Whiskey, Vamps, and Thieves (Southern Vampire Detective #1)

by Selene Charles

  But that cold stare didn’t faze me. Emerson had given me worse. Like that one time when he’d glared, called me a bitch, and then clamped his jaws of death around my neck.

  Broke my hyoid bone. Emerson gave new meaning to the term “Brotherly Love.”

  “I tell you why I’m here, you tell me what you saw.”

  He wasn’t really asking, but I pretended as though he was, anyway. Pursing my lip, I feigned thoughtful consideration. Until he growled beneath his breath, causing me to finally chuckle and hold up my hands in mock surrender.

  “Yeah, whatever, dogface. Cough it up. If I’m satisfied, I’ll tell you what I saw.”

  His lips twitched, as though he fought to smile.

  “You don’t want to like me, and yet you can’t seem to help yourself, can you, Jamie boy?” I fluffed up the ends of my hair. “Yeah, I have that effect on people.”

  He snorted. “That why half the shifters in this town want to see you gone?”

  I raspberried. “Considering that about ten years ago they wanted me hung, quartered, and then placed six feet under, I’d say that’s progress, wouldn’t you? And stop stalling. Why are you really here?”

  The laughter died from his eyes. I half expected him to give me the runaround, but he surprised me once again.

  “Alpha called me back home on business.”

  “Duh. Next?”

  He cocked his head. “Mercer told you, didn’t he?”

  I clamped my lips shut. What Mercer and I did was none of his business. He narrowed his eyes. Finally he nodded, tapping his fingers against the dash in a repetitive and, might I add, annoying manner. I was just about ready to break his fingers when he finally stopped.

  His glance was annoyed and irritated before he finally said, “Even after all these years, he’s still got a hold on you, doesn’t he, lass?”

  I lifted my brows, pretty sure I knew who he was referring to but wanting to make sure nonetheless. “He? He who?”

  He growled. “Feck off. You know. You’ve always known. The way he looks at you. The way he never lets you—”

  The blood running through my veins—which, incidentally, was still technically his, since he’d been the last one I’d fed on—went cold, and I narrowed my eyes.

  “Don’t even act for one moment like you’re jealous of Mercer. You have no idea what I owe him. What he’s done for me.”

  His silver eyes began to glow. “What’d you see, Scar? When you kissed me? What’d you see?”

  I crossed my arms. God, I was getting so sick of guys. In twenty-five years, I hadn’t had this many men so obviously pissing on fire hydrants over me the way they suddenly were. Even Mercer, my rock of Gibraltar, was losing his damn mind.

  “How do you know I saw anything?” I snapped.

  His brows drew into a sharp vee. “You denying it?”

  I pursed my lips, keeping silent.

  Leaning back on the seat, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Please, Scarlett, I don’t have time to play games. What did you see?”

  “Why the hell do you care so much? What does it matter to you?”

  When he looked back at me, his eyes no longer glowed, but they were still just as intense.

  “Because we all have secrets, Scar. Secrets we’d kill to protect.”

  My flesh prickled. I didn’t trust James as I did Mercer. Wasn’t certain of anything when it came to him. But he was right, we all did have secrets we’d kill to protect, and I was no exception.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything of consequence. You have secrets. I can respect that. I didn’t mean to take. It just happened. You want to know what I saw? I saw you and Merc. I saw Merc telling you to leave.”

  My voice cracked at that last part, and I clenched my jaw tight, glancing out the window, because dammit, it still hurt to remember waking up the next morning and finding him gone.

  No note. No goodbye. Just gone.

  And I should have been angry at Mercer for being the one to send him away, and a part of me maybe was, but James was a grown-ass man, and pack or no, he could have found a way to let me know if he’d really wanted to.

  The night shivered with tension as I heard him reach toward me. Then his finger was under my chin, and he was turning me to look at him.

  “I should never have done it. Not like that. Should never have left that way.”

  I cursed myself when I felt the first bloody tear run down my left cheek. Sniffing, I batted his hand off and then brushed the offending tear away.

  “Whatever. James, I’m over it.” I tossed out my hands as if to show him how over it I really was. I was sure I was convincing with my bright red nose and bloodshot eyes.

  God, being an overly emotional vampire sucked sometimes.

  His eyes grew shaded and full of something that I didn’t even want to analyze.

  Sniffing again and trying to swallow that stupid lump in the back of my throat, I said, “But you’re not here just ’cause of the Alpha.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “Oh, come on. There’s more. There’s always more with you. Once you do whatever it is you’ve been sent to do, you can go. You’re a drifter. A lone wolf.” I rolled my eyes, remembering all the times he’d told me just that.

  Basically letting me know not to get too attached to him, that he’d get what he wanted and bail the first second he got. He was a bad boy, the worst sort—an unrepentant heartbreaker—and the part that pissed me off the most wasn’t the fact that he’d told me all that.

  It’d been the fact that I’d stupidly thought I’d be different. I might have been a big, bad Veiler, but I had abysmal taste in men.

  “You’re right,” he finally said, and I looked at him. He shrugged. “You’re right. There is more. I’m here for you, Scarlett. No more games. No more lies. I knew it was a mistake leaving you the second I rolled out of Silver Creek. I should have come back sooner. Should have—”

  I held up my hand and squeezed my eyes shut. “Stop. Just stop. I have too much going on in my life right now. And if you think I’m really stupid enough to fall for that again, you’ve got another—”

  “It’s not a lie.” He grabbed my hand, holding it tight, and I could feel his tensile strength.

  Shifters were such powerful, such preternaturally animalistic forces of nature that from the very first moment I’d come around them, I’d known that frowned upon or not, my heart would always be loyal to them.

  In the beginning, I’d wished I’d been reborn a shifter and not the hated, reviled Veiler that they almost all wished dead. That they curled their lip at in revulsion when they thought I wasn’t looking.

  Mercer had never treated me different, but he’d always kept me at a distance. Telling me without words that I wasn’t ever going to be good enough for him. Not to touch. Not to love.

  I hated that weakness in me. That desire to know and be loved. But I guessed at the end of the day, I was still only human after all. And then James had come along, and he’d touched my body. He’d worshipped it, telling me that I wasn’t vile, abhorrent, an evil, wicked thing. But a woman with passion and needs and wants.

  He’d made me feel alive again. Made me feel okay to be me.

  He’d given me life, and then he’d left me.

  I came off as strong because I had no other choice. To survive in the pack, I couldn’t be anything but. The shifters did not want me, but neither had my own kind. To them I was tainted, a fur lover. Disgusting even to my own.

  Another bloody tear rolled down.

  But this time, I didn’t get the chance to wipe it up. Because he’d leaned forward, and before I knew it, his cheek was pressed to mine as the tip of his tongue lapped up my unwilling offering.

  I shuddered, digging my claws painfully into my lap, doing anything I could to remind myself what he’d done to me the last time I’d dared to trust him.

  “Tell me I have a chance, Scarlett Smith. That’s all I need to know.”

  My heart screamed
yes, but my mind and mouth whispered, “no.”

  He clenched his jaw and fists, making the knuckles pop, then he grabbed the door, practically kicked it open, slid out, and slammed the door shut behind him.

  I expected him to run, to shift into his wolf and vanish as his kind so expertly did whenever they grew too pissed to remain good company.

  Smelling the powerful scent of wolf pheromone mingled with man, I knew his shift was imminent. I remained where I was. I was powerful, but even I knew where to draw the line when it came to dealing with shifters.

  James turned, and the way the moonlight sliced across his face turned him into a beast. His eyes burned with silver flame. His flesh rippled as the fur fought to break free, and his canines lengthened into lethal killing machines.

  In a voice that was a guttural mix of man and beast, he said slowly, “I don’t love many things in this world, Scarlett. But when I do, it runs deep.”

  I hardly dared to breathe, letting those words sink in, trying to make sense of them but unable to. He released my door, turned, and ran.

  And though the night was thick, I saw the man shift into his wolf. A minute later, the lonely, haunted cry of a wild beast echoed back at me.

  Delilah screamed.

  Chapter 8

  Scarlett

  I was a wreck and had no desire to go back home after that. My head was throbbing, and my canines ached. I needed food. The real kind.

  Stomping on the gas, I raced for town as fast as my beat-up old Ford would let me. I chose a spot as familiar to me in life as it suddenly was in death.

  The old cemetery where I’d been killed.

  Parking in a swath of shadow, I hopped out of the truck.

  The night was beautiful, full of stars and silvery clouds. Several bats winged overhead, catching midnight snacks. An old wrought-iron gate barred the way inside, but in almost fifty years, the thing had never been good at keeping anything out.

  I glanced both ways to make sure no one saw me and scaled the ten-foot structure with a single hop. I felt like superman and grinned sadly to myself.

  This was where I’d lost my first love. My Boo.

  Inhaling deeply, I shoved my hands into my blue jean pockets and looked at my feet as I walked, thinking about life, death, and everything in between.

  I should have been seeking an audience with Clarence, and if I could have, I would. But the moon was full tonight, and he’d be running with the Wolf Pack. I’d have to try tomorrow, which caused my stomach to knot up, thinking about wherever the hell the Veiler was right now, stalking others, looking for more hearts.

  Stealing lives.

  I closed my eyes to stem the flow of paranoia.

  It would seem bizarre to say that vampires could suffer from PTSD. In movies and books, we seemed like a group of monsters that had no souls and no desires other than our constant and unquenchable thirst for blood.

  But we felt. Deeply. Or at least I did. I wasn’t familiar enough with my brethren to say what they truly were. All I knew was, sometimes those emotions made me feel as though I might die from them.

  I hated that things weren’t normal between Merc and me. Hated that Carter still hadn’t forgiven me and hated that James had sounded as he had.

  But I was just one woman. Not a monster. Not a heartless, soulless creature. I stared at gravestone after gravestone, studying the names, wondering about the dashes between years, wondering how they’d lived, how they’d died.

  My feet moved by muscle memory. I knew where I was going, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

  The weeping angel towered before me, that familiar honeysuckle bush off to the right of her. Somewhere an owl hooted a melancholy tune.

  I looked around and scented the air. I was alone. But it was barely past midnight. I’d wait.

  Taking a seat on the bench in the exact same spot I’d been that night, I looked across from me. It was empty, but once he’d been smiling back at me—my Boo.

  My love. My first love. Blond, with amazingly clear blue eyes and always laughing, always cracking jokes. He’d been so gentle with me. Controlled and patient. The very opposite of a shifter. There hadn’t been a jealous bone in Boo’s body. Living with shifters as I did, I would have categorized Boo as a beta. Not weak but never making waves. Willing to follow others and be reasonable. If only the world had more betas in it, I don’t think we’d have been nearly as war torn as we were.

  He’d been the star quarterback. He’d graduated the year before me and hadn’t known what to do with his life. We’d been together three years before he’d finally decided to join the military.

  He’d just come back from basic, come back to visit me, when we’d decided to steal away to the graveyard. Crime report said they’d found a ring box in his left pocket.

  A gentle breeze stirred, laden with the scents of honeysuckle and cloves.

  “You were gonna ask me to marry you that night, weren’t you?”

  I looked up into the ghostly face of the one I’d loved most in life.

  Boo—aka Jimmy Jones, who everyone had called JJ but I’d just called my boo—smiled down at me.

  “Hey, little bit.”

  All a human would hear when he talked was a moan, like that of a groaning wind slapping against a window. Boo didn’t always come when I showed, but he seemed more corporeal during a full moon.

  I smiled through watery tears. “Hi, Boo.”

  Even then, he was still dressed in his marine finery. I grabbed my chest, imagining for a moment that I could feel the ghostly echo of my heartbeat.

  Moving slowly, he came and sat next to me, looking at me as I looked at him. Only then could I see the similarities between him and Mercer.

  Blond hair and blue eyes. There were slight variations. Boo was more slender while Mercer had a steely athleticism. And Mercer’s eyes were far more intuitive and mysterious than Boo’s open and smiling gaze. Boo was clean-shaven, Merc...not at all.

  I smiled softly to myself, realizing that even in life or death, I’d definitely had a type.

  “You look sad, little bit. Wanna talk about it?”

  Shrugging, I wiped at the tears that never seemed to want to stop. “Life, Boo. Life is too hard sometimes.”

  He waggled his brows. “Then maybe you should come join me. Things are pretty nice here. Though the food leaves something to be desired.”

  I snort-laughed, happy I’d decided to come out here tonight. “God, I miss you. Miss you so much it hurts sometimes.”

  He reached out and traced my cheek with his thumb, but unlike the phantasms that haunted the shack, Boo was just a ghost. He was nothing more than an imprint of a memory etched into the landscape of the place he’d died. He had no true form, so I could never feel his touch again. But I leaned into him anyhow.

  “My life is so screwed up right now.”

  “Guy problems?” He chuckled.

  I nodded.

  Ghosts like Boo weren’t tethered to emotions; that wasn’t what kept him here. He didn’t love me as he once had. He had memories of that love but not the feelings anymore. He stayed because his death had been so violent and brutal that a part of his soul had bonded to the grounds. Boo would remain forever in this place. It made me sad when I thought about it too much.

  “Too many problems. Mercer doesn’t like me right now.”

  He snorted. “Mercer could never hate you.”

  I shrugged. “He’s different. I don’t know why, but he is.”

  He shrugged right back. “James is back.”

  A corner of my lips tilted up into a grin. Gossiping hens had nothing on ghosts. I didn’t know how they did it, but considering ghosts couldn’t eat, couldn’t have sex, drink, do drugs, or any other things for enjoyment, all they had was gossip. They were like the information superhighway, except dead and vaguely spooky.

  “Yeah, he is.”

  “You want to trust him.”

  Again I shrugged. “I don’t know what I want. He hurt me. I’m not
sure I’m ready for anything as intense as he promises to be.”

  He patted my knee, and this time I got the sensation of ice prickling my flesh. The mere fact that I could feel anything at all told me he was getting stronger.

  Smiling, I jerked my chin down at his hand. “You keep that up and you just might become a phantasm one day.”

  His blue eyes sparkled. “Been practicing.”

  Anyone who’d ever walked into a room and had something fly off a shelf, or seen a cup or book drop to the floor five feet away from where it should have landed, probably had a phantasm hanging around.

  They weren’t dangerous. Just lonely.

  “Whatever. I don’t want to talk about him.” I flicked my wrist.

  “Then what do you want to talk about?” He glanced at the sky; thick clouds were rolling in, hinting at rain.

  I didn’t know why ghosts couldn’t stick around when it rained, but they couldn’t. Probably something to do with the electrical currents charging up the ozone. I was no scientist, but it sounded plausible, anyway.

  “Carter.”

  At that name, his head snapped up, staring at me with a strange look in his eyes.

  “Boo?”

  He shook his head, standing quickly. “I have to go.”

  “Wait. What?” I asked, confused, glancing around and then reaching a hand out to him. “But you just got here.”

  Visibly swallowing hard, he took a step back, and my flesh pebbled with goose bumps. “Boo, what’s the—”

  “Talk to Teresa. Be careful, Scar. Just be careful.”

  Then he vanished, leaving only the ghostly echoes of his warning to ring in my ears.

  What in the hell could I have said to spook a ghost the way I just had?

  No sooner had I thought it than I was suddenly interrupted by the sounds of footsteps and laughter. I glanced up in time to see a group of three college-aged girls laughing as they rounded a corner. All of them dressed in black, with black hair and dark makeup on.

  “Way too easy,” I said softly, then smiling, I got to my feet and slunk into shadow.

  ~*~

  My impromptu trip down memory lane didn’t end at the graveyard. I’d had no plans to come out to 221 Cherry Lane. Somehow this seemed like the kind of night to revisit the past, to allow memories I’d buried deep to churn back up.