Bled & Breakfast

by Michelle Rowen

  A shiver went down my spine.

  A “deal” made it sound so innocent. Like I was buying a used car through Craigslist. Only this was the kind that came with a body in the trunk.

  Here’s the thing. Despite Markus being a deadly kind of guy, he wasn’t a villain. He was actually extremely good at his job, the kind of scary grim-reaper type you’d want on your side if faced with adversity, but terrifying if you crossed him.

  Markus had done a favor for me in Vegas by retrieving my stolen engagement ring from an underground-dwelling street kid vamp. In return, he wanted information.

  Information about Thierry’s past.

  “I don’t know anything yet,” I whispered. “I mean, it’s been, what, a whole two days since you asked me for this? Who do you think I am, Houdini?”

  “It was in Salem that Thierry was last seen before he disappeared for fifty years.”

  My brows shot up. “It was?”

  “Yes. And it was also there where he resurfaced five decades later. Since you’re there, we want you to find out more about this. The elders are very interested in this information.”

  My grip on the phone tightened. “Why do they care? Thierry’s been around for nearly seven centuries. What do fifty unaccounted years matter in the grand scheme of things?”

  “It’s not for me to say, but they want to know. Right now, the only one who would know the answer to this is your husband himself.”

  “Then you should ask him yourself instead of sending me cryptic messages.”

  “I thought you were going to be helpful, Sarah. Don’t you want to make sure Thierry’s term with the Ring runs smoothly?”

  Of course I did. There was no question about it. They had a bat in their bonnet about where he’d gone during those fifty years, during which nobody had seen or heard from him. Frankly, I was curious, too.

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” I said halfheartedly. “But I can’t promise anything.”

  “I know you’ll do your best.”

  “Oh really? And how do you know that?”

  “Because I’m certain you don’t want anything bad to happen to your new husband.”

  The line clicked.

  “Yeah, well,” I spoke into the phone, furious now, “why don’t you stick your passive-aggressive threats right up your—”

  “I’m still here, Sarah.”

  My stomach sank. “I thought you hung up.”

  “Obviously. Bottom line, Sarah, it’s in your best interest to get me this information as soon as possible. Do you understand me?”

  My mouth was nearly too dry to form words. “I’ll do my best.”

  “I know you will.”

  This time I ended the call.

  I slowly made my way back up to the room while my thoughts raced. Thierry had “disappeared” here in Salem in the seventeenth century and hadn’t been seen or heard from until fifty years later. It sounded like something that had a simple answer, although I couldn’t think what it could possibly be.

  The Ring wanted to know the truth.

  I hated keeping secrets from Thierry—from anybody, really. I was terrible at it, always had been. Friends had rarely trusted me more than once or twice with any of their intimate details, usually because when I was younger I’d end up blurting it to my next friend before I even realized what I’d done. My mouth had always lacked a filter.

  But this wasn’t an innocent secret. And I’d do whatever I could to help Thierry and keep him safe from the Ring, whom I had no doubt would go to extremely unpleasant lengths to get what they wanted, whatever it might be.

  Thierry was on his laptop computer when I entered the small room. I went directly to the vanity and sat down in front of it, digging into my purse for a brush. I began to violently brush the tangles out of my hair.

  “How’s Amy?” Thierry asked.

  “She’s, um, just peachy.”

  “Right.” There was a long pause. “Who were you really speaking to just now, Sarah?”

  My brush froze in midstroke. I caught his gaze in the reflection of the special mirror. “What do you mean? I was talking to Amy.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  My throat was tight. “You think I’m lying to you?”

  He nodded. “Lying is not one of your strongest talents. I can tell every time you attempt it.”

  “I resent that.”

  “Resent it all you like. It’s still true.”

  I pointed my brush at him. “I’m a very good liar.”

  “Perhaps. But still, you’re lying right now about who you spoke to. And I would like to know why.”

  The man had a talent for pinning me with those intense gray eyes of his, like a brunette butterfly he’d collected on an afternoon walk. I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to.

  I stood up and began pacing the small room. “How can you sound so calm right now?”

  He cocked his head. “Should I be otherwise?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Owen just got killed by a witch’s death spell and is splattered all over Heather’s driveway. We’re stuck in a town that has a murderous alpha witch lurking somewhere. A witch hunter’s ghost was giving me the evil eye earlier. And now I’m lying to you about who I spoke to on the phone.”

  “So now you’re admitting it.”

  I hissed out a breath. “Fine. It was Markus Reed.”

  His gray eyes widened a fraction as he took this in. “Interesting.”

  “I tell you the Ring’s favorite enforcer is contacting me out of the blue and you think it’s interesting?”

  “You seem rather distressed about this.”

  I wrung my hands. “You could say that.”

  “Tell me.” His expression turned serious and he got up from his seat by the window. He touched my chin to raise my gaze to lock with his. “What does he want from you?”

  With Thierry it was really hard to tell what he was thinking if you went only by his expression. He’d had a long time to perfect the ability to appear unreadable.

  But there it was—that edge of something dangerous, something barely restrained. It wasn’t directed toward me, though. It was toward Markus.

  “Has he threatened you?” He said the words simply, but there was a thick layer of underlying darkness there. If I said yes, I had no doubt that Thierry would immediately go to find Markus, and it wouldn’t be to make small talk about the weather.

  “No, no threats. Well, not toward me, anyway.” I hissed out a breath. “He wants me to find out some things. About you.”

  His brow lifted. “About me?”

  “Yeah. Namely, about another time you were here in Salem.”

  “Is that so?”

  “So why don’t we just get it all out into the open.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Apparently you went missing for fifty years and the Ring is dying to know where you went. Care to share with the class?”

  He studied me for several drawn-out moments as if trying to figure out the riddle in my eyes. Then something very unpleasant flashed across his face. “How dare they use you to try to get this information. If Markus wanted to know so badly, why didn’t he simply confront me about it face-to-face?”

  “Would you have told him anything?”

  “Of course not.”

  I nodded. “Then that’s very likely why.”

  Thierry pulled his BlackBerry out of his inner jacket pocket. “I’m calling him right now.”

  I snatched the device away from him before he’d even attempted to scroll through his address book. “No, you are most certainly not going to call him right now.”

  “Sarah,” he growled, “let me handle this. You don’t have to be any part of it.”

  “I guess you misunderstood the part in Vegas when we said the ‘for better or for worse’ thing?”

  “You’re paraphrasing. Our vows were not that traditional due to the Elvis impersonator you thought would be—how did you put it? Super fun?”

  “Yeah, well,
the better or worse thing was implied.” When he reached for the phone, I hid it behind my back. “Nuh-uh. No way, vampire. You’re not getting your hands on this. Markus didn’t want me to tell you anything about this.”

  “And I wonder why that is. Because he wouldn’t want me to know that he threatened you. I will not let anyone bully you. Not today, not ever.”

  “Markus isn’t bullying me. He’s just doing his job.”

  His lips thinned. “So now you’re defending him, are you?”

  “What happened back then, Thierry? Where did you go? We can make something up to tell him if it’s really bad—if it’s dangerous information. But I want to know. I need to know.”

  He searched my face. “Why?”

  “Because . . . I should know your deepest, darkest secrets. Especially if they’re weighing heavily on you. I might be able to help.”

  He shook his head, bemused. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  He turned from me and went to the window to look down at the street outside, his shoulders tense. “As heroic as you might wish to believe I was, I’ve done some unsavory things in my life, Sarah. Existence, especially one as long as mine, is an evolutionary process.”

  “And this means what exactly? You’re actually a dinosaur in hiding?”

  He turned to face me again, his expression shadowed. “All I’m saying is that you wouldn’t have liked me back then.”

  I watched him steadily, refusing to be swayed by his cryptic Tales from the Darkside. “You’re wrong. I’m sure I would have. I love you—I always would have loved you.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that. If you saw me, who I was, especially leading up to my missing years . . .” He trailed off. “It wasn’t the most heroic time of my life.”

  I crossed the room and reached down to take his hand. “It’s more than three hundred years ago. And I totally believe the whole evolutionary process. So, okay, you think you were a caveman back then, but you’re more evolved now. So don’t sweat it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sweating.”

  I smiled. “I promise there’s no judgment here. None at all. Now, tell me what the Ring is so curious about.”

  Finally, just when I thought he wouldn’t tell me anything, he spoke. “The truth is, Sarah, that I don’t remember the years that I was allegedly missing. One moment I was here in Salem at its bleakest hour during the witch trials. I’d arrived by ship from overseas that very day. The next moment it was fifty years later.” His jaw tightened. “What happened in the interim is not something I retained.”

  I stared at him with shock. “You don’t remember. Seriously?”

  “Seriously. I’ve tried to put it behind me, but this blank spot is more worrying to me than any memory I do possess.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t know what I might have done during those years. Or who I might have harmed.”

  That was a chilling thought. “Maybe you didn’t do anything at all. Maybe you were in a coma. Or hibernating, like a fanged groundhog.”

  His lips twitched. “Perhaps. However, I don’t believe the answer is quite so cut-and-dried. It was a long time ago. I returned to my regular life, found those whom I had known before. No one questioned me too deeply about what happened, where I’d been—not even Veronique. It became a nonissue. But now I see that the Ring has been attempting to compile my full biography. They must have a great deal of time on their hands.”

  “Apparently they have a file on you. Three inches thick.”

  His expression darkened. “Must make for interesting reading for someone.”

  “Epic, I’m sure.”

  “Do you want access to this file?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No.”

  He gave me a wary but surprised look. “Really?”

  “Really. Anything that you don’t tell me yourself, I don’t need to know. And, quite honestly, there are some things I know you’d rather me not know. I’ve made my peace with that.”

  He searched my face. “I think you honestly mean that.”

  “You said yourself I’m a terrible liar.”

  “True. But I actually consider that a strength, not a weakness.”

  He would. I nearly laughed at the thought before I sobered. “What about you? Are you a good liar?”

  “An excellent one. But not with you. I don’t lie to you, Sarah. You’re the only one I feel I can be completely truthful with. That means more to me than you will ever know.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine.

  I kissed him back. “Although . . . you did just admit to being a pro at lying, so, really, you could be lying right now.”

  He gave me the barest edge of a smile. “Touché.”

  I had my answer, but I wasn’t sure it would do us much good. “So what happens with the Ring? Will they be okay finding out that you don’t remember anything?”

  His expression darkened again. “We should get ready for the séance.”

  My throat thickened. “I’ll take that as a no. What will they do?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “You should have a T-shirt made with that slogan. You use it a lot.” I nervously twisted a finger into my hair. “Seriously, though, is this something to be worried about?”

  He regarded me, raising an eyebrow. He was used to my tenacious nature—which was a nice way of saying that if I was a dog, it would take a great deal of effort to pull away a bone I’d been chewing on. “The Ring sees most difficulties in black or white terms.”

  “And . . . I’ll take that as a yes to the worrying. You were with the Ring before—I mean, you created it in the first place. Is that how you see things, too? Black or white? Right or wrong? No shades of gray? And I’m not talking about the naughty book.”

  “Once I was like that. Lately, though, many things have changed. My outlook on life is one of those things.” A new smile tugged at his lips. “All thanks to you.”

  My heart warmed. “Such a good answer, Monsieur de Bennicoeur. Gold star.”

  “It’s the truth.” He slid his hand around to the small of my back to draw me closer. “For some reason, the Ring’s curiosity has been piqued about my history. I won’t lie. It could become an issue, but it’s not something we need to worry about today. Let’s deal with Heather’s séance and get to the bottom of Owen’s murder without further delay. All right?”

  Owen. Poor Owen.

  “Heather loved that guy, you know,” I said, my throat tightening again. “Even though he was an unredemptive womanizer who seemed shadier than a black umbrella, even though the writing was on the wall that he would have broken her heart into a million pieces on the heels of her last boyfriend leaving town, she still loved him.”

  “She’s young. She’ll recover and be better off without him in her life.”

  “Promise?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Promise.”

  I really hoped he was right. It was both challenging and wonderful being in love with a living vampire.

  A dead one wouldn’t be any fun at all.

  Chapter 4

  Midnight was the best time to summon the recently departed spirit of a vampire sex machine—or, apparently, any other spirit. Solemnly, we gathered in a small room downstairs around a circular table—Thierry to my left, Heather to my right, and Rose across from me. Heather had lit many candles, which lent the only light other than that from the moon streaming through the bay window in the adjoining living room. Hoppy the toad sat on the table next to Heather, as still and silent as a toad-like rock.

  “Have you ever done this before?” Thierry asked.

  She grimaced as if embarrassed by the question. “Once or twice. But I’m not very good at it.”

  Rose took hold of her hand and squeezed it. “Heather’s mother was an incredibly talented witch. I still believe Heather’s greater powers are to come. It’s why I gave her the locket.”

 
Heather touched the gold locket at her throat. “It’s a family heirloom. Grandma says it was worn by all the strongest witches in our family line, including my mother. She gave it to me on my fourteenth birthday, just after my parents died.”

  Rose patted her hand. “It’s good that we’ve had each other over the years.”

  Heather looked at her fondly. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  “You would have been just fine, sweetheart. I, on the other hand, likely would have ended up at Salem Acres.” She glanced at me. “The old-age home on the west side of town. Old, warty witches live there. Stuck in their silly memories of long-lost loves. I prefer to live in the present and look toward the future.”

  Heather drew in a shaky breath. “I can’t believe Owen’s gone.”

  “Not that I’d ever wish that end on anyone,” Rose said, “but he was a man who got around. Every girl in town knew what he looked like with his clothes off.”

  “I didn’t,” Heather said with a sigh.

  Hoppy let out a low croak.

  I felt Heather’s pain at losing Owen, but I had to agree with Rose. Anyone could have killed him—and my guess was a jilted lover had.

  “Shall we get started?” Thierry asked gently.

  “Yes, of course.” Heather wiped away her tears. “I’m sorry.”

  “Please, don’t apologize,” he said. “Owen and I never got along that well, but I am sorry for your loss. I know you felt close to him.”

  “Yes, but this is your honeymoon,” Heather said. “I don’t want to take time away from that.”

  “It’s a rather small bed in the Batberry Suite,” Rose noted. “If you need an extra cot, we can have one brought up for you.”

  I almost laughed. “I think we’ll be okay.”

  A small bed on one’s honeymoon certainly wasn’t a bad thing, in my opinion. I’d bought some sexy lingerie before leaving Las Vegas that I hoped would see the light of day—or the dark of night—before we left Salem.

  “Yes,” Thierry agreed. “But thank you for the kind offer, Rose.”

  I gave him a sidelong look to see that he was now repressing a smile. The old woman seemed to amuse him. It was a talent both she and I shared.