“Oh, my God,” Imogene wheezed. “This is you. This is the you she was talking about.”
His eyebrows lowered. “Who?”
“Doc.” She nodded toward the back door. “This is the you she met in Paris.”
He looked away, which hid the fact that his green eyes were currently almost completely gold and shining like matching Rolex faces under a jewelry counter. “Yes, well, we were all quite well fed back in those days.”
“How many people did you just eat?”
“Eat?” He rolled his eyes. “I took a few nibbles.”
Imogene reached for the sink and covered her face with a washcloth that smelled like lavender because of course it did. “How many nibbles?”
“It’s really none of your business.”
She cussed through the cloth, which was exactly when Vixen barreled through the dining room doorway and latched onto Nicholas from behind, her nose against his throat. He tried shoving her away when she started humping his leg—which was when Dean reappeared, not even batting an eye.
“A little help?” Nicholas asked.
Dean laughed before sprinting across the room and tackling Nicholas around the waist. The two men—and Vixen—flew across the room. Vixen seemed undeterred and continued her mindless molestation of Nicholas, who did his best to dodge Dean’s punches.
Imogene leaned against the counter, drank her forgotten rum punch, and watched.
“Stop it!” Dr. Savage’s shrill cry ceased all activity. “Dean, take care of Vixen,” she screamed.
He socked Nicholas once, hard, in the ribs. “But—”
“When are you going to understand?” Dr. Savage threw her hands in the air. “I love you. I love you more than I ever loved Nicholas. You are the only person I want on this entire Earth, so when are you going to understand that?”
Dean stopped throwing punches and looked over his shoulder. He got a twinkly-eyed look about him before smiling and dragging Vixen off Nicholas with a hand to the back of her blonde hair. He dragged the snarling vampire all the way across the dining room to kiss his girl before disappearing through the foyer and back to what Imogene assumed was Vixen’s bedroom.
“You two.” Dr. Savage pointed at Imogene. “Practice. Now.” She hurried off in the direction of her boyfriend, which left Imogene in the kitchen with her rum punch and Nicholas on the floor, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t move.
“Well,” she said. “That was fun.”
Nicholas sat up and twisted his torso, which made a distinct popping sound. He winced and twisted some more, probably putting a busted rib back in place. “Bollocks,” he muttered.
Imogene sniffed the air again. “Is that blue lotus?”
“Obviously.” He stood. Slowly.
“You went and saw her.”
“She and Olivier. I had to confirm the plan.”
Imogene tensed.
“At least pretend to confirm the plan.” He limped to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of vodka. He chugged.
“I thought you didn’t drink to excess,” she said.
“Fuck off, sweetheart.” He hobbled around the corner and into the living room where he fell onto a couch and put his bare feet on the table.
“Don’t mean to scare you.” She chugged rum punch from the doorway. “But I might have rubbed off on you a bit.”
“Sit down.” He gestured to the leather chair across from him.
She didn’t move.
“Please.”
She still didn’t move.
“Please with bloody fucking sugar on top.”
She sauntered over and sat. “Yup, definitely rubbed off on you.”
He sighed and drank more vodka. “I need you to glamour me.”
“What? Just like that? I told you I can’t glamour vampires.”
He closed his eyes like he might go to sleep. “Try.”
“Fine.” She leaned forward and stared at him, his eyes still shut. She mentally told Nicholas to smack himself in the face.
After a couple seconds, he opened one eye at her. “Are you trying?”
She snarled and stood up, back to the kitchen to make another rum punch. In the middle of pouring a double shot, Nicholas shuffled in, eyes downcast. “What does it feel like when you glamour someone?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “It just happens.”
“Are you sure?”
She bared her fangs at him. “I don’t know! It’s just something I do. I don’t really think about it.”
He put his bottle down on the marble counter. “I need you to think about it now.”
“You know, truthfully, I can’t think because you smell like David Bowie music feels and you look like a glowworm.” She pointed to her head. “All I can think about is fucking you damn stupid, which I’m not going to do because I hate you.” She gawked at him as if all this should be obvious.
“Okay. We’re going out.”
“Huh?”
“We’re going out.” He carried the vodka bottle with him as he returned to the dining room and threw on his discarded hoodie. “We need to make this not about you and me—and fast.”
“What does that have to do with going out?”
He jangled keys in his hoodie pocket.
“Just come on.”
He drove recklessly, never once looking in her direction, which was totally fine—just fucking fine. In rebuttal, Imogene plugged her iPhone into the radio, cranked up some Motley Crüe, and head-banged across the bridge into Lazaret, where Nicholas parked behind Necto.
“What are we doing here?” she asked as he climbed from the car.
When he didn’t respond, she continued.
“You can’t go in looking like that. You look like a high school grunge kid from 1995.”
“It won’t make a bit of difference,” he muttered, and she followed a couple feet behind him until she realized his yummy man scent was stronger back there and hurried to walk in front of him.
She didn’t have to stand in line to get inside or even flash ID. She noticed, neither did Nicholas, who the bouncer welcomed inside with a star struck look on his face.
“You glamoured him.”
“Obviously. I don’t have time for ethics this evening.” He shoved past her and prowled straight for the bar.
Imogene put her hands on her hips and took one long, slow breath. The club was packed, as always. The deejay waved at her from across the room, and she didn’t wave back. She recognized more than a dozen people in the crowd, including her walking blood bag, Paul, who was working it hard with some brunette with glitter in her hair. Vixen was absent, surely still locked away with Dean and Dr. Savage for fear of her masturbating at Nicholas.
Speaking of, she turned to find him and spotted his slouched figure at the bar, glass of what she assumed was straight vodka already in-hand. There was something else, too. Everyone—man and woman alike—within a ten-foot radius stared at him. She shoved past a girl gaping like a goldfish and elbowed Nicholas in the ribs.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Drinking,” he said.
“To the people in the club.” She grabbed his drink from his hand and set it down, spilling half of it when she forcibly removed it from his fingers. “What are you doing to them?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “It’s just residual.”
“Residual what?”
“Residual me.” He picked up his drink. “It happens after I’ve consumed fresh…” He drank more vodka.
“Fresh meat.”
“It’ll go away. We’re here to see the extent of your powers.”
The bartender slid Imogene a rum punch, and she grabbed it from the bar without looking. “These people aren’t vampires, duh.”
“I know. Duh. I need you to identify how you feel when you glamour humans.”
“I told you I feel nothing.”
“That’s not true. You’re just not focusing.” He pointed to a guy in a black silk sh
irt talking up a girl in a way too tight white tube dress. “Make him spill his drink on that dress.”
She gawked. “God, no! That’s a fabulous dress!”
Nicholas finished his straight vodka with a long gulp. “Someone else then. Make someone spill a drink.”
Imogene blinked, and the bartender dropped a bottled beer on the floor. “There.”
“Great. Now, how did you make him drop that drink?”
“I dunno. I just thought, ‘Drop the drink,’ and he did.”
He sighed and spun on his bar stool to face her. “Fine. Think something at me.”
She thought, again, Smack yourself in the face.
Nicholas shook his head. “Just thinking isn’t going to do it. You need to feel something.” He stood. “Something more challenging then. How are you at distance?”
“I told you. Twenty feet. Thirty maybe.”
“The deejay.” Nicholas pointed. “Make him play something you want to hear.”
Ten seconds later, the opening beat of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking” started playing, and Imogene pointedly stomped one of Nicholas’s bare toes with her shit kickers.
He opened his mouth in a silent groan and bent forward at the waist.
“Next,” she said.
He winced and stood straight. “Glamour the whole club.”
“The whole club.”
“Mm.”
She looked up at him, and then stared at the room, at least seventy people full. She rolled her shoulders back once, twice, and then her head from right to left. “Fine,” she said, and she thought about glamouring an entire club of humans.
Nothing happened.
“Fuck!”
Nicholas stepped behind her and put both his hands on her shoulders. She tried to snivel and pull away, but he held tight.
“Get your hands off—”
“Your skin is crawling right now, I’ll bet,” he said, right in her ear. “Use it. Use the anger, the disgust. Use it, Imogene.”
Her skin wasn’t crawling, actually. Her skin felt warm where his cold palms touched her. She leaned back against his body until his nose nudged the side of her neck. She closed her eyes and felt every traitorous physical response, caused by Nicholas’s obscene proximity. Then, she used it.
Nancy Sinatra abruptly came to a halt. The song changed to “Electric Boogie,” and an entire room of cool hip-hop kids halted, looked around, and fell in step to The Electric Slide. They even looked like they were enjoying it.
“Holy shit.” Imogene laughed when she noticed even the bartender was dancing.
“Yes,” Nicholas said. He fell back onto a barstool and grabbed a full bottle of vodka without asking anyone’s permission. “We’ve found it.”
“Found what?”
“Possibly the key to unlocking your immense talents.” He poured liquor down his throat.
“Which is?”
“Your hatred of me. At least it’s good for something.”
Imogene put her hands on her hips and watched human friends and ex-lovers dance like idiots. “Yeah,” she mumbled.
She called ahead of time to let Celia and Ian know she was coming to avoid getting zapped by their vampire security system, so when she arrived, she walked in, no problem. Celia was on her like a hungry mosquito, hand gripped in Imogene’s purple hair, and snarfing big mouthfuls of air. “Why do you smell like that?”
Imogene stood still, head tilted to the side, trapped by a fist in her hair. “Uh, so this is pretty annoying, actually. Sorry I used to do it after you’d been hanging with Ian.”
Celia sniffed again but didn’t let go.
“She’s been really hungry today,” Ian said from his chair, where he played video games in a sexy tight tee and torn khaki cargo pants—bare feet, as always.
Imogene batted at Celia until she let up, then went over and gave Ian’s cheekbone a lick. It’d been too long. He grinned up at her.
She went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer before falling down on their comfy couch. Celia sat next to her and kept sniffing, which gave Imogene the opportunity to catch her off guard.
“Can I try to glamour you?”
Celia leaned back, resting open hands on her distended belly. The belly warbled, “Fuck.”
“Uhhh…” Celia said.
“Oh, never mind. I don’t feel up to it.”
“You’ve been practicing,” Celia said. “With Nicholas. That’s the smell.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s never smelled, well, like that before.”
“He’s feeding off humans now. Trying to get his strength up so he’s a match for those SL assholes.”
“Oh.” Celia didn’t say anything else.
“What?”
“Huh?”
“Merk. What?”
“Well, are you okay with him feeding on other people?”
Imogene’s hand tightened around the beer can. “Of course I’m fine. We’re over. He can do whatever he wants.”
“So you had the break up talk?”
“No.” She hid behind her red plastic sunglasses. “I don’t think we need to really—not after I tried frying him on a roof. Thought it kinda went without saying.”
“Point,” Ian agreed, blue eyes glued to the screen. His video game looked like something out of Lord of the Rings with all the animated elves and goblins running around the screen. He’d gotten a promotion at work, which was why he no longer only tested games on his computer. He tested games on every system, which explained why his stacks of DVDs now almost challenged even Celia’s movie collection.
Celia poked at the couch fabric. “So you’re, like, okay with it being over?”
“Of course I’m okay. He was here to steal your baby. He probably just used me to get close to you.”
“He already was close to us,” Celia said. “We liked him. He didn’t need to use you.”
“I’m sure I was part of the plot.” She finished her beer. “The baby-stealing plot.”
Celia winced and reached for her tummy. As if they shared a psychic connection, Ian was on his feet and kneeling in front of his wife. “Breathe,” he said.
Imogene backpedaled until she balanced on the couch arm. “What’s going on?”
“The baby is moving a lot.”
Ian used his huge hands to rub her belly.
“Nicholas is coming tomorrow night to check on things,” Celia said. “I just feel like she really wants to come out, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.” Imogene stood. “Jesus, she’s not going to just explode out of there, is she?”
Both Celia and Ian looked at her like she was a New Kids on the Block fan.
“What?”
“No, Imogene, she’s not going to explode.” Ian kept rubbing Celia’s tummy, a furrowed, focused look on his face.
Imogene was ready with a rebuttal, but then, all the lights in the house dimmed, buzzed, and then lit up again.
“What was that?” Celia asked.
Imogene dropped her empty beer can. “Someone just set off your exterior security system and probably got zapped.” She moved to the front door and looked through the peephole, expecting to see smoke from a singed body.
Instead, she saw a big poof of fake red hair and a familiar, leathery nose.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” Imogene swung the door open.
“Lookin’ slutty, Olive Oyl. Not that I would expect anything less.”
“Heidi!” Celia shrieked.
The ex-owner and landlady of the burnt-to-the-ground Sleeping Gull Apartments stepped into the house, pitchfork in hand. She’d replaced the blonde wig they were all accustomed to with one that was Jessica Rabbit red. Her skin was still an assembly of pre-cancerous cells, wrinkled like an antique baseball mitt. However, out of character, she wasn’t in a bikini but head to toe black instead. She dropped the pitchfork on the floor and gestured outside.
“I know a vamp zapper when I see one.”
; Imogene tilted her head. “You do?”
Heidi froze when she saw Celia. “Hell in a hand basket, what is that?”
Celia, with Ian’s help, pushed herself to standing. “I’m pregnant.”
“Noooo.”
“She totally is,” Imogene said. “Creepy shit, isn’t it?”
“Uh, Heidi, what are you doing here?”
“Oh. Well.” She threw a big, black duffle bag on the ground. “It’s the annual vampire hunter convention down in Miami.”
Imogene laughed. “You’re a hunter now?”
Heidi shrugged. “Seeing as I like killing people, my most recent husband thought it was a good transition. Until I killed him. But it just proved his point really. Got any tequila?”
Even though Heidi was possibly a gazillion years old, she moved like a black panther across the living room and into the kitchen, leaving the three of them to mouth “what the fucks” back and forth. Their ex-landlady was, in fact, a murderer, known to the FBI as Bloody Betty, due to all the husbands she’d murdered over the years.
She came back with a bottle of Patrón and sat in Ian’s chair. “This chair smells like a nursing home.”
Ian chuckled.
“I heard vampires were killing humans in Lazaret.” She pointed at Imogene. “Wasn’t you, was it?”
“No.”
“Thought I’d swing through the old town and chop off some heads.” Her tan face crinkled when she smiled. “As I said, had to get outta Dodge after Frank drowned in the bathtub last week.”
Imogene put her hands on her hips. “You got married? Again? And already murdered the guy? It’s been, like, five seconds since we saw you.”
“I had to move fast.” She tipped the bottle back. “Lost a lot of money when the apartments went up.”
“You should teach classes,” Imogene said.
“On which? Marriage or murder?” Heidi winked.
Imogene smiled and shook her head. “Never thought I’d say this, you old bag, but I missed you.”
Heidi swung around in her seat. “So how’d she end up knocked up, hmm? Pretty sure that ain’t supposed to happen.”
“We’re not really sure either,” Ian said, guiding his wife back to the couch.
“You call in a specialist?”
Imogene huffed. “It’s a long story.”
“Fuck!” the baby shouted.
Bite Somebody Else Page 21