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

by Selene Charles

  I looked at the familiar lemony-yellow sided colonial home across the street. It had a triangular roof, and a stacked chimney was plopped in the middle. Nine windows in the front and eight smaller ones on the sides. White plantation shutters across each one. A white picket fence. Flower boxes bursting with crimson petals. A neatly manicured lawn and an American flag swaying in the breeze from a long silver pole.

  In over fifty years, my parents hadn’t changed a thing.

  They’d had me later in life. Almost in their forties. Which made them damn close to eighty. But they were still spry and healthy, all things considered. They would leave me soon.

  It was the way of things with humans.

  In the beginning, it’d terrified me—the thought of the day it would happen—but I was coming to terms with its eventuality.

  All the lights were off, except for one in the attic. The shadow of my mother pacing the floors made me smile. She’d developed insomnia in the past ten years. Sometimes she’d watched old movies of me as a child playing in the sandy beaches of Hawaii, where we’d vacation every summer.

  Other times she’d pull out her memory boxes. Boxes full of old school projects and pictures. Sometimes she’d just listen to music.

  Tonight she paced and muttered to herself. Praying, I think.

  “It’s a little unorthodox to stalk more prey when you already have food sprawled across your lap.”

  I lifted a brow, turning toward the fae who’d appeared like magick beside me.

  Blue was dressed in a smoky-gray sequined gown that spilled to his knees and was wearing bright red lipstick. He wore a thick black wig that made him look like an early seventies Bob-Mackie-stylized Cher. Beautiful as ever. The bastard.

  I snorted, then lifted the wrist of the wannabe Goth whom I’d mesmerized back at the graveyard. She was beautiful too. With long, natural ebony hair that fell almost to her waist, she really could have been Blue’s twin in his current getup. Her pale skin was nearly as lily white as my own.

  Her blood was rich and sweet and spiked with liquor. Funny thing, that. But if someone drank alcohol right before I fed on them, I actually tasted it. Hers tasted of rum and way too many dark beers. She was going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow.

  She snored loudly.

  Blue laughed.

  I slipped her wrist back into my mouth and sucked on it gently. After another long sip, I gave him the side eye.

  “Whaddaya want, fairy?”

  He pouted prettily. “You wound me, baby doll. That’s what. And besides, I thought we had a deal.”

  He tipped his head to the side, showing me his vein, and I sighed longingly, tracing my tongue along the vein in her wrist to seal the bite mark but imagining for a second that it was his.

  “You know I can’t.”

  He sighed deeply. “Boo. I don’t like that answer.”

  “Yeah, well, you’d like it even less if Merc caught wind of you teasing me this way. You know he doesn’t like you all that much.”

  “That dog can just go lick himself where the sun don’t shine,” he teased, and I couldn’t help chuckling.

  “Don’t ever let him hear you say that.”

  “Anyway”—he batted my words aside—“I heard through the grapevine that a serial killer’s on the loose in Silver Creek. Deets?”

  I frowned, giving him a no-nonsense glare. It was one thing to shoot the breeze with him. “I’m not discussing an active case with you. You know that. So don’t ask.”

  Kicking out his feet, I caught sight of six-inch silver heels that would have likely broken my neck if I’d ever dared to try them on. He held up his hands in mock surrender.

  “Don’t shoot the messenger. Just wanted to let you know that if you maybe are investigating something like that, that there have been rumors in the sithen that maybe, just maybe some old junker that goes by the name Harlen Morte might know something about it.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  I knew Harlen. Most every local, human or otherwise, knew him. The Morte family had run the local junkyard as far back as anyone could remember.

  “Harlen’s human. What would he know?”

  Blue snorted. “If you only knew.”

  I’d never thought much about the crazy old coot that muttered nonstop to himself. Harlen was a classic hermit. Kept to himself. Never married and old as dirt. The Morte line would die with him, which seemed kind of sad when I thought about it, but I wasn’t really sure what he could—

  Leaning in, Blue kissed my cheek, and my breath caught on a gasp as I felt the spark of his power press against my own.

  “Good luck, darling.”

  I frowned. “Where are you going now?”

  He glanced down at himself. “Have to do my next set. Just wanted to tell you before I forgot.”

  “As if you could forget anything.” I frowned, thinking of something. “Wait. Who sent you to tell me this? Did someone—”

  He snorted. “Night-night, fanger. Oh...and don’t just roll her into a ditch when you’re done, ’kay? You vampires can be so damned messy sometimes.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Answer my question, Blue.”

  He blew me an air kiss then popped right back out of existence.

  “Well, that was weird,” I said to no one in particular. Having fairies help with an investigation wasn’t usually Blue’s forte. And to do so without even asking for something in return. “Doubly weird.”

  “Wah, wash werd?”

  I jumped, almost forgetting about the food lying on my lap. She was waking up. I shook my head. Time to get back to the real world.

  Looking into her eyes, I said, “You are getting sleepy. Very, very sleepy...”

  Her long lashes fluttered, then her body grew lax once again, and before I knew it, she was mouth open and sawing logs.

  If it worked for Bela Lugosi, it was good enough for me.

  With one last look at my mother, I hefted the dead weight in my arms and ran her back to the cemetery. Tomorrow she’d wake up with no memory of being fang food but with one heck of a dream to tell her friends.

  Chapter 9

  Scarlett

  I did not sleep well last night, but what else was new? I texted Mercer to let him know I’d be late heading into work tonight. He didn’t text back.

  Boo had told me to go to Teresa, and so I would.

  I wasn’t exactly sure how he knew the brownie-slash-dwarf owner of the local antique shop, but ghosts seemed to know just about everything. It was simply a matter of getting them to actually tell that was the problem.

  Feeling blah and just...yeah, blah was a really good word. That blood last night hadn’t done a thing to me. I’d had shifter blood for the first time in my life, and like a junkie needing a fix, I wanted more. I wet my lips as my stomach growled.

  Blowing out an exhausted raspberry, I didn’t take time to dress nicely. Whatever didn’t stink was what I put on. That happened to be jeans and a teal Dia de Los Muertos shirt. I liked colorful skulls. I pulled on my lucky boots and then shrugged.

  Whatever.

  I gave my hair a few quick brushes, knew I’d looked better, and gave it up as a lost cause. Then I took out a box from the bottom drawer of my dresser.

  It wasn’t big, just the size of both my palms. A heart was etched in silver on top. The box was a pretty maple wood and had my name burned into the bottom.

  Daddy had made it for me for my tenth birthday. It wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world, but I loved it more than anything. I carefully flipped the old hinge open and found only two small plastic Baggies inside.

  I gently extracted them and slipped them into my pocket, closed the jewelry box, kissed its lid, and then quickly put it back and walked out of my bedroom. After fishing my keys out of the bowl, I locked up, walked to my truck, started it up, and drove off. Maybe while I was there, I’d see about replacing Mercer’s desk.

  He was currently making do with a stack of crates, a piece of plywood on top and a crea
m blanket over it all. Redneck chic at its finest.

  Walking through the doors of Magnolia Antiques, I took a deep breath. Memories were often stored in the olfactory. The scent of pine, dust, bitter coffee, and rat droppings trapped beneath wooden baseboards were as familiar to me as the den.

  Teresa hadn’t lived in Silver Creek long for an immortal—or nearly immortal, as was her case. She moved around a lot. As she said, “What good does it do a person to live forever if they don’t at least get to see the world while they do it?”

  She’d lived in Silver Creek not even three years, which was why I’d had no Teresa to rely on when I’d first encountered my bogeyman, but I had her today.

  Since my rebirth into the exclusive Veilers club, Teresa had become a mother figure to me. We had nothing in common, and yet she was a kindred. I came to visit her as often as I could, which shamefully, wasn’t often enough—usually only when a case needed Teresa’s particular talent and skill.

  A pack-a-day chain smoker with the voice to match, Teresa spotted me the moment the little bell above her quaint shop chimed.

  Half brownie and half dwarf, she was barely four and a half feet tall, and she had skin dark as bark with eyes that were almost completely black. One thing brownies all had in common was a sense of smell that could rival even that of a bloodhound. On top of that, Teresa, having visited not only the world but also fae sithens, knew a bit more than the average bear when it came to Veilers. She was a true historian, and I was eager to see what she thought or might know about my bogeyman.

  If anyone could maybe, possibly give me the information and proof I needed before I went to see Clarence, it would be her.

  Her black eyes sparkled, and a smile tugged at the near constant grim slant to her lips as I walked toward her. She slipped off her owl-eye glasses, letting them dangle off her neck from a dainty gold chain.

  Dressed in a salmon-colored flower-print smock that looked as if she’d gone rummaging in the ’70s for it, she came out from behind her counter and tipped her chin up at me in greeting.

  “As I live and breathe, the prodigal returns.”

  I snorted. “Nice to see you too, midget.”

  Nothing was remotely feminine or slender about Teresa. She might have been tiny in stature, but she was built like a freaking tank. Laughter shook her taut belly heartily, and her homely face transformed into something temporarily pretty.

  She had short brown hair that she kept cut shorn nearly to her scalp, and hard, almost masculine features. She might have been small, but the woman was a force to be reckoned with.

  As she walked the final distance over to me, I groaned, knowing immediately what came next.

  “No, don’t—” I made to sidestep her, but those short arms shot out like a bullet. She had me in a vise grip and squeezed tight, lifting my toes up off the ground.

  “Damn good to see you too, Vampire,” she said after I was sure she’d cracked each rib in my body.

  Grimacing and rubbing at the suddenly tender spots, I gave a snuffling, pain-filled chuckle.

  Dwarves and trolls were physically the strongest among all Veilers. Vampires were powerful, and shifters were powerful, but nothing had quite the brutal, raw strength that the dwarves and trolls did. Even half-breeds could tear someone’s gizzard out without batting an eye if they really felt inclined to.

  I could move faster than her and could have gotten out of the way. But she’d have eventually tackled me into submission when I was focused on something else. I’d learned through the years it was better to get the death hug out of the way. Dwarves were stubborn little bastards when they wanted to be.

  “Well, what can I do you for?” she asked with a raised furry brow. “’Cause I know you well, and you don’t just come to see me for no good reason unless you really want something. So spit it out.”

  She grinned, and I shrugged. “What if I told you I came to buy a desk today?”

  She lifted a pencil-thin brow, looking horribly disappointed, like a baby being denied her favorite toy. I almost laughed.

  “A desk?”

  I nodded. “Mm-hmm.” Then looking around, I pointed at the first thing I saw that I thought Mercer might like, an old secretary desk with a bookshelf on top and a well for an ink jar cut right into the desk itself. It was old-fashioned, just like him. “Yeah, that one. Put it on my tab, will you?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “That’s five hundred.”

  I almost gagged on my spit. But in for a penny, in for a pound. Plastering on a fake grin, I shrugged as though it was nothing. Thank God I didn’t need to eat food. Looked as if I’d be taking fewer baths for the next few months too. “Yep, I want that one. Deliver it to the den as soon as possible.”

  “Fine,” she said, practically daring me to walk away.

  I’d felt bad in the past that the only times I’d ever made it out this way was when I’d needed to use Teresa’s nose to help me solve a case, but I’d begun to suspect for some time now that antiquing didn’t quite give the half-breed the adrenaline rush she craved.

  Chuckling, I finally said, “And yes, I do have need of your assistance, you old battle ax.”

  Rubbing her powerful hands together, she wet her lips, bursting with excitement all over again. “Well? What have you got for me today?”

  Snorting, I reached into my pocket. “You’re bad, Teresa. Don’t even give me a moment to shoot the breeze with ya.”

  “Pft.” She flitted her fingers in a walking motion. “I do that all day with the little pink-haired biddies that walk through my door. Show me what you got.”

  The excitement in her tone was almost akin to a dog begging for a treat.

  “Fine. Fine. If you insist.”

  I slipped a hand into my pocket and pulled out two separate Baggies, one containing a piece of fabric from Faith’s little white dress and the other a scrap of fabric from the hospital room three years ago. The latter had faded over time, turning from a deep blue jean fabric to a color almost gray and fragile.

  I dropped a scrap into each palm and whispered, “This first one here came off the body of a known associate of the Veiler I’m currently tracking. Local PD thinks he might be back. This second scrap is from our latest crime scene. I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me whether this might be one and the same. And if I’m honest, I’m really hoping you’ll tell me it’s not.”

  I held my hands perfectly still.

  Teresa’s eyes practically sparkled. For a great-great-many-times-removed-grandmother of almost nine hundred, she rarely got this excited, but I secretly thought she got a high off the thrill of solving crimes.

  “And just who are you tracking now? You seem nervous.” Teresa spoke softly, a reverent hush filling her voice.

  I shook my head, not answering. I never could explain the feeling the bogeyman elicited in me. I was a vampire. I feared nothing and no one.

  And yet...

  “This belonged to his ward,” I said, rubbing my thumb gently over the scrap. It’d confused the hell out of me when I’d first touched the dress. And it still did.

  I’d expected to see gore, chaos, evil when I’d grabbed hold. Instead, the only hit I’d gotten was a soft but hazy memory of pure love.

  A love so deep and genuine I’d not known what to make of it. Here was a creature so wicked, so vile...a creature that in order to survive had to steal the skins of others, and yet he’d found and fallen completely and madly in love with a little girl he’d raised as his daughter, and who’d very nearly gotten him caught in the end.

  “May I?” Teresa asked reverently, pointing at the scrap.

  I nodded and clenched my jaw as she slipped it from me. I couldn’t explain it, but when things got really tough in my life or scary or just downright awful, I reached for that Baggie.

  I knew I should have turned it in to the police as evidence, but to part from it had felt a little like death. It was rare in life to come across something so full of goodness that it made me breathe easier just
by holding onto it.

  She lifted the small square to her nose and took a deep breath. Her eyes, which had closed, slammed open, and she shoved the scrap back into my hand. Her hand shook violently when she grabbed Faith’s sample and took a delicate sniff.

  “Get it away from me,” she snapped, shaking her head and holding up her hands.

  Her reaction was so violent that I blinked, stunned. “Teres—”

  “That’s a demon. A devil.”

  Her eyes, normally so black, were ringed in white, terror evident in her gaze.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” I asked, quickly slipping the fluttering bits of cloth back into their respective pouches before tucking them safely away.

  Breathing heavy and completely spooked, Teresa turned on her heel and practically ran for her back room. Cocking my head and flabbergasted by her reaction, I chased her down.

  Teresa had run into a dusty room full of slanted wooden shelves filled to bursting with even more antiques not on display. She’d climbed atop a stool and was reaching for a large, weathered-looking leather-bound book.

  “Wanna tell me what’s up?” I asked, leaning against the doorjamb, still confused.

  She merely shook her head, hugged the tome to her chest, and stepped down before walking over to a bench and setting the book down.

  The spine creaked when she opened it. The pages inside were a dingy yellow and brittle. They’d probably have cracked if it weren’t for the fact that the pages weren’t made of paper but animal skins. The smell of goat flesh was faint but still lingered if one had a good enough sense of smell to pick it up.

  With the memory of an elephant, she turned to page three hundred and forty-five, moved her finger halfway down the page, and then stabbed at a paragraph twice.

  “Here,” she said gruffly. “This is what you’ve got going now, Vampire. You’re in some serious dog poo, girl.”

  Her eyes bore into my skull like a drill as she wrapped her small arms around her waist and held on tight. I’d never seen Teresa this worried.

  My lips twisting into a frown, I slowly turned the book my way and peered at where she’d pointed.