking and ribbiting going on around us, I could just make out some tinny music that sounded as though it was playing from a cheap TV or radio. Someone was home. A few someones, if the trucks parked behind the shack were any indication of who was inside.

We were almost at the dwelling when Zee stopped, and in the dull lamplight he pointed down at his extended leg. “What . . .” Just below his knee, where his pants had torn, a black thing about an inch long appeared to be stuck to his skin. “What. The fuck. Is that?”

“That is a leech,” Victor said, tugging weeds from his hair and snarling before tossing them aside.

“A leech?” Zee blinked. And blinked again. “Why is it on me?”

“I suspect it’s partaking of a free meal.”

“Excuse moi. What the fuck does that mean?”

Victor sauntered over to get a closer look. “Marvelous. You can’t feel it because—rather amusingly—like vampires, the leech is an amazing creature that secretes an anesthetic agent so its host is unaware it has latched on using three jaws and over a hundred teeth. Isn’t it glorious?”

Zee blinked some more. Was he pale? Or was that just the weird hue of the lamp?

“That industrious little champion also produces an anticoagulant,” Victor continued. “Preventing your blood from clotting so that it might feast until bloated, at which time it will harmlessly fall off.”

“Imma just . . . I just gotta . . . go over here . . .” Zee staggered, swayed, and collapsed. He would have hit the muddy ground had Victor not dashed in and caught him.