“Tabitha—”

“Tabby.”

“Let me help. I used to be a cop. I’ve got some first aid training.”

“Don’t worry about it, champ. I got it.”

As she stepped back, widening the gap between them, Tabby reached into her back pocket with her free hand. She had to have one in there—ah, yes. Without breaking their stare, she showed Adam the patch in her hand before slapping it against her thigh. With enough force, the patch cracked and activated.

She peeled the liner with her teeth, then slapped the patch on her neck. She moved so quickly, there was no way that Adam could catch sight of his puncture wounds.

It was better that way. Something warned Tabby that the Nightwalker wouldn’t be able to stomach seeing the mess he made of her flesh.

Once the patch was in place, she raised her eyebrows before wiping her bloody palm on her jeans.

“I’m a slayer,” she told him with a perky smile. “So do I.”

5

It didn’t hit Tabby what she’d done until long after she saw the back of Adam Wright.

She’d told him she was a slayer. No pretense, no hemming, no hawing, just opened her trap and put it out there.

Her uncle was going to kill her.

The Slayer’s Code made it clear. Keeping the gig secret was the number one rule—well, number two, really, since number one said that all slayers must eliminate every threat they came across. In Boone’s eyes, a Nightwalker was a threat. She should’ve taken him down long before he bit her.

Looks like she broke two of the rules.

Lovely.

He was a cop, though, huh? Adam? For some reason, that made her feel a little better about everything. Slayers were kind of like cops, too.

And, okay, she was trying to rationalize the magnitude of what she had done…

She told him. She told a Nightwalker that she was a slayer.

And, to her surprise, he didn’t even seem to react at all. Tabby had been expecting a look of horror at the very least, or for him to make his excuses and bolt like he did the last time they met. Which Adam eventually did, but she could tell that that had less to do with her confession and more to do with the bulge in his sweatpants he couldn’t even begin to hide.

It still amazed her that she’d needed to tell him at all. Humans were oblivious, most paranormals didn’t know the difference between a slayer and a Normie, but Nightwalkers? The turned vampires always could tell that she was different. That she was a threat.

Not Adam Wright.

He didn’t know. If he did, he wouldn’t have stopped at one bite—or held back when she wiggled, letting him know he was taking too much of her blood.

He would’ve kept on going until she was drained.

Or worse.

But he didn’t. And then she went on to tell him she was a slayer.

Her father had made that mistake, too. When Tabby was barely a year old, her father—who had married into the job and, like Tab, never really understood why the secrecy was so important—let slip his business to the wrong people. They were human, but that didn’t matter. She’d learned early on that humans could be just as evil as damaged Paras.

Regardless of who spread the secret, though, it was a Nightwalker duo who stalked and tortured Mike and Elisa Winslow, leaving them for dead—and Tabby an orphan.

Uncle Boone never let her forget it.

You would think the tragedy of her parents’ deaths would entice her to keep her mouth shut. In some ways, it did. But it wasn’t like that Nightwalker was the only person Tabby had ever told. Like father, like daughter, she guessed, because she found it impossible to keep the secret a hundred percent of the time.

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