I enjoyed all of Huff's "Blood" novels, and was glad to find this fair-condition softcover containing the fifth "Blood" novel and a collection of all of the Henry-and-Vicki short stories at the Used Book Superstore in Burlington MA.

Blood Debt is the fifth and final "Blood" novel, and takes place after some very significant changes in the lives of all the major characters, so it could be even more of a spoiler than other books in the series; if you like reading your series-books in order, take note!

The story opens with Henry finding himself the unwilling recipient of ghostly visitations - from spirits that are apparently in desperate need of his help. They target Tony as well, causing even more tension between the two - and, eventually, forcing Henry to ask Vicky for help, even though they had both thought it would be impossible, or at least highly dangerous, for them to ever meet again...

The collected short stories are good, some dark, some amusing; they fill in details between and after the novels (and in some cases include spoilers, so if you haven't read the novels and don't want to know who ends up where or with whom, save the stories for later. [I think most of them stand alone fairly well, but they're more interesting when you know the back-stories.] Most of the stories focus on Vicki, but "Someone to Share the Night" is an amusing/bittersweet tale about Henry, and "Sceleratus" includes some details about Henry's past.

Then there's "So This is Christmas," an impressive, darkly humorous but wrenching take on A Christmas Carol, with Vicki in the Scrooge role; she doesn't want to spend Christmas with her lover's family (and isn't much interested in celebrating at all, for reasons which I won't mention because they're spoiler-y). The spirits are in the form of the other main characters in the series, and each delivers the appropriate message in a manner suitable to the character; Tony's is especially amusing, but I had to laugh when one of the "see how loving families celebrate" scenes featured a family of werewolves!

But the spirit of Christmas Yet To Come... Whew! There are spoiler-related reasons why I can't go into detail there, but it shocked me - even when I realized that it was the perfect choice given the situation. Dickens' old chestnut of a story has been re-done many and many a time, and it holds up under the most - unorthodox - treatment...

[There's a TV Tropes page on the series that may be of interest.]

I left this book, bagged against the elements, on a bench in the little park commemorating the Wilson Mill site, at around 4 or so; hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released for the 2014 Spook-tacular Halloween Challenge, for "blood". ***

Read a few pages and decided it wasn't for me.