His grin widened. “Aw, Lizzie. You’re tops in my book.”
“Don’t call me Lizzie. It’s puerile.” I opened the door and gestured for him to come inside. “C’mon. It’s ready.”
Rand moved to Broken Heart when he was seventeen. Now he was twenty-two, and, for a human, his specialty was a rarity in a town filled with paranormal residents. He was the expert on the care and feeding of dragons.
I was forty-three when Lorcan O’Halloran, or rather the beast he’d become, attacked and killed me and ten other residents of Broken Heart, Oklahoma. He suffered from the Taint, a disease that affects only vampires. Luckily, a cure has since been discovered.
Every vampire has strength, speed, the ability to glamour, and, unless your head is chopped off or sunlight gets you, immortality. There were eight vampire Families, each with its own particular power. I was from the Family Zela, and our ability was to manipulate and control any metallic substance.
As a human, I hadn’t been able to conquer my vanity about getting older. Going under the knife, taking the injections, getting the acid peels… I did them all. However, becoming undead rid me of crow’s feet, stretch marks, cellulite, and forestalled other atrocities of the aging process.
“I’ll make tea,” I said as he stepped inside and shut the door.
“Earl Grey?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Though I enjoyed my solitary lifestyle, I couldn’t resist having a cuppa with whomever crossed my threshold. Thanks to an accidental fairy wish, vampires within the borders of Broken Heart could eat and drink again. That is, drink liquids other than blood. I had missed taking tea, and had been pleased to reestablish the routine.
The old Victorian opened into a wide foyer. Straight ahead was the staircase to the upper floor. On the left side, you could enter the formal living room. On the right side was a smaller room, the parlor, which was where I typically entertained visitors.
Rand paused by the antique coat tree. He studied it, then glanced at me. “New?”
“Yes. It’s French. Hard-carved oak, circa 1870. See the hooks? They’re cherubs.” The darkened wood had been polished with beeswax. I’d fallen in love with the piece merely from its picture. EBay was a glorious boon for vampires. “The bench seat opens.” I flipped it up and we looked down into the emptiness.
Rand shook his head. “You’ve got a thing for old stuff.”
“So do you.” I tweaked his earlobe, and he laughed.
The kitchen was accessed through a narrow door at the back of the parlor. While Rand took a seat at the small table I used for tea service, I went to the kitchen and put on the kettle.
“Hey, I forgot!” Rand called from the parlor. “Patsy gave me something for you. Said they found it in the attic and it belongs to you.”
I poked my head into the parlor. “I’ve told her a hundred times that whatever she finds, she can have or toss out.”
He shrugged. “I’ll go get it.”
While Rand went to get whatever it was, I returned to the kitchen. I cleaned up the mess I’d made earlier during a botched attempt at making scones. I heard the front door open and shut, and then steps in the foyer.
“Elizabeth.”
The man’s voice seemed to come from right behind me. It vibrated with fury. I could practically feel strong hands try to creep around my neck.
Startled, I whirled around, my hand pressed against my chest. My palm flattened over the spot where my heart no longer beat.
Nobody was there.
The kitchen was small. I’d kept it simple during the renovation, thinking it pointless for me to even have one. The cabinets were whitewashed, the countertops and walls a cheery yellow, and the floor, as was the rest of the house, was polished oak. About the only place for someone to hide was the pantry. I opened the door, but saw only the fully stocked shelves, and in the back, cleaning equipment.
Unnerved, I returned to the stove and opened the cabinet that held my tea stashes. I pulled down the tin and pried off the lid, looking down into the dark, loose leaves. It smelled strong and fragrant, as good tea should.
“Elizabeth.” The voice was stronger now, insistent. I had excellent hearing thanks to my vampire ears, but this wasn’t someone speaking from a distance. The man calling my name did not like me. I had the uneasy feeling that he wanted to hurt me. Foreboding sat in my belly, as solid and heavy as an iron weight.
“Hey, you need help?”
I yelped, dropping the tin. It bounced and rolled, its contents spilling onto the floor.
“Shit,” said Rand. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He crossed to the mess and picked up the container. “I don’t think there’s much left.”
“I have another one.” I hesitated. “Did you hear anyone just now?”
He frowned. “Who?” He glanced around the kitchen, the same way I had earlier. “You think someone’s in the house?”
I shook my head, feeling foolish. “I’m just being silly. Never mind.”
“You’re a lot of things, Lizzie, but silly isn’t one of ‘em.” He grimaced. “I mean, you know, you’re mature.” He slapped a hand against his forehead. “I’m not saying you’re not fun, just that you’re serious.”
His face went red. I swallowed my laugh and reached for the second tin of Earl Grey so he wouldn’t see my amused expression.
“Maybe you should stop complimenting me,” I offered, “and go get the broom.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding relieved. “I’ll clean up the mess. No prob.”
“Where’s the all-important thing?” I asked.
“I left it inside the coat tree.”
“Why on earth would you do that?”
“So you’d have a surprise to open.”
I stared at him, but he shrugged and grinned. Then he went to the pantry, grabbed the broom, and busied himself with cleaning up.
———
Later, we settled at the table with our tea and conversation. However, I didn’t want to torment Rand for too long. He’d come to my home for a singular purpose.
“Here.” I slid the velvet the box across the table and Rand accepted it.
His face had a look of wonder and, if I wasn’t mistaken, an edge of panic. I suppressed my smile as he flipped open the box. His mouth fell open and his eyes went wide.
It was gratifying to see his reaction to my work.
He plucked the ring from its silk confines and studied it. “I knew you did great work, Lizzie, but… wow. This is art.”
“Thank you,” I said modestly.
Rand had procured silver and gold for me, and a small, rare dragonfire gem that was deep purple in color, passionate in promise. Two dragons – one silver, one gold – stretched in a circle, from joined tails to snouts, pressing against the oval stone.
“It’s perfect,” he said. He dragged his gaze from the ring to me and smiled broadly. “Now all she has to do is say yes.”
Rand was in love with MaryBeth Beauchamp, a vampire who’d been Turned at the tender age of eighteen. I supposed she would be twenty-three now, if vampires counted years. (And, thank goodness, they didn’t!) She was a nice girl who was the official full-time nanny of Queen Patricia’s triplets.
When Rand approached me about making an engagement ring for MaryBeth, I asked him about his concept of forever. He was human, after all. Then he explained that as a handler of dragons, he fell within their protection, and one gift given was immortality. He said he’d probably stop aging around thirty human years, which was the same as dragon shifters.
So he and MaryBeth would truly have forever. Part of the vampire curse, if you want to call it that, was that sex equaled an instant hundred-year commitment to your bedmate. Needless to say, most of us were very careful. In my case, I avoided dating altogether, although I sometimes yearned for the emotional and physical intimacy of a relationship.
Ah, well. Love was for the young, and all that.
———
I stood on the porch
steps and waved good-bye. Rand drove a white Ford truck, a rather mundane vehicle for a man with such a wild nature. Soon he would give MaryBeth the ring, and his love. And I hoped she returned the favor. It was a difficult thing to do, to entrust one’s heart to someone else.
Or so I suspected.
I had never really been in love.
I married Henry Bretton when I was twenty-two, in the fall after I graduated from the University of Tulsa. Not for love, though I certainly enjoyed his company and found him an amiable companion. No, I married the man my parents picked for me because I understood the limitations of my own life, and certainly the figurative dangling scissors they held over the line to my trust fund.
In my late twenties, I discussed with my husband the possibility of having children. I wanted a baby, maybe even two or three.
Henry had no choice but to admit that he’d had a vasectomy, and then he confessed why.
The month before Henry married me, he’d had a one-night sexual romp with a Las Vegas showgirl named Trinie. Nine months and one DNA test later, he was the reluctant father of a baby girl. His solution to this problem was to throw money: at Trinie, at the baby girl she named Venice, at whomever promised to help with such a delicate situation.
I was aware my husband enjoyed extramarital activities, but he’d always been discreet. It was a terrible blow to learn he had a child, one he’d kept hidden not only from me, but from the world.
I was the one who insisted he publicly claim her.
After that, Henry and I kept separate bedrooms, and though he continued having affairs, I never took a lover. I kept busy with planning parties, chairing committees, heading charities, and mixing martinis. According to my mother, a dry martini and a good cry could fix damn near anything.
It’s understandable that Venice grew up with a skewed sense of self-esteem and a damaged moral compass. She was embarrassed to have a showgirl mother and desperate for the attention of the wealthy father who’d emotionally abandoned her.
The drama started in her early teens. Kicked out of boarding schools. Arrested for underage drinking. Photographed with a lifted skirt – and no panties.
Henry was mortified by his daughter’s behavior. He shipped Trinie and Venice off to Europe. Anytime Venice ended up in the tabloids, he’d pack them off to another country.
When Venice was seventeen, her mother died in a car accident in France. Henry had no choice but to bring the girl into our home.
Venice never realized she didn’t have to compete with me for her father’s affection. I wanted so much to be a good stepmother. Every time I reached out to her, she ignored me, and worse, she viciously rejected any show of kindness.
Venice became a fashionable club girl. Famous only for being famous. With her father’s money, she started a perfume line, and then a clothing line. She acted a few bit parts in low-grade horror movies. Henry financed her return to France, and she left without so much as a good-bye.
Not long after my forty-third birthday, Henry died of heart failure. I left New York after the funeral. I dropped every obligation, abandoned every project. I spent the next couple of months at my parents’ home, completely out of sorts. They took an anniversary trip to Europe, and asked me to inventory the old Silverstone estate in Broken Heart. It was busywork, but I didn’t care. I needed to do something productive.
The Silverstones had long since moved away from the town they’d helped found – everyone but my grandfather’s brother. He was a greedy man, somewhat lecherous, too, and he liked his privacy.
Then Great Uncle Josiah just… left. He never told a soul why he abandoned the manse. He went off to the Alaska wilderness, where he later died. In his will, he stated that the house could not be occupied by, or sold to, any member of the Silverstone family.
———
On my first evening in town, Lorcan found me outside Broken Heart’s one and only motel (now demolished). I’d been trying to coax a can of Sprite from the uncooperative soda machine. The beleaguered beast threw me against the wall and sucked me dry.
I woke up undead – courtesy of the Consortium, an organization created by vampires who wanted to better the world. It moved into Broken Heart, ousted most of the human residents, and created a parakind community.
I donated the Silverstone mansion to the town. Officially. It had already been abandoned by my family, and my parents couldn’t have cared less what I actually did with it. Now it belonged to the vampire queen, her lycanthrope husband, and their three darling four-year-old triplets.
My parents were surprised when I told them I wanted to stay in Broken Heart, but they didn’t question my choice. They certainly didn’t know that I was a vampire. I found a lovely old Victorian that I renovated to suit me and settled down into the life of a well-to-do bloodsucker.
I very much wanted to be a mother, and I will always regret never knowing the experience, the joys, or the sorrows. I think, maybe somewhere deep inside, I had hoped to have a little piece of it with Venice. No matter how small the slice of motherhood she might’ve allowed me, I would’ve been so much the happier for it.
Alas, motherhood was no longer an option for me.
I was not holding out for romantic love, either, and certainly not the giddy, passionate, moon-eyed kind that seemed to afflict so many of Broken Heart’s residents.
What was that saying? Oh, yes. We were the sum total of our experiences. Sometimes I felt more subtracted from than added to.
I shook off my pensive mood. Sunrise was in less than two hours. Like everything about my un-life, I embraced the sudden sleep that affected all vampires. I usually prepared for bed earlier than necessary and read until I passed out.
My guilty pleasures were romance novels. Though I didn’t even dream of finding that kind of love in my own life, I very much enjoyed reading about it. Every happily-ever-after gave me such a thrill of satisfaction. Each novel was like a Godiva truffle. I enjoyed every one, and when finished savoring, I was eager for the next.
I heard thunder crack. Startled, I looked up into the cloud-swirled sky. It was nearing mid-September, and still warm by Oklahoma standards. The suddenness of the storm shouldn’t have concerned me. The attitude of Oklahoma weather could be summed up thusly: I’ll do whatever I damn well like. Come to think of it, that was also the attitude of the state’s residents. Especially the ones in Broken Heart.
The rain began in earnest, and, suddenly chilled, I went inside.
I paused by the coat tree. Thinking about the silliness of Rand’s hiding whatever family heirloom Patsy had discovered, I looked inside.
Foreboding shot through me like a poisoned arrow. I knelt down and picked up the silver box. Uneasiness quelled my admiration for its simplistic beauty. As strange as it sounds, I felt as if I was touching something evil. Something wrong.
I removed the lid.
Empty.
Though it was only a four-inch square, its dark blue silk lining pegged it as a jewelry container. It might be big enough for a couple of bracelets or a few rings. It was an odd size.
Then I saw my name was engraved on the lid. Mine and another: Lucas.
It made me shiver.
Elizabeth was a family name passed down through generations. It was likely that this item belonged to my great-great-great-grandmother, who was married to Jeremiah Silverstone. She’d died not long after their second child had been born.
I was fuzzy on family history, though curious enough now that I might call Eva, our resident expert on the town, and chat about it.
The box was tarnished, obviously old. I stared at the lid and frowned. If the Elizabeth on the lid referred to my ancestor, to the wife of Jeremiah… then who the hell was Lucas?
———
The storm raged with a ferocity that made me distinctly uncomfortable. I lay among my pillows with the covers pulled up to my chin, like a child frightened of closet monsters. I tried to focus on my novel, but my gaze kept wandering to the flickering light of my bedside lam
p.
We vampires didn’t do coffins, but crypts were another matter. I had created my bedroom in the basement of the house as a precaution against sunlight. I added a full bathroom down there as well, with a jet tub and glass shower. Everything was luxurious, from the rich green, gold, and bronze colors of my decor to the Egyptian cotton sheets and towels.
Beautiful interior design and lavish materials, however, did not offer the kind of comfort I currently needed. I was too much a woman alone in her creaky old house – a horror-movie heroine stalked by an ax-wielding maniac.
I gulped.
I couldn’t shake off my trepidation. No amount of self-lectures about my maturity, my vampire traits (as Jessica would say, I totally kicked ass), or security reminders (werewolves, Invisi-shield, neighbors) helped. Granted, my neighbors weren’t exactly close. I lived on three acres, two acres of which were woods. I had blazed my own trails numerous times hiking through them, but now the closeness of the forest merely represented optimal hiding places for the nefarious.
I badly wanted to hear another person’s voice, but I would feel utterly ridiculous if I gave in to such an urge. How would I explain such a phone call to my friends?
It was still an hour away from sunrise.
I decided to make some jasmine tea to calm my nerves. I gave in to cowardice and used vampire speed to zip from my bed to the staircase, which led directly into the kitchen.
The rain pounded like a hundred fists against the windows. The storm was unsettling me. I set the water to boil and wandered around downstairs, flipping on all the lights.
I stopped in the parlor, my gaze falling on the little silver box. I’d left it on the table where Rand and I had enjoyed our tea.
“Elizabeth.”
I whirled around, but the man’s angry voice had no owner. I reached out with my vampire senses and felt no one, nothing. My own powers didn’t include communing with the dead dead. The very idea of a spirit roaming my house gave me the willies.
I snatched up the box, thinking I should just toss it into the trash. I was disturbed by its presence, and equally disturbed by my irrational fear.
Come Hell or High Water Page 20