Fire in Her Blood

by Rachel Graves

  “Okay, okay I should have told you all. I’m sorry. Mea culpa. Do we have something else to talk about? Please?” I begged Phoebe.

  “We do indeed. The fundraisers are at an end. Who raised what?”

  “Someone else goes first,” Isaura said. “I want to save mine for the end.”

  “Save it all you want. I know I lost. Two thousand three hundred fifty-four dollars and that was with nearly two hundred runners. Thank the Gods we had Jakob to cover the expenses. Supposedly we’ll make more money next year as the race gets bigger, but for all the stress it seems small.” Phoebe finished with a frown.

  “Unlike my professionally run carnival. The nice carnival company came in, set everything up, took everything down, and with only a little intervention from me raised a whopping sixty-five hundred dollars. Guess we know who won, huh?” Anna smiled smugly and reached for the Champagne glass.

  “Uh, actually,” Isaura said, snatching the glass away. “My raffle would have made six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, if we had sold every ticket.”

  “Six thousand two hundred and fifty, much less than six thousand five hundred, why are you holding on to my glass?”

  “Because we would have made that much if we sold every ticket, but we didn’t. We sold every ticket and an extra two hundred we were begged to print. That means a total of eleven thousand two hundred and fifty dollars.” She paused to sip the Champagne, than slowly pronounced the amount again.

  “But you had to cover the cost of the car, right?” Anna tried.

  “Donated.” Isaura took another long drink of Champagne.

  “So who won the raffle?” I wasn’t going to ask who had them print extra tickets. I hoped it was Jakob, and he’d won. Then he could give the Jeep to me, and we all live happily ever after, a girl, her boyfriend, and the world’s most perfect vehicle.

  “Umm, I’m not really supposed to talk about it because of the legal stuff. But I know they made the call yesterday,” Isaura said, without a thought to how she was killing my dreams. She finished the drink, accepted the praise Phoebe and Rhythm heaped upon her and politely asked Anna about her new cousin. The conversation lasted for all of ten minutes before we were on the dance floor. The next time we all stopped for a break, it was nearly midnight, and Isaura kept checking her watch.

  “You got a hot date or something?” Rhythm asked.

  “Sort of.”

  My eyebrows went up two inches. Nightshift worked the opposite of my hours, seven p.m. to seven a.m. Isaura shouldn’t have date for another seven hours.

  “I was going to bring Ben lunch,” she said meekly.

  “So that’s why you’re dressed like someone’s mom,” Anna declared.

  “This is a cute outfit,” Isaura protested.

  “Yeah, cute if you’re someone’s mom.” Anna rolled her eyes.

  “Please, not every woman wants to bare her skin when it’s fifty degrees out.” Isaura shot back. Rhythm stepped between the two.

  “Now ladies, I think we can all agree that you two have very different looks. Isaura’s works for her, and Anna, yours works for you. Just like running off to have a midnight lunch with some guy seems like a good idea to Isaura, while I’d rather keep dancing.”

  “Me too!” Anna agreed. “Have a nice date with the new boy.” She gave Isaura a quick kiss on the cheek to make up for her cattiness and then went back to the floor. I was willing to admit I was beat, and Phoebe announced she had something she had to get to herself. The three of us bundled up and headed out into the crisp October night. Phoebe was oddly quiet for most of the car ride, no doubt distracted by whatever plans she had for the rest of the night.

  “I’ll see you at Anna’s tomorrow,” I reminded her, getting out of the car.

  “Uh-huh, have a good night,” she replied, distantly.

  “And have fun with your errand, whoever he is.” I grinned widely as surprise registered on her face. I might not be a spirit witch, but knowing what Phoebe’s midnight assignation centered around didn’t require magic.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jakob joined me, and after I told him the details of my day, I slept like a rock, not waking up until the middle of the morning. When I finally got out of bed, all I managed to do was curl up on the couch with a book. I was thoroughly engrossed when I heard the doorbell.

  “Chica!” I opened the door to Phoebe’s smiling face.

  “Pheebs!” I shouted in return. “Come distract me from my Saturday morning.”

  We sat on opposite sides of the couch, her long hair spilling all over the dark cushions. The decorator who had picked the furniture for my apartment had never met Phoebe with her bright blonde hair and her wonderfully tan skin, but the dark green of my couch was perfect for her.

  “It’s one o’clock in the afternoon, chica, it hardly counts as morning.”

  “We left Convenire hours ago, that makes it morning,” I corrected.

  “Ask me how my morning went then.”

  “Do I want to know?” Phoebe was entirely too sexually open for my taste. I could understand that Pagans believed in free love, but watching her practice it made me cringe.

  “Oh yes, this one you want to know all about.” She raised her hand to the collar of her button down shirt and pulled it aside. Even with the shutters down, the puncture wounds on her neck screamed at me.

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did it.” She grinned like the cat that had eaten the canary.

  “Who? Those can’t be from Mark.”

  “Yeah, cause that conversation would have gone well. ‘Hey honey, I know we haven’t talked in, oh, weeks, but could you come bite me?’ Sheesh, do I look that dumb?”

  “Then who?” Shocked though I was, I couldn’t think of any other vampires Phoebe knew that well.

  “Your baby-faced brunette friend,” her eyes sparkled with mirth.

  “He’s not my friend! I don’t even like him.”

  “Oh admit he’s on your list.” She rolled her eyes at me.

  “What list?”

  “The list of people to do if you get a chance, that list.”

  “I don’t have a list!”

  “Everyone has a list. You might not admit it to yourself, but you do. Ethnicities, positions, things you’ve always wanted to try, other women—you wouldn’t believe what I’ve caught Anna feeling when she looks at you.” Actually I would believe it. I was the only one in our group who knew what was on Anna’s list. “The point is you’re in a committed relationship which means you’ve decided Jakob is worth not getting everything else on your list. Good for you, but some of us are more goal orientated.”

  “So the vampire thing was on your list?”

  “How could it not be?”

  I groaned. Of course, Phoebe and a lot of other women in the world wondered what it must be like. I was still surprised she’d taken this step. “You really paid him for sex?”

  “Mallory, Mallory.” She shook her head at me. “You don’t pay a professional for sex. You pay them so you can leave afterwards. And I must say this was some of the best money I’ve ever spent.”

  “What?” There was no way to keep the shock out of my voice.

  “Two hundred and fifty smackers, it seems high but the per orgasm price works out to—”

  “Don’t tell me.” I sank into the couch. “Please say this wasn’t some sick and twisted favor for me.”

  “Relax, your repressed desire for our brown eyed friend just made me realize there was a way to check this off my list.”

  “My desire is not repressed.”

  “Don’t you mean you don’t have any desire?” She fluttered her long eye lashes at me.

  “You know what I meant. I don’t even like him. No matter what you might think is going on inside my head.”

  “Lie to yourself all you want, chica, there are entirely too many pictures of that boy in your head for you not to feel something. You might not want the biting thing, but him—” I started to say someth
ing but she cut me off. “I’m not saying you’ll end up in bed with him. I’m not even saying you’re going to acknowledge how you feel. I’m saying he’s on the list.”

  “He is not. I’m in love with Jakob.”

  “Okay,” she drew the word out into several syllables. “If that’s what you want to believe. But just because you’re in love with one man, doesn’t mean all the others are dead to you.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Can we go back to the fun part of the conversation?”

  “Which part was that?”

  “The amazing sex I had last night.”

  “As long as we’ve established I don’t care about this guy at all…”

  “We have.”

  “Tell me everything.” I smiled.

  “It was crazy good sex. I mean, he’s a professional, that’s what you expect but damn.”

  “That great?” I asked.

  “That great,” she agreed.

  “Better than Mark?”

  “Not bigger, but better.” She thought about it for a minute. “Actually, that’s not fair. Every other person I’ve been with sex has been a mutual thing, this was all for me.”

  “An entirely self-indulgent evening of pleasure?” I shook my head. “Yeah, I could see how that would be hard to beat. I’m sorry for the next guy.”

  “I’m not.” It was the first trace of unhappiness I’d heard in her in voice.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The bite part didn’t turn out how I wanted.”

  “You’re not bruised?” I tried to peer closer at her neck.

  “Nope. It’s more of a head space kind of thing.”

  I gave her a quizzical look.

  “All right. It was amazing. It was great. It was like someone else took over and made my body do tricks. So I should be delighted—orgasmic—thrilled, but”—she took a deep breath—“I’m kind of not.”

  “Is this guilt?”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t raised to feel ashamed about sex.” She shook her head. “It’s more that someone else set up shop in my head, and I don’t like that idea. It bothers me to know that someone out there can control me entirely. It’s a little…”

  “Scary?”

  “Yeah, and humbling, maybe? It makes me feel vulnerable. When it happened it was all part of this amazing ride, but now I’m wondering if it was the right thing to do. Great fun, sure, but smart? Not so much, you know?”

  It was a pretty serious speech for her. “So that’s why you’re here, to talk about it.”

  She nibbled her lower lip. “Not much else to say really. I wanted something, I paid for it, and I got it. I’m just not entirely sure I’m happy with what it says about me. Maybe this was a line I shouldn’t have crossed.”

  “You’re still you, Pheebs. It’s not like he drank away your soul.” I did my best to reassure her.

  Her voice was the tiniest whisper. “But I would have let him. I would have let him do anything he wanted. It felt that good.”

  “It felt that good then, but it doesn’t now. If this was going to be a problem, you wouldn’t be here.”

  A ghost of a smile played across her lips. “So because I’m worried about it, I don’t have anything to worry about?”

  “Pretty much. It’s something you learn in social work: the ones who worry about being crazy aren’t. It’s the patients who think there’s nothing wrong with the vacuum cleaner talking to them that you have to watch out for.”

  “Wait you don’t get messages from your appliances?” And serious and worried Phoebe was gone, replaced with the light hearted girl I knew.

  “They don’t say anything to me, but I may have heard the refrigerator ratting out my stash of brownies to Jakob.” She laughed at my bad joke.

  “Speaking of which, I haven’t had breakfast yet…” She looked at me imploringly, and I couldn’t say no. We devoured a box of Indigo’s best brownies and nearly a half-gallon of milk before she went on her way. The conversation turned to lighter things: bawdy talk about sex in general, shopping, telenovelas she watched, all kinds of things that didn’t really mean much. It wasn’t until she thanked me for listening at the door that the serious look returned to her face. I suspected she still had a lot of thinking to do about her evening.

  It was nearly three when I saw her out. I wandered upstairs to dress before Jakob woke up when I felt the magic prick at me. There was something important going on in my bedroom that the death witch in me didn’t want the rest of me to miss. I focused, trying to read the feeling. It kept telling me there was a vampire in the room, which I knew. I could see Jakob sleeping a few feet from me. Realization dawned, not a vampire sleeping, but a vampire. He was awake. Oh no. But how long had he been awake? More importantly, how much had he heard?

  I stopped myself from groaning in frustration. Phoebe and I had spoken fairly openly about things I didn’t usually discuss with Jakob. Hell, we’d talked about things I didn’t even mention to Jakob. I steadied my nerves and climbed into bed next to him. I hadn’t changed out of my pajamas yet, through the thin cotton I could feel the cool of his skin. We’d been together long enough that I knew the curves of his body but when I molded myself around them, he stiffened.

  “How long have you been awake?” I asked gently. I worried Jakob had gotten an earful.

  “Long enough.” His voice was tense.

  “So since she walked in?”

  He nodded.

  “Sorry. It didn’t even occur to me you’d be up.” I wondered if we were going to smooth this over or if we were going to fight.

  “Dare I ask if the details of my anatomy have been discussed so bluntly?” Apparently we were going to fight about it.

  “I’m not Phoebe,” I snapped. “I respect that our love life is private.”

  “Mark doesn’t get that same privacy?”

  “I wasn’t the one talking about him.”

  “But you didn’t stop her from talking either.”

  “If it bothered you so damn much, why didn’t you say something?” He was silent. “Uh-huh, what exactly are we fighting about here?”

  “Your baby faced brunette,” he quoted. “The man who entices you, spreads hate about me, and now feeds off your friend.”

  “He did what she asked him to do, what she paid him to do.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less depraved.”

  “For you, not her.”

  “What is his name?”

  “No. This is not about him.” I had to steer the conversation carefully, any minute now Jakob would stop being too mad to think. The minute he did he’d put two and two together and Amadeus would be dead. “This is about you overhearing something that bugs you.”

  “And how she’s acting doesn’t bother you? Phoebe who enjoys everything sexual is left scarred. Isn’t that a problem?”

  “She’s an adult. She went too far. She’ll deal with it. She’s not hurt,” I said.

  “Not physically,” he replied. “Does that makes it acceptable somehow?”

  “You can’t go kill someone for doing his job.”

  “It’s my town. I can do whatever I like.” His voice was cold enough that I slid away from him on the bed. Fighting in relationships is tough. When you’re snuggled in bed together, it’s hard to get really mean.

  “And I’ll arrest you,” I said, matching his icy tone.

  “You could try.” He was sitting across from me, his blue eyes filled with rage.

  “God damn it. Why are you so upset about this?” I shouted.

  “I don’t want you to die like she did,” he shouted back at me.

  We both stopped the minute he said it. There was no question who the she was. Jakob had lost his first wife to a vampire.

  “So because Phoebe thinks I want this vampire on some subconscious level, you’re afraid for me,” I said softly.

  He nodded. I moved across the bed to hug him closely to me. His body was still tight with anger.

  “You don’t have to be afraid for me.”
/>   “Not if he’s dead,” he replied.

  “Not if he’s alive. I love you. I want you. The rest of the world can’t have me.”

  “The rest of the world doesn’t bother me. This man does, tell me who he is.” The anger faded from his voice but not enough for me to feel safe giving him any details.

  “No, because there will always be another one after him. I love the way you protect me when I need to be protected, but this isn’t one of those times. He’s a guy that happens to annoy the hell out of me, that’s not an offense you kill someone for.”

  “Then tell me who he is so I can be sure he won’t call to Phoebe. If he took enough blood, she’d be powerless not to go to him.” Damn it, a minute ago I was ready to go for the sappy emotional end to this argument, now he’d brought up logic. What’s worse was he was right. I didn’t think Amadeus would do that, but it was entirely possible. Hell.

  “Don’t worry, I might not like his personality, but he’s someone you can trust,” I tried.

  “Don’t you trust me enough to tell me his name?” He looked up at me with those wonderful blue eyes, and I knew I was being manipulated. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop it from working.

  “You promise me you won’t hurt him? You won’t threaten him? You won’t…” I thought for a minute. “Oh hell, I’m not going to be able to cover all of the possibilities here, am I?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He smiled. “But I won’t do any of it. I won’t even tell Mark to kill him or let someone else kill him if I happen to be there to save him. But I will make absolutely sure Phoebe, and all of the other women he’s touched, are safe.”

  I should have stayed sitting on the other side of the bed. It was hard to say no to him when our bodies were pressed together. I delayed with a kiss.

  “What if it was someone you already knew? Someone you liked?”

  “You’re stalling,” he pointed out.

  “Could I distract you from this with sex?”

  “After what you and Phoebe discussed? No, I’m afraid not.” He moved away from me, sitting on the bed.

  “Oh come on, not even a little?” I sat down next to him and let my fingers move softly down his side, drifting into the curve of flesh by his hip. He caught my hand.