But there were complications with dating humans. Mortal men and women tended to have life goals like having children, or growing old together. Those expectations weren’t something she could fulfill. She wasn’t getting any older than twenty-two, and even if she’d wanted children, she could no longer have them. After her own transformation all those centuries ago, she was vehemently opposed to turning someone for an emotion as fickle as love. It would never last, and she’d end up with a broken heart and eternal burden.
Priscilla finally got to work, replenishing her stock of cookies. The classic chocolate chunk was usually the lowest at the end of the morning shift. Becca Peckman, a local girl and the daytime manager of Fangs in Fondant, was particularly adept at baking them.
About an hour later, she’d placed a couple dozen cookies onto the rack to cool. The bakery was warm and smelled like chocolate and vanilla extract. Exactly as it should. Priscilla allowed a little of the tension to ease from her shoulders. Maybe things could work out after all. She just needed to stick to what she did best—baking—and let the rest fall into place. She hadn’t exactly been invested in her career of late, too busy trying to chase after Dean and avoiding the Sons of Adonai.
She just had to get one more job, and she could invest in a CCTV system. Her lips curled into a small, reluctant smile when she realized that she’d probably be doing it on the Bellmare Historical Society’s dime. How ironic was that? It was the sort of joke Maddison and Anna would have appreciated. But Anna had the night off, and Maddison was next door, working a shift at her mother’s restaurant, The Big Bowl. It was a Thursday night, and the roasted garlic soup had to be bothering her. If it hadn’t been for Olivia’s help, Priscilla might have considered fishing Maddison out to save her poor nose.
And speaking of things that stunk …
The bell above her door let out a chime as Gabriel Winthrop stepped into her shop. He smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. It was too recent, and his clothing too saturated with the scent for him to have just walked through a cloud of it.
“Smoking is a bad habit,” she said dryly. “You’ll kill yourself, you know.”
He gave her a tight smile, the first flicker of true animation she’d seen on his face since meeting him earlier in the day. It made him impossibly more compelling. “I think I’ll take my chances, Miss Pratt.”
“What are you doing here, Mr. Winthrop?” Priscilla asked, leaning against her stove. Even though it had been off for about five minutes now, it still radiated comforting warmth. If she shook hands with him, she might actually feel human to the touch.
As much as she might have liked to, she couldn’t force him out of her shop by rescinding an invitation. Vampires had to respect the thresholds of human or human-like beings such as werewolves. But a business had no threshold. The invitation was open to anyone, regardless of whether she liked them or not. That rule could get complicated when a human’s shop was also their dwelling, but even that couldn’t be used to oust Gabriel. She was dead. So were all occupants of her household. So he was free to cross the threshold as he liked.
“My job, Miss Pratt,” he said, dark eyes searching her face. She wondered what he saw. She wasn’t exactly a lot to look at, and she was even paler than usual because she had yet to feed. “As tedious as it is, I’ll be in Bellmare until I’ve gotten what I was sent for.”
“Ask anyone at Bellmare PD,” she said. “They’ll tell you I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“That’s what they would say, if they’d been compelled to do so. I notice most of the men who serve are past their fifties. Their minds are easier to mold as they near the end.”
Priscilla’s mouth dropped open at that. To accuse her of murder was one thing—she’d heard the allegations before from people who thought all vampires were murderers—but this? Compulsion had been banned by the United States for a reason. It was a human rights violation to make another bend to your will through vampire wiles. For him to even think she’d do it to a whole department full of cops was just ... unbelievable.
She was saved from answering his accusation with a rude retort by the old rotary phone she still kept in the shop. Priscilla was absolutely horrible with new technology, and it had taken her much longer than it should to puzzle out how to use the TracFone that Arthur had given her for emergencies. The rotary phone was one of the last models of phones she actually liked, even if it was impractical in the modern day.
She picked up the receiver and brought it up to her ear. The plastic felt especially brittle beneath her fingers and she fought to relax her grip. She wasn’t going to destroy her possessions because this vampire was being an annoyance.
“Hello?”
“Priscilla?” Maddison sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “Priscilla, is my dad in your shop? Or Mom’s? I can’t find him anywhere around the house. Mom sent me home to check on him and he’s not here.”
Priscilla’s spirits fell even further. Timothy Baker, Maddison’s adoptive father, had recently been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. His condition had become so debilitating that he’d been forced to retire early. Olivia had been thinking about hiring a private nurse to take care of him during her shifts at the restaurant.
She was sure if Timothy had wandered into the Big Bowl, Olivia would have called Maddison. And Priscilla had not seen hide or hair of him all night.
“I’m sorry, Maddison, I’m not sure where he is.”
Maddison let out a strangled sound. “Mom is going to kill me.”
“It isn’t your fault,” Priscilla soothed. “Hang on. I’m going to close up shop and help you look.”
“Priscilla, you don’t need to—”
“We’ll find him faster if there is more than one of us. Call your mother and leave a message. I’ll close up and be there in a little while.”
“But—”
“This place is dead, and I’m going to spend the rest of the night trying to find someone to reapply my logo anyway. Let me help you.”
Maddison’s sigh rattled over the old receiver. “All right. Thank you, Priscilla.”
“I’ll be at your house in an hour,” she promised, and hung up.
“Did I say we were through speaking, Miss Pratt?” Gabriel said with a frown. Priscilla ignored him, placing the cookies she’d baked in their respective jars. She cleaned up her workspace, and rinsed the dishes she’d used to make the cookies before setting them gently in the sink.
“Miss Pratt, did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” she said, untying her apron. She shook it out and placed it on a hook. The hairnet that kept her dark hair at the nape of her neck joined it. The familiar weight of it settled on her back. Much better.
“I wasn’t through speaking with you.”
“You are,” she said, turning to face him. “You’re not a patron of my shop, Mr. Winthrop. And when Parliament made an agreement with the US government, they agreed to play by the US government’s rules. If I am not mistaken, it’s illegal to enter someone else’s property without their permission. I would think an agent like yourself would be well aware of federal and state laws.”
“A member of law enforcement officer may enter a dwelling if there is reasonable suspicion that there is foul play going on inside.”
Priscilla extended her arms, indicating her bakery. “Where is the crime, Mr. Winthrop?”
His lips pursed and his dark eyes narrowed. “I will catch you, you know.”
“Have fun with that,” she snapped, snatching her keys up from the bowl near her register. She shooed him outside and flicked her lights off, locking the door behind her.
The air outside was slightly humid, but still comfortable. At least Priscilla could reassure herself that Timothy wasn’t going to die of exposure or heat stroke. She brushed past Gabriel dismissively and made a beeline for her battered old van.
She’d gotten the red van used, and it was getting a little temperamental in its old age. She just hated to replace it. The glossy red
paint was exactly the right color to match her promotional materials, and the logo pasted onto its side had yet to peel off. She wasn’t a fan of driving, but had to admit that it was faster and easier than tracking Timothy on foot.
“This isn’t over,” Gabriel warned. “I’ll be seeing you again very soon, Miss Pratt.”
“It is for now,” she said, climbing into the driver’s side of the van. She slammed the door with more force than was necessary and shoved her keys into the drive. She checked once to make sure no one was coming up the road, and then pulled out of her space in front of the bakery.
The Bakers lived in a part of town that everyone had dubbed Larsonburg. The small suburb consisted of homes made in 1901 by Frederick Larson. Back then, they’d been low-rent homes made to capitalize on a swell of immigration from Europe. Now they were rented, or bought, by anyone who could afford them. The property value was lower than anywhere else in Bellmare, though there was a push to remodel the place and make it more appealing to prospective buyers.
She pulled up in front of the house. It looked much like the others on the block, with off-white siding, brown shutters over the windows, and slate-gray roof tiles. The Bakers had decorated their house with hanging baskets of flowers, and colorful lights strung around the property which varied with the season. Right now they were red, white, and blue in anticipation of Independence Day.
Maddison hurried out of the house, hopping into the van as soon as it was stationary. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and for a second it took Priscilla a moment to realize why. Vampires had difficulty with human physical reactions unless they were very well fed. Priscilla could only cry if she’d recently had human blood from the vein.
Someone in the Blood Legion was being very generous and literally sticking their neck out for Maddison. Priscilla tried to ignore Maddison wiping her cheeks clear of tears with her shirt sleeve.
“Where do you think he might have gone?”
“I’m not sure. He doesn’t have a car. The only car we have is at the Big Bowl, with Mom. So he had to have taken off on foot. I guess he could be trying to get to work, but at this hour I don’t know. The only other place he used to go to besides work and home was Pastor Jameson’s house. They were friends.”
“We’ll search there next,” Priscilla said, pulling back out onto the road.
The headlights cut a swath through the darkness. The night was darker than usual, as a new lunar cycle was just beginning. She’d been sure to keep track of the cycle recently, so she could be aware of when Garrett was going to change and might need supervision. Right now he was probably passed out in a pile of beef jerky wrappers. That little gift had been Anna’s idea. Werewolves craved meat during their transition and weren’t particular about what form it came in. He wasn’t quite sure he could be trusted to run loose yet, so he’d been getting processed meats instead. Without fail, he’d be inside her bakery tomorrow, ordering the cheese and vegetable strudel, the most savory item on her menu and one she usually reserved for holidays. She made an exception for Garrett.
She kept her eyes on the road, looking for anyone who might be wandering along the side of it. The only thing her headlights illuminated on the way through town were a few startled squirrels and an angry opossum.
“Maybe I should get out,” Maddison said when they reached a four-way stop. “I’m not sure we’re going to find him this way. He could be wandering in circles and we’re just missing him every time.”
“If you want to do it that way,” Priscilla said. “But I think you should grab your car keys from Olivia. You’re going to cover more ground in a car than on foot.”
Maddison nodded grimly and checked the rearview mirror. There was no one coming behind them. With the ghost tours in another part of town, there wasn’t much happening near the square. Maddison hopped out of the van and waved Priscilla on.
She took a right at the intersection, heading toward the Baptist church, the parsonage, and the graveyard. Maddison had said he might be there, so it was as good as any place to start.
She was beginning to feel anxious as she passed house after house and saw no one out and about. It was late for most humans, so she should have expected it. She was beginning to think that she was going in completely the wrong direction when she turned a corner and saw four men walking. Or more accurately, three of the men were supporting a fourth, who seemed unable to support his own weight.
Two of the men recoiled from the beam of her headlights like it physically hurt them. Squinting past the glare, she could make out at least one familiar face. The lights leeched all color from him, making him look almost like a ghost. Still, she would have recognized that mop of curls anywhere.
“Dean,” she ground out, putting the van in park. She didn’t bother cutting the headlights when she pulled the keys from the ignition.
As she stalked toward her wayward ward, she saw to her relief that one of the four men was Timothy. He was supporting a sagging Pastor Jameson with one arm and squinting past the light to get a glance at her.
“Priscilla,” Timothy said warmly. He had more gray in his brown hair than the last time she’d seen him, and his spectacles were slightly askew. “Did Maddison send you? I left her a message that I was going to scrape Ed off the floor at Brannigan’s.”
Only he hadn’t. Maddison’s keen eyes would have spotted something like that. The forgetfulness was worrying, but at least he wasn’t wandering alone in the woods like she’d feared.
“Something like that,” she said, forcing a smile. She didn’t want to upset Timothy by telling him he’d forgotten to inform anyone he was leaving. “How’d you come across Dean, Tim?”
Tim smiled, and his eyes crinkled behind his glasses. “Oh, these young men were wandering around the cemetery when we stumbled in. Mr. Hobbes here was telling Dean about some of his friends who died in the Civil War.”
Ah, so that was who the fourth man was. Priscilla had never had any contact with Logan Hobbes, the only other vampire to live in Bellmare long-term. He’d been even more of a recluse than she had, and had chosen to stay that way even after secrecy was no longer necessary. He’d been turned at eighteen, luckily for him. It meant that for the majority of his undead life, he’d been able to live unaided. But Timothy was right. Hobbes did look young.
His face had never lost the full roundness of youth, and his eyes were a piercing blue. She almost felt as if she were being x-rayed when he examined her. His expression didn’t change at all. She couldn’t tell if he disliked her or not.
“Ma’am,” he finally said, and dipped his head in acknowledgement. She wasn’t sure quite how to react to him, so she nodded back.
“Damn bastards,” Jameson slurred. “Tagged up the church. I oughta …”
Dean’s face broke into an amused grin, and it was so surprising that Priscilla could only stare. She’d never seen Dean look pleased, let alone happy.
“That’s strong language there, preacher,” he said, though he didn’t sound offended by it. “You sure the big man upstairs will approve?”
The pastor reeked of whiskey, sweat, and a hint of blood. Probably from his scraped knuckles. Why had the pastor been wearing a coat? It was the middle of summer, and he had to be sweltering.
“He took Elaine,” Jameson groaned, clutching Tim’s arm more tightly than ever. “Took her.”
Priscilla knew that he wasn’t speaking of the Sons of Adonai. His wife had recently passed away after losing a fight with cancer. She’d known he was taking it hard but ... this hard? Pastor Jameson slipped a recording of the Sunday service into her mail every week. She knew he was vehemently anti-alcohol. So why hadn’t someone said something sooner?
“Who?” Dean asked.
Priscilla shushed him before anyone could elaborate on Jameson’s wife. “Come on. We need to get him home.”
“What do you think we were doing?” Dean asked with a sneer. “We were just about there.”
Priscilla took Pastor Jameson’s other arm and ignor
ed the reek of whisky rolling off of him. Together, she and Tim managed to sit him down on the front step of the parsonage. He slumped there and stared at his badly scraped-up knuckles.
“Did you hit something?” she asked him gently. He shrugged and his head lolled to one side. She sighed. It would be like pulling teeth to get answers from him in this state. Maybe she and Tim could nurse him back to sobriety with enough time.
“May we come in, Pastor?” Priscilla asked quietly. “We need to get you cleaned up.”
“Sure,” he slurred. She hoped that drunken invitations still counted.
She was helping him to his feet again after Tim opened the door when it happened. The wind shifted and carried a scent to her nose that was impossible to ignore. The warm, metallic scent was fresh and close and she could practically taste it—
It was only her hunter’s instinct that drew her focus away from the smell of blood and onto the almost identical reactions of her fellow vampires. To her relief, Hobbes put a restraining hand around Dean’s bicep, even as he strained toward the scent.
“Blood,” Dean breathed. “It’s fresh.”
Tim stared at them, wide-eyed. “What? What blood?”
He glanced down at Pastor Jameson’s knuckles. “Is it him?”
Priscilla shook her head. “Blood doesn’t normally saturate the air like that. There has to be a lot of it for the scent to be this potent.”
Hobbes nodded. “A dangerous amount for a human to lose.”
They hurried Pastor Jameson inside. An Alaskan Malamute with a tag that identified him as George wagged his tail eagerly as they entered and flopped onto his belly, but he didn’t get up from his doggy bed. Good boy. Tim grabbed a flashlight from a drawer as Priscilla situated Pastor Jameson in a soft brown armchair.
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