I hadn’t spent a night alone in a few days now, which I appreciated.
“Desiree Dumas,” he murmured in my ear, apparently more awake than I’d thought. Much more awake, I realized, as something extra hot and hard prodded at my hip. He snuffled at my hair, a shifter ritual I enjoyed now that I’d gotten used to it.
“Desiree Dumas,” I affirmed, enjoying the roll of my name on my own tongue.
For at some point in the last week, helping Ricky, Lupe, and Father Bryan recover from the attacks and guarding them in case the vamps returned, I’d learned a good lesson.
That if anything came after me—say a beautiful French vampire who’d discovered where his pet had got off to—I knew I needn’t run.
After all, I had the fixin’s of a truly Cajun happy endin’: a good man, a crossbow named Lolita, and enough wooden bolts to protect myself and the people I loved.
Daddy would be proud.
EXTREME MAKEOVER VAMP EDITION
LEIGH EVANS
Leigh Evans’s fancy was caught by Todd Seabrook and Bev Leveto, the vampire hosts of a reality show mentioned in Dead and Gone. The two fashionistas have never met their makeover match, until the night Eric Northman sends them to deal with the recluse of Vicksburg. Best friends Todd and Bev have their work cut out for them.
—
“You lead.” Bev’s gaze traveled over the outline of the old two-story house, taking in the broken slats of the shutters, the buildup of brush around the foundation.
Todd extended his hand to test the light Louisiana rain. “Why do I always have to go first?”
“Sweetie, what have I always told you?”
“Always moisturize before dawn?”
“Not that.”
“Never have a midnight snack who’s eaten lasagna?”
“No, silly.” She gave him a hearty shove out of their custom-painted RV in the general direction of the front door. “Always lead with your best asset.”
Todd streaked across the weed-choked yard at full speed—a long blur of dark hair and cream cashmere. Once he’d gained the relative shelter of the leaking porch, he twisted himself to stare at her. “Now what?”
Five years ago, maybe even three, she would have shaken her head in irritation at his constant need for direction. Now she simply mimed knocking.
“I wish we’d brought the camera crew,” he said, after giving the warped wooden door an enthusiastic pounding. “I know this makeover is pro-boner but I don’t see why we couldn’t have brought them.”
“Pro bono,” Bev corrected. “And a vamp marriage ceremony is not for public consumption.” Though we would have killed in the ratings. The living love schmaltz. She extended a manicured nail toward the gray hive hanging from the corner of the porch’s roof. “Besides, there are cameras, Toddy. There’s a small one hidden inside that wasp’s nest.”
She’d noticed the first one when they turned onto the dirt road. Admittedly, her powers of observation had been dulled by the languor of her self-induced starvation (a short-term deprivation due to the fact that they’d just finished a shoot and she’d met her mortal end smack-dab in the middle of her monthly period bloat). Malnourished or not, Bev’s survival instincts had kicked in once she’d noticed the presence of a surveillance camera in the fork of the old oak tree. As a rule, a derelict house and a few acres of scrub didn’t warrant the cost of security cameras. She’d quietly searched for others as her co-host painstakingly steered their RV around the worst of the driveway’s potholes. By her count, the camera in the wasp’s nest made four.
“It’s a camera? Really?” Todd spun around, completely intrigued.
That was both the downside and joy of Toddy. Since he had the attention span of a teenager with a remote control and a thousand channels, he greeted each new experience without the been-there, done-that ennui of most vamps his age. Agreed, it was a virtue set by default. His long-term memory was full of holes; thus most things were new to Toddy.
His maker had never bothered to perform an intelligence test before he turned the handsome farm boy with the dimples and flashing teeth into an immortal.
“See the red recording light?” Bev asked.
Todd strained on his toes to get a better look. “Peaches, it is a camera!” he said with delight. For the benefit of the device—Toddy loved any camera—he bestowed upon it one of his widest smiles. “Hello, Liara Giacona! I’m Todd Seabrook and this is Bev Leveto.” Then he paused (because she’d drilled into him that timing was everything) before delivering what they called the “Come to Vlad” kicker. “And we’re from the hit show The Best Dressed Vamp. We’re here to uncover your true beauty!”
Dead silence from the house.
“I don’t think she’s home,” Todd whispered.
“Oh, she’s home.”
“How do you know?”
“Our bride-to-be is a recluse.” Bev crossed her arms, mentally recalculating their timetable. “Where else would she be but inside? Reclusing?”
For the seventh time since they’d left Shreveport, Todd said, “I wonder who the groom is. It has to be someone well connected for Eric to call in such a big favor.”
Bev set her expression to “squash”—dark eyes narrowed until her thick lashes almost tangled, thin cheeks sucked in until the soft inside brushed against the hard plastic of her flipper. It was askew again. She willed her left fang to retract, then nudged her dental device back in its proper place with the tip of her tongue. Hunger and flippers, two things that constantly worked against each other.
Beauty never came cheap.
“Toddy,” she said for the eighth time since they left Shreveport, “remember that nothing matters beyond the makeover. That’s what we do. We make ugly people beautiful. Everything else is a detail. And we don’t—”
“Like details,” finished Toddy.
She was giving him the atta-boy nod when something fluttered in her peripheral vision.
“Toddy,” she whispered. “There’s something behind you. Don’t kill it, okay?”
Ever since “the incident”—or as Toddy called it, “when that psycho bitch tried to kill me”—her co-host had been a trifle twitchy.
Three things happened next. Toddy spun around, the porch lights flickered on and off, and Bev felt the first stirring of real curiosity since the moment Eric had summoned them to Louisiana to perform a hasty makeover on the recluse of Vicksburg.
Showmanship. Now, that was something Bev admired.
A semitransparent figure was doing the dance of the seven veils in one of the downstairs dark windows. As visions of Gothic horror go, it was a humdinger: female, Medusa hair, wearing what looked like a cat-shredded muumuu.
“Goooooo awaaaaaaay,” the thing moaned. “Gooooooo now!”
Todd’s eyes bugged. “Our makeover’s a ghost?”
“Now, what would be the point of that?” Bev reached for her box of tricks. “Sweetie, the woman lives alone and has no one to watch her back. She has to have some sort of alarm system to keep the squatters out of her place during the daylight hours. It’s nothing more than an illusion, probably done with mirrors.”
“Go awaaaaay!” howled the apparition.
“Not going to happen, Liara!” Careful of her heels, Bev picked her way across the soggy ground.
“I already don’t like her,” Todd muttered when she joined him on the porch.
“Eyes on the prize, Toddy.” Bev set her case down. She’d come loaded for bear, filling her sturdy tool kit with fourteen shades of blush, two dozen bottles of thick foundation, every conceivable shade of eye shadow, superglue, latex, and several types of tape. You never knew who needed a rib or two broken to fit into the perfect dress.
“Liara Giacona,” she said, in a clear, firm—always be firm—voice. “Before sunrise, you will be brought to Fangtasia. You will arrive there begowned
and bedazzled. Your makeup will be divine, your imperfections well camouflaged, and your booty—should it require help—will be as high and round as the best shapewear can make it. When you meet your groom, I can promise you that you will look absolutely radiant, even if we need to glue a smile to your lips.”
“Leaaaaave here,” intoned the apparition.
“You wish.” Bev unzipped her shoulder purse to extract a sealed envelope. “Since you’ve chosen to ignore his e-mails, Eric has directed me to hand you this communiqué reminding you of your debt to him.”
“All debts are paaaaaid.”
“Well, brace yourself, cookie. Now that Felipe de Castro’s made his move, old debts are being shifted between vamps faster than a Vegas cardsharp shuffling aces into the pack. Eric’s called in all of our markers and here we are.”
“Told you we shouldn’t have taken his money for the flipper start-up,” said Todd.
“Not in front of the makeover candidate,” she murmured, her lips barely moving. Though now that the question was raised, Bev found herself briefly wondering what possible political benefit Eric could earn by connecting a Louisiana recluse to one of Felipe’s new boys.
A moth fluttered toward the wasp’s nest, drawn to the camera’s red eye.
Details. Bev gave herself an internal shake and went back to business. “Liara, we’re here to make you pretty.”
“Go awaa—”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Bev passed the envelope to Todd. “Open it and hold the letter up to the camera so she can read it.”
“I wish you’d let me kill the spook,” said Todd, removing the sheet of paper. Lips set in a snarl that in no way diminished his beauty, he held Eric’s missive up to the wasp’s nest.
The window’s ghostly apparition winked out.
And stayed out. Bev checked her watch. Eight hours until dawn. “Heads will roll if we don’t get this done in time,” she muttered.
Either Liara was an achingly slow reader, or she was choking over the contents of Eric’s missive. Curiosity tugging again, Bev edged sideways to read the letter over Todd’s shoulder. Dear Liara, it began, prosaically enough. It wasn’t until paragraph two that Bev’s gut plummeted.
Him? Liara was to be Anton Van D.’s consort? Bev’s brain—the one part of her that was demonstrably still alive—hiccupped. Not him. She read it again. Yes. There it was in black and white. Anton Van D. was to wed the recluse of Vicksburg.
Bev’s path hadn’t crossed his since Hoover’s party. When was that? Before or after Kennedy? She couldn’t remember but it didn’t matter. She could recall the room, the dresses, the pool of people circulating the room—minnows unaware of the very hungry shark. She’d been leaning against the wall, debating the wisdom of informing J. Edgar that the rigid girdle under that sateen horror of a dress had been a terrible mistake, when she’d heard Anton’s laugh.
Light. Mocking.
She’d left right away. True, she’d stopped to snag a diplomat as a consolation prize before she sailed through J. Edgar’s door, but still—she’d left without pausing to acknowledge Van D.’s existence with so much as a polite nod.
And now, Eric had tasked her with prettying his bride.
Oh, the irony.
Todd glanced at the paper, then asked casually, “Whose head will roll?”
“Ours,” she said faintly.
“Oh hell no.” The paper fluttered to the porch as Todd spun on his heel. One hard kick and the rickety door was reduced to splinters. He skipped over the debris littering the threshold while Bev bent to retrieve Eric’s note.
The moth followed, fluttering into the hallway to strike up a flirtation with the single, bare lightbulb.
“You listen here, missy!” Todd put his hands on his hips. “I have not lived through five centuries of war, plagues, and stake-happy villagers just to lose it all over a vamp who’s too dumb to take advantage of my fashion sense! We can transform you! We will transform you!”
Her co-host’s spiel was delivered to the moth, a mouse quivering under the floorboard, and not a great deal more. The living room appeared deserted, as was the attached dining room and Formica-proud kitchen. All three rooms were fastidiously clean.
And empty of one Liara Giacona.
“I’ll find her,” Todd promised.
Bev’s nod was at best abstract. She smoothed Eric’s letter carefully before folding it into a precise square. Maybe she’d use it for target practice later. After she’d made a fashion-backward recluse into a bride worthy of Anton Van D.’s appreciation.
Toddy did his best. No cupboard was left unopened, no bed left unturned. Shoulders slumped, he descended the stairs. “Well, I got nothing. I can’t find her anywhere.”
Reminding herself that everything else was a detail, Bev stepped into the hall and inhaled. The stale air carried the faintly dry smell of an old female vampire, but it was missing one vital tooth-taunting scent.
Her co-host sampled the air, too, his brow crumpled. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t smell any fresh blood,” she said. Old vamps usually preferred their meals warm and organic. But the only scent of nourishment present in this house was the chemical hint of TrueBlood. The aroma was the most pungent in the old-fashioned parlor, over by the back wall, near the easy chair that sulked under the flimsy weight of a truly ugly antimacassar.
Bev removed the crocheted dust catcher with a grimace.
This was where Liara spent her nights? This lumpy chair positioned to face an old portable TV? How did she stand the quiet? The lack of lights and company? The set was on, its screen streaming a surveillance video feed of the backyard. A remote rested on the side table beside a deck of cards.
“This place reminds me of somewhere.” Bev turned to reexamine the fireplace mantel with its matching brass candlesticks, the standing lamp with its bobble-trimmed shade, the spindle-legged dining table. Incongruous were the other, far less obvious details—the little pinhole projector over the window, the motion detector alarm, the water sprinklers in all of the rooms.
“What about that nursing home in Miami?” Todd said, after a deep think. “All those scotch mints and menthol anti-inflammatory creams?”
Bev nodded, though she thought he was wrong. The place felt more like a movie set. Arsenic and Old Lace or some thirties B film. Its hominess felt staged.
Toddy picked up the TV’s clicker and began testing how well the power button worked. On. Off. On. Off.
“Sweetie,” she murmured, holding out her hand.
He dropped it into her palm and she turned to place it back on the table. That was when she noticed a thick tome jammed between the chair’s cushions. It was both expensive and heavy: an art book filled with images of jewel-toned Renaissance paintings. She picked it up and had to work hard to suppress a shudder when the book automatically fell open to a page of belly-rolled nudes.
“Ew,” said Toddy, peering over her shoulder.
“Double ew,” she agreed, flicking past pages and pages of women with apple-sized breasts and meaty thighs.
“Maybe she’s a lesbian,” said Toddy. “That’s her porn and she doesn’t want to be debutched for any guy.”
“And maybe she likes art. Or she’s agoraphobic. Or maybe she thinks she’s Helen of Troy and she doesn’t need our help.” Bev dropped the book to the floor. “I don’t care. All I want to do is finish this job and head back to New York.”
Liara’s home decorating efforts were getting on Bev’s nerves. The only thing remotely tasteful in the place was the long rectangular mirror mounted on the wall behind her favorite chair.
As was her habit, Bev checked her reflection.
Damn.
Humidity was trying to restore her blond hair to its original, crimped permanent wave. Excellent. She was going to stink like a salesclerk from Target for the rest of the night because Tod
dy had emptied the last can of unscented hair spray on yesterday’s makeover. Maybe she should hit it now with another layer of lacquer before it became unmanageable? Her gaze started to slide toward the doorway, then stalled. There was a mess of fingerprints on the mirror’s beveled edge. A line of them, as if someone habitually grabbed one side of the mirror’s ornate metal frame. Oddly placed, those grubby marks. The rest of the glass was clean, except for that cluster of smudges at approximately hip level. Now, why would someone . . .
This Liara woman is devious.
“Toddy, I think this mirror is a two-way.” She tested her theory by tugging on the edge of the frame. A piece of wood splintered off, but the mirror didn’t so much as shiver on its mooring. “Yes, it is. She’s hiding behind a false wall.”
Todd floated over. “You’re kidding.”
“Not this time.” Bev tucked the offending lock of hair behind her ear. Perfection nearly reinstated, she scratched the polished glass with her sharp nail. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
“I don’t think so,” Liara replied from the other side of the wall.
“Yours is not to think.” Bev turned, searching for the source of the voice, and finding it in a small speaker that she’d dismissed as an air grate. “Yours is just to do. In this case, hold perfectly still while we throw some curlers in your hair and take a hedge trimmer to your eyebrows.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because I’ve seen your picture.” A small fabrication. The image in question had been a frustratingly unfocused shot taken at a gathering of Louisiana vamps. Eric had tapped his finger on a dark-haired woman, half-hidden behind two very large males, and said, “That’s her in the sweats.”
Yes, sweats.
Try as she might, Bev hadn’t been able to pick out one distinguishing feature that could turn the toadstool into the temptress. Did Liara have great hair? Fine eyes? Who could tell from that blurred photo? Liara’s hair had been scraped back, and her face was a pale blur, save for a pair of thick, dark brows. “Darling, it’s time to shuck you out of your sweats and let your inner goddess shine.”
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