The stakes are real. The mediator isn't.

"Investigation, Mediation, Vindication." That's how the Yellow Pages ad starts, and if it sounds like the sort of thing a drunk teenager might come up with... well, you'd only be wrong about the teenager part. John Smith owns San Diego's smallest private investigation firm, but he doesn't know the first thing about mediation. Or vindication.

On the other side of town, vampire Lucia Borghesi is having a terrible century. Stripped of her throne and banished...