by Stella Blaze
~*~
Andy felt warm and safe in her old room. Her mother was well again, and it only seemed right that she was back under the same roof as her mother and sister. But a couple of hours later she was still lying in her old bed, wide awake.
Why can’t I sleep?
Because this isn’t who you are anymore.
She punched her pillow and scrunched up her eyes. She was so tired. Vaporizing a faerie Queen really took it out of you. But she just couldn’t relax completely. Part of her, a very big part of her, wanted to be home, and this just wasn’t home anymore.
Her little dog looked up with worried doggy eyes from where he lay on the bed beside her. Andy rumpled his little furry ears, and then pulled herself up out of bed and got dressed again.
She gathered up Brutus, who was quivering with excitement, and called for a cab. The taxi company called a couple of minutes before the cab would arrive. Standing all alone, even on a well lit street, made Andy’s nerves stand on end. She turned and looked down the street to find nothing. Then she turned the other way and about jumped out of her skin. Min’s vampire, Luca, was standing there silently, looking across the street.
“This is really stupid of you.”
She scowled at him and then turned to face away from him. “My cab should be here any minute. You should go back to Min.”
He shook his head ever so slightly. “Min would want me here, with you.”
“I can’t sleep, okay? I thought, since none of the fae would be coming near me for a very long time that it would be safe to go home, to my own bed.”
“I get that.” The vampire stood unbelievably still for a moment, not breathing, not blinking. He was like a statue, literally. “But I can’t let you travel there alone.”
Andy glared at him menacingly. “I’m not going back in—”
“I’ll ride with you, and make sure you’re safe.”
“Oh,” Andy said, the anger dying from her like a snuffed out candle. “Uh, thanks.”
The cab pulled up a moment later, and Andy and the vampire got in. It wasn’t much of a drive, and thankfully the vampire didn’t feel too chatty. But Andy finally found herself babbling, about how she understood now why her mother had kept this from her, but that it still kind of pissed her off. And she was glad that Min had him, but “If you ever hurt her, I-I…I’ll…”
Luca looked at her nonplussed.
“I’ll make what I did to the Winter Queen look like a bad sunburn. We clear?”
A smirk played on the edges of the vampire’s lips. “Crystal.”
Andy turned away, shaking her head, but a smile was pulling at the sides of her mouth. She liked the vampire. It was hard not to like someone that had literally risked life and limb to help save you. You’d be a sorry piece of work if you didn’t.
Finally the cab arrived in front of Andy’s house. She sighed as she looked up at the huge granite edifice. There were lights on here and there, but mostly the apartment building was asleep. It was well after midnight, after all.
Andy pulled her dog closer to her and looked over to the little park where she usually walked him. It was usually dimly lit, but the moon was full and illuminated everything until it practically sparkled.
That’s how she saw that Sam was sitting there at the lone picnic table, his big beast of a dog by his side. Her heart leapt up into her throat, and then she felt a surge of adrenaline. She wanted to go talk to him in the worst way. And since he was just sitting there, it seemed that he might be waiting for her too.
“I thought you were going up to your apartment?” the vampire asked. And then he looked over to where Andy’s eyes were focused. “Oh, I see.” And then he gave a little laugh. Not an unkind sound, just amused. “Well, he seems safe enough.”
Andy glanced at him, not really knowing if he’d meant that last as a small insult, or whether he meant it. In truth she didn’t care. She just wanted to get to her not-so-secret crush. The dark creatures and monsters of the world would just have to find someone else to hassle for a little while. She had plans.
She got out of the cab and set Brutus on the ground. She listened to the cab drive off as she and Brutus walked quickly toward the park. She must have been walking pretty quietly, because Sam was muttering to himself, and didn’t seem to know she was approaching.
But Shylock noticed, and whined affectionately when he spied her coming.
Sam turned, the look on his face turning from surprised to happy in a heartbeat. But she saw that something long and shiny had been in his hand, and now wasn’t. Just that fast.
He stood and was about to say something, but just didn’t seem able to do so. It was comical, and endearing, and a couple of days ago it might have been disastrous. If he’d gotten tongue tied, then her nerves would’ve jumbled, and she would’ve been tongue tied too. Or worse, she might have started babbling. But instead she smiled and said, “Waiting for me?”
His handsome Anglo Saxon face blushed, and a guilty smile lit up his face. She loved his smile. It was boyish yet masculine at the same time. It didn’t hurt that it belonged to such a great-looking man.
He had broad shoulders, a well-muscled body, and straight brown hair long enough to brush his shoulders. Not to mention his hazel eyes. They changed with his mood, or what he was looking at. And as he looked at her they changed from a cool blue to a radiant green.
“Yeah…I missed you last night. I was home but you weren’t.”
Andy didn’t take her eyes from his, just shrugged. “I had a family thing across town. Stayed overnight with my mother and sister.”
A relieved look shown on his face, for just a moment, and then he covered it up with a hasty smile. “Good, I mean, it’s good you get along well with your family. Family’s important.”
Absently he rubbed his hand over his mouth, obviously thinking over what he was going to say next. But Andy noticed something peculiar. A ring, old and gold, and topped off with a ruby and diamond insignia. She’d seen this emblem before, in books, and had always thought they were either remnants of a forgotten time, or simply fiction.
But standing across from Sam, the moon shining down upon them, she knew he wasn’t just some pretender. The light made him shine just a little more than anything else. An inner light she had somehow ignored up until then.
Faith.
No, he was the real deal. An honest to goodness Knight of the Cross.
Andy gasped as this realization hit her brain. She was a star—or a piece of one—fallen to earth and was now human. Well, human with a bunch of unknown powers. And she had a huge crush on her neighbor…and he was a freaking Holy Knight of the Cross, a crusader, a fist of god.
“What’s wrong?” Sam’s expression had turned alarmed.
Andy realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out, took another deep breath and smiled, more to herself.
Any other day this might have all been too much for her to handle. But today, after the couple of days she’d had, it just didn’t seem like that big of a deal.
She walked past Sam and sat down at the picnic table, letting Brutus pounce around on his leash.
“Nothing,” she said. She decided to let him tell her about his real job in his own time. She knew that secrets were tricky things, and that they were usually kept for a good reason. She leaned back against the wood of the table and extended her arm to point at the bench left beside her.
“Want to sit and talk for a bit?”
Sam’s face lit up again, and he quickly sat down beside her. “So,” he said, “do you come here often?”
Andy laughed. “All the time. I like the swings the best.”
***End***
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Better Off Dead
A Lucy Hart DEATHDEALER Novel
~*~
Stella Blaze
Copyright 2012
, 2016
Previously published as Last Rites
Smashwords Edition
Edited by Stephanie T. Lott (aka Bibliophile)
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Chapter 1
SOMETHING glinted out in the cool September night and caught Lucy Hart’s eye. She peered out the large picture window over the kitchen sink and scanned the area between the swimming pool and the cabana house. Just trees and perfectly manicured privacy hedges, and a cluster of swaying hibiscus.
Speaking of perfectly manicured, she spotted a chip in her own manicure—she would need to duck out on second period study hall to get it repaired. She’d go before school but her nail salon didn’t open its doors until nine.
She gazed out the window again to the thicket surrounding the back yard. She had always been able to see extremely well in the dark. Just some freak genetic quirk—handy in haunted houses on Halloween, or when rolling blackouts intruded on California life.
“Weird…” she said as she turned her attention to her near empty can of diet Coke.
“Talk about weird!” Tara exclaimed dramatically. She had scarlet and gold paint not only speckled on her nails, in her golden blond hair, but smeared on her white Sketchers and a smudge on her cheek. “Did you see Kara Strom today at lunch? She was totally trying to move her skanky butt in on Drew!”
She rolled her eyes as she gulped the last of her diet Coke, tossed it in the trash can and retrieved another cold can from the refrigerator. “Sorry, didn’t see your name monogrammed on the boy.”
Tara made that little noise, like she was choking on a peanut, and she knew she’d pressed the right button to get her off the subject. She certainly wasn’t going to spend twenty minutes listening to Tara vent about a boy she had only gone to one minor dance with. It wasn’t even a formal. And since Tara was her number two on the cheer squad, she had pressing business to discuss before she went upstairs to the more entertaining possibility waiting in her bedroom.
“Everything cleaned up?” She pulled her long mahogany tresses back in a casual ponytail and tied it back with a silver hair-band.
Tara shook the unhappy look off her face and replaced it with a sycophantic smile. “Yep. I got all the paint off your mom’s floor, the other girls took the banners to the gymnasium for tomorrow, and I took everything else out to the trash.”
The entire cheer squad had been there creating lavish, cloyingly spirited banners for the pep rally at the end of school tomorrow. She had supervised while the other girls had done all the painting and cutting and hot-glue gunning. Tara had supervised, and obviously participated in, the cleanup while she changed into her nightshirt.
“Did you tell Mellissa she’s on probation?” Lucy asked. “She has to cut ten pounds. Her skirt is starting to ride up and everything.”
She watched the naughty smile spread across Tara’s lips. “She was in tears. Maybe we should tell her fifteen pounds, see if we can’t make her into an Olsen twin.” She giggled wickedly.
She ran her finger over the outside of her diet Coke can, picking up the condensation on her fingertip. “She’s not the only one who needs to trim a few pounds. I’ve still got knee marks on my back from this afternoon’s practice…Tara!”
“Me?” She made that little choking sound again, and she sniffled. The color drained from her face. “But I’m the smallest girl on the team.”
Which she was, thus she was always the apex of their cheerleader pyramids. And since by size Lucy was on the very next level, she knew without a doubt that somewhere on that birdlike frame Tara had packed on some pounds.
“I expect you to lose it by next week’s game.” Lucy gently ushered Tara from the kitchen and pushed her down the hall to the foyer, and the front door. “So that means a dry bran muffin for breakfast, a tuna salad sandwich on wheat for lunch, and a salad with light dressing on the side for dinner. Got it?”
Tara’s intake of breath rattled. “I will… I promise.”
Lucy smiled. It was just too easy to manipulate people.
“Okay, good. Then I’ll see you in first period and we can go over exactly how much you need to lose. Night-night!” She shut the door in Tara’s face, turned on her heel and returned to the kitchen. She let her mind wander upstairs to where her boyfriend waited in her bedroom.
She’d just changed into her Stanford nightshirt when Jeff had knocked on her window, teetering perilously from a trellis of bougainvillea. The nightshirt was just an oversized men’s Stanford embossed T-shirt her daddy had picked up at his last class reunion. It was his alma mater, and he wanted her to matriculate there as well.
Her grades were excellent, and she had quite the resume of extracurricular activities—and since her father was an alumnus of their law school, and rich as sin, she felt she was a shoe in.
She’d left Jeff alone so he could deliberate whether he wanted to do as she commanded, or leave the way he came: through the window, and without even a kiss goodnight. She was certain he would obey—when it came right down to it, guys always conceded. Their pride almost never precluded them from embarrassing acts of degradation, especially if they were horny.
She grabbed her diet Coke and her phone, and right before she clicked off the kitchen lights she glanced out the window again. A dark figure stood by the privacy hedge, billowing in the Santa Anna winds like a pitch black swath of night. It was so much darker than anything else. She shivered as her hand touched something soft.
She gasped and jerked her gaze to what she’d touched. Her mother’s orange tabby cat purred up at her from his perch on the counter by the light switch. His green eyes sparkled, begging her for attention.
“Tigger!” She turned back to the window and found the yard vacant once more. She looked harder, held her breath then slowly let it out as relief spread through her. Nothing or no one looked back.
She shook her head and gave the tabby a quick scratch from behind his ears down his back, and then clicked off the lights.
Weird the things you think you see when you look out into darkness.
Heading upstairs she passed by her door, purposely wanting to say good night to her parents before they decided to knock on her door and ruin her little boyfriend fashion show. She couldn’t dim the grin that thought gave her as she leaned against the doorframe of her parents’ bedroom. It was huge, even bigger than her room—and the master bathroom was to die for.
She’d asked them…well… back when she was twelve she’d demanded they swap rooms with her, but that was one of the few things her father, Adam Hart, would not budge on.
“Turning in?” her mother said in her singsong voice, a tennis equipment catalogue spread in her lap. Tennis and its many very expensive accessories were her mother’s most recent obsession. Lucy cringed every time she saw her mother’s fuller figure packed into some little white tennis dress.
She should try black…it’s always slimming, and out in the hot sun it might just help her burn off some weight.
She gave her mother an innocent smile and said, “Me sleepy… yawn…” and brought her hand up to pantomime quelling an actual yawn.
Her father stepped out of the master bath and his face lit up—as usual—the instant he looked at her. He’d taken off his suit jacket, but still had his tie on, which meant he had some briefs or something lawyerly to look over before he turned in.
That meant she would need to keep Jeff quiet. She’d had Jeff in her bedroom before without incident. The bathroom and a linen closet were both positioned between their room and hers. With her door shut nothing much could be heard.
Her father stepped up and peck
ed her affectionately on the cheek. “Good night, my little girl.”
She pretended his calling her a little girl still, even though she was a senior in high school, was gross—but secretly she loved it every time he said it.
And she loved his aftershave—Lagerfeld—and she inhaled a long whiff of it before she blew her mother a kiss and retreated down the hall to her room.
She passed by her brother Seth’s closed door. The sign tacked to the door read to “KEEP OUT!” and she found it infinitely easy to honor his request. They hadn’t had anything in common besides their parents since she was thirteen.
Excitement bubbled through her veins as she turned the doorknob and let herself into her room. She leaned against the door and it shut with a click. Her eyes widened and her breath caught as she took in the sight before her.
On the fly, she took the opportunity to bring her cell phone up while he wasn’t looking and snap a picture. She licked her lips as she clicked the button, taking the picture. Though ridiculous looking, the sight of Jeff Haas in her bedroom naked, except for the short, green and blue plaid Catholic-school-girl skirt she’d coerced him into wearing, was starting to turn her on.
Guys will let you do anything to them if they think it is foreplay.
“What are you doing with that?” Jeff said when he caught sight of her.
She froze for a moment before she said, “Tara texted me.” And since they exchanged texts roughly every half-hour, she silently blessed plausibility and routine.
Jeff’s expression lightened, but then his brow furrowed. Oh no, he’s having an actual thought.
“But it didn’t ring.”
She held up the razor-thin device and gave it a dainty shake. “Got it on vibrate.”