Your Coffin or Mine?

by Kimberly Raye

  I could feel my own hunger stir and tamped it down.

  “This looks pretty fresh. No coagulation. Which says that whoever did this was here pretty recently.”

  Which meant that Ty hadn’t been unable to pick up a phone these past few months to call me. He simply hadn’t wanted to. So much for soothing my ego.

  “Ty, on the other hand, hasn’t been here for a pretty long while.” He knelt near the dark stain. He touched his fingertips to it and took a whiff. “This smells like him and there’s definite coagulation.

  I hate to admit that this bit of news brightened my otherwise gloomy day, but it brightened my otherwise gloomy day. “You think so?”

  “This is what I do.” He examined the stain. “I know so.”

  “Or maybe you’re the reason he’s missing.” My brain started to piece things together and my suspicion stirred. Anger roiled in the pit of my stomach and I felt my jaw tighten. The sharp end of my fangs grazed my tongue. “How do I know you didn’t do this and now you’re trying to cover it up?” I took an intimidating step toward him. At least, it would have been intimidating to anyone else—human, vamp, or Other.

  But Ash…There was something about him that seemed almost invincible. Crazy, I know. While there were some powerful creatures in the world—yours truly included—none were invincible. Superman had his Kryptonite, vamps had wooden stakes, and weres had silver bullets. Whatever Ash was, I felt fairly certain that he had weaknesses as well.

  No, really.

  He stared at me, his gaze pushing into mine, but that didn’t stop me from taking another step forward. “How do I know,” I went on, “that you didn’t pull a Jeffrey Dahmer and stuff Ty into the fridge?” Because you’re mentally linked to him, bozo, and he couldn’t very well call out to you if he’d been dismembered.

  That, and the fact that the fridge door was hanging on for dear life, revealing an empty refrigerator, the light busted, the shelves demolished.

  I took one more menacing step before I stalled. (Okay, so my courage gave out, but we’re talking invincible.) I waited for an answer and used the ticking silence to mentally calculate how far up Ash’s ass I could actually stick my primo shoe before he turned on me.

  If he turned out to be a vamp killer.

  “You’re right,” he finally said after carefully sizing me up. “I could be lying through my teeth.” That dark gaze found mine and again I saw his eyes brighten from a bleak obsidian to a blinding tequila sunrise. Then they cooled. “But I’m not.”

  I believed him. Hey, I had Super Vamp senses. Even more, he had spotless clothes. If he had, indeed, been responsible, there would have been some telltale sign.

  I started to tell him about my mental link with Ty, but then thought better of it. Hey, I knew absolutely zip about this guy except that he had mucho sex appeal and wore really cool clothes.

  Yikes, what was I thinking?

  In my book, mucho sex appeal and cool clothes ranked numbers one and two on my Must Have in an Eternity Mate list. As opposed to the usual (1) astronomical fertility rating, and (2) astronomical fertility rating. Forget talking to him. I should be jumping him on the spot.

  The notion stirred a very vivid image, followed by a rush of guilt. Misplaced guilt, I reminded myself. I was not the one who’d bailed on Ty without so much as a see ya.

  Except that he might not have bailed. He might have been kidnapped after our night of hot, wild sex. Which would have made it impossible for any sort of goodbye, or even a note. He could be being beaten and tortured at this very moment.

  Or worse. My gaze zeroed in on the dark stain. “You don’t think he’s—”

  “—permanently dead? Staked through the heart? Head chopped off? Body cut into little pieces?”

  Ewww. “Uh,” I swallowed, “something like that.”

  He shook his head. “Not enough blood. No arterial matter. No flayed skin.”

  Double ewww.

  “But wherever he’s at,” Ash went on, “I don’t think he’s in good shape. Judging by the size of the puddle, he lost quite a bit of blood.”

  Loss of blood meant he was weak. Probably drifting in and out of consciousness, barely coherent, which would totally explain why he hadn’t contacted me again.

  I glanced around at the chaos again and my chest tightened. Ty’s words replayed in my head and I got this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. A feeling usually reserved for the stack of credit card bills currently taking up half of my desk.

  “We have to help him,” I said, letting go of the last of my vengeful thoughts. Hey, I’m female and we’re entitled to change our minds. Judging by this latest info, I was firmly convinced Ty wasn’t a total jerk-off and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Ash was right. Something bad had happened.

  He glanced at the mess and then at me. “Any ideas what we should do?”

  “You’re the detective. You tell me.”

  “We start with the girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend? Are you telling me that he has a girlfriend?” And to think I’d actually forgiven him in the last five seconds. What an idiot. I gave myself a massive mental head slap. I was so going to find him and decapitate him myself. I fought down a wave of anger and tried to sound disinterested. “So, who’s his girlfriend?”

  “I’m looking at her.”

  I glanced behind me before the truth struck. I whirled and blond hair slapped me in the face. “Me?”

  “Yeah,” he said as if he’d just pointed out that I also had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Duh.

  “Wait a second. You think I’m his girlfriend? Did he say that? And if he did, when did he say it? And how? Did he seem happy about it? Angry? Suicidal?” The questions poured out before I could stop them. Not that I would have. I wanted to know everything. Every minute detail of every super sweet thing Ty Bonner had ever said about me. “Do you think he meant it? Did he mention anything else—”

  “Whoa.” He signaled with his hands. “Time out. I think you’re getting a little carried away. He didn’t actually say it. I just assumed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.” He shrugged. “I could just tell.”

  “How?”

  “Because he said you had a big mouth.”

  My mind rifled back to our night together and my eyes narrowed. “That dirty rat fink. I can’t believe he told you that we—”

  “He didn’t,” Ash cut in. “He didn’t say a word about you personally. Just that you like to talk a lot.”

  “And this translates to girlfriend how?”

  “Guys talk about their current squeeze or their latest blow job: ‘I boffed this girl or gave it to that one.’ You know the spiel.”

  No, but I was quickly finding out.

  “They don’t talk about wives or girlfriends,” Ash added. “That would just be weird.”

  Okay, it sort of made sense. (Was my ego hanging on by a thread or what?) “So he said I like to talk a lot and that’s it?”

  He nodded. “But I think he liked it. The talking, I mean. He looked aggravated. At the same time, I think he thought you were funny.”

  “Okay, now that could go either way.”

  “Funny in a good way.”

  I drew a deep breath and let my lungs fill to calm my nerves. Okay, I was the funny girlfriend. It wasn’t exactly the hot, delicious, irresistable GF, but it would do. “So how can I help?”

  “Well,” he smiled, “For starters, you can tell me what he said when he contacted you telepathically.”

  Five

  After some mega-shock, I spent the next five seconds filling Ash in on my mental dish with Ty.

  “That’s it?” he asked when I finished.

  I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for tall, dark, and silent.” Literally.

  The notion stirred a memory of me and Ty and yum, and I quickly snapped my mind closed to it. Particularly since I hadn’t eaten yet and Ash had more sex appeal than Brad Pitt, Toby Keith,
and that guy from Nickelback all rolled into one. My hormones, bless their traitorous little souls, were obviously having a major yowza fest.

  “He must have said something about his whereabouts. An address. A building description. A fucking weather update. Something.”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t say anything else.”

  “Didn’t you get some sort of mental picture? A visual of the place? A face?”

  “Can I do that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the one with the telepathic connection. You tell me.”

  “I never have. But then we’ve never really done it that much. When I hear him, I don’t see anything.” Well, maybe a few pics of Ty naked that lingered in my head whenever I heard his deep, seductive voice. “It’s all just black.”

  “Yeah.” He stared at me knowingly, as if he could see the thoughts flying around. “Sure it is.”

  I thought about using my convincing vampness on him, but I had the gut feeling it wouldn’t work.

  “I wish I’d gotten more, but I didn’t. He just stopped sending.”

  Ash seemed to think. “Maybe he didn’t stop. Maybe someone else stopped him.”

  That’s what I’d thought. Well, that and that he was simply too busy doing the bump and hump with a megalicious stripper vamp named Bambi. Or Bubbles. Or Colette. (Did I ever mention the slut countess who stole my very first boyfriend?)

  Not that it mattered. Ty and I didn’t have an actual commitment. Sure, we’d spent time together and he’d saved me from spending eternity at Riker’s Island. But really, when you peeled away all the life and death stuff, it amounted to one measly fantabulous night of sex.

  But the thing was, I liked him and I thought he liked me. Not that he couldn’t go out and have crazy, outrageous monkey sex with someone else and still like me. But it did sort of kill my whole happily ever after fantasy.

  A secret fantasy, I might add.

  See, born vampires aren’t exactly die-hard romantics. Rather, the entire race centers around sex. BVs stop aging when they lose their virginity. Their search for an eternity mate is based entirely on Fertility Ratings and Orgasm Quotients. Love, if there is such a thing, or even like, simply doesn’t figure in.

  So you can understand why Ty and I riding off into the sunset (me wearing a killer pair of Sergio Rossi leather stiletto boots) is not something I can actually admit to anyone. Not without them thinking I’d drank one too many glasses of the bottled stuff. Bottled blood equaled slower reflexes, which equaled cuckoo to a born vampire.

  At least that’s what my father said.

  He was also the vampire who’d almost decapitated himself with a pair of hedge clippers in an all-out battle with his werewolf neighbor over azalea bushes (I am so not touching that one).

  Anyhow, I wasn’t in any hurry to see myself starring in the next episode of Intervention, so I kept my mouth shut about the fantasy. Besides, my mother was already slipping valium into her AB negative thanks to my youngest brother, Jack, and his impending nuptials to a human. Why ruin a good thing and shift all that motherly disapproval back to moi?

  “Have you tried contacting him?”

  I nodded. “He’s not responding. That, or I’m not doing it right.”

  “Are you focusing? Projecting?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I think.” When he flashed me an exasperated look, I added, “I’ve never been mentally linked to anyone before. I’m still on the learning curve.”

  “Keep trying. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can come up with here.” He pulled a card from his back pocket. “Here’s my cell number. Call me if he contacts you again.”

  I pulled a Dead End Dating card from my purse and handed it to him. He stuffed it into his pocket.

  “I’ll be in touch if I find anything,” he told me.

  “That, or if you get lonely.”

  A grin split his face and my heart gave a tiny little pitter-patter. “That’s the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.”

  I tossed a major shut up! at my hormones and frowned. “I’m not trying to pick you up. I’m a matchmaker. It’s my job to help lonely men and women the world over. So,” I eyed him, “are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Lonely?”

  “No.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “A blow-up doll named Ginger?”

  He shook his head. “You do talk a lot.”

  “It’s part of the job. Surely you don’t just work all the time.”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “You really should get out more. Think of all the wonderful life experiences that are passing you by.” He gave me a get-outa-here look. “Okay, fine. But think of all the really hot women who are passing you by. Don’t tell me you don’t like women.”

  “I do. Occasionally. But I’m not interested in dating one.”

  “That’s what they all say. But sooner or later, the lonely bug bites everyone and then you do something desperate. One minute you’re watching television by yourself and the next you’re cruising the Internet, surfing chat rooms and viewing profiles on MySpace. You wind up talking dirty to a hot little Swedish number named Inga.” I made a tsk-tsk sound. “Tragic.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because Inga is really a five-hundred-pound Japanese guy with a pot belly and bunions. But you don’t know this because he’s got all of these great pics posted and so you fall into a deep, meaningful back and forth exchange, only to have your heart broken into a thousand pieces when you find out the truth. Then you’re scarred for life, afraid to trust anyone. You turn into a hermit, invest in a couple dozen cats. They find you one day, facedown in the kitty litter. Dead. Alone.”

  He eyed me for a long moment. “Does that story usually work?”

  “Usually. Sometimes I tell it with dogs instead of cats. Or even Chia Pets. But you didn’t really look like the gardening type.”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Call me if you hear from him again, okay?”

  I nodded. Not that I was going to sit around waiting on Ty and worrying. I didn’t do worry very well. Rather, I was going to be proactive. I would send out a message to him every hour on the hour, and the rest of the time I would spend working.

  I had bills to pay, after all, and as ominous as things seemed (Ty was missing and there was still the little issue of me being followed), I’d still had an extremely productive evening. I’d met John-the-insurance-fraud-investigator, who obviously needed some serious help in the soul mate department. I’d also passed out a ton of cards and even gotten several in return.

  Love was definitely in the air.

  Unfortunately, love wasn’t the only thing. The realization hit me, along with the smell, when I left Ty’s building and started down the street toward the corner. My nostrils flared and the foul scent grew stronger with each step and—Ugh.

  I glanced down at the brown mess squishing out from beneath the toe of my snakeskin Prada. I twisted and started scraping my shoe on the concrete to clean the mess. I’d just about gotten everything off when I heard the faint sound.

  The meow echoed through my head and my first instinct was to run the other way.

  I know cats are cute and snuggly, but I’m just not into them. Most vampires aren’t, and the ones who are keep them around from pure necessity. Like my great uncle Pierre who still lives a zillion kilometers from civilization (aka the nearest shopping mecca) in the remote French countryside. While he has a huge staff of servants to help him out with the need to feed, sometimes he gets tired of the same old, same old. He likes a little variety, and since the nearest village is home to a pack of were-wolves, he turns to whatever’s handy, i.e., his cat. I know. Talk about a flossing nightmare. But to each his own.

  The sound kept blaring in my head as I neared the corner. Louder. More desperate.
<
br />   Meow.

  It wasn’t like I cared. No cats. That was my motto. Not only because of the hair issue, but because I was determined not to wind up facedown in the kitty litter.

  At the same time, it was my civic duty to ensure that the streets of New York City remained free of piles of stray-cat poop. Talk about a fast way to kill a pair of killer shoes.

  My Pradas, the poor things, would never be the same.

  I took a few more steps before turning down a narrow alley that wound down the side of the building and around the back. My vision cut through the darkness, skating this way and that as I searched for the source. I caught a whiff of damp fur and more poop. The sound grew louder.

  I bypassed garbage cans and a Dumpster and there it was. The Prada killer in the flesh.

  Not that there was much flesh on it. It looked like a full-grown cat, yet it was so scrawny and malnourished that it couldn’t have weighed more than the small bag of MAC necessities I kept in my purse. The black fur was matted. Big, bright green eyes glittered back at me and my chest hitched.

  I stiffened against the feeling and put on my best you-are-so-busted look. “You owe me six hundred bucks,” I told the cat. “Since you can’t possibly pay me back, I’m calling the animal shelter. They’ll pick you up and the streets will once again be safe for designer shoes.”

  He blinked and shivered.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I am calling the animal shelter.”

  Another blink and more shivering.

  “You can’t just stay here, pooping and starving. The animal shelter will feed you and find you a home.” And put you out of your misery if no one wants you. The thought struck and guilt spiraled through me.

  Wait a second. I don’t even like cats. Never have. Never will. They shed and they shit and I don’t even want to think what they taste like.

  Meow.

  “You’re not coming home with me.” Excuse me? Back the Ferrari up. I was not—repeat NOT—thinking about taking this shoe destroyer home with me.

  Was I?

  My brain did a quick scrambling before the right answer popped up.

  No. Definitely not. Sure, they allowed pets in my building, but we’re talking the cute, fuzzy kind. Not an over-the-hill, shriveled-up excuse for a feline.