I opened my eyes and found his face three inches from mine. “Not yet.”
“Why not?” he asked, giving me a peculiar look. Something that straddled the line between suspicion and irritation. He glanced down at my jacket and yoga pants and frowned.
“I’ve been busy,” I said, squirming under his scrutiny. “Is that all? I really need to get home.”
Agent Knight extended a business card to me, pinched between his index and middle finger. “Call me if you think of anything useful.”
I hesitated as my brain began to work again. “You have my phone in evidence. My badge and everything else that was on me that night, too.”
He licked the corner of his mouth and nodded. “And you’ll get it all back once this case is closed.”
I frowned at him and snatched the business card before jerking open the Bronco’s door. Will’s notebook slipped from under my arm. It grazed my hip as I climbed into the driver’s seat, and I quickly yanked the door closed behind me, hoping Agent Knight hadn’t noticed.
He stepped back and tucked his hands down into the pockets of his dress pants as I backed out of my parking spot and merged into traffic. I couldn’t decide if he knew more than he was letting on, or if he was extra suspicious of everyone. Either way, it didn’t sit well with me. I made a mental note to avoid him.
Especially since I had wanted to take a bite out of him more than I’d wanted anything for as long as I could remember. This couldn’t be normal. Not even for a new vampire. Could it?
I eyed the bag of blood in the passenger seat and prayed it would be enough to fill the hole burning through my stomach.
Chapter Nine
It was almost eleven before I made it home. I half expected Laura to be in bed, but the blue light of the television danced through the front curtains as I pulled into the driveway. I grabbed the food and the bag of blood and took a deep breath before heading inside.
I found Laura sitting in the middle of the living room floor, a box of tissues crumbled on the rug beside her. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs, and Duncan whimpered in her lap, his little pink tongue lapping her elbow.
“Sorry I’m so late,” I said, not sure it was reason enough for this level of hysterics. I had told her I’d be running errands first.
Laura gasped and fumbled with the remote, but she wasn’t fast enough. David Steckleman—or Hollywood, as I referred to him—crossed the red carpet in a tacky satin suit. A waif of a model clung to his arm, pausing to cross one overpriced heel in front of the other and pout her lips at photographers. She looked like a baby version of Laura, complete with the cascading red locks and bright blue eyes.
If she were older than twenty, then I was a French poodle. Hollywood was at least sixty. I didn’t have anything against May-December romances. As long as they were legal. And didn’t involve my sister. Or the dirtbag who had lured her halfway across the country when I’d needed her most.
“He cut me from the show, and now this.” Laura hiccupped and shook her head, sending her crimson ponytail over her shoulder to rest against her back. She was still in her sports bra and spandex shorts. “I gave up a franchise movie deal for that pig!”
“You gave up more than that,” I said, biting my tongue too late.
“Oh, great.” She threw her hands up in the air. “Go ahead, tell me you knew this would happen. I’m sure you’re just dying to rub it in.”
“I’m sorry, Laura. Really.” I held up the sack with her salad and Mandy’s pasta in it. “I think I have a bottle of wine that would go well with this.”
Laura’s cheeks flushed, and she hiccupped again. “You did have a bottle of wine. Not anymore.” She pulled herself off the floor and swayed as she led the way into the kitchen.
“When did you find out you were cut?” I set the paper bag of blood and Will’s notebook down on the breakfast bar so I could strip out of my jacket. My tank top was still on backward, but Laura didn’t seem to mind so much after a bottle of wine. I draped the jacket over a barstool and unpacked the salad and pasta.
“It happened last week.” Laura sniffled and rubbed the back of her hand under her nose before retrieving a pair of water glasses from a cabinet. My stomach clenched as I watched her fill them at the sink.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. It was too embarrassing. It still is.” Her brow creased, and fresh tears lined her lashes.
“Well, now you can go after one of those movie roles you want. Right?” I circled the counter and nudged her aside with my hip so I could dig a couple of forks out of a drawer.
Laura’s eyes drooped. “I don’t even know if any other producers would consider me. Typecasting is a real problem lately. I’ve been with Henry’s Courtroom since the very beginning. I made that show. Eight seasons, and David decides my character, the legendary Anastasia van de Velde, is boring audiences and needs a rest. I thought he was gearing up to bring her back in some big way next season.”
“The show will totally flop without you. You were the only one on there who could even act,” I said, blushing when she turned her surprised eyes on me.
“I knew you watched.” She smirked and pushed one of the water glasses my way.
“Yeah, well. I’ve been working nights. What else was I going to watch during the day?”
“Mmhmm.”
Standing on the opposite side of the breakfast bar from me with her elbows resting on the counter and a lazy grin on her face, she looked so much like Mom. I often wondered if Laura had colored her hair red for that reason—and not just because Hollywood had a type. With all the accusations flying around about how hard I was trying to fill our mother’s shoes, coloring my hair to match would have been too much.
Laura pried open the lid of her salad and laid it on its top to use as a bowl for her packet of Caesar dressing. Duncan did a little dance at her heels until she deposited a chicken strip in front of him.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said, eyeing the gaping hole in the drywall where the kitchen phone used to be. “What happened there?”
I chewed my bottom lip and gave her a pained smile. “Solicitors?” This lying business was getting old fast. And Laura didn’t look convinced.
“Huh.” She made a skeptical face.
“I’d better check on Ma—my dog,” I said, laying a fork on top of the box of pasta so I could pick up the glass of water in my other hand.
Laura’s bottom lip jutted out. “You’re not going to eat with me?”
“Uh… I’m not hungry. This is for…the pooch. I’ll come back and keep you company, though.”
“You really should eat something. You look a little gangly.” She gave me an appraising frown.
“Gangly?” I raised an eyebrow at her. I worked out at the gym, and I could lift more than some of the guys in my department. Gangly was not a word people used to describe me.
Laura gave me a weak smile and loaded her fork with salad. “Bring your dog takeout often?” she asked. “Because I couldn’t find kibble anywhere in this house. I left a bowl of Duncan’s inside your bedroom door.”
I pressed my lips together and gave her a strained smile. “Yeah, I’m out. I’ll get some more tomorrow. Thanks.”
Laura nodded and stuffed a bite of salad into her mouth as I slipped out of the kitchen and headed down the hallway to my room. I balanced the box of pasta in the crook of my opposite arm long enough to wrangle the doorknob open.
“It’s me,” I said, clicking on the bedroom light and pulling the door closed behind me.
Mandy poked her head out of the bathroom. Her mousy hair hung in ringlets around her face, and I could tell she’d been playing in my makeup drawer. “Where the hell have you been? You just left me here. With that sister of yours.” She put both hands on her hips and pulled herself up to her full height, which was a few inches shorter than me, even though she was wearing my wedge sandals. She had also changed into a pair of my jeggings and an off-the
-shoulder lace blouse. My favorite one. I guess that’s what I got for setting her loose in my closet.
“Relax. I went to get blood,” I said. “One problem at a time—and that one was the most pressing.” The knot in my stomach hadn’t released since the meat shop incident, and the red had never fully left the corners of my eyesight.
Mandy sniffed the air. “I think your order got mixed up with someone else’s.”
“The blood’s in the kitchen. This is for you.” I handed her the box of pasta, and she snagged it with both hands.
“Yes! I am starving to death.” She nodded toward the door. “Feel free to take that bowl of rat food and shove it up your sister’s ass for me.”
I snorted and set the glass of water down on my night table. “She might be staying longer than I anticipated. She just lost her job.”
“Great.” Mandy rolled her eyes and flopped down on the edge of my bed. She pulled her legs up and crossed them before nestling the box of pasta in her lap. “We’re going to have to figure out some other arrangement then,” she said, twirling her fork through the fettuccini until she had a bite the size of a tennis ball.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m sick of playing Fido. Tell her I’m a foreign exchange student or your live-in housekeeper or something.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s going to work. You don’t have an accent, and do you even know how to clean a house?” I glanced down at the floor where half of my wardrobe lay in random piles.
“I said tell her that. I’m not actually going to clean your damn house.”
“Then maybe you could at least try not to destroy it?”
Mandy scoffed and proceeded to shove the enormous bite of pasta into her mouth. I was unsurprised that it fit.
At least we could agree on one count. We definitely needed a better arrangement. I picked up a pair of jeans and folded them before tucking them back inside my dresser.
Mandy was too busy gorging to pay any more attention to what I had to say, so I left, brainstorming ideas on how to convince the brat to clean up after herself. And ideas on how I could introduce her to Laura in human form.
Maybe she could be a dog trainer? No. That wouldn’t work, considering she couldn’t very well be in the same room as herself in wolf form. Maybe she could be interning with me for the week? But me being on leave wasn’t the best way to show a junior officer the ropes. A brilliant idea dawned on me as I stepped into the kitchen—and then the doorbell rang.
Laura glanced up from her salad. “Were you expecting company this late?”
“No.” My first thought was that the punks from East St. Louis had somehow followed me home. I opened the drawer of the china cabinet in the dining room and retrieved the Glock I usually reserved for the range. “Wait here,” I said to Laura.
I crept through the living room, staying clear of the front window. The television was playing some late-night talk show, and it disguised the squeak of the floorboards as I edged up next to the door to glance through the peephole.
Vin Hart stood on my front porch. A baby blue polo was buttoned all the way to his throat and tucked into a pair of khaki shorts. He held a bouquet of purple and white flowers under his chin, and an anxious smile stretched across his face. I rolled my eyes and opened the coat closet long enough to discard my gun on the top shelf.
“It’s just Vin,” I shouted to Laura. “I’ll get rid of him,” I added, not caring that he’d probably heard me through the door. I flipped the deadbolt and cracked the door open wide enough to poke my head outside. “What do you want?”
Vin blinked at me, his brown, puppy dog eyes turning upward in hurt confusion. “I wanted to see how you were feeling. And to bring you these,” he said, angling the flowers at me.
I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m allergic,” I lied. “And I’m feeling right as rain.” Another lie. “Thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate your concern.” The biggest lie of all.
Vin blew out a frustrated sigh and ran one hand through his hair, mussing his geek-chic image. “It’s been ten years, Jenna. Are you ever going to forgive me?”
I wedged the door open a bit more so I could lean against the frame and fold my arms. “Forgive you for what, Vin?” If he was going to open old wounds, there was nothing stopping me from poking and prodding them.
Vin tilted his head back and shot a bitter laugh up at the ceiling of the porch. “I was a stupid kid, okay? I didn’t start that rumor. But,” he injected as if he anticipated that I might cut him off. “I should have put a stop to it. That’s on me. And I’m truly sorry.”
“That’s ancient history, Vin.” God, I was an awful liar. But it seemed too petty of a grudge for me to own up to. “I can forgive you without wanting to give you another chance to screw me over.”
“Screw you over? Really?” His shoulders slumped, and he gaped at me. “I didn’t correct someone when they spoke the truth. That hardly counts as screwing you over.”
“The truth?” I ground my teeth together. Vin’s polo faded to a light purple. “Ten years, and you’re still clinging to that delusion?”
He dropped the flowers in a wicker chair without taking his eyes off me. “Ten years, and you still deny that the best night of my life ever happened.”
“With a hand that good, you should’ve become a surgeon.” My stomach did a summersault, rage and hunger building into a cyclone at my core, and suddenly, Vin was too close. I could smell his cologne, the toothpaste on his breath, his sweat, the musk of his arousal.
“So you do remember how good my hands were,” he said, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper.
I wanted to laugh in his face, but I couldn’t catch my breath. Vin mistook my panting for longing. He reached up to touch my face, but I caught his hand. The want in his gaze crumbled into concern when I pressed my nose against the inside of his wrist and took a deep breath. Warm blood pulsed beneath his flesh. I could see it coursing through his veins and arteries, all the more visible in the red hue of my hunger.
“Jenna, you’re freezing,” Vin hissed. He tugged at his hand, but I couldn’t convince my fingers to uncoil from around his wrist. “Your eyes are…are dilated.” He gasped as one of my fingernails broke the surface of his skin. “Ouch! Shit, Jenna. What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, finally releasing him. I took a shuddering breath and pressed my lips together, feeling the points of my canines graze the inside of my mouth. That was new.
“Jenna?” Vin took a step back and stumbled down the front steps, landing flat on his ass on the lawn. “Are…are you okay?” I should have been asking him that. “You don’t look well. Your mouth.” He covered his own with one hand, horror lighting up his eyes.
“Thanks for the flowers.” I slammed the front door and flipped the deadbolt back in place.
This was a disaster. My hands shook, even clenched into fists and pressed into the void of my shrinking stomach. My skin had taken on a sickly sallow color from the hints I could see, and Vin was right—I was freezing. I pressed my forehead against the closed front door and breathed through my nose, waiting for the nausea twisting my insides to let up.
I couldn’t go on like this. Even if the cow blood tasted like pickled livers, I would choke it down if it meant not mauling someone—even a shit like Vin Hart—in my own front yard.
When the red plaguing my vision tapered off to a dull throb in my peripheral, I pushed away from the door and marched toward the kitchen. A plan was forming in the back of my mind. I could take the bag of blood and slip inside the pantry long enough to chug it. Then maybe I wouldn’t be compelled to eat my own sister. The thought tightened my throat and sent a shudder through my shoulders. But it was nothing compared to the panic that slapped me once I rounded the corner and stepped into the kitchen.
The paper bag from the butcher’s shop lay on the floor. One of the plastic containers of blood sat on the kitchen counter. The other one was clenched in Laura’s hand. T
he look on her face was a cross between confusion and disgust.
“Is this what I think it is?”
Chapter Ten
I stared at Laura, my mouth hanging open like an idiot, and tried to come up with a simple lie to pacify her. It should have been easy. But I couldn’t even get my teeth to stop chattering.
“It’s f-f-for a recipe. B-b-blood pudding,” I said, wrapping my arms around my middle.
“Oh my God, Jenna.” Laura set the blood down and circled the counter. “Are you okay? You’re turning blue.”
“M-m-maybe the th-thermostat is broken.” I caught a whiff of her fruity shampoo, and the salty tears dried to her cheeks. The red eating at the edges of my sight pulsed stronger as she neared me. “Stay back!”
Laura froze, her eyes swelling to the size of silver dollars. “What’s going on here?” A line of worry cut across her forehead, and I was sure my expression mirrored hers—though it was likely paler, and I could feel the bones in my face pressing through my skin.
I eyed the containers of blood on the counter, just past my sister, and debated whether or not to risk getting that close to her in order to reach them. But the longer I waited, the harder it would be. And the more danger Laura would be in.
Laura folded her arms and glared at me, the shock and concern quickly shifting into anger. “Are you on drugs? Please tell me you aren’t that stupid.”
“Not drugs,” I said between labored breaths. My fingernails bit into the palms of my hands as I made up my mind. I sidestepped around her and lunged for the blood, taking a container up in my shaking hands. The tacky fluid oozed over the brim as I ripped the lid off and lifted it to my mouth.
A thin film had formed on the top. It stuck to the roof of my mouth, and under normal circumstances, it would have triggered my gag reflex. Not tonight. The blood congealed at the corners of my lips and trickled down my chin, but most of it sloshed to the back of my throat, coating my teeth and tonsils like syrup.
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