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I pushed my laptop aside. “Picture this: your family is dying one by one—”

“Great way to start a story.”

“Just listen, smart ass. The locals tell you the culprit is a dead person. To see if that’s the case and stop the disease from progressing through your family, what do you do?”

He gave a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t know. Make a potion with eye of newt and toe of frog? Call in a doctor to do some bloodletting? Dance naked under a full moon?”

I wasn’t sure which shocked me more, him quoting Macbeth or how hard the idea of him naked hit me. My brain supplied some very unhelpful and detailed images. All those muscles, his chest covered in a layer of dark hair. I bet he had a huge—

“Briar?”

I blinked the image away.

“If the perpetrator is a dead person, you go to the cemetery.”

His teasing expression faded and he ran a hand over his jaw. “You would.” He said the words so low I barely heard. “I remember a documentary about people buried with silver coins in their mouth in case they came back to life.”

“See, vampires. These superstitions were widespread.” I smacked my hands loudly on the wooden table for emphasis and caught a glare from the librarian.

Jonah leaned in. “Is there any way to find out the cause of death of the other people in the cemetery? Like, would it have been listed in their obituaries?”

I pushed myself out of my chair. “There’s only one way to find out.”

He trailed after me to the back of the library. Rows of books and computers gave way to one dusty microfilm machine and a wall of mismatched cabinets filled with old document reels.

He looked around and whistled low. “This is going to be quite the project, isn’t it?”

I clicked the button on the microfilm machine and it gave an unhappy whir. “I’m afraid so.”

Jonah stepped over to the cabinet and opened the first drawer. The metal protested the movement.

“Let’s see here, S - SC, SC - SL…huh.”

I spun around in the spinny chair. “What’s wrong?”

He scratched at his stubble, and I ignored how much I liked the rasping sound.

“The most likely last name was Smith, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That record is missing.”

“What? Let me see.” I moved to stand beside him, breathing in the smell of his woodsy cologne. I ran my eyes over the small printed labels on the back of each microfilm box. Everything was neatly in order, S - SC, SC - SL then right to ST - SZ.

No gap where it had been recently removed. Just gone.

I ran my eyes over the boxes in the drawer. There were no other letters missing. Just SM. The longer I thought about it the more that bothered me.

By the time Jonah’s watch beeped for him to leave, I’d made up my mind. The missing reel was too strange. Too specific. I couldn’t sit here and pretend it was a coincidence.

“I’m coming with you to the cemetery.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Look, I know my theories seem a little crazy with witches and vampires and all that, but having records we need missing is legitimately strange.”

“The records are 200 years old. Is it really a surprise some are missing?”