When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) by J.K. Beck

and pulled out a handful of dirt, then deposited it in a small glass bowl that sat on her coffee table. “But at least we can track it.”
    Beside her, Edgar pressed his fingertips to his temple. “Shit. Shit, shit,
shit
.”
    Alexis caught Leena’s eye, but she only shrugged. No help there. She took Edgar’s arm and eased him toward the couch. “This doesn’t change anything. You knew they were vile. You knew they were clever.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me before that they could do that?”
    “I didn’t think about it. I guess I figured you already knew. I’m the one who was late to the party, remember? You and Leena have known about vamps for ages.”
    Edgar made a
hmmph
sound. “Didn’t know about this. Shit.”
    “Don’t feel bad,” she said. “That’s the way it works, you know? But we’re fighting back. You’re still with me, right?”
    He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders, then cracked his neck. “Yeah, kid. I’ve got your back.”
    Alexis shifted her attention to Leena. “Are you up for a tracking spell, or did trying to find Tori’s killer wipe you out?”
    “I can do it.”
    “You sure?” Now that they’d moved to the better light of the living room, Alexis could see how pale Leena looked and how bloodshot her eyes were. “Another headache?”
    “Threatening,” Leena said. “But it hasn’t burst out yet.”
    “Maybe you shouldn’t track him,” Alexis said, hating the fact that even as she spoke she was hoping Leena would disagree. She didn’t want her friend to suffer another migraine, but at the same time she was itching to go back on the hunt. She no longer cared if the vamp that killed Penny Martinez was the same one she let get away. He was on her radar now. He was
hers
, and she was going to take him down.
    “She can track him even if he’s not hunting?” Edgar asked.
    “Right. So long as we have the dirt. It’s like a mystical thread. A bit of his aura is with us, and then we follow the thread to where the vampire himself is.”
    “Not a bad explanation,” Leena agreed. “And because there’s a physical—or metaphysical—connection, it doesn’t sap my strength.”
    “Let’s get to it,” Alexis said. “Penny may have just been an appetizer.”
    Nodding, Leena took the bowl with the dirt to the kitchen, where she’d stored jars and bottles of the various herbs and other ingredients she used for her spells. As Alexis and Edgar sat on stools at the granite-topped kitchen island, Leena went to work mixing the dirt with various ingredients and muttering a series of words that, as she’d explained, were chosen to pull out and harness the powers of the earth.
    Finally, she closed her eyes and with arms extended held the dirt out in her hands. She’d formed it into a small ball, and now it glowed with a slightly silver tint. After a moment, the glow faded. Leena opened her eyes and handed the ball to Alexis. “Can you tell where he is?”
    Alexis shifted the ball in her hand so that she could better examine its smooth surface in the light. The crust on the dirt felt like aluminum foil, with dark spidery lines crisscrossed like veins. The only imperfection was a red pinpoint dot. “At the beach,” Alexis said, looking up at Leena. The dark lines formed a map, and the red dot showed the vampire’s location. Unfortunately, the map on the ball didn’t have street names, just thick and thin lines representing streets, highways, the coast, and other landmarks. “Pass me the map book and let’s see if we can’t narrow it down.”
    Leena opened the junk drawer on her side of the island, pulled out the thick Thomas Guide of the area, then flipped pages until she found a map with the same curvature of coastline that showed on the ball. Alexis peered over her shoulder. “Venice Beach,” she said, then slid off the bar stool.
    Edgar frowned. “That’s it? How the hell are you supposed to find him? Venice is small, but it’s not that small.”
    “Alexis