Spencer’s father smiled ruefully, his handsome face unmarred by his centuries-old age. “It makes me glad we’re not human, kiddo. I couldn’t bear to lose any of you.”
Walking toward him she tucked her arm under his and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Did you need me for something?”
Edgar kissed the top of her head. “The picture of Brian Reynolds just arrived.”
“Who’s he?”
“Your next client. He’s waiting for you, and his family will be here tonight before the viewing tomorrow, so I thought I’d better let you know.”
Spencer glanced at the clock on the barren wall. “Damn, I’m sorry, Dad. I’ll get right on it.”
Edgar gave her a squeeze before he let her go. “It’s okay. You have plenty of time. Sad thing about Alan, don’t you agree?”
Spencer nodded. He had no idea how sad. “Yeah, I feel awful for Mrs. Perkins. The coroner’s office is going to pick up the body soon and hack him back up. I just felt like I needed to apologize to Alan for that. Silly, huh?”
Spencer’s father tweaked her cheek as he had for many centuries when he wanted to cheer her up. “It’s not silly, kiddo. Sensitive is more like it. You’re a good-hearted vamp, Spencer. I just wish you’d get out more. See your girlfriends more than once every couple of months. I have a feeling, somewhere in that social life, lies your life mate.”
Spencer winkled her nose at him playfully. “I know, Dad, but I have to hope he finds me because I can’t find him with a bum sniffer, now can I?”
Edgar chuckled and pinched her defective nose lightly. “You have other qualities that make up for your lack of smell. I feel as sure as the day is long that you’ll find that special vampire soon and settle down.”
“Yep. I’m right there with you. Count Dracula is just around the corner, waiting on me. But until then, I’d better see to Brian Reynolds.” She smiled at him and gave him a pat on the arm before exiting the viewing room where Alan waited to be picked up.
Something was very wrong here. She felt it in her gut, deep in her bones, and she was going to find out what it was if it was the last thing she did.
* * * *
Spencer pulled on her scrubs and pushed her way through the door to the embalming room. Preparing a body gave her purpose. It helped her to focus on making it easier for the family who had to say goodbye. For now, it took her mind off the freaky/hunky detective and Alan Perkins’ bite marks.
At least Brian Reynolds’ body wasn’t a mess like Alan’s had been. He wasn’t pretty, for sure, but he hadn’t decomposed quite like Alan had. Spencer skimmed his chart. Car accident—found right off of I-36 again.
Downright dangerous to hang out there lately, wasn’t it? He was whacked up pretty badly. The coroner’s office had ruled it severe brain trauma. Spencer ran her hand over his bruised face and forehead and grimaced. Yeah, he’d hit the windshield pretty hard. Damn, she hated trying to cover bruises of this severity.
And he was so young too, just a year younger than Alan Perkins.
Well, shit. Cases like this, when the patient had so many years ahead of them yet, made Spencer think too much about their lives. In the same way she’d fretted over the possibility that Alan might have had a wife and children—she now focused her energy on Brian.
“Oh, Brian. I’m so sorry,” she sympathized. “You had more miles to go, didn’t you? God, that really sucks. But I’ll fix you up just right. Promise.”
Spencer eyed the picture of Brian in life. Taken not long ago, if the time stamp was right. He was smiling on a beach somewhere, the sand spilling over his toes, the glimmering blue ocean at his back.
Brian needed a trim if what his picture revealed was how his family would expect to see him. As Spencer ran her hands through his thick tresses, pulling it up and away from his neck, her hand froze.
Fucking hell.
She covered her mouth with her forearm to keep from gagging on a dry-heave.
Another bite? For fuck’s sake, what the hell was going on in Easton?
Spencer fought revulsion as she forced herself to examine Brian Reynolds’ neck. Running a gloved fingertip over his skin she felt the same small incisor bites on Brian as she had on Alan.
Oh, Christ and a sidecar. Who was doing this? Why?
And now what?
She had to do something, because whoever was biting the victims obviously wasn’t draining them. Once more she reminded herself, she’d drained Alan’s body of blood just before embalming him. He certainly didn’t have a lot of blood left, but he wasn’t drained. So what was the purpose of biting these men if not for sustenance?
Spencer let go of Brian’s hair and paced the floor frantically trying to figure out who would do such a thing and if the coroner’s office had missed this twice, had there been others just like them? Would someone else become another victim?
How long would it be before the coroner finally caught on? Because certainly more bodies would show up. Spencer felt the realization claw at her throat until she gagged again. More bodies would show up. She knew it as sure as she knew something horrible was happening in Easton.
“Whose body is going to show up?”
Spencer’s head snapped up and met the gaze of Larkin McBride’s intense glare. Fabulous—Inspector Clouseau was here. Yay.
Larkin shook his finger at her in a tsk-tsk manner. “Aha. Just so happens, I do know who Inspector Clouseau is. French guy, right?”
Crap. She moved away from the embalming table and Brian’s body, planting her hands on her hips. “Channel surfing again, Detective? What happened? Did you give up on late night vampire flicks?”
Larkin moved toward her, large and overwhelming, his tight jeans clinging to his bulky thighs with every step. “Whose body were you thinking about showing up?”
Spencer rolled her tongue in her mouth, pushing at the insides of her cheeks in impatience. Think vapid, Spencer. “I deal with bodies all day long, Detective,” she replied coolly. “It’s really no great mystery that I’d be thinking about another one showing up.”
Larkin shook his head, his lips thinning. “No, what you thought was, and I quote, ‘more bodies would show up’.”
“Well that’s kind of a duh, Detective. I work in a funeral home. Yes, more bodies will show up.”
As Larkin came to stand next to her, or over her might be the proper assessment, he grinned that fucking stupid smile that made her phantom innards jiggle and her knees clack.
“How do you do this all day? It stinks in here.” It was as if he’d just noticed the unpleasantness that Spencer often heard about, yet couldn’t identify with because she couldn’t smell it. Larkin covered his nose with his hand, his eyes beginning to water. “Mind if we step outside into the hall?” he asked then hacked a cough before pushing his way out the door and into the corridor.
Pantywaist.
When he turned around to face her, he grinned a grin so perfect it was surely a gift from above. “Pantywaist? Okay, fine. I’ll give you that. But c’mon, be fair. The smell in there is pretty ripe.”
Spencer stifled her urge to giggle while fighting the magnetic force of his body when he backed her up against the wall. “I have no sense of smell, so it doesn’t bother me.”
He cocked an eyebrow upward. “I remember you thinking you had a bum nose. Didn’t know what that meant.”
She clasped her fingers behind her and looked up into his eyes. “So what do you want today, Detective? Are you here to hassle me about your newfound mind reading abilities, or do you want some more vampire tips? How to fry a vampire in one sunrise or less? Or what about one hundred and one crock pot recipes for O positive lovers?”
Larkin winked at her and her legs jiggled again, pissing her off. “Nope. Today I’m focused on Alan and his supposed suicide, but you never know when a good recipe for O positive might come in handy.”
Her panic returned in full force. “So you’re here in an official capacity?”
Larkin leaned into her
, bracketing her head by placing his palms against the wall above it. Her body responded in kind by radiating lava-like heat and a with hormone alert squealing a warning that rang in her ears. “Nope. I’m here because I was Alan’s friend and Adelaide is onto something.”
Spencer shivered as his breath grazed her face. “Onto something?”
“Yeah. Alan had a lot going for him. Great job, sweet bank account, all the stuff a guy lives for—and he just up and offs himself? Doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”
She clucked her tongue. “You know what they say about money. It can’t buy you love or happiness.”
Larkin scoffed, his features turning hard again. “I know all about the inner peace bullshit, but Alan had more going for him than not. It doesn’t add up, and I want answers.”
She shrugged her shoulders, hoping to feign indifference. “Maybe you’re just looking for something that isn’t there. Sort of like your vampire fetish and the voices in your head. You move from obsession to obsession with the grace of an elephant.”
He did something then, something she’d relive over and over later on. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, making her spine arch toward him unwillingly. “You weren’t thinking I was such an elephant just a minute ago.”
“Why, no, I wasn’t, was I? I was thinking you were an overgrown baby for not being able to take the smell of a little embalming fluid.”
“That’s not all you were thinking at all, Spencer,” he murmured low and husky.
Spencer’s nipples tightened painfully, pressing against her sweater while a vampire’s version of goose bumps broke out on her arms. “I have a body to prepare for a viewing, Detective. So unless you want to stick around for the slice and dice, and I doubt you could handle it, I’d highly recommend you spend the afternoon off chasing after shadows somewhere else.”
Larkin stared down at her, his eyes hard chips of ice again. The lighthearted moment he’d experienced gone. “I’ll do that, Spencer, though I’ll be back. Not a chance in hell Alan took his own life. I might not have any proof other than what my gut says, but I know I’m right. So I’ll be seeing you, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”
As Larkin’s solid bulk moved away from hers, she felt cold for the first time in her life. It must be cold because her fingers were numb.
Spencer knew he’d be back. Alan was his friend, and he wanted answers about his death. He deserved them, but he wouldn’t just be back because of Alan. He’d be back because he was determined to figure out how he was hearing her thoughts.
Hopefully before the drool-worthy detective returned, she’d have a little prep time to empty her mind and beat her libido into submission.
Because after that encounter, Spencer Polanski realized she was hot for a guy for the first time in centuries and it was for a guy who—in his line of work—and with the kind of honor and duty she sensed in him—would probably personally handcuff her to a cross at dawn, and swallow the key.
While there was plenty of sensationalized fictional facts about vampires made famous in movies like the ridiculous notion she sparkled in the sunlight (if only), there was a hint of truth to some of it.
The truth was she really would burn to death and turn to ash after prolonged exposure to sunlight.
But that wasn’t what petrified her the most. Not by a long shot.
What left her almost immobile with fear was something far more menacing.
There was a murderer on the loose in Easton, and the only place to begin the hunt for this killer began by investigating the obvious.
The obvious being the members of her very own clan…
Note from Dakota
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About Dakota
Dakota Cassidy is a USA Today bestselling author with over thirty books. She writes laugh-out-loud cozy mysteries, romantic comedy, grab-some-ice erotic romance, hot and sexy alpha males, paranormal shifters, contemporary kick-ass women, and more.
Dakota was invited by Bravo TV to be the Bravoholic for a week, wherein she snarked the hell out of all the Bravo shows. She received a starred review from Publishers Weekly for Talk Dirty to Me, won a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Kiss and Hell, along with many review site recommended reads and reviewer top pick awards.
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eBooks by Dakota Cassidy
Visit Dakota’s website at http://www.dakotacassidy.com for more information.
Witchless In Seattle Mysteries, a Paranormal Cozy Mystery series
1. Witch Slapped
2. Quit Your Witchin'
3. Dewitched
4. The Old Witcheroo
Wolf Mates, a Paranormal Romantic Comedy series
1. An American Werewolf In Hoboken
2. What’s New, Pussycat?
3. Gotta Have Faith
4. Moves Like Jagger
A Paris, Texas Romance, a Paranormal Romantic Comedy series
1. Witched At Birth
2. What Not to Were
3. Witch Is the New Black
4. White Witchmas
Non-Series
1. Whose Bride Is She Anyway?
2. Polanski Brothers: Home of Eternal Rest
Accidentally Paranormal, a Paranormal Romantic Comedy series
Interview With an Accidental—a free introductory guide to the girls of the Accidentals!
1. The Accidental Werewolf
2. Accidentally Dead
3. The Accidental Human
4. Accidentally Demonic
5. Accidentally Catty
6. Accidentally Dead, Again
7. The Accidental Genie
8. The Accidental Werewolf 2: Something About Harry
9. The Accidental Dragon
10. Accidentally Aphrodite
11. Accidentally Ever After
12. Bearly Accidental
13. How Nina Got Her Fang Back
14. The Accidental Familiar
The Hell, a Paranormal Romantic Comedy series
1. Kiss and Hell
2. My Way to Hell
The Plum Orchard, a Contemporary Romantic Comedy series
1. Talk This Way
2. Talk Dirty to Me
3. Something to Talk About
4. Talking After Midnight
The Ex-Trophy Wives, a Contemporary Romantic Comedy series
1. You Dropped a Blonde On Me
2. Burning Down the Spouse
3. Waltz This Way
Fangs of Anarchy, a Paranormal Urban Fantasy series
1. Forbidden Alpha
2. Outlaw Alpha
Dakota recommends … Lexxie Couper
“Lexxie Couper, books so hot, you need asbestos gloves to read ‘em!”
Savage Retribution
Savage Australis, Book 1
Lexxie Couper
Prologue
Dublin—Four Months Ago
The stink of sex, sin and death seeped into Declan O’Connell’s nostrils, overripe and acrid all at once. His lips curled into a silent snarl and he stepped deeper into the dank, d
im building, the hair on his nape prickling.
This is not right.
The thought sent a ripple of tension through his already tight muscles. It wasn’t right. The whole night hadn’t been right; the anonymous tip about his sister’s killer, the insistence he be here—at this place—at this time, the derelict, abandoned condition of the building. It didn’t add up.
McCoy’s not here, Dec. Shit, he’s never been here. You can’t even smell him on the air. Face it—this was a set up. And you’ve just walked right into it.
The snarl on his lips turned into a low growl and he felt the muscles in his body begin to coil tighter. Stretch. Grow.
Change.
Teeth grinding, Declan forced back the beast, denying it control of his body. He didn’t know who had brought him here under false pretence—more than one person wanted him dead, and not all of them knew what he truly was. Better to walk out of the situation, not lope out on all fours.
A soft sound—barely louder than the snap of a dry blade of grass—shattered the silence of the derelict brothel and Declan froze.
He wasn’t alone. Someone was—
The dark blur hit him from the left. Hard.
Something large and heavy crashed him to the ground. Teeth, long, sharp and slick with saliva, snapped at his face. He was barreled across the debris-strewn floor, chunks of concrete and shards of broken glass grinding into his knees and elbows, biting into his flesh even through the leather of his jacket. His favorite Levi’s tore but he didn’t give a rat’s ass. Not with a fucking huge, black wolf trying to tear his throat out.
The animal lashed out, razor-sharp teeth missing his neck by a hair’s width. Declan felt hot saliva splatter his cheek. He struggled on his back, pinned to the crap-covered floor by the wolf’s writhing, savage weight. The stench of urine attacked his breath, invaded his senses with the mark of an animal Declan had tasted before.
His eyes snapped wide open, locked on the burning, iridescent gold stare of the wolf attacking him.
Outlaw Alpha Page 22