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I laid the hair on the table. It lay there curled and gleaming. I didn’t want to lift the cotton. I didn’t want to see what else they’d cut off of Daniel. The one consolation I had was that of the many awful possibilities that flashed through my mind, most of them were too big to fit into the box.

I lifted the cotton and fell to my knees like someone had struck me. I knelt there, staring down at the tip of a little finger that was far too delicate to be Daniel’s. The nail polish on the finger was still perfect, smooth, pale. Nothing déclassé about Richard’s mother.

Dr. Patrick had to leave the table and throw up in the sink. Soft touch for a doctor and a werewolf.

“What is it?” Cherry asked.

I couldn’t speak.

Asher answered because he could see over my shoulder into the box. “It’s a woman’s finger.”

Jason had just entered the room. “What did you just say?”

The vampire, Donald, said, “What have you done, human?”

“We have Richard’s brother and his mother,” Thompson said. “I thought we’d just kill you, but Niley’s paying the money. He wants to give you a way out besides killing. He seems to think if he doesn’t try to kill you, you won’t try and kill him. Funny, ain’t it?”

I finally looked up, away from Charlotte Zeeman’s finger. “What do you want?”

“You leave town tonight. We release Richard’s mother and brother tomorrow morning, when we’re sure you really are gone. If you don’t leave this time, Niley will keep trimming pieces off of Zeeman’s family. Maybe an ear next time, maybe something bigger.” He was grinning as he said it. Thompson was a sadistic brute, but he didn’t understand me at all, or he wouldn’t have been smiling.

There was a look on Donald the vampire’s face that said he did understand me.

I stood up very slowly. I laid the box on the table beside the lock of hair. My voice was amazingly calm, almost empty of inflection, “Where are they?”

“We left them safe and sound,” Thompson said.

“I did not know what they had done,” the vampire said. “I did not know they had mutilated your third’s family.”

I shook my head. “You see, that’s the problem, Donald. When you play with bad guys, you can’t control how bad they are. You both just left Daniel and Charlotte, just left them there.”

“Yeah,” Thompson said. “Ol’ Don here picked me up in his car.”

I was staring at the finger. I couldn’t seem to not look at it. I raised my eyes to Donald the vampire. “So, you both know where they are,” I said.

Donald’s eyes went wide. He whispered, “I didn’t know.”

Asher moved forward and laid hands on Thompson’s shoulders.

Thompson wasn’t worried. “If anything happens to us, they’ll do worse to both of them. Richard’s mom is a real attractive woman. Be a shame to change that.”

Donald said, “I am sorry about what they did, but my orders are the same. You must leave our territory tonight.”

“Use the kitchen phone. Tell them we give. Tell them don’t hurt them, and we’re out of here.”

Thompson smirked. “No, no phone calls. They’re giving us two hours. Then, if we’re not back, they’ll start cutting things off that will affect a lot more than her typing.”

I nodded and pulled the Browning. I pointed it and shot it in one motion. I didn’t even remember aiming. The vampire’s head exploded in a cloud of blood and brains. The body rocked back and fell, taking the chair with it.

Asher held Thompson in his seat. Some of the blood had splattered Thompson’s face. A glob of something thicker than blood was trailing down his forehead. He was trying to bat at the piece of flesh, but Asher held him.

I took the gun out from under his arm and pointed the Browning at his forehead.

Thompson stopped fighting and glared up at me. I had to give him credit. Covered in blood and brains, held down by a vampire, staring at the barrel of a gun, and he was putting on a brave show. “Kill me, it won’t get you anything but them cut to pieces.”

“Tell me where they are, Thompson, and I’ll go get them.”

“Fuck you! You’re going to kill me, anyway.”

“I give you my word that if you tell us where they