by Kristie Cook
“And this is fair?” he asked, his voice husky. He tugged on the strap, pulling me up against him. He must have felt my hard nipples, because he gave me a cocky smirk. “I think you missed me.”
I pressed my hips in, feeling him arouse under the pressure. “I think you missed me, too.”
“Possibly.” He leaned down, his full lips brushing over mine.
Morning breath.
Coffee.
I stepped back and clamped my hand over my mouth. “I need to brush my teeth.”
He chuckled as I hurried for the bathroom. When I came back out, feeling more human—well, as human as a vampire can feel—I found him sound asleep on my couch. I sat beside him, about to wake him up, but stopped and studied his face. His sharp cheek bones and square jaw could have made him a pretty boy, especially with the stunning eyes now hidden behind closed lids, but he had a rugged look to him, rather than beautiful. Especially now. My thumb lightly caressed the purple circles under his eyes, then my fingers brushed over the dark beard that had grown beyond his usual summertime stubble over the last week. I hadn’t seen him look so relaxed since I’d been back, and still, even in sleep, his forehead creased with worry.
I didn’t know anything about the several one- and two-day trips out of town he’d been taking with Tase, only that it was absolutely necessary that his brother didn’t go alone. Xandru refused to tell me more than that. But whatever the reasons had been, they obviously had not been mini-vacations. This wasn’t the haggard face of too much partying. This was the gauntness of too much work, the wariness of constant and unending stress and worry. I wondered when he’d last slept and decided not to wake him.
He was still asleep after I showered—which said a lot. We’d tried to seize every opportunity that presented itself to be together, but they had been few and far between. Of course, for a while in the beginning, as my memories returned and everything about my parents—what they’d done, their deaths—had settled in, I’d been emotionally unavailable. Since then, we could hardly find more than a few moments at a time to be alone. It’d been four months now, and we still hadn’t made love.
We’d done pretty much everything else, but we’d promised each other that our first time back together wouldn’t be frantic, rushed, and meaningless. He wanted to do right by me, and I wanted it to be right, but that was in the beginning. We hadn’t realized we’d be bogged down with work and family issues, and that days would turn into weeks and weeks into months. And now I didn’t know if our expectations had been built up so high that we were afraid of disappointment . . . or if it just didn’t matter enough anymore.
Don’t think like that, Kaela, I reprimanded myself. But I couldn’t help it, especially when he hadn’t even stirred while I’d showered. We were like an old married couple, except we never got the engagement or the wedding or the honeymoon. And I was too young to be old, damn it.
I slipped outside and strode across the lawn to begin my day at the inn. When I took my place at the front desk, I noticed Mammie in front of the parlor picture window, watching all the hubbub of town square across the way.
“They’re doing it all wrong,” she said, a look of longing on her face as city workers and volunteers set up for the Fourth of July festivities tomorrow. “They should have done this weeks ago! Where are the lamppost decorations? The red, white, and blue twinkle lights? This town needs its twinkle lights. That Rose Howe has no idea what she’s doing. Why did they let her take over? You should have had the committee meeting here, Michaela, so I could have had input.”
“I’m sure it will be fine, Mammie,” I muttered while glancing over our expected guests for the night—all two of them. I hoped they didn’t mind the unanticipated construction zone.
“Oh, there’s Adelaide. She’ll straighten them out.” Still, Mammie wrung her hands as she floated back and forth in front of the window.
My aunt, aka Madame Luiza, aka Mammie, had passed four months ago, right after I’d first come back to Havenwood Falls on a weirdly arranged job offer at the inn. She’d returned in this new form, her silver hair in a bun and wearing the purple ball gown I’d dressed her in before she died—but a little less solid than she’d been before. Her death had been the last in a string of deaths in our family, including my parents, leaving Gabe, Aurelia, and myself on our own. Mammie couldn’t bear to leave us quite yet, for which I was grateful. Surprised as hell the first time we saw her, but incredibly grateful. I wasn’t quite prepared for what it would mean to finish raising two teens while simultaneously trying to save the family business that was over a century and a half old and on the verge of bankruptcy.
Although I knew her worry for us was the real reason Mammie visited our realm, she claimed she came to help the business. She was a marketing ploy.
“Looks like our efforts last night worked,” I said to her as I read the comment card left by today’s departing guest.
“Only because of you,” she said, distracted. “He was a tough nut, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, he’s experienced. He wrote, ‘I’ve been to several hotels and inns in Colorado that claim to be haunted, but this is the real deal. Watch for the woman in the purple gown. She particularly likes windows. Besides an incident involving my backside, she seems harmless enough, but there is something more sinister that lurks in the shadows. I felt like it might want to eat me.’ Ha! We did it! But what does he mean about his backside?”
Mammie looked over at me with a coy smile. “I’m dead. It’s time I start living.”
I sucked in a breath. “What did you do?”
She patted her hair. “Oh, well, I might have pinched his butt.”
“Mammie!” I squeaked as laughter bubbled up.
“The dead don’t need to be proper. I’ve decided I wasted my life being good, and look where that got me. Just as dead as the ones who had all the fun.” She shrugged. “Now it’s my turn. And it gives the guests more to talk about.”
Mammie served as the resident haunter of Whisper Falls Inn, scaring guests (or, apparently, sexually assaulting them) just enough to thrill them into leaving enthusiastic reviews. The memory wards surrounding the town meant tourists never remembered visiting Havenwood Falls once they left, so we had to capture their excitement to paper before their departures. For really tough customers, like this guy, I vamped out in dark corners or reflective surfaces, leaving them to question what they saw, but with a spike of fear flowing in their blood. Nobody could accuse us of false advertising. In fact, we were more authentic than most.
“What is Adelaide doing? She’s walking right past them all and not saying a word.” Mammie let out a sigh, before turning and giving up her post at the window. The guy was right about her liking windows, particularly one on the top floor in the far back of the inn. She stared out it, but at what, I wasn’t quite sure, because it looked upon the back of the row of businesses on Main Street and the alley that ran behind it. “The mail came, dear. Maybe while you’re out there—”
“I’m not going to tell those people how to do their jobs, Mammie.” I walked around the front desk and headed for the door.
“Somebody needs to!”
Snickering, I hurried out to collect the mail, then sighed as I ruffled through the envelopes on my way back inside. Bills, bills, and more bills.
Tase had paid off the mortgage, and Mammie’s hauntings had helped to keep the inn afloat, but we were still in deep. The inn had fallen into some disrepair over the last several years, thus the need for all of the work. Our current services were only the basics—besides our outdated guest rooms, we offered muffins, scones, and coffee provided by Coffee Haven each morning and that was pretty much it. Our kitchen needed to be completely redone, and the dining room needed updates. I could have tended the bar, but without diners in the restaurant or overnight guests, we had no reason—nor funds—to keep it stocked.
Mom and Mammie had been unable to keep up with everything after Dad’s death, and Mammie had an especially hard time after
Mom passed. But the inn’s misfortune had started even before Dad died, when Tase bought the ski resort. He’d been engaging in shenanigans with a witch to draw out-of-town visitors to the resort’s new cabins and simultaneously drive our business into the ground. He’d almost succeeded.
He claimed to have seen the evil in his ways and changed. Possibly because he had a death sentence hanging over his head. Maybe because he actually felt real guilt for everything he’d done to our family. I wasn’t sure it was possible for Tase Roca to feel anything at all, but it explained why every single bill in today’s pile—and every day’s pile—was marked “Paid in Full.” Along with McCabe’s and Weston Design’s invoices.
“Looks like that boy’s not going to give up.” Mammie looked over my shoulder, near enough that her cold breath sent a chill down my spine.
“He’s pretty damn persistent.”
“Good. Let him be. We need to bring in more guests, Michaela. There’s nothing more to it. That boy owes us. He and his father. Let him pay their debts.”
I didn’t reply as I left the front desk area for the back office to drop the invoices on my desk. She wasn’t wrong about needing more guests, but more guests meant we needed all of our rooms not just habitable, but comfortable and nice, and our dining room and bar functional. Which meant I needed the work to be done if I ever wanted to earn enough money to pay for the work that needed to be done. Without Tase’s help, we were between a rock and a hard place.
I really hated letting Tase Roca get his way, though. Everything wrong in my life was about him getting his own way, including everything wrong between Xandru and me.
“Isn’t it coffee time with Adelaide?” Mammie asked, as I came back to the front desk. “It looked like she headed to Coffee Haven.”
I glanced at the clock. Addie had been my best friend since preschool, and we had a standing coffee date—whenever we could both get away, anyway. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Talk to her, will you, dear? She’ll tell those men how to do their jobs.”
“Yeah, sure. If Xandru comes in, tell him where I am.”
The sun was actually, finally warm as I crossed the front lawn of the inn that sat on a diagonal facing the corner and Town Square Park across the intersection. Once I crossed Eleventh Street, though, the Main Street buildings threw shade onto the sidewalk, and it was still a little chilly for my thin blood. It’d probably be a year or two before I adjusted from Hotlanta to the mountain climate. At least once I passed Callie’s Consignments and crossed the alley, I was back in the sun, where I found Addie sitting at an outside table at Coffee Haven.
She wore a black tank top, displaying the tattoos that covered her arms, cutoff jean shorts, and purple Chuck Taylors. A bandana covered her head, her brown hair snaking out of the bottom in two braids. Round sunglasses had replaced her regular eyeglasses. She hunched over the small book she carried with her everywhere, two cups on the metal table in front of her.
“I didn’t know you BuJo’d,” I said as I took a seat and a cup.
She looked up at me. “I what?”
“Bullet journaled?” I motioned at her book, the pages filled with writing and drawings in a colorful array. “Or is that a Happy Planner? I’m not quite sure about the difference.”
“What the hell is a bullet journal or Happy Planner?” she demanded.
“Um . . . that. Sindi had them, too.”
“Sindi? You mean the other Addie?”
I laughed. Sindi was my old roommate in Atlanta, and while I’d been there, she’d been my best friend. It was kind of funny how similar she and Addie were, although it made sense. I supposed they were my “type” for besties.
“Don’t worry, nobody could ever replace my Bratty Addie,” I cooed as I reached over to tweak her nose. She slapped my hand away. I gestured at her notebook again. “Anyway, Sindi would never admit it, but she was a planner freak, and she loved her BuJo. She planned out her days, used them as a journal, and tracked all her crap, from when to change the water filter to the last time she had sex and with who. She had all these stickers and tapes and a gazillion markers and pencils for her color-coding system. I even caught her using Pinterest to pin all these elaborate, artsy layouts.” I laughed at the memory of her flushed face when I teased her about it. “I’ll admit, I’ve been tempted to start one myself to keep track of everything going on. At least give myself the illusion that I have my shit together.”
One side of Addie’s lip curled up, as if she were appalled by the whole idea. Then she leaned forward and hissed, “This is my Book of Shadows.”
I stared at her.
“My grimoire.” She huffed out a breath at my ignorance and leaned even closer, whispering, “My spell book, you idiot.”
“Ohhh,” I drawled out. Then I whispered back, “Your magic BuJo.”
She threw a piece of scone at me. I caught it and popped it in my mouth. Aster McCabe may not have been around here anymore, but her scone recipe remained. And her scones were not something to be wasted. In fact, doing so felt like an affront to her memory.
“Still no news on your skinwalker, which is really pissing the Court off,” Addie said. “Some of them are worried we won’t be able to detect it if it’s wearing someone’s skin who’s already registered and known by the wards.”
“Is that possible?”
“You gave us,” she wrinkled her nose, the stone piercing twinkling in the light, “tissue samples. That should be enough for the coven to track it if it were in town.”
“So, you think it left?”
“I don’t know. These things are skeevy as hell. But we can hope, right?” She took a sip from her cup, eyeing me over the rim. “So, speaking of the Court . . .”
I made a face and blew out a sigh. As the Court’s business manager, Addie had apparently been given the job of persuading me to claim the moroi seat, because it came up nearly every time we saw each other. “After what they did to the McCabes, I don’t know that I want to be a part of that.”
“Maybe you could have changed the outcome.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Okay, probably not,” she admitted. “We do have laws in this town. If you don’t want your seat, though, you’ll have to give it up to a Roca. And you know what that means.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Saundra, Addie’s grandmother and one of the leaders of the Luna Coven as well as the Beaumonts’ member of the Court, had already explained it to me.
The Petrans—my father, specifically—had always held the Court seat for the moroi vampires, since the very beginning, because at the time, the Rocas had been my family’s servants. When my father passed a couple of years ago, there had been a huge uproar by the Rocas, who hadn’t been servants for over a century, because the seat was offered to my mother instead of Mr. Roca. That’s how all seats were passed along, from family member to family member. But Mr. Roca was, among other things, a misogynistic and self-righteous ass, and thought he deserved the seat rather than my mother.
Then again, I couldn’t entirely blame him. After all, the Rocas had never had any true say in things in our little town. My father had always spoken for all of the moroi, and I doubted he consulted the Rocas before making any decisions with the Court. When Mom passed, Mammie took the seat. Now it was meant to be mine.
If I didn’t want to claim my place on the Court, I could offer it to another moroi vampire. And since my siblings were minors, that meant one of the Rocas. I’d honestly considered offering it to Xandru. Since I’d been gone for over five years, he had a much better understanding than I did of the town’s secrets and things that went on beneath the surface. But Xandru wasn’t the eldest of his family.
Tase could rightfully dispute the offer, and since he was unpredictable these days, we couldn’t take the chance. The only way to guarantee he didn’t get the seat and Xandru did was to prove to the Court that Tase was incapable of fulfilling the duties of the position. And while that might have been true,
we didn’t want to go that far yet with Tase, especially with the Court. That would have meant giving up hope on him, and not even I was at that point. Even if I were, I couldn’t do that to Xandru.
Or to Addie, who’d never give up on him, even if her love was unrequited.
I gnawed on my bottom lip as Addie drummed her fingers on the table’s edge while studying me.
“You’re not ready for the commitment, are you?” she asked.
“What?”
“To the town,” she clarified, then she cocked her head. “To Xandru?”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”
She leaned forward, resting her arms on the table. “Kales, I love you. You’re like a sister to me, and I missed you so much while you were gone. We all did. But I get it. You didn’t even remember us, so you couldn’t possibly have missed us.”
“But now that I’m here and I remember—”
“It’s not the same, is it?”
I sucked in my lip and chewed even harder on it, as feelings I didn’t realize I’d been harboring stirred within.
“You’re not the same,” she said pointedly.
“What do you mean?”
She smiled, and although I couldn’t see her eyes, I could sense the sadness in them. “You’ve had a big taste of life outside this sleepy little town. Big city life. You’re different.”
I leaned forward, too. “You really think so?”
“I don’t think so. I know so. You’re . . . darker. Less confident than you used to be. More hesitant. The old you would have been the one to BoJu or whatever you called it, because you always had so much going on, and you loved organizing and color-coding. The old you was the bubbly and social one, while I was the weird, awkward, and ugly best friend. The old you always dove headfirst into whatever crazy idea we came up with. We were practically fearless together.” She dropped her voice to a soft whisper. “And the old you wouldn’t have gone this long without jumping into bed with the man she loves.”
I frowned. “That’s not all me. To be honest, I don’t think Xandru likes me anymore. Not in the same way.”