At Second Bite

by Michelle Rowen

  Julia looked at Henry, his head tilted back to avoid the blade Evan still held tightly against his throat. “Do you promise to not relentlessly pursue me?”

  Their eyes locked and she only felt that click from earlier tighten up a notch.

  “Not sure I can promise that,” he managed. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stay away from you even if I wanted to.”

  She knew he didn’t mean murder. But Evan didn’t.

  “Thank you for making this easier, brother.” Evan pulled his arm back to prepare for the death blow.

  Julia moved quickly, putting herself between Henry and Evan before he could bring the knife down across Henry’s throat.

  “Stop,” she said. “Nobody has to die here. I’ll go with you. Anywhere. We never have to see Henry again. Just don’t hurt him. Please.”

  “You are acting very erratically,” Evan said with a frown.

  “It’s been a strange evening.”

  Julia heard something then. A low buzzing sound.

  Evan grimaced. “One moment, please.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and held it to his ear. “Evan Frost here.” A pause. “Yes, that’s right.” Another pause and then he raised his gaze to look at both Julia and Henry in turn.

  Julia could feel the heat from Henry’s body behind her. She didn’t want to turn. She didn’t want to say anything else. She knew what would happen if she couldn’t convince Evan to turn around and leave with her. He’d kill Henry with no more questions asked. It didn’t matter how long they’d been brothers, how long they’d lived and survived. One would be dead. And she was sure that Henry wouldn’t raise a finger to defend himself. He’d spent his existence trying to keep his younger brother out of trouble; he wouldn’t fight to the death against him.

  She knew it was impossible to have fallen in love with somebody in a matter of minutes - to love them so deeply that you’d be willing to change your life in order to save them. And yet, that’s exactly what she was doing. She’d leave with Evan if it meant saving Henry’s life.

  It was crazy, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. She’d never felt so sure about anything before in her entire life. She loved Henry, and she didn’t want him to die.

  “Don’t do this,” Henry whispered into her hair. “Let him kill me. It’ll be easier for everyone involved.”

  “Shut up,” she told him.

  Evan frowned as he continued to speak to whoever was on the phone. “I don’t understand. Very well, if you insist.” He looked again at Julia and Henry. “It’s the witch who performed the soulmate recovery spell. She wants to be put on speakerphone.” He pressed a button and held the phone out at arm’s length.

  “Hello, can you hear me?” the witch said.

  “Uh . . . yes,” Julia replied.

  “Loud and clear,” Henry said.

  “Very good.” The witch cleared her throat. “I’m afraid there’s been an error and I’m not quite sure how it happened.”

  “An error?” Evan sounded disturbed. “What do you mean?”

  “When you were here yesterday, Mr Frost, I felt as if there was something awry. The feeling has lasted until a moment ago when I got a surge of power here in my lair. My crystal ball lit up like a lantern. And I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that something was horribly, horribly wrong with the recovery I did for you yesterday.”

  Evan still clutched the machete as he gazed wistfully at Julia. “There is nothing wrong. I have found my true love with your help and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Every penny of your fee was earned. She is mine for ever. Our souls reunited. I have never felt such deep love in my entire existence.”

  “Julia Donner is not your soulmate,” the witch said simply.

  “Excuse me?” Evan replied. “I don’t think I heard you right.”

  “I know, it’s very unusual. I found the wrong one. The energy I channelled yesterday pointed in the wrong direction but I don’t understand why. No one else was with us. There was no other life essence that I could have drawn from. I can’t understand this.”

  “Well, I was there.” Henry’s voice was soft.

  “Pardon?” the witch said.

  “I was there,” Henry repeated. “I’d followed Evan. I wanted to find out the location of his soulmate so I could find her and murder her so she wouldn’t exert her evil influence on my brother ever again.”

  There was a pause. “And is she dead?”

  “No, still alive,” Julia spoke up. “Very confused, freaked out and generally shaken, but alive.”

  “Then that must be the answer,” the witch said. “OK, that totally makes more sense. I thought I’d screwed up and that never happens, thank you very much. Hello? We’re talking a millennium of perfect soulmate recovery here. I have a very good rep. for this sort of thing, you know - the best in the biz, in fact. I didn’t realize that there were two Frost brothers in attendance at the recovery yesterday. It’s obvious to me now that I channelled the wrong essence and found your soulmate, Henry. Not Evan’s.”

  Henry and Julia looked at each other. He swallowed. “That’s impossible. I don’t have a soulmate.”

  “You’ve never found her before probably because you didn’t have my help, but there she is. Congrats. Live happily ever after. I’ll send you my bill.”

  Julia was stunned. More stunned, that is. So it was true? That deep and nearly immediate connection she felt for Henry was because they were soulmates who’d just never connected before?

  “Um,” Evan said, the machete now lowered to his side. “What the hell?”

  The witch cleared her throat nervously. “So very, very sorry about any inconvenience, Evan. If it helps, I did manage to locate your true soulmate, formerly known as Katerina.”

  Evan’s previously dejected expression turned optimistic. “Where is my truest love?”

  “It’s a good news, bad news situation. She was reincarnated as a pit bull terrier. That’s the bad news.”

  His shoulders slumped. “What’s the good news?”

  “She’s in the same city you’re in right now. If you want to see her again.”

  Evan chewed his bottom lip. “Yes, I’ll be needing that address.” He took the phone off speaker. “Henry,” he said. “So sorry about the mix up. No hard feelings?”

  “Consider it forgotten,” Henry replied.

  Evan wandered off with the phone pressed to his ear.

  “So . . .” Julia began after a few moments of silence. “Strange night, huh?”

  Henry swallowed hard. “I deeply apologize from the bottom of my heart for everything that has happened here.”

  She pressed her lips together. “You should probably know that I’m still not totally convinced about this whole soulmate thing.”

  “No?” He raised an eyebrow.

  She shook her head. “It’s a bit outside my comfort zone of knowledge.”

  He nodded gravely. “I would assume so.”

  “However . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I suppose I’d be OK with learning more about it.” She grinned at him. “That is, if you wanted to teach me.”

  “I could easily be convinced.” A smile touched his lips. “So you forgive me for trying to kill you?”

  “No. But if we potentially have forever together then I’ll probably get over it eventually.” She reached down to take his hand in hers. “But how about we start with drinks back at the bar and take it from there?”

  “I’d say that’s an excellent start.”

  The world seemed much bigger than it had before. Full of strange things like handsome vampires and soulmate-recovering witches.

  Was Henry the one-eyed vampire her soulmate? Was he the man she’d waited her whole life - possibly several lives — to find, only to have him fall into her arms at a most unusual moment?

  She was definitely willing to find out.

  Author Biographies

  Michelle Rowen

  Bestselling and award-winning author
of the Immortality Bites vampire series.

  michellerowen.com

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters 162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2009

  “At Second Bite” © by Michelle Rowen. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.

  The right of Trisha Telep to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN 978-1-84529-941-5

  First published in the United States in 2009 by Running Press Book Publishers

  All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

  US Library of Congress number: 2008942197 US ISBN 978-7624-3651-4

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