Semi-Charmed

by Isabel Jordan

  Harper stood up and walked away without looking back, but she could practically feel his eyes on her ass. She locked eyes with Mischa who was standing outside the bathroom. “You got him,” she mouthed.

  Harper shook her head, half pleased that it had been so easy, and half disgusted. She could be a serial killer or have herpes, for God’s sake, and this guy was willing to chance it for skeazy bathroom sex.

  Harper was sitting on the bathroom counter—a surprisingly clean, nice gray marble that she wouldn't mind having in her own bathroom at home—when her would be tryst swaggered in. She glanced at her watch. Four minutes. A new record.

  She shook her head as he grinned and started unzipping his pants. “This just isn’t your night, friend,” she said amiably.

  He opened his mouth—no doubt to ask what she meant—when Mischa stepped out of the one of the stalls and tased him.

  He convulsed wildly and dropped to the floor like a sack of wet cement. A drooling, twitching sack of wet cement.

  “Nicely done,” Harper said.

  Mishca calmly repacked her Taser’s wiring and tucked it away in her purse. “Why did I have to Tase the guy? Couldn’t you have just grabbed his wrist or something when he handed you a drink?”

  “This is the guy who sold our friend out there the GHB.” She shrugged. “I thought this would be more fun than grabbing his wrist for a quick premonition.”

  Mischa scowled down at the guy before kicking him in the stomach. “Asshole,” she muttered.

  “Block the door for me, will you?” Harper asked.

  Mischa took up position in front of the bathroom door as Harper knelt beside the bartender and cupped her hand around his bicep. She didn’t have to wait long for the premonition.

  “Shit,” she grumbled a minute later, rubbing her throbbing temples. “He’s not our guy.”

  “What do you mean he’s not our guy?”

  “I mean, our guy is a girl. This joker told Riddick about an hour ago that Phoenix’s little wannabe is a chick named Lisa who isn’t on until midnight.”

  Mischa glanced at her watch. “That’s in five minutes. Let’s go wait by the employee entrance.”

  Harper had just put on her jacket and set foot out the employee entrance behind the bar when someone grabbed her and slammed her back against the brick wall beside the door. She immediately brought up her knee, but the guy easily deflected it. He pressed his forearm across her shoulders and leaned into her. Harper blinked up into a pair of very familiar, very angry blue eyes.

  “Hi, Riddick,” she said weakly.

  Riddick’s gaze never left hers as he said, “Mischa, I swear to God, if you Tase me, I’ll hand you over to Hunter for a midnight snack.”

  Harper heard Mischa zip her purse and knew she wasn’t going to get any help there. “Riddick, I—”

  “Don’t,” he said, his voice completely calm and completely at odds with the fiery look in his eyes. “What was so fucking hard to understand about staying home until I found Phoenix?”

  She felt her own temper rise in response to his. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a kid, damn it. I’m a licensed PI, for God’s sake. I know how to track someone down.”

  He choked out a laugh and pushed away from her. “This isn’t some easy skip trace or background check, Harper. This is serious.”

  “Oh, as opposed to all the non-serious cases I’ve solved? Give me some fucking credit for once, Riddick.”

  “Uh, guys,” Mischa said.

  Harper went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Besides, you can’t just tell me what I can and can’t do. You’re not my damn boss and you’re not my damn mother.”

  “Guys,” Mischa tried again.

  Riddick shoved his hands through his hair. “What you really need is damn keeper. You’re out of control!”

  Harper took a step toward him. “I’m out of control? You’re the one who—”

  “Guys!”

  “What?” Harper and Riddick yelled in unison.

  “The bartender? Lisa? The wannabe vampire?” Mischa pointed down the narrow alley between the bar and the neighboring shop. “I think she’s getting away.”

  “Shit,” Riddick muttered as he took off after what looked to Harper to be a streak of blond hair.

  “She’s heading around toward the front,” Mischa told Harper, who’d already raced back into the bar, knowing Riddick had taken the long way around.

  “I’m on it!”

  Riddick rounded the corner just in time to see Harper step out the front door and clothesline the bartender, throwing her neatly to the ground. Flipping her over, Harper wrenched the girl’s arms behind her back, pulled a plastic zip tie from her jacket pocket and used it to bind her wrists. The whole thing took less than a minute.

  It was maybe the hottest thing he’d ever seen.

  “What the hell’s going on?” the doorman asked.

  Harper yanked the girl to her feet. “Nothing to worry about,” she said calmly. “VCU. I’m taking this one in for questioning. Tell your boss she won’t be working tonight.”

  “Whatever,” he replied. “Just take that shit away from the door. You’re scaring people.”

  Riddick glanced around. A few people were snapping photos with their phones, but no one looked scared. Except for the girl Harper was pushing through the parking lot.

  “I swear I didn’t do anything wrong, Officer,” she said, her voice breaking pitifully. “I’m innocent.”

  “Oh, save it,” Harper replied, spinning her around and shoving her back against Mischa’s Honda. “You’re about as innocent as I am a cop. Tell me about Phoenix. And give up the big-eyed Barbie doll routine. It annoys me.”

  The girl’s delicate features immediately took on a hardened look as she glared at Harper. “Phoenix will rip your heart out and eat it, bitch. And I’ll laugh while he does.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Riddick, hold her here, would you?”

  Riddick held her shoulders against the car. She turned big blue eyes on him hopefully. “Help me. Let me go and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  He glanced down at her. “Sweetheart, you’ve got nothing I want.”

  Harper chuckled. “Nice try, though.” She laid her hands on either side of the girl’s face and closed her eyes. She frowned after a moment. “Huh. Nothing.”

  "Phoenix probably gave her blood," Mischa said, strolling up behind them. "A lot of vampires do that for their familiars. Makes them immune to seers and empaths, even some psychics."

  "What took you so long?" Harper asked.

  "I don't run unless chased," she said dryly.

  Harper turned to Riddick. "Well, my plan is shot to hell. What was your plan for getting her to talk?"

  He shrugged. "Didn't really have one. Torture usually works, though."

  Lisa shook her hair back and laughed. "Phoenix trained me to withstand torture. I can take anything you can dish out, pretty boy."

  Harper's brow furrowed as she looked back at the girl. "Why do you do this?" she asked quietly. "Is immortality that important to you? You want to stay young so bad you'll condemn innocent women to death? That you'll let Phoenix torture you as some kind of training exercise?"

  Some of the anger bled out of the girl’s features. “You try living with bone cancer and see what you’re willing to do to stop the pain.”

  She didn’t have to explain further. Vampire blood didn’t cure cancer or any other ailment, but it sure as hell could slow the progression of disease and give someone the illusion of health between transfusions. Riddick had never been sick a day in his life, but he imagined that would be a pretty powerful motivator.

  “Shit,” Harper muttered. She turned to Riddick. “If she’d said she wanted to stay young and beautiful forever, or that she dreamed of being like Bella in Twilight, I could’ve tortured her. But now…” She shrugged. “My heart’s not in it.”

  Riddick nodded. “We can keep her until the vampire blood is out of her system, then see if you can pi
ck up a premonition.”

  “That’ll be days,” Mischa said.

  Harper glanced at her and smiled. “I’ve got an idea. Does vampire blood make her immune to mind control?”

  Mischa’s eyes widened. “I don’t like where you’re going with this.”

  Damned if she wasn’t smart and beautiful, Riddick thought. “No,” he said. “She’d still be susceptible to your friend Hunter.”

  “Sweet.” She spun Lisa around, opened the car door and shoved her in. The girl fell across the back seat in an unladylike sprawl of limbs. “Let’s go.”

  Mischa grumbled something under her breath about vampire scumbags as she slid into the driver’s seat.

  Riddick grabbed Harper’s arm as she opened the passenger door. She looked up at him, her eyes wary. He hated that he’d put that look there.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said.

  Her head jerked back as if he’d slapped her. “You do?”

  He nodded. “You were right. I don’t give you enough credit. What you did tonight…it was…amazing. You’re amazing.” Shaking his head in awe, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and cupping her jaw in his hand. “So soft and delicate-looking on the outside, tough and smart and fearless on the inside.” He stroked his thumb over her cheekbone. “How can you be all those things at once?”

  She turned her face into his hand gently and closed her eyes. “Wow,” she said, her voice a little huskier than usual. “For a guy who doesn’t say much, you give one hell of an apology.”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t even apologize yet.”

  She gulped. “Better not. I don’t think I can take it. My knees are already a little weak.”

  His gaze dropped to her lips. Heaven was right there. All he had to do was lean forward…

  Mischa laid on the horn. “I don’t have all night,” she barked impatiently.

  Riddick let his hand drop to his side. Harper blinked a few times as if coming out of a trance and turned a fierce glare on her friend. “Timing, Misch,” she muttered as she slid into the passenger seat. “Yours could be better.”

  Mischa’s timing was perfect, Riddick thought with no small amount of regret as he got into the back seat with Lisa. Painful, but perfect.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Riddick is still there, isn’t he?”

  Harper resented the hell out of Mischa’s motherly tone. It was totally insulting that her best friend didn’t think her capable of knowing when it was time for Riddick to go home.

  The fact that Mischa was right not to trust her irked Harper even more. She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at the phone.

  “I know what you’re doing, and it’s childish,” Mischa said dryly, “so stop it.”

  Harper frowned. “The fact that you can see through phones and read minds doesn’t make you adorable and quirky, it just makes you spooky. But if you must know, Riddick is still here. He’s checking out my apartment.”

  Harper was pretty sure that a strong, independent woman wouldn’t enjoy having Riddick thoroughly search her apartment—including the shower and under the bed—for hidden dangers. But obviously, she wasn’t as strong or independent as she’d like to think, because having Riddick there with her made her feel infinitely safer.

  After their near-miss kiss in the parking lot at The Lair, they’d all gone to Hunter’s apartment. As usual, he’d been shirtless. Harper was used to it. She knew he came from a time when men wore buckskin pants and little else. As a result, he didn’t care for modern clothing—so, when he was at home, he didn’t wear much.

  But Lisa, not having the advantage of seeing Hunter shirtless a million times before, had practically fallen to her knees the minute he opened the door and pledged her undying devotion. He barely said a word and the girl started spilling her guts, confessing to everything but killing Kennedy and kidnapping Patty Hearst, for God’s sake. She’d also given up the drop point where she usually left Phoenix his drugged potential victims.

  Lisa had begged Hunter to sire her. He’d politely refused. He had, however, agreed to give her enough blood transfusions to keep her healthy through her trial, and probable prison sentence. And since he was much, much older than Phoenix, it wouldn’t take nearly as much of his blood to keep her going.

  She’d been so grateful she offered to thank him in ways that made Harper blush. Mischa had made a few gagging noises and gone home shortly thereafter.

  Harper had called Lucas who came by and picked up Lisa after arranging for a tactical team to check out the drop point. He’d stubbornly refused Riddick’s offer to lead the team. Harper wasn’t surprised. He’d been fairly pissed about them taking matters into their own hands—again—by pursuing Lisa. But if all went well, Phoenix would be in custody by morning.

  “It’s bad enough you live in the same building as Hunter,” Mischa said. “The last thing you need to do is add Riddick to the mix.”

  Mischa spoke Hunter’s name with the kind of enthusiasm most people reserved for talk of head lice and boils. “Christ, Misch, I get why you’re concerned about me and Riddick, but what have you got against Hunter?”

  “The fact that you don’t already know the answer to that question proves to me your judgment can’t be trusted. I’m coming over in an hour and a half, and if Riddick’s not gone, you’d both better be dressed or I’m kicking somebody’s ass.”

  All right, enough’s enough, she thought. Time to redirect the conversation. “So what’s up with you and Hunter, anyway? You two leak sexual tension all over me every time you get within ten feet of each other.”

  As expected, Mischa sucked in an outraged breath. Probably sucked all the air out of her apartment, Harper thought.

  “There is no sexual tension between me and Hunter.”

  Harper snorted. “Please. I got a contact high just standing between you two.”

  “I can’t even believe you’d insinuate I could be attracted to a vampire.”

  Harper stifled a sigh. A good horizontal mambo with a hottie like Hunter was probably just what Mischa needed to loosen up and live a little.

  “Misch, Hunter is hot as the blazes, vampire or not. And he’s no killer. There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to him.”

  She could practically hear Mischa’s pout. “He says he’s not a killer. Sentry showed me proof to the contrary.”

  Harper rolled her eyes. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what Sentry said. They were obviously wrong. He’s lived in this building for years and he’s never been anything but nice to me. Hell, Misch, he even came up here that time I found the mouse in the pantry and took it outside for me…alive! And he could’ve killed me a hundred times, if he wanted to.”

  “Any vampire in town could’ve killed you a hundred times,” she snapped.

  “Jeez, you’re really cranky when you’ve got the hots for a vampire,” Harper said innocently.

  With a wordless growl of frustration, Mischa hung up.

  Harper chuckled and hung up.

  “Tormenting your friend for your own amusement?”

  Harper glanced up to find Riddick leaning negligently against her bedroom doorframe. “What are friends for?”

  He didn’t answer. Probably because he had no idea what friends were for. As far as she knew, he’d never had any.

  “I assume you didn’t find anything?” she asked, settling herself on her overstuffed sofa, already missing Cane.

  Mischa had been quick to point out that the dog would be safer with her. If she didn’t know better, Harper would think that Mischa—white carpet owner that she was—liked being Cane’s pack leader.

  “No. There’s no one here,” he said, sitting next to her. “So, what’s on your mind?”

  “What makes you think something’s on my mind?”

  He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “It’s a pretty safe bet with you, sunshine.”

  Well, she couldn’t tell him she was thinking how much better her couch looked with him on it, and ho
w much better she’d look with him on her, because that would make her sound like the horny CPAs at the Kitty Kat Palace.

  So instead, she said, “You’ve met my family, and probably know way more about me than you care to, but I barely know anything about you.”

  A now familiar frown line appeared on his brow. She knew she was the cause of that line, and she’d love it if she could be the one to ease it away.

  “What do you want to know?”

  Anything. Absolutely anything and everything. “What did you like to do when you were a kid?”

  “Hunt.”

  Duh, Harper thought. She should have known that. “What were you doing when Sentry found you?”

  “Time.”

  She frowned in confusion, and he clarified, “Prison, Harper. I was in prison.”

  She blinked. She’d forgotten that little tidbit of Mischa’s story. Damn ADD. “Right. I think I remember hearing that. Who was it you supposedly killed?”

  “There’s no supposedly about it. I killed the guy.”

  “Why?” she asked quietly.

  He was silent for so long she thought he was going to ignore her. She jumped when he finally spoke.

  “I was in my…oh, I don’t know, six or seventh foster home at that time, I think,” he said in a lower than usual voice. “Instead of just knocking me around, that foster father had…other plans for me.”

  Harper swallowed hard. Mischa had said he’d acted in self-defense, but Harper had no idea just how bad things had been for him. “Did he…” she trailed off, unable to say the words out loud.

  Riddick shook his head. “No. He tried. I broke his back. Snapped him in half, pretty much. It was as simple as that.”

  But she saw the pain flash through his eyes, and she knew there was nothing simple about it. “They tried you as an adult for his murder?” she asked, her voice hoarse. “Sent you to prison?”

  “Yep. I was there for a few months before Sentry came for me.”

  And promptly told him he was a natural-born killer, then proceeded to study him like a lab rat. No wonder he was a loner.

  Looking at him, with his tense shoulders and set jaw and wounded eyes, she knew now more than ever that he wasn’t the dead and empty killer Mischa and Sentry thought him to be. He was just…ruthlessly contained.