Dara shook her head, but Lucy saw a smile curl the corner of her mouth. “Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you think,” she murmured.
Jessica grimaced. “Listen, I’m sorry for being rude to you when you came into the store the other night. I don’t even care about Paul anymore, and I feel really bad that all these years, I’ve—”
“Oh, cut it out, Ramos,” Dara threw back, cutting her off. “Now’s not the time to be getting sappy on me.” Her soft smile took the sting out of her quoted words. “How did you end up with the bookstore, anyway?” she asked. “Why did Mr. Morris leave it to you?”
Jessica’s face lit up, and Lucy was glad Dara had asked her about Book of Love. She knew her best friend liked nothing better than to talk about the bookstore. It was her pride and joy.
“Rand was really good friends with my parents,” Jessica explained, “kind of like an uncle to me, and he didn’t have any kids of his own to leave it to. He had a niece, but she didn’t want anything to do with a bookstore. He was worried if he willed it to her, she’d just sell it to some developer and it’d either get turned into another fro-yo bar, or leveled into a parking lot. I’d worked at Morris’s Books in high school and college, and he knew how much I loved it. When he offered it to me, I jumped at the chance to take it over.”
“Oh, I would have, too,” Dara sighed. “What a wonderful job it must be.”
Jessica veritably beamed with pleasure. “It is, but it’s been a lot of work, too. I’ve basically been renovating it from the ground up since I took it over. Lots of hours, lots of money. And the previous manager, Mrs. Davis, is retiring but isn’t exactly fond of the idea of leaving me in charge. So she’s been a real peach to deal with sometimes. But I honestly think all the effort will be worth it in the end. It’s going to mean revitalized business, not only for me, but hopefully for everyone else around us in the Courtyard, too.” She told Dara about the big party she’d been planning for months, to celebrate the release of A Prince at Midnight.
“I saw the standee in your window,” Dara said, and admitted she had loved all the previous books in the series. “Are you going to have the author at your party?”
Jessica goggled at her. “R.Q. Vander Gries?” she asked, with an air of reverence. “No way. How would I even get ahold of her?”
Dara said, “Jason and I give a lot of money to local charities, including the library system. I know Vander Gries did a reading at one of the branches last year. I bet if I sent a few emails, I could get you in touch with someone who can get you in touch with her management. It’d be worth a shot anyway, right? She does live in Dallas. That’s not too far away for her to drive.”
Lucy thought her best friend’s jaw might drop completely off her face. “You would do that?” Jessica gasped. “For me?”
“It’s nothing,” Dara said. “You’d still have to do all the hustling yourself—you know, convince her to make the trip down here and all.”
“Oh, I can hustle,” Jessica laughed. “I can hustle with the best of them. But the party’s only a week away. It’s probably too short notice.”
Dara shrugged. “Still. She’ll have other books. You can get her to come down next time.” She returned her attention to yet another stake she was finishing off, dropping it on the pile and picking up another dowel rod.
Jessica shot a look of disbelief at Lucy, but her eyes were sparkling with happiness.
“What about you, Lucy?” Dara asked without looking up. “What’ve you been doing with yourself since high school?”
“What?” Lucy nudged her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Oh, I um…I went to college for a couple of years, took some basic courses, but I never finished a degree.”
Now Dara did look up, her surprise evident. “You were pretty good in school,” she said with a hint of sarcasm. “What with your advanced classes and whatnot.”
Lucy shrugged self-consciously. “Yeah. I’d skipped a grade in elementary school, too. But I, uh, had some family issues. My dad got sick for a while, and I moved back home to help my mom with him. I got sidetracked. Since then I’ve had a few different jobs. For the past eight months I’ve worked at Acray-Sys.”
Dara puckered her lips, blowing wood shavings off the end of her stake. “I’ve seen the Acray-Sys campus. What is it they do there again? Software development?”
“Yeah. Mostly timeclock software. The company was founded by Alexander Craydon. A-Cray-Sys.” No sooner had she said it then Lucy felt silly for explaining. As if Dara—or anyone—cared about the etymology of her company’s name. Why did she always have to go off on such weird tangents? Dara probably thought she was the biggest geek she had ever met.
But Dara just smiled kindly at her. “And you met Aaron there?” she asked.
Lucy gave a quick nod and felt a blush immediately bloom on her cheeks.
“Wow,” Dara laughed, “you really like him.”
“He’s the best boss ever,” Lucy declared, and again felt foolish. She sounded like a lovesick schoolgirl, gushing over her crush like he was the class basketball star or something. “I’m uh,” she stammered, “I’m just his executive assistant, though. His secretary.”
“You are not ‘just’ anything,” Jessica said. “Aaron would lose his head without you.” To Dara, she added, “She’s liked him for the past six months, and he finally made a move on her the other night. Told her what a great person he thought she was, asked her out to dinner and everything.”
“Oh,” Dara said, “how exciting!”
Lucy blushed again. She considered explaining to Dara that she wasn’t even sure Aaron remembered calling her, much less mentioning dinner, but then she decided to just let it go. “Yeah,” she said, staring at the half-finished stake in her hand, “he asked me out for pizza. But that was right before all this vampire stuff happened…” She thought of Aaron lying in a stupor back at her apartment, and angry tears pricked at the back of her eyes. “Now who knows if we’ll ever get to do anything together?” Much less go out for a pizza, she thought dismally. By now, Aaron was probably deathly allergic to garlic.
Dara’s mouth thinned to a line. “Don’t worry, Lucy, we’re going to fix this. We’ll get our guys back. I refuse to believe anything different, and neither should you.”
Lucy nodded, but turned her attention to Jessica. “What about you, Jess? Do you really think we can do it?”
Jessica’s eyes gleamed. “Of course I do. You guys,” she gestured at Lucy and Dara, “are in love. Which makes this a love story. And like I told you, in a good love story…” She stared expectantly at Lucy.
“There’s always a happy ending,” Lucy finished, fighting not to roll her eyes.
Jessica gave her a level look that discouraged any arguing, and she hacked her knife into her dowel, attacking her stake with renewed fervor. The others did the same, silence dropping over the kitchen as they concentrated on topping up their anti-vampire arsenal.
Chapter Nine
At long last, Lucy, Jessica, and Dara were ready to go out for the night.
To go out vampire hunting.
Lucy felt another frisson of giddiness over the absurdity of it, but she kept the sentiment to herself.
“Are we ready to go?” she asked instead.
Dara stood up and dusted her hands together. “I think so. The Red Palm is pretty casual, right? So we should be okay in these clothes.” She looked around at her companions. All three of them were dressed similarly, in jeans, casual tops, and flats. “But I think we ought to accessorize,” she said. She retreated into her bedroom for a minute, re-emerging with a trio of roomy designer handbags lined up on her arm. She kept one for herself and handed the others to Jessica and Lucy. They loaded each purse with knives, flashlights, stakes, and duct tape, and then stowed the drop cloth, lighter fluid, and a couple of candle lighters in the back of the SUV, and headed out. The Red Palm was only ten miles away, and minutes later, just as the sun was sinking below the horizon, they pulled into the
parking lot.
Dara parked the 4Runner, and the women trooped inside to search for a table. It was early, so the crowd was thin, and they were able to secure a booth in a back corner. They ordered drinks and settled in.
“This is perfect,” Jessica declared, looking around. “We can see the whole room from here. We’ll be able to watch everyone that comes in.”
They did watch, and plenty of people did come in, but none of them looked particularly vampiric or otherwise suspicious to Lucy. After a while, she started to get antsy...and then bored.
She picked up the drink menu, flipping through the laminated pages without paying much attention to them, and tried not to worry, but it was impossible. All she could think about was Aaron, sleeping like the dead—the undead—back at her apartment. Or possibly waking up and feeling frightened when he realized he was all alone. I should’ve left him a note, she chided herself, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. At least she’d left his cell phone sitting right next to him on the nightstand. She could send him a text. And say what? she wondered. That he shouldn’t worry because she and a couple of her girlfriends had carved up some stakes and gone out to slay the vampire who’d bitten him? It would likely just freak him out even worse. He might not be in love with Lucy, but she knew he cared about her as a person. If he thought she was in danger because of him, he’d feel guilty. He might even come out looking for her, even though he was likely in no shape to leave the apartment. He didn’t have his car with him, but there was always Uber.
Lucy closed the drink menu and slid it into the center of the table. She reached for her phone, thinking there must be some less alarming message she could send to Aaron, something that would let him know where she was, that she was okay, and that she would be back home with him as soon as possible, without lying to him about what she was up to. She was wracking her brain for how to word it, when suddenly Dara sat up straighter and whispered, “Hey. Over there, you guys. That woman who just came in and went to the bar.”
Lucy and Jessica peered through the crowd at the lady in question. She was petite, decked out in a silver sequined top, black mini skirt, and high heels.
“Yeah.” Jessica’s eyes were narrowing. “She’s young and pretty. And blonde. Which means she fits both Jason’s and Aaron’s descriptions of the vampire. Check out how she zeroed in on that cute guy who was sitting all by himself, too. And now look…he’s leaving with her! Oh no, we have to stop them before she bites his neck!”
“Shhh!” Lucy warned her. Then, dropping her phone back into her purse, she said, “Come on, let’s follow them.”
Jessica was more than ready to do so. She practically shoved Dara out of the booth, almost dumping her onto the floor as she wriggled out of her seat and scurried toward the entrance, her borrowed handbag clutched under her arm.
Her friends trailed her outside. There weren’t that many people hanging around on the street at this hour, but Lucy and Dara walked at a normal pace and did their best to look casual anyway. Up ahead, Jessica hurried down the sidewalk. She stopped and turned around, bouncing up and down on her toes and waving maniacally when she realized they were so far behind her.
“They went into that alley over there,” she hissed when they caught up. “Just like what happened with Aaron!”
“Calm down, Jess,” Lucy pleaded. “We need to be careful about this. And we want to be sneaky, right?”
The three of them fished flashlights and stakes out of their bags and slunk into what turned out to be a blind alleyway, staying close to the wall of the Red Palm. The sun had been down for almost an hour already, and it was dark back here. Only one faulty security bulb glowed dully above the bar’s back door, blinking erratically as it threatened to wink out for good. Still, with the moonlight it was bright enough for Lucy to see the man and woman they’d followed standing in the corner, just beyond a Dumpster and a pile of pungent garbage bags. The man had his back against the wall. The woman was leaning into him. Jessica turned and looked at Lucy with huge eyes, and Lucy knew what she had to be thinking. The woman was about to bite him.
Sure enough, the next second, the woman rested her hand on the guy’s cheek and forced aside his head. She dipped her face, nestling her mouth against his neck. The man moaned and started to slide down the wall, his hands grasping at the woman’s shoulders.
Jessica raised both the flashlight and stake in one hand. She flicked on the light and jumped out of the shadows. “Stop it right there!!” she shouted.
The man and woman screeched and leapt away from one another. They whirled and stared at Jessica with their mouths hanging open. There were no fangs or blood anywhere that Lucy could see. For a minute, the man seemed incapable of forming a coherent sentence and just stood there, murmuring a string of curse words and rubbing his face, but the woman frowned and settled her hands on her hips.
“Who are you?” she demanded of Jessica. “A cop or something? ’Cause there’s nothing going on back here. We’re just…two consenting adults, you know?”
“Y-yeah,” the man finally managed, trying to tuck his shirttail back into his pants as he staggered out from behind the garbage bags, “that money I gave her was just…I was paying back a loan…”
The woman slapped his shoulder and told him to shut up.
Uh-oh, Lucy thought, her cheeks starting to flame. They hadn’t stumbled onto a vampire attack at all. This was…well, this was something else. Catching the mortified look on Dara’s face, she could see she was thinking the same thing.
The only person who didn’t seem rattled or embarrassed at all by the situation was Jessica. Dropping the stake back into her purse, she raised the flashlight higher and aimed it into the man’s eyes.
“You sure?” she demanded. “Nothing funny going on out here?”
The man held up his hands and angled his face away, shaking his head.
Jessica swung the flashlight beam at the woman, who squinted and repeated the same stuttering denials.
“Huh,” Jessica said. “Alright. Well, consider this your warning. But if I ever catch the two of you around here again…”
“You won’t, officer, you won’t.” The woman was already scrambling toward the mouth of the alley. The man was right at her heels and, in a flash, they’d disappeared around a corner.
Jessica let out a breath. She rejoined her friends, still cringing against the wall. “Well crap,” she said, dropping the flashlight back into her purse. “That was a bust. I’m not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.” Before Lucy could agree with her, something blocked out the moon. All three women looked up in surprise and watched as it descended toward them: a shadowy, humanoid figure with its long arms extended and its legs coiled like a frog’s.
What the-? Even as Lucy tried to make sense of what she was seeing, the strange, hulking vision dropped into the alleyway right beside them. It landed soundlessly and straightened up...up and up, to an imposing height. Lucy shrank back against the wall, beginning to quake in her shoes even before the shadow reached out its gargantuan hands and intoned in a rasping voice, “Jessicaaa…”
◆◆◆
“What the-?” Jessica spun around, yanking the stake back out of her purse.
“Calm yourself, Jessica,” the bear-like shadow commanded, holding up its paws. Then it cleared its throat and spoke more normally. “It is only me.”
Jessica froze, staring at the shadow. Which was really, Lucy now saw, a rather tall and striking young man in a dark sweatshirt, with the hood pulled up over his head. “Nathan!” Jessica cried, lowering the stake. “Were you up on the roof? Good grief. What are you doing here?”
Nathan! Lucy thought, her heart thumping wildly. Jessica’s vampire neighbor!
No wonder her friend had described him as ‘otherworldly’. Even in the moonlight, Lucy could see he had beautiful eyes, the irises so dark blue they looked almost violet. His bone structure was all sharp edges and symmetry, his lips masculine and yet silky-looking and sensual. His shoul
ders were broad, his legs long and well-muscled. He was easily one of the handsomest men Lucy had ever laid eyes on.
He seemed pretty steamed, though, his expression turning thunderous as he threw back his hood with gloved hands.
“Me?” he demanded. “What about you?” He stared at each of them—and at the weapons in their grips—incredulously. “Just what do you think you are doing?”
“Hunting the vampire I told you about, duh,” Jessica responded.
Nathan glanced back over his shoulder, in the direction the man and woman had just disappeared. He said, “That was not a vampire.”
“No, that was just some hooker and her john,” Jessica admitted despondently.
Nathan gave her an odd look. “No, I do not believe they were.”
“Huh?” Jessica’s face crinkled in confusion.
“I heard them conversing just before you arrived here,” he explained, “and it seems they were a married couple. Out on a date.”
“A date?” Jessica was dumbfounded. “Behind the Dumpster?”
“A role-playing date,” he clarified, and shot her a wry look. “But do not feel bad, Jessica. I imagine your sudden arrival and portrayal of a policeperson only made it all the more exciting for them. I assume they are off somewhere…finishing the game, as we speak.”
Jessica stared at him, her mouth slightly agape. She swallowed hard and said, “Okay, I hate to sound judgy, ’cause to each their own, but…Ew.” She shook herself. “And, whatever, the vampire is still out here somewhere, right?”
“Perhaps,” Nathan said. “And if she makes an appearance, you and your friends will not want to be anywhere in the vicinity. Not unless each of you has a death wish. You should leave now.”
“No way,” Jessica said. “We’re staying until this bloodsucking floozy comes out of hiding. We’ve got to kill her.”
At that, Nathan ripped the stake out of Jessica’s hand and stared at it. “What is this?” he demanded.
The Sharpest Kiss Page 9