Holy Kris Kringle! It was Christmas in February.
The floorboards creaked with Dante’s movements around the cabin. The door of the wood stove groaned in protest when he pulled it open. It echoed with the sound of logs being tossed inside. The crinkle of paper followed, then silence. A few moments later, Dante gave a satisfied “whoop” that I took to mean the fire was alive and kicking.
For some reason, I felt like humming Christmas carols.
Dante walked over and reached inside a cupboard, pulling out a bowl. At first I thought it was for the chips—party time in the cabin—but a moment later, he was filling it with dry dog food. He set it near the table. His dog chowed down the moment the bowl hit the floorboards.
He moved toward the front door. “I’ll be back with water for the big guy and beer for us.”
Dante returned shortly with a gallon of water and six-pack of beer. He filled a bowl with water. Next, Dante pulled out his keys and popped the lid off two Alaskan Ambers from the Alaskan Brewing Company, setting one down on the counter beside me.
“What’s that you’ve got cooking?” Dante asked. The excitement in his voice made me smile.
“It’s nothing out of the Cordon Bleu, but it’s edible.”
“Food is food,” Dante said, walking over. “Is it ready?”
I looked inside the pan. A bubble burst through the sauce and popped at the surface.
“Yep.”
“Great, I’m starving.”
Yeah, nothing like hiking through the woods to work up a beastly appetite.
Dante crouched down to get tinfoil out of a bottom drawer. He tore into the cupcake box, unwrapped four individual cakes and wrapped them in the tinfoil. While Dante stuck the cupcakes on top of the woodstove, I dished the spaghetti into two mugs, sticking a spoon in each.
Using my elbow to squeeze the bag of chips to my side, I took a mug by the handle in each hand and set them on the table before going back for our beers. Dante quickly joined me.
“Nothing like a hot meal and a bottle of beer in front of the fire,” he said. He swallowed a spoonful of SpaghettiOs and grinned. “These are good.” He said it like I’d made them from scratch.
“Thanks.”
We finished the spaghetti in no time then moved onto the beer and chips. The fire crackled and snapped. With each sip, I began to warm up and feel a blissful sort of serenity wash over me.
I never would have pegged myself as a woodsy girl, but this wasn’t half bad. It was easy to leave behind all the cares in the world when I was sipping a beer deep in the woods.
Dante tilted his beer back and gulped it down until there was nothing left. “Want another?” he asked.
“Why not?”
I finished mine while he opened two more bottles.
“Let’s strategize,” Dante said.
I took a swig from my fresh bottle. “There’s nothing to strategize. Let me define stakeout for you. It means surveillance duty, spying—like what you did with those fancy goggles of yours. Tomorrow we’ll see if Buck’s at work. Same thing the day after that until he has a day off and then we’ll see what he does in his free time.”
“You mean besides sit in front of the tube eating Cheetos?” Dante huffed. “Most boring vampire ever.”
“Buck’s actually a really cool guy.”
“You sure are defensive when it comes to vampires. Did you date one or something?”
I glared at Dante. That question was way too personal. It caused pain inside my heart because it reminded me of how close I’d come to sleeping with Gavin. No matter how screwed up it was, I felt disappointed and heartbroken over someone who’d never even been mine. I felt the loss of possibility.
“I don’t date vampires,” I said coldly.
Dante set his beer down and gave me an assessing look before saying, “Good, because you deserve better than some half-human wannabe.”
“Thanks. That’s... touching.”
“No problem.” Dante took a swig of beer.
After we polished off the unthawed cupcakes, Dante offered to rinse our mugs and spoons outside with the jug of water he’d brought along. Guess he had better manners than I originally thought.
I tossed the spaghetti can, Doritos bag, cupcake wrappers, tinfoil, and beer bottles into a plastic garbage sack. That done, it was time to assess the sleeping situation. It made sense to take the smaller cot in the corner closest to the door. Both beds were beside the stove. A blissful warmth filled the air beside the fire.
I hadn’t removed my coat until now. Folding it carefully, I tucked it inside my duffel bag. I unzipped my hoodie next and removed my skirt and top. I wasn’t too worried about Dante walking back in. It wasn’t like he’d make any moves with someone he perceived as a little sister, and I’d never been especially modest.
I slipped on a midnight blue T-shirt, leaving the thick tights on like leggings.
Dante returned with the rinsed mugs as I slipped inside the cot’s sleeping bag. “Good idea,” he said after setting the mugs on the kitchen’s narrow strip of counter. “We should get some shut eye before another exciting day of surveillance.”
I rolled onto my side, facing the wall. “Good night, Moose.”
“Good night, Mouse.”
I smiled to myself and closed my eyes.
Dante shuffled around the cabin. There was a loud puff of air, and the lights dimmed. Footsteps, followed by the pitter-patter of dog paws, made their way across the floorboards to the corner on the other side of the stove. Dante unzipped his bag and rummaged around. The sound of his movements faded as sleep pulled me under. I slept the sleep of the dead. My internal body alarm woke me in the morning, but I ignored it and went back to the land of blissful unconsciousness.
9
Spy Duty
The bears weren’t the only ones hibernating. Dante, the dog, and I slept in until midday. After dragging our asses out of bed, we ate cupcakes to tide us over before hitting up a McDonald’s drive-through in the early afternoon. We ate inside the Jeep, across from the A&P where Buck had started his shift at two p.m.
Dante slurped his soda while paging through a Maxim magazine, followed by GQ.
I spent the time trying not to agonize over what it was about me that wasn’t good enough for Gavin or any other guy.
At three forty-five p.m., Dante announced he was taking his dog up and down the sidewalk for a pee. He grabbed a pair of sunglasses from the clip on his visor and put them on, followed by a baseball cap.
“Good,” I said. “You’re getting the hang of this surveillance thing.”
“Nah,” Dante said. “I can’t have anyone driving by recognizing me. If my mom finds out I drove up and didn’t see her—woo—I’m in big trouble.”
He hopped out of the Jeep and got his dog out.
While Dante led his dog down the sidewalk, I snatched his GQ and flipped through the pages.
Look at all the hotness in here, Noel.
Sexy young actors. Yes. This is what deserved my attention and focus, not Gavin. Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. He kept popping into my head. I was sick of him! If he was fool enough to choose Valerie, I should pity him, not pine after him. What the hell was wrong with me? Clive was right. No man would ever love me. He’d been right all along.
My lips pinched together. I slapped the magazine shut and tossed it on the dashboard.
When Dante returned, he let his dog into the backseat and opened the trunk, scraped around for a few minutes, closed the hatch, and returned to his post behind the wheel.
Dante groaned. “This is worse than sitting in an airplane. At least in a plane you’re getting somewhere. Do you think Aurora’s landed in Sitka yet?”
“No idea.”
“They’re so lucky. Gonna get the vamp house again. It’s not fair.”
“Wah, wah, wah,” I said.
Dante leaned across the armrest, close to my face. “You can’t tell me you’re having fun?”
I shrugged. “Beats school.”
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“Yeah, I guess.” Dante relaxed back into his chair.
Around six p.m., we did a grocery run. It wasn’t like Buck was going anywhere. Dante had me go into the store alone in case his mom or any of her friends were shopping. He made a request for more SpaghettiO’s—at least one can each tonight.
Just after nine p.m., we watched Buck leave work. We tailed him home then turned around at the end of the road again, but tonight, instead of traipsing through the woods, we headed back to the cabin where I made another round of canned spaghetti.
We turned in shortly after eating. There wasn’t a whole else lot to do in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. The novelty wore off really quickly after spending a day sitting in one place freezing my ass off with nothing better to do than obsess over a vampire not worth the energy it took to fire the electrons in my brain.
I held my phone half a foot away from my face and began reading a sample of Fifty Shades of Grey that I’d downloaded using the Kindle app. Ana met the sexy Mr. Grey in Seattle then interviewed him and drove back to Vancouver, Washington. What the hell? I thought this was a sex book.
I began speed reading until I saw Mr. Grey reappear in Vancouver at Ana’s place of work and ask to purchase cable cord followed by masking tape and rope. After which the sample ended.
Dante chuckled in a deep throaty voice.
I couldn’t see him over the wood stove.
“What?” I asked defensively. As if he had any idea what I’d been reading.
“I think Aurora’s bored.”
I turned on my side. “So, she didn’t get the vamp house?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Say hi for me.”
“Umm, hmm,” Dante said in a faraway voice
I purchased Fifty Shades and tried not to picture Gavin’s face on Mr. Grey when he tied Ana up.
The next morning, I woke up to the sound of Dante singing Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” I pulled my head inside my sleeping bag like a turtle. Even through the layer of down, I could hear him.
The smell of coffee lifted my mood considerably.
I unzipped my sleeping bag in slow motion and swung my legs down to the cold floor.
Dante stopped humming. “Oh, great, you’re up. So, I was thinking why don’t you and I strategize? We aren’t getting anywhere with this stakeout.”
I leaned forward to put on my knee-high socks. “That’s the point of a stakeout,” I said with my head bent. “You don’t go anywhere. You stay put and watch.” I was beginning to wonder if Dante had A.D.D. God, I needed coffee.
As though reading my mind, Dante walked over and handed me a mug. He held his own cup a couple feet in front of me with a dopey sort of faraway look on his face. At least he wasn’t leering at me in my stockings, panties and T-shirt.
After swallowing loudly, Dante said, “Buck’s just gonna go to work... again. Harper, I’m about to expire from boredom. Come on, you enjoy engaging with the enemy. Let’s confront this sucker.”
I set my mug in my lap. “What exactly is your plan, Dante?”
“I just want to talk to him, feel him out, that’s all.”
“Right, that’s all.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re not going to try and kill or poison him?”
Dante slowly grinned. “It’s his own fault if he bites me.”
I took a quick sip of coffee. Ah, that did the trick. “I have a better idea. Since you’re so insistent on meeting Buck, you can pose as my vampire boyfriend and then we don’t have to worry about anyone biting you.”
The floorboards creaked when Dante did a little jump. “Undercover as a biter. I love it! Never tried that one before.”
“Are you sure you’re up for this? Sure you’re ready to act like one of those “things”?
Dante grinned. “Do I get to bite anyone?”
“Yeah. Me.”
Dante’s brows lifted. “Sure you’re ready to be bit by a human?”
“I’m ready for anything.”
“Good.”
While Dante and his dog did their thing outside, I finished getting dressed. After that, we had an entire afternoon to kill. Somehow, we ended up at the movie theater. Buck wasn’t going anywhere. Dante’s dog stayed behind in the warm cabin. We came back with dinner, ate, and headed to the A&P shortly before nine.
“Okay, here we go,” Dante said, gripping the steering wheel inside his Jeep and doing the push up move once more.
“We can go inside right before he finishes work or jump—I mean, bump into him when he gets off.”
“Let’s go in,” I said.
“Right, right,” Dante replied, nodding. “Cut him off before he has a chance to flee.”
“Sure.”
Tonight the ice fog had cleared, but it was so dark I still couldn’t see anything beyond the black wall until we reached town and civilization. Dante parked five spots down from Buck. He turned the ignition off and gave his face a good stare in the review mirror, turning his head from side to side, and tilting his chin down.
“Everything look okay?” I asked.
Dante rubbed his chin, eyes focused on his reflection in the mirror. “I don’t look like a blood sucker.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said.
“I’ll be better than fine.” Dante flashed me a smile before reaching for his door handle. “Let’s do this.”
“I’m ready.”
Working with Dante was sorta like diving off a plane without a parachute, but he had so much confidence I trusted there’d be a net below to catch us. I was a woman of action, myself. This was going to work.
The cold provided extra incentive—driving us inside despite any qualms. Dante held the glass door open for me, and I hustled into the A&P. I felt a moment’s panic when I looked around the convenience store and didn’t spot Buck behind any of the registers. Then he emerged from a backroom, coat draped over one arm.
“See you next week, man,” Buck called out to a bearded guy reading a comic book at the front register.
Buck was probably around twenty-three when he stopped aging. He had thick hair like Dante and good skin that held color even in winter, not your typical pasty-skinned Alaskan or vampire. Vamps like Buck broke stereotypes.
A nervous flutter entered my throat in the seconds before Buck would have to pass us and notice me. When his eyes met mine, he stopped moving. His lips formed a question mark.
“Noel? What are you doing in Fairbanks?”
“Buck? Oh my gosh. I never thought I’d run into you up here.”
I slipped my hand around Dante’s arm.
“My boyfriend wanted to show me his hometown.”
Buck looked from me to Dante, quickly sticking out his hand. “Hey, man, I’m Buck.”
Dante didn’t hesitate to pump Buck’s hand. That was a relief. I didn’t know if he’d want to shake hands with a vampire, but I supposed he’d do anything in the line of duty—even play nice with his enemies.
“Dante.”
“How long have you two been going out?”
I opened my mouth, but Dante beat me. “A week.”
I would have given us at least two, but no matter.
Buck nodded a couple times. “And you’re already taking a trip out of town. You move quickly.”
Dante smirked. “Well, life’s short... at least for Noel.”
Buck glanced at the clerk up front and leaned in. “But not you?”
Dante’s smile widened. “Who wouldn’t want to see this mug walking around forever?”
Buck mirrored Dante’s grin. “Cool. I’m actually new to this.”
Dante slapped Buck on the shoulder. “Welcome to the club. If you ever need pointers I make a great mentor.”
I clenched my teeth together to keep from staring at my partner agape. Dante teach a vamp to be a vamp? That would be the day.
“Awesome, thanks man,” Buck said. “You seem really chill. A lot of these undead dudes come off reserved, you know what I mean?”
Dante stret
ched. “That’s because most of them were counts in a former life, and they’re still walking around with a stake up their ass.”
Buck snorted and laughed. He glanced quickly at his co-worker.
“Listen, you guys should come over to my place. Do you like pizza and beer?”
“Do bears shit in the woods?” Dante returned.
“Then follow me. I’m in the rusty pickup out front.”
After Dante and I got back inside the Jeep he said, “This guy’s not bad for a vampire.”
“I told you Buck was harmless.”
“We’ll see.”
“The only thing you’re going to see is Buck drinking beer. He’s new. Biting and drinking blood still feel unnatural to him. It’s not like he’s assigned a real mentor to teach him the ABC’s of eternal life.”
“How do you know all this?” Dante asked.
“I make it a point to know about everyone who walks through the doors of the palace. You take pride in your job, I take pride in mine.”
“I’m beginning to see that.” Dante eased out of the parking lot, following Buck into the street. “So, they really don’t get any kind of master vampire instructor? Doesn’t seem fair.”
I pressed my lips together. I didn’t even know how to begin to comment on that one. Dante almost sounded sincere.
Buck wasn’t much for speed, which meant Dante had to drive slowly. He tapped his finger on the wheel and hummed a tune I couldn’t make out.
“When do I bite you?” Dante asked suddenly. He slid to a stop, three inches behind Buck at a red light. “Before dinner? After dinner? During dinner?” His eyes widened. “There really will be pizza, right? That wasn’t code for something else? Like the pizza boy being dinner.”
“What?”
Dante puffed. “They made a meal out of one in Anchorage, or did you forget already?”
“Of course not. Don’t worry. We’ll be eating pizza.”
“Good, because that would be going one step too far.”
Stakeout (Aurora Sky Page 11