Bitten & Smitten

by Michelle Rowen

  “Finally,” she said and placed an elegant hand on her slim hip. “I’ve been waiting here for ages.”

  I glanced at Thierry. He took a deep breath and didn’t seem as if he was going to say anything back to the woman. How rude was that?

  “Hi.” I extended my hand. “I’m Sarah.”

  She smiled, showing off perfect white teeth, fangs included, and shook my hand. “Veronique,” she said. “Thierry’s wife.”

  Chapter 15

  Veronique de Bennicoeur was slightly over seven hundred years old, though she didn’t look a day over thirty. She and Thierry had met during the Black Death plague in Europe. She’d been a vampire first and Thierry’s sire. She currently lived in France, but word had reached her through the grapevine that there was trouble in Toronto, and she thought she might be able to lend a hand. Her favorite drink was a martini on the rocks.

  I listened to her give me the Cliffs Notes on her life with the poorest excuse for a smile frozen in place on my face. I was trying to decide, while listening to her go on about her fabulous life, who I wanted to kill more. Her or myself.

  “So, what do you think?” Her voice was as beautiful as she was. She could have been a deejay. Or a phone-sex operator.

  I decided. I was going to kill myself.

  “Hmm? What was that?” I stood behind the bar, bracing the edge of it for support. I’d originally gone behind it to get myself a shot of whatever blood type was on tap, and Veronique had sat down across from me and ordered a martini. I only gave her one olive.

  She smiled. “I just asked if while I’m in town, the two of us could go out for a girls’ lunch. It’s so rare that I find another woman I feel I can really talk to. You’re an excellent listener.”

  “Yeah? Wow. That sounds great.” Even I couldn’t coax enthusiasm into those words.

  After a quick two-cheeked European-style kiss and a few words of greeting to Veronique, Thierry had disappeared into his office shortly after he’d let us in the club. George was lying down in a nearby booth concentrating very hard on healing, but I was pretty sure he had a curious ear open for our mostly one-sided conversation. What I was still doing there was beyond me, although I was sure that the bone-jarring shock had something to do with it.

  Thierry had a wife.

  Not something that had come up in casual conversation.

  I was trying very hard not to freak out. It was difficult, but so far I was succeeding. He had a wife. Okay. He wasn’t currently living with this wife; that much I’d figured out. Well, I suppose when you’re married for six hundred freaking years you need a little time apart to help keep things fresh.

  I’d done four shots of B positive with vodka chasers since we got back. They weren’t making me feel better. I guess B positive didn’t live up to its optimistic reputation. I was starting to feel way claustrophobic. Since Thierry hadn’t said a word to me to explain what was going on, I was getting the distinct, stomach-churning impression that I wasn’t needed anymore. Gorgeous European über-wife had returned.

  “I should go,” I said.

  “No, dear girl, stay. I like you. And you make an excellent martini.” She ran a French-manicured finger along the edge of her glass.

  “Thanks. Um, no, I really have to take off.”

  “Very well, if you insist. And listen, I know Thierry wants to shut down the club. Don’t worry at all. We will open for business tonight as usual. I know how hard it is to be a working girl in the big city.”

  She thought I was only a waitress there. Kill me. Somebody, kill me.

  “Great.” I smiled at her through clenched teeth. “I’m just going to say bye to Thierry now.”

  There were a few other choice words I had in mind for him, too. But I was going to try to be mature. That was me. Mature with a capital M.

  I knocked lightly on his office door and then pushed it open. Thierry sat at his desk, staring intently at some papers. He didn’t look up.

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “Hello? I said I’m leaving.”

  He finally glanced up as if surprised to see me standing there. “I thought you’d already left.”

  I felt heat rise in my cheeks. “Oh, did you?”

  He shrugged, then looked back down at the papers. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose.”

  I stepped farther into the office and closed the door behind me. I could prove I was mature. Just watch me. “Veronique is very beautiful.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  I counted slowly to ten in my head. “I didn’t know you were married.”

  He blinked. “And now you know.”

  “Um, she seems very nice.”

  “Didn’t you say you were leaving?”

  This time I counted to fifteen. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had said nothing to piss him off. I’d even thought about what I was going to say before I let the words leave my mouth. That rarely happened. There was no reason for him to be acting like a jerk to me, especially after… well… after everything that had been happening between us.

  “There’s no reason to get snippy with me. I guess I’m just trying to understand.”

  “Understand what?” He stood up and pressed his palms against the desktop.

  “It’s just that I thought… well, about what happened in Abottsville. I just figured—”

  “I guess you figured wrong,” he said cutting me off. “I don’t mean to be rude, Sarah, but perhaps you read more into the situation than you should have. I have agreed to help you adjust to the life that has been thrust upon you, yes. But please, do not mistake a potential fling for something more meaningful.”

  “A potential fling?” I sputtered. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, you’re right. To call it a fling would be exaggerating. It was only a few kisses, after all.”

  His words felt like a slap in my face. For the last twenty minutes I’d wondered who I wanted to see die more, myself or Veronique. I’d just revised that list to include Thierry. And he was officially at the top of it.

  I took a deep breath and concentrated on erasing the stunned look from my face. “You know what? I think you might be right. It was just a few kisses.” I forced a smile at him and didn’t try to make it look friendly. “And now you can kiss my ass good-bye.”

  “Ah, yes.” The corner of his mouth raised into a half smile. “The refined wit of Sarah Dearly. It has been so refreshing this past week.”

  Turning the doorknob, I looked back over my shoulder. “Oh, and by the way, if you happen to get the urge to throw yourself off another bridge anytime soon, don’t bother waiting for me to help you out. Just go for it.”

  My reward was seeing a frown spread over his features before I slammed the door behind me.

  I saw the club through a foggy daze. I absolutely had no idea where that fight had materialized from. The only thing that echoed in my mind were the words “potential fling.” Was that really all he thought of me? And why did the idea of that cut me deeper than finding out he had a wife?

  I knew why. Because I’d been a silly dope and sort of fallen for him. But I wasn’t completely stupid. You didn’t have to hit me over the head, over and over, for me to see the truth. Not when it was sitting at the bar with its long, lean legs crossed, seductively sipping a martini.

  Veronique waved good-bye to me. “Lunch. Soon.”

  I walked around to the other side of the bar toward George. “Bye, George. Get well soon.”

  “Sarah,” he said, his voice was still weak, but not as weak as it was earlier. He was healing up very nicely; another asset to life as a vampire.

  “Yeah?” I leaned over.

  “If it’s any consolation…”

  “What?”

  “You’re way cuter.”

  I bent over to kiss his forehead. “You are now officially my favorite person in the entire world.”

  I stopped at Holt Renfrew on my way home and bought a new pair of sho
es. Hot pink, expensive stiletto pumps I’d seen a couple of weeks ago in Vogue—same pair Charlize Theron wore to a recent movie premiere. Did I mention expensive? The fact that I had no money except for twenty bucks left over from the tips I made the other night did occur to me. But I needed to buy something in the worst way—retail therapy.

  When I took the shoes out of the box at home, I realized I didn’t even like them. I cried over those pink shoes for a whole half hour. I was crying over the shoes. Really.

  I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t talk to anyone. I’d decided to officially become a hermit.

  My hermitivity lasted exactly three hours. I did some laundry, took a shower, and paced around my small apartment. Finally I was so bored I was climbing the walls, and I decided to go out for a walk. Danger be damned.

  I walked past a small park about two blocks from my apartment complex. In it, there was a girl arguing with a young guy. I squinted at her familiar black hair, black clothes, and pale face. She looked over and saw me studying her and then I recognized her.

  It was Melanie. The Goth chick I’d clocked the other night at the club. The human girlfriend of Timothy, the vampire. Her eyes narrowed as she recognized me, too. She poked the shoulder of the guy she was with—not Timothy—and pointed at me. Then she started to march right toward me, and she didn’t look friendly.

  The guy followed dutifully behind her.

  “That”—Melanie pointed at me—“that’s one.”

  “What?” I asked. “Somebody who’s kicked your ass?”

  Melanie scowled at me. Her friend just blinked a couple of times. Maybe he had even less of a clue what she was talking about than I did.

  “No, bitch,” she snapped. “A vampire.”

  I sighed. “Wow, alert the media. You know, Timothy should really invest in a leash and muzzle for you.”

  “Timothy and me are through,” she spat and grabbed the arm of the timid-looking boy. “This is my new boyfriend.”

  He blinked at me again.

  “My condolences,” I said and turned away.

  “Where do you think you’re going, bitch?”

  I raised my eyebrows and turned around. “You have a lot of hostility, Melanie. But at least your glowing personality makes up for it.”

  “Vampire,” her friend finally spoke. His voice was small and nervous. He struck me as the kind of guy who’d be better off wearing a polka-dot bow tie, sitting in a small office, adding lists of numbers together, than out on the town with “Miss Congeniality.”

  Melanie nodded. “That’s right, Eugene. A vampire. And what do we do with vampires?”

  His forehead creased in concentration. “Uh.”

  Melanie rolled her eyes. “We kill them. Come on, get your stake out and kill her.”

  “He’s a vampire hunter?” I asked, my voice devoid of any panic. I mean, come on.

  “That’s right,” Melanie said proudly as Eugene searched his pockets. “I’m training him, based on my knowledge of your kind.”

  Eugene finally found what he was looking for. He held a stake tightly in his trembling right hand, but it slipped away from him and clattered to the sidewalk.

  I bent over to pick it up and handed it back to him. “I should let you know that I’m in a very bad mood right now. It’s been one of those days.”

  “Kill her,” Melanie prompted, her black-rimmed eyes shiny with the prospect of violence.

  Eugene raised the stake.

  I kicked him in the shin.

  He dropped the stake again, blinked painfully up at me as he rubbed his leg, and then ran away in the opposite direction.

  I shook my head as I watched him flee. “Honestly, Melanie, I think your taste in men may be even worse than mine.”

  I turned to glance at her just in time to see her lunge at me, the stake now in her hand. Instinctively, I grabbed her wrists to prevent her from plunging it into my chest. Her momentum knocked me backward and we fell in a heap on the ground, my dark sunglasses knocked off my face. She was stronger than she looked, plus she’d taken me by surprise. Not a good combination.

  “This’ll teach him for dumping me,” she shrieked. “He thinks I’m not good enough for him, huh? We’ll see about that.”

  It never would have occurred to me, after facing off against legitimately deadly vampire hunters, that I had anything to be afraid of with Melanie. But as I wrestled with her—her jilted-girlfriend rage tripling her normal strength; her seeing me as the reason for all of her problems—my life flashed before my eyes.

  And it wasn’t pretty. I hadn’t lived a very interesting life.

  I felt the sharp tip of the stake nick my chest. The pain brought me out of my mental slide show and back to reality.

  With my hands busy fending off her attack and my legs trapped under her, I knew I’d have to use my head if I wanted to get out of this one. Literally use my head.

  I smacked my forehead against the bridge of her nose. She screamed but didn’t budge.

  “Let go of me,” I yelled.

  “No way. You’re dead meat!”

  “What about Eugene?” I managed. “Don’t you want to make sure he’s okay?”

  “Screw Eugene!” she yelled.

  “No thanks!”

  We rolled around on the ground. The girl sure had spunk, I’d give her that. When she set her mind to something, she didn’t give up. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that killing me was a very good thing for her to set her sights on.

  Then I saw somebody out of the corner of my eye. Thank God. Somebody was going to rescue me.

  The somebody wasn’t moving. While I held Melanie’s hands away from me, I glanced over.

  Quinn looked down at us wrestling on the ground. He wore dark sunglasses.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not so good.” I bashed Melanie in the upper lip this time, giving me the opportunity to maneuver myself on top of her. I was going to need some Tylenol after this was over. Either that or a mortician.

  “Who’s your friend?” Quinn still wasn’t making a single move to help me out.

  “Oh, this is Melanie,” I said, after I narrowly avoided the stake hitting my jugular. “Melanie, Quinn.”

  Melanie wasn’t in the mood to meet new people at the moment.

  It was quite obvious that Quinn was trying to keep from smiling at my predicament. If I weren’t fighting for my life, I would have been extremely annoyed.

  “Need some help?” he finally asked.

  “Oh, no. I’ve got it all under control.”

  Melanie rolled over, so she was on top again, and let out a Xena-like war cry.

  “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll see you later, then.”

  “Quinn!” I yelled after he turned his back. In this position the bright afternoon sun was blinding me. “Welcome to the land of sarcasm. Help would be nice.”

  He grinned and, with one hand, snatched Melanie by the back of her black sweatshirt and hauled her off me. She clawed at him, the air, and everything in between. I slowly got to my feet and brushed off my jacket. There was a patch of red over my heart, where she’d grazed me with the stake. I rubbed it tenderly and pouted. She’d ruined one of my favorite T-shirts.

  Quinn gently shook Melanie until she dropped the stake. She didn’t seem scared; she just looked pissed off that we’d been interrupted. Quinn held her arms firmly against her sides so she couldn’t budge.

  I grabbed my sunglasses off the ground and put them back on. Then I walked over to Melanie and slowly looked her up and down. “Now is the time when I’m supposed to say that I’m sorry about how things went down with you and Timothy. And that vampires aren’t all bad. Also, that in time you’ll be okay; you just need to give your feelings a while to heal.”

  She blinked at me, and I could see the rage slowly fading from her eyes.

  “Let her go,” I told Quinn. He released her and she turned to walk away without
saying another word.

  “Oh, just one more thing, Melanie,” I said.

  She turned around and I punched her in her already-injured nose.

  I smiled at her. “Come near me again, and I’ll bite you.”

  Her lower lip quivered and she turned and ran away.

  I rubbed my throbbing hand. “Ow, that hurt.”

  Quinn just shook his head at me.

  I frowned at him. “What?”

  “You just made me remember one of the first things you ever said to me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you’re not a nice girl.”

  “Oh, right! That was after your pickup line from hell.” I smiled, and then stopped myself from looking too friendly. “What are you doing around here, anyhow?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “Is that right?” I was immediately on my guard.

  “Relax,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. Besides, after what I just witnessed, I don’t think I’d be able to hurt you. You’re pretty tough.”

  I crossed my arms. “Then what do you want?”

  He began to say something and then stopped. He opened his mouth again and met my eyes. “I wanted to apologize.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Apologize. For what?”

  “For everything. Mostly the nearly-killing-you part. Yeah, I wanted to apologize for that, and then thank you for saving my life.”

  “You know, Quinn, even though I haven’t known you that long, I hope you’re not insulted if I doubt your sincerity.”

  He shrugged. “I know. I guess it’s been one of those ‘walk a mile in someone else’s shoes’ things for me. I’ve been raised to believe that va—that vampi—” He stopped and frowned deeply.

  “Bloodsucking, murderous monsters,” I finished for him. Again with the sarcasm. It was a gift.