Joy rolled her head on her neck. “Yeah, I’m tired. Last night was grueling and it bothers me that Mrs. Perkins’ suffering is only just beginning because of those freaks at the coroner’s office.”
“Did you feed?”
Joy waved Andrew off as she got up and began gathering her newest patient’s stats from her desk. “Yes, I fed, Andrew. I may be younger than you, but I’m almost five hundred years old and plenty able to feed myself. So go dig a grave and leave me alone. A man awaits me on my table.”
Andrew chuckled maniacally from behind her, his taunt echoing down the hall. “It’s probably the best date you’ve had in over a century.”
Joy sighed at Andrew’s crack. Well, yeah. So she spent a lot of time with dead men. Oodles of ’em. Men were men -- dead or not.
What of it?
They sort of beat the alternative. Waiting around for a human guy to sweep her off her feet or worse still -- this lifemate her mother and cousin talked about who was playing a pretty serious game of hide and seek with her.
“Hey, Andrew,” Joy called over her shoulder, “how do you feel about embalming fluid as your beverage of choice?”
Chapter Three
Joy stood at Alan Perkins’ casket and raised his arm, now stiff and unyielding. He did so kill himself, he’d bled out… The evidence was right there. A thin jagged line that Joy had had a helluva time covering with makeup.
Joy placed Alan’s arm back over his abdomen carefully. Jack-ass coroners.
“Well, Alan, I’m sorry to see ya go this way. You’re not quite ready for your eternal slumber party yet.”
Joy slipped her hand under his head and straightened the satin pillow it rested on. Most people would be disgusted by such a hands-on approach, but Joy didn’t feel that way at all. This was her contribution to death with dignity. As she pulled her hand out from beneath him her fingers grazed his neck and she felt a slight bump on his skin she hadn’t noticed when she was preparing his body.
Leaning in closer she moved his thick hair away from his neck and gasped.
Alan Perkins had two incisor bites on his neck that she’d skillfully covered with makeup without even realizing. Her cousin Cathy’s husband, Joel, had them after she’d turned him. They weren’t grossly distorted like Joel’s had been for weeks after her cousin bit her lifemate because his were given during passion and Cathy’s love for him. Kind of like a vampire hickey.
Rather, Alan’s were almost unnoticeable to someone who knew nothing about a vamp bite, but to someone like Joy this held meaning.
Oh-my-God!
It couldn’t be a vampire bite. Joy’s breed of vamp didn’t kill anyone -- ever. Her father didn’t believe in it. They were peace-loving vamps. Power to the people and all that crap. There weren’t any other vampires in Easton or parts surrounding that she knew of. But she’d know a vamp bite anywhere.
But then, how could Alan be dead?
If he was bitten by a vamp wouldn’t Alan be undead like the rest of them?
Not if he was killed first, then sucked dry… but he wasn’t dry. She’d emptied his body of blood herself and though there wasn’t much of it, he had bled out.
Oh, Jesus. Joy had to tell someone. She shook her head. No, no she couldn’t do that. She could just imagine the nice coroner’s face if she called him up. “Hey, it’s Joy Polanski here, down at Polanski Brothers. You know, the place where our motto is you fuck up the autopsy and we watch as you ruin a perfectly good embalming? Look here. I got a guy who was bitten by a vampire. Yep, that’s what I said, a vampire. The real McCoy. Are ya freaked out yet? Anywhooo, you better get some garlic and holy water at the ready. Just in case this guy is the first in a long line of victims for a Dracula wannabe.”
Oh, God what was she going to do? Joy didn’t know any vampires other than her own family and none of them bit people.
Not one.
Would the coroner’s office even think the bite was something meaningful? Would they see it the second time around if they’d missed it the first? Weren’t they looking for blunt trauma or some such official reason to investigate further? Because Alan’s internal organs were gone.
Joy clung to the edge of the casket and let the wave of panic take hold, followed by deep breaths to help them subside.
“Joy?” Her father called her name from behind her. “Are you okay, honey?”
Yeah. Good, great even. See this here dead guy? He’s been bitten by a vampire. You been snackin’, Daddy? Oh, God. Joy bit her lip and stood up to turn and face her father. “I’m fine, Daddy, just tired. Last night was a long night, huh?”
Joy’s father smiled ruefully, his handsome face unmarred by his centuries-old age. “It makes me glad we’re not human, kiddo. I couldn’t bear to lose any of you.”
Walking toward him she tucked her arm under his and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Did you need me for something?”
Edgar kissed the top of her head. “The picture of Brian Reynolds just arrived.”
“Who’s he?”
“Your next client. He’s waiting for you, and his family will be here tonight before the viewing so I thought I’d better let you know.”
Joy glanced at her watch. “Damn, I’m sorry, Daddy. I’ll get right on it.”
Edgar gave her a squeeze before he let her go. “It’s okay. You have plenty of time. Sad thing about Alan, don’t you agree?”
Joy nodded. “Yeah, I feel awful for Mrs. Perkins. The coroner’s office is going to pick up the body soon and hack him back up. I just felt like I needed to apologize to Alan for that. Silly, huh?”
Joy’s father tweaked her cheek as he had for many centuries when he wanted to cheer her up. “It’s not silly, kiddo. Sensitive is more like it. You’re a good-hearted vamp, Joy. I just wish you’d get out more. Maybe meet someone, make me a grandfather.”
Joy stuck her tongue out at him. “I know, Daddy, but I have to find my lifemate first and I can’t do that with a bum sniffer, now can I?”
Edgar chuckled and pinched her nose lightly. “You have other qualities that make up for your lack of smell. I feel as sure as the day is long that you’ll find a nice vampire soon and settle down.”
Yep. Count Dracula is just around the corner. Too bad she couldn’t smell him.
* * *
Joy pulled on her scrubs and pushed her way through the door to the embalming room. Preparing a body gave her purpose. It helped her to focus on making it easier for the family who had to say goodbye. For now, it took her mind off the freaky/hunky detective and Alan Perkins’ bite marks.
At least Brian Reynolds’ body wasn’t a mess like Alan’s had been. He wasn’t pretty, for sure, but he hadn’t decomposed quite like Alan had. Joy glanced at his chart. Car accident -- found right off of I-36 again. Damn dangerous to hang out there lately, wasn’t it? He was whacked up pretty badly. The coroner’s office had ruled it severe brain trauma. Joy ran her hand over his bruised face and forehead and grimaced. Yeah, he’d hit the windshield pretty hard. Damn, she hated trying to cover bruises of this severity.
He was young too, a year younger than Alan Perkins.
Well, shit. Cases like this, when the patient was so young, made Joy think too much about their lives. In the same way she’d fretted over the possibility that Alan might have had a wife and children -- she now focused her energy on Brian.
“I’m sorry, Brian. You were a young man with more miles to go. God, that sucks. I’ll fix you up just right. Promise.”
Brian needed a trim if what his picture revealed was how his family would expect to see him. As Joy ran her hands through the thick tresses, pulling it up and away from his neck, her hand froze.
Fucking hell.
Her stomach jumped and her gut heaved. Joy covered her mouth with her forearm to keep from hurling at warp speed. Her oxygen intake became minimal as she heard her shallow gasps for breath echo around her.
Another bite… For fuck’s sake, what was going on?
Joy gulped, gagg
ed, then gulped again as she forced herself to examine Brian Reynolds’ neck. Running a gloved fingertip over his skin she felt the same small incisor bites on Brian as she had on Alan.
Oh, Christ and a sidecar! Who was doing this? Why?
And now what? She had to do something, because whoever was biting the victims obviously wasn’t draining them. She’d drained Alan’s body of blood just before embalming him. He certainly didn’t have a lot of blood left, but he wasn’t drained. So what was the purpose of biting these men if not for sustenance?
Joy let go of Brian’s hair and paced the floor frantically trying to figure out who would do such a thing and if the coroner’s office had missed this twice, would someone’s luck run out soon? How long would it be before they finally caught on? Because certainly more bodies would show up. Joy felt the realization claw at her throat until she gagged again. More bodies would show up. It simply just was.
“Whose body is going to show up?”
Joy’s head snapped up. Fabulous -- Inspector Clouseau was here.
Larkin McBride shook his finger at her. “Now I do know who Inspector Clouseau is. French guy, right?”
Crap. “Channel surfing again, Detective? What happened? Did you give up on late night vampire flicks?”
Larkin moved toward her, large and overwhelming, his tight jeans clinging to his bulky thighs with every step. “Whose body were you thinking about showing up?”
Joy rolled her tongue in her mouth, pushing at the sides in impatience. Think vapid, Joy. “I deal with bodies all day long, Detective. It’s really no great mystery that I’d be thinking about them.”
Larkin shook his shortly cropped, dark head. “No, what you thought was, and I quote, ‘more bodies would show up’.”
“Well that’s kind of a duh, Detective. I work in a funeral home. Yes, more bodies will show up.”
As Larkin came to stand next to her, or over her might be the proper assessment, he grinned that fucking stupid smile that made her innards jiggle and her knees clack. “How do you do this all day? It stinks in here.” It was as if he’d just noticed the unpleasantness that Joy often heard about, yet couldn’t identify with because she couldn’t smell it. Larkin covered his nose with a broad hand. Too bad he couldn’t keep it there, planted firmly.
Pantywaist… “I have no sense of smell so it doesn’t bother me.” Joy stifled her urge to giggle.
“Yeah,” he said from behind his hand. “I remember you thinking you had a bum nose. Didn’t know what that meant.”
Of course she had. Now if she could continue to refrain from thinking about her bra size… “So what do you want today, Detective? Are you here to hassle me about your newfound mind reading abilities, or do you want some more vampire tips? How to fry a vampire in one sunrise or less? Or what about one hundred and one crock pot recipes for O positive lovers?”
Larkin winked at her and her legs jiggled again, pissing her off. “No, today I’m focused on Alan and his supposed suicide, but you never know when a good recipe for O positive might be useful.”
Joy turned her back on him and began to prepare the embalming solution. “So you’re here in an official capacity?”
Larkin came to stand behind her. Radiating heat and those frickin’ hormone alerts flowed from every pore in her body.
“Nope. I’m here because I was Alan’s friend and Adelaide is onto something.”
Joy shivered as his breath grazed her ear. “Onto something?”
“Yeah. Alan had a lot going for him. Great job, sweet bank account, all the stuff a guy lives for -- and he offs himself? Doesn’t make sense.”
“You know what they say about money. It can’t buy you love or happiness.”
Larkin scoffed. “I know all about the inner peace bullshit, but Alan had more going for him than not. It doesn’t add up.”
Joy shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe you’re just looking for something that isn’t there. Sort of like your vampire fetish. You move from obsession to obsession with the grace of an elephant.”
He moved the hair from her ear and Joy’s spine arched unwillingly when his lips moved against it. “You weren’t thinking I was such an elephant just a minute ago.”
“Why, no, I wasn’t, was I? I was thinking you were a big baby for not being able to take the smell of a little embalming fluid.”
“That’s not all you were thinking, Joy.”
Joy’s nipples tightened painfully, pressing against her sweater, and her panties grew damp with each breath she took, but she whipped around angrily anyway. “I have a body to prepare for a viewing, Detective. So unless you want to stick around for the slice and dice, and I doubt you could handle it, I’d highly recommend you spend the afternoon off chasing after someone else.”
Larkin stared down at her, his blue-gray eyes hard. “I’ll do that, Joy, and I’ll be back, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”
As Larkin’s solid bulk left hers, she felt cold for the first time in her life. It must be cold because her fingers were numb.
Joy knew he’d be back, she just wished she knew when.
Maybe he could give her a little prep time to empty her mind and beat her libido into submission.
Joy Polanski was hot for a guy for the first time in centuries and it had to be for one who -- in his kind of profession -- would probably handcuff her to a cross at dawn personally, and then swallow the key.
Lust was certainly a many-splendored thing…
Chapter Four
Larkin sat hunched in his car, sipping a scalding cup of shitty coffee and let his brain rest from Joy Polanski’s constant intrusion. He was doing a pretty good job of playing it cool with her and this mind reading thing, but after a night spent thinking about it too much, he was getting pretty freaked.
He didn’t like the feeling of freaked. It just wasn’t manly.
He could hear every damn thought she had and then some and it not only intrigued him, but made him more than a little uncomfortable. His natural instinct to investigate was front and center. Logic would have to outweigh how screwed up this all was for now.
Always a cop, McBride…
Sticking a finger in his ear, he twisted it violently as if it might alleviate some of the muddled muck in his head. It had happened so suddenly that Larkin thought she’d spoken to him and when he realized those gorgeous lips weren’t moving, he’d been hell bent on understanding why this was happening. It wasn’t like he possessed any special abilities other than a cop’s instinct for bullshit.
Joy’s thoughts of vampires disturbed him the most, but she had more than vamps on her mind. He’d had brief, fleeting glimpses into Joy’s thoughts of him, and he wanted more, but she was successfully keeping most of her musings to herself.
Larkin shifted in his seat because his thoughts of Joy were anything but pure. Christ she was hot. Ivory skinned and sharp tongued.
And hiding something.
Her pouty lips spoke one thing, but they meant something entirely different.
His cell phone chirped and he grabbed it, hoping what he needed was on the other end of the line. “McBride,” he answered roughly.
“God damnit, McBride, how the fuck do you get me involved in this bullshit? You’re on suspension and all of a sudden the coroner’s office in Easton is throwing your name around this precinct like you’re some police god. You just better be glad I was the one who caught that call, asshole. You’re fucking suspended, for Christ sake!”
Larkin smiled into the phone. Had to love Sweeney, always reminding him of his faults. “It’s temporary and it’s only because I won’t go see a fucking counselor. I don’t need a counselor to tell me I have trouble seeing kids die needlessly. Okay? So skip the lecture and gimme what ya got.”
Sweeney sighed in exasperation. Larkin could picture him back at the house arranging the pencils on his desk. “Look, this is the last time I do this shit for you. It’s my ass on the line. Yours is off in Easton investigating bullshit just for the sake of causing
trouble. Alan Perkins didn’t have a lot going on in his life. His mother was right, his life was solid financially and the money he spent was mostly on his house and the clubs he went to sometimes. He paid his bills on time and he had no debt. As for the Polanski chick, pretty much the same thing. Polanski Brothers has been in operation five years. Clean as a whistle. They run a nice, above board operation. This Joy Polanski has clean credit and no priors.”
Well, fuck. Of course she didn’t, that would be too damn easy. “Clubs he went to?”
“Yeah, he went to some clubs about fifty miles away from you in Gordonville. Not much goin’ on in that Easton, huh?”
Larkin snorted. Not much goin’ on was an understatement. “Gimme the names of the clubs, would ya?” Larkin set his coffee in the holder and fished for a pen on his dashboard, scribbling on a napkin as Sweeney gave him two names.
“McBride? What’s the beef here? What does the Polanski lady have to do with your friend Alan and what makes you think Alan didn’t kill himself?”
Larkin ran a hand through his hair in frustration. He sure as shit couldn’t tell Sweeney he could read Joy’s mind, now could he? “I dunno, buddy. It’s just really bugging the shit outta me. Something isn’t right. Alan had no reason to whack himself off. He had it all.”
Sweeney’s laugh was gruff. “Money ain’t everything, McBride. Quit making shit up in that head of yours -- do what the boss says you have to do to be reinstated and get the fuck back home.”
He’d heard that before… from a pair of full, raspberry lips. Money isn’t everything… “I’m not going to see some shrink, Sweeney. Look, I appreciate what you’ve done to help me out. If I need more I’ll let ya know.”
Sweeney whistled into the phone. “Wait a redneck second. I’m not helping you out anymore, McBride --”
Larkin clicked the phone off before Sweeney could finish his sentence. Larkin McBride didn’t need a fucking shrink and he didn’t want to go home to his bare apartment.
And the seedy motel you’re shacking up in is better?
All right, so it sucked, but it was a place to rest his head while he figured this shit out and thought about Joy Polanski.
The Polanski Brothers: Home of Eternal Rest Page 3