Adelaide rose as he ended the call. “Work?”
“Yeah.” He scrubbed a hand over his prickly scalp. “Looks like I can’t stay after all.”
“No problem.” She tossed the remote aside. “I’ll walk you out.”
An honest laugh escaped him. “That eager to get rid of me?”
“No,” she said, dragging out the word like she was still making up her mind. “I was remembering what you said about a case keeping you in town. I didn’t want you to think you had to stay on my account.”
An hour or two made no difference to the dead. Boaz could have blown off work, plopped back down, and gotten to know Adelaide better on her home turf. That was what he should have done, but he was a coward.
When Adelaide stared at him, his future looked back, and he couldn’t see Grier even on the periphery. The loss gutted him. So, yeah. He could have stayed and done the fiancé thing, played his role, but Adelaide gave the impression of being just as eager to get rid of him as he was to escape her.
“Night, Adelaide.”
“Good night, Boaz.”
Goddess, this was it, wasn’t it? The beginning. So why did it feel like the end?
Five
When Cass came to retrieve her car, she found me curled up on the couch and plopped down beside me.
“You look rattled.” She flicked the end of my robe’s sash back and forth like an irritated cat swishing its tail. “Want to talk about it?”
“Boaz dropped by tonight.”
“I thought he was in Savannah.”
“So did I.” I twisted to face her. “He got drafted by the local sentinels to help investigate a serial killer. It dovetails with a case he’s been working back home.” I might as well tell her the rest. “Ron might be the latest victim.”
“That’s not ideal, but we can manage.” She crossed her long legs and kicked her foot, smiling an evil little smile at the silver tip on her boot, probably thinking about when she would get another opportunity to torment Gustav. “He’s got no reason to think you’re involved, and he doesn’t know me from Adam.”
A weird caving sensation filled my middle. “I invited him to stay here.”
“Smart.” She tapped my knee. “This way we can keep an eye on him.”
That was the plan, but he had keen eyes himself. Who would be watching whom? How much had I slipped up tonight? How much had he noticed? How would I explain any of this if I got caught?
“Are you sure it’s safe for us to stay involved?”
“There are always idiots who fancy themselves vampire slayers, Addie. You would not believe the quality of stakes I’ve been assaulted with in my time.” She slipped into her mocking-humans voice, low and brutish. “I sharpened a pencil.” She mimed stabbing me in the chest. “Fear me!”
“First of all, you only did that to cop a feel.” I slapped her hand off me. “Second of all, the Society wouldn’t get involved if it wasn’t serious.”
Boaz was an Elite, a special class of sentinel. They wouldn’t spend him on a case that wasn’t priority.
“The Society loves to stick its nose into vampire business. They’re helicopter parents if you ask me.”
The Society was responsible for resuscitating humans, using necromantic magic to transform them into vampires, but they only cared for their offspring up to the point when the check cleared. Past that, as long as they weren’t making waves among humans, the Society would sit on its hands and allow the vampire masters to police their clans. Or not. Obviously. Or I would be out of a job.
“Before I forget.” She reached between her boobs, taking far too long, and pulled out a wad of cash. “There’s your cut.”
“How did you manage this?” I gawked at the money I never expected to see. “The cleaners took the body into custody, right?”
Cleaners kept the paranormal world from bleeding over into the normal, and that meant cleaning up our crime scenes and disposing of bodies before they were discovered by humans.
“Do you remember Frank?”
“The human who thought he got turned into a vampire because you bit him during sex once?”
“That’s him.” She chuckled at the memory and then sighed with amusement. “He’s a cleaner these days. I talked him into giving me the head after the rest had been catalogued.”
“Won’t that get him in trouble?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t you care?”
“Not especially.” She frowned when I gave her the look. “Please don’t lecture me, Addie.” She bared her fangs then pointed at them. “I’m carnivorous. Dare I say, a maneater.” She hooked her fingers into claws and raked the air with them. “This is what I do. I use them, and then I throw them away.”
“So basically, you’re a predatory litterbug.”
“I don’t believe in double-dipping.” A shudder rippled through her. “Do you know how many alcohol wipes I used before I bit him? Five. And now he’s always baring his throat around me and talking about blood exchanges like he’s seen in the movies.” She gagged a little. “He believes everything he sees on TV. It’s ridiculous.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I didn’t remind her of the week she spent as my uninvited guest, the better for me to play nurse to her, after she accidentally drank the blood of someone who had eaten pizza for dinner. Convinced she was going to die from garlic poisoning, she wouldn’t leave my bed or put on clothes, determined to exit the world the way she came into or some such nonsense. Also something she saw in a movie.
After seven days, her lucky number, she rose from the bed and proclaimed herself cured by the grace of—I wasn’t really listening. At that point, I had a week’s worth of naked vampire to wash out of my sheets before I could sleep in my room again. Plus, she had been sipping her warmed blood in bed and spilled it all over my good comforter.
“What will you do if your man sneaks into your room at night?”
“He’s not my man.” Just my future husband. “I’ll stab him with the stake I keep under my pillow.”
Given my line of work, I had to be prepared a vampire might follow me home one day. From where I sat, I figured the trick worked on fiancés who followed me too.
“Bloodthirsty.” She chuckled. “I like it.”
Coming to visit and finding a man pinned to my wall, a macabre butterfly caught midair, would make her century.
“Of course you do.” I nudged her with my foot. “What is that? Are you…purring?”
“Am I? That’s embarrassing.” She touched her lower stomach. “Oh. No. It’s my phone. I set it on vibrate.”
“You set it on vibrate, and then you shoved it down your pants.” I was never borrowing her phone again. No matter how much hand sanitizer she used after the fact. “Like a normal person.”
“I’m not a person,” she said absently. “I’m a creature of the night.”
She bared her fangs half-heartedly and hissed for emphasis.
“Who’s calling?” I nudged her again. “Gustav?” I leaned over. “I noticed you wore his favorite boots.”
Boots.
The reminder gave me a headache. I should have shucked those off first thing. Boaz must have seen them. The way he pointed out my frog slippers…yeah…I had screwed up there. At least he hadn’t called me on it.
Holding the phone as far from her head as her arm allowed, she read off the screen. “The sentinels have put out a BOLO on Angelo, Ron’s lover. Clan Willis is offering a reward for his safe return.”
“Do you think Angelo heard about the murder that fast?”
“The preliminary findings have been uploaded into the cleaners’ database.” Her lips twisted. “I was on-scene. I provided the identification. The gory details can’t have been listed yet, but seeing Ron’s name might have been enough to send Angelo into a tizzy.”
“Vampires are so dramatic.”
“Live as long as we do, and you begin to crave sensation. What is love if not pain? What is loss if not the ultimate agony?
” She tapped the end of my nose. “And, as a vampire, he must make the most of it. That includes public displays of mourning, where the depth of his love will be judged by the effort he puts into his appearance.”
“Are you telling me he’s at the tailor’s getting fitted for mourning attire? That he would ditch his clan, tell no one where he’s gone, and duck out just to get a new black ensemble?”
Depending on his age, he might commission enough black suits to last him a full year.
Vampires: the original drama llamas.
“We are what we are, Addie.”
“I held my sister’s hand while she died. I was in my pajamas, and so was she. I cried until I passed out and had to be carried to my room. The last thing on my mind was dashing out for a quick fitting.”
Cass did a thing she hated almost as much as germs. She apologized and meant it.
“I’m sorry.” She touched my leg in a mostly nonsexual way. “Humans love differently than we do. We might have been human once, but we lose that spark. What’s left is an echo of mortality and morality. You have the biggest heart of anyone I know, which is why it was so easy for me to insinuate myself into your life and bend you to my will.”
What she wanted from me at the beginning was a desperate partner in crime, someone willing to do the dirty work. The literal dirty work. Anything that might result in contamination from germs, diseases, so forth and so on. How she made it as a prostitute for so long boggled my mind. Sex was the ultimate fluid-swapping experience, and she had been paid for it long before condoms or birth control, let alone treatment for STDs and other infections.
Unless she had been willing to coexist with germs until after she became a vampire. It happened like that sometimes. A weird trait, a personality quirk, a bizarre affectation ballooned until it overtook them.
“Does that mean you wouldn’t grieve for me if I got my throat ripped out on the job?”
“No.” A low rumble laced her voice. “It means I would rip the flesh from anyone who dared, strip by strip, and feed it to them. I would then hang them from their pinky toes, slash their throats, and let them exsanguinate. Once that was done, I would coffin them in cement and have the block dropped in the ocean.”
Touched by her twisted affection, I had to swallow back tears. “But would you look good doing it?”
“Dearest, darling one.” She plumped her cleavage. “I would look amazing.”
A familiar ringtone had me reaching for my phone. With Dad upstairs and Cass beside me, I had few guesses as to the culprit. “Hello?”
“I’m going to be late,” Boaz said grimly. “Are you sure you want me to come back to your place? I can crash in the barracks. I don’t want to be an imposition.”
The slight pulling sensation in my chest drew me upright, and Cass too. “What happened?”
“There’s been another murder.” A siren muffled him. “I can’t get into the details, but I need to go.”
“Another murder,” I echoed, hearing the dots connect. “Linked to your other cases?”
“Yeah.” He exhaled hard. “I wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t worry.”
Beside me Cass mashed her index fingers together and twisted them back and forth while making kissing noises.
Annoyance with her bled over onto him. “How presumptuous of you.”
“Just a turn of phrase.” His voice came out tired, defeated even. “I didn’t mean to imply, well, anything.”
A frustrated scream rose up my throat, but I couldn’t let it out. Once I started, I might not stop.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you.” Palming Cass’s forehead, I shoved her out of my face then hopped off the couch to begin pacing. “I appreciate the call. I would have worried if I woke and you weren’t here.”
Turning, I bumped into Cass, who had moved on to dry humping the doorframe while pointing at the phone and mouthing Boaz’s name. I wished for bleach or a time machine to undo the last ten minutes of my life. Or the last ten years. I would take what I could get. But, as usual, the goddess left me on read.
“You don’t have to patronize me.”
“I’m not.” I made a fist and hit myself in the forehead. “I’m having a bad night, and it’s wrong for me to take it out on you.”
“The offer stands. I can go to the barracks.” He lightened his tone. “Hell, I can stay there all week if it’s easier.”
Two vampires dead. One a bounty of ours, the other…I would have to butter up Gustav for those details.
The killings, so close to home, bothered me. Having Boaz this close, in my space, bothered me too, but he was a handy conduit to information. He was also the man I’d agreed to spend the rest of my life with, so I had to play nice. I had to smooth this over. I had to make this work.
Goddess, I was tired all of a sudden. Even the comforting weight of cash doused with Cass’s perfume did nothing to alleviate the dread coiling around my throat, tight as a noose.
“Come home,” I said, hating the waver in my voice. “I’ll be waiting.”
“All right.” He hesitated. “You’re good people, Addie.”
Good people didn’t invite their future husbands into their homes to spy on them.
Good people didn’t consider how far they were willing to go to keep their secrets.
Good people didn’t wish, even a little, that the label would stick, that the epithet was true.
I couldn’t afford to be good, and what’s worse, I couldn’t afford to let him catch me being bad.
Six
“Well?” Cass prowled over wearing a toothy grin. “Are we going hunting?”
“For Angelo?”
“The payout isn’t as large since he’s not a criminal, but we can both guess where he’ll go.”
To the scene of the crime. To make whatever peace was left to him.
A quick check of the time left me conflicted. “We only have two hours until dawn.”
“I enjoy living dangerously.”
“Clearly.”
“Your love muffin won’t be home for hours yet. He won’t catch us, if that’s what worries you.”
“He’s not my love muffin.”
“Did you notice his hands?” Cass flexed her delicate fingers. “That man knows how to knead dough.”
“My bakery is not open for business.” I made a slashing gesture when her gaze dipped to my chest. “Do not make mention of my breasts as pillowy mounds of—anything really. Leave my boobs out of this.”
“You’re the least fun person I’ve ever met.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
“Your staidness was a cry for help. Who am I not to answer?”
“Staidness is an old vampire word. I thought you were hip and with it.”
“I’m hip and with it enough to know humans don’t say hip or with it and haven’t since the eighties.”
Anyone who hadn’t been living under a rock was aware, I was sure. But it was fun to tease her.
“Two hours,” I warned. “We’ll have to make it fast.”
Cass smiled, teeth glittering. “My specialty.”
“You’re terrible.” I wrinkled my nose at the innuendo. “Horrible.”
“No good,” she agreed. “Very bad too.”
Laughing under my breath, which only encouraged her, I jogged upstairs to pull on jeans, sneakers, and a tee. I didn’t expect Angelo to put up much of a fight. I doubted I would need the protection leather could offer me. Plus, dressing casually meant fewer questions if Boaz caught me out again.
With dawn an oncoming threat, we had to factor in vampire ennui as well.
Angelo might decide he would rather greet the sun than live without his lover.
Out of the six or seven attempted suicides I had fielded, solo, since Cass couldn’t very well brave the sun without dusting either, only one had resulted in the vampire going through with it. I hesitated to count it since he hadn’t meant to do it.
I’d tracked him to his bedroom, he’d spotted me, s
tartled, then tripped over the fabric artfully arranged on the floor at his feet. He caught himself on what turned out to be a blackout curtain, it tore, and he exploded into dust I was blowing out of my nose for days.
We had only driven about five miles before a red-and-blue strobe caught my eye.
“Accident?” I heard the doubt in my voice. “Can you tell if it’s police or emergency services?”
Soon it became apparent we would have to drive past them to reach our paycheck.
“Police.” She slowed as we approached. “This doesn’t look good.”
“Forensics.” I recognized the sleek van from previous encounters. “These aren’t local cops.”
The vehicles bore the right logos, but they were too new, too shiny. Nicer than the budget would have stretched across a fleet this size.
“They’re Society,” she agreed. “Sentinels, cleaners, maybe even Elite.”
The rise of her voice at the end of the sentence spoke volumes. “You think Boaz is out there.”
“How many crimes against the Society could be committed in a town this size in one night?”
“Depends on how dedicated the individuals are to their cause.”
We rolled to a stop when a uniformed officer stepped from the shoulder onto the road. He knocked on the glass, and Cass lowered the window. He blinded us with his flashlight, making it impossible to make out his features.
“There’s been an accident.” He focused the beam on Cass. “I’m going to have to ask you ladies to turn around.”
“We’re headed into town for a late dinner.” She kept her fangs tucked in, though he was a necromancer, and he would know instinctively she was a vampire. “Can’t we squeak past?”
This was the main road into town, and there was nothing but driveways for miles. A detour wouldn’t do a lick of good out here. There was nowhere to go.
“No, ma’am.” He indicated the row of orange cones dotting the oncoming and outgoing lanes. “You’ll have to cancel. I’m sure your dates will understand.”
“Dates?” She fluttered her lashes. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Just a girls’ night out, that’s all.”
The Redemption of Boaz Pritchard Page 4