He shrugged. “Why not? I’m not going to hurt her.”
I shook my head. “She needs friends with a pulse. You don’t have one.”
“Thanks for the news flash. Here I thought I did. If anything, it is good if I befriend your child.”
I studied at him. “Okay, let me in on how
that
works.”
“Name one creature that can best a vampire.”
Sirens, some witches, whatever else happened to be real in the creepy make-believe world.
“There aren’t any sirens, most witches would never stand against a vampire, nothing else I know of has managed to kill me, and I have been around for quite a while.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, I should let my kid talk to a vampire because you can kick butt and she might need butts kicked someday?”
“Mostly, yeah.” He leaned back and propped one leg over the other.
“If my daughter ever needs butts kicked, that is what I’m here for.”
He laughed. “Yeah, you are one terrifying woman.”
I shrugged and leaned back as Vance got bombarded by Vickie’s return and the ensuing onslaught of Playstation talk. I sat and watched the clock tick.
At the moment the hand hit nine, I cleared my throat and pointed smiling at Vickie. She did her usual and pleaded for five more minutes. I said nothing and aimed my pointing finger to her room. Grumbling, she gathered her things and trotted off to her bedroom and slammed the door. I got up and followed her. Waiting about two minutes outside the door, I then tapped.
“Come in!” She’d changed into her pajamas and sat on the bed, giving me a dirty look. I kissed her, tickled her and took down her hair. We read the next chapter in her latest book and I tried to pretend there wasn’t a vampire waiting in the living room. When her breathing evened out, I got up and planted a final kiss on her head. Smoothing her hair back, I sighed.
As I left the room and closed the door, I leaned on it for a moment, gathering myself.
When I turned, Vance caught me in his arms.
He spun me and pushed me into the wall opposite Vickie’s door and put his face less than an inch from mine.
Our breath mixed, and my pulse sped. “I have wanted to do this ever since I woke.” His lips closed over mine possessively. I rose to my toes to deepen the kiss. My heart raced, and my breathing hitched. Heat scorched me, and I opened my mouth to allow him better access.
After a moment, he released my lips to breathe harshly in my ear. I am not sure why the sound was so erotic, but it was. I tried to calm my own breathing, while burying my hand in his hair. I clung to him.
I did
not
cling—it just wasn’t me. I pushed him back a bit to clear my head. With his body pressed into mine, sanity eluded me. Of course, then I could see him. He wore a black leather blazer over a black button down shirt and jeans that someone must have painted on him. That did nothing to help me regain sanity, so I walked past him to enter the kitchen.
Turning my back on him showed I trusted him though, dammit. No one turns their back on an enemy, so some part of me did trust him. Probably the same weak part that got married and thought with dewy-eyed innocence that love could conquer all. It sure wasn’t a more logical part of me. The logical part said,
Hello
?
Vampire!
Pouring a glass of water, I drank it and focused on the feel of the coolness going down my suddenly dry throat. Leaning patiently on the counter, Vance watched me. Sighing, I took the key ring from my belt loop and opened the fridge. I pulled out one of the blood bags and passed it to him. I very carefully did not look at him until I heard him throw it away. “More?” I offered, politely.
“No, thank you.”
When the phone on the counter jangled, I was happy for the inturruption. “Hello?”
It was Sven “Hey, is Vickie in bed yet?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Come down here, if you can. And don’t, well, just you, okay?”
“Okay.” I relayed this to Vance, who stood still for a moment.
“The cops are down there. I didn’t hear them. I was distracted.”
I had distracted him, I guess. I slid into my shoes and headed down. Sven looked flustered and pointed at me the minute I made it down the stairs. A man and a woman stood in the store—cops, according to Vance. Paranoid, I thought they knew about the body I found the night before.
“Janie Smith?” The man glanced at a small white tablet when he asked, then spared me a glance. Dressed in a brown suit and white shirt, I noticed his tie tilted to far to the right of his throat.
“Yes.” I crossed my arms in front of me.
“You are a friend of Mia Cunningham?”
I nodded.
“Do you know where she is?” The woman cop spoke sharply, her words like gunshots being fired into the room.
“No, I’m sorry. She left a note saying that she had to go out of town and that she wanted me to help out here.” Which wasn’t a lie. I didn’t know where Mia was at that point. I knew where she was earlier today, but where she’d gone since? I had no idea.
“We need to ask her a few questions regarding Vansickle Masterson.”
“Why not just ask me?” Vance had come up behind me and he placed one hand on my shoulder. I concentrated on keeping my breathing even. It was stupid that his just standing there rattled my nerves, but it did.
The woman got a little smile, and I figured that was everyone’s response to Vance. He
was
awfully good looking for a dead guy. The man frowned. “We have a coroner’s report that says you are deceased.”
“As you can see,” Vance swept into the room past me, “the rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.”
“Isn’t that a quote?” I looked around the room in general. “Mark Twain or something?”
Vance quirked a brow back at me before turning back to the nice officers.
“Could we ask you to come down for some questioning?”
He nodded. “But you will find that is unnecessary.”
“Really, Pete, isn’t that unnecessary?” The woman still appeared dazed by Vance.
“Yes, it does seem to be. I mean, there he is, right?”
I studied Vance, who looked into their eyes intently.
“And you can take care of everything, clearing Odd Stuff and its proprietor of any further suspicion,” continued Vance, in an odd monotone.
“Actually, Pete, none of this has anything to do with some little harbor business or its owner.”
“Really, it was silly to begin with. I mean, Mia has never done anything out of the ordinary. She is a pillar in this community, what with her drawing in tourism.”
Vance nodded at them, and they got their things to leave. They weren’t even going to offer us their card. I turned to Vance. “What are you doing to them?”
He glared at me. The nice officers looked at me blankly. Sven poked me in the ribs, which nearly sent me across the room.
“Nothing. Just answering their questions.”
I leaned on the counter and waited for the cops to leave. Then, I rounded on Vance. “That was bullshit!! You just manipulated them!”
He shrugged. “One of the perks of being me. Besides, did you
want
them going after your best friend?”
I shook my head. “Of course not, but that was wrong!”
“Why?”
“You can’t just bend people to your will! This is America…land of free speech!”
“I did nothing to their ability to speak. And they are free to think what they will, but they just aren’t going to think it about Mia.”
“What is your problem?” Sven shook a finger at me. “He just got them off our backs.”
“By making them think what
he
wanted them to! How is that right? You gave me the sob story about sirens last night and you are worse than them!”
“I am not!” Vance twitched his hair behind him like some big cloak.
“How do you figure? Sirens ruled you and you had no choice
you
said, but what choice did those officers have? You fed them a line of crap and now they have to try to make it work. What do you think their superior officers are gonna say when they trot in there and say, oh, Vance is alive. Yeah, we saw him. Nope, we saw no reason to bring anyone in. They are going to have a hell of a time, all because you couldn’t be bothered with it!”
“So?” Sven gestured helplessly.
“Sirens were calling us to our deaths.” Vance’s anger rolled off him in waves, but I didn’t care. I was too mad to care. “Hardly the same thing. That was why they got killed off, not because they could alter our thinking.”
“What is the difference? Were
all
the sirens doing it or did you guys kill off an entire race because of the acts of a few?”
Vance looked at me as if I had gone daft. “Well, they were
all
cold as the seas. I mean, they had their perks, but for the most part—”
“
Perks
?” I sputtered.
“They were unworldly beauties with voices that made your soul ache. They helped us call humans from the sea. They were supposedly good in bed, but they were
killing
us.”
I stared at him. “I still don’t see how you can debate this with me. You killed off an
entire
race on a whim.”
“It wasn’t a fucking whim! They were
killing
us! And I didn’t do it, dammit, the vampires as a whole did!”
“They weren’t
all
killing vampires!”
“And how would you know, human?” He glared at me, and I glared back. Unfortunately, I had no real rebuttal. I mean, I didn’t actually know any of it. I only knew what I’d been taught as a kid and what he’d said.
“You vampires are nothing but parasites on humans. I mean, you change what they think to suit you and then drain them.”
He came closer to stand toe to toe with me. I breathed in his scent of leather and soap and man and steak. A shiver ran down my spine and I wasn’t altogether sure if it was fear from pissing off the vamp or something much, much more dangerous.
“You are the one making generalizations now, human, and if you ever want to know the rest of the story about the sirens, ask. In the meantime, I would ask
you
not to make assumptions about the mistakes of a long dead race or blaming me for them. I am not a parasite any more than humans are parasites to a cow.”
“Cows are stupid animals and—”
“And humans are brighter? Has a cow ever killed another cow over a piece of dirt or over a theory? Has a cow ever created something that killed off lots of cows? Humans are the only race of life on the face of the earth with a hell-bent wish to destroy themselves and nearly every thing else on the face of the planet. Yet you would judge me for eating them?”
I opened my mouth and closed it. I hated to lose an argument.
“Besides, I personally only drink from those who would willingly give to keep me alive.”
I glared at him. “Yeah, I just saw how hard it is for you to make someone willing.”
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “I have never, and will promise you now that I
will
never, influence the way you think, even if you think some of the more ridiculous things I have ever heard spouted.”
That was probably the best offer that he had ever given a human.
Well, kind of a human.
His eyebrows both rose. “What are you if
not
human?”
Oops.
There I went again, getting mad and thinking things better off not thought around mind reader types. This not-being-able-to-think-privately thing was getting old fast.
So, I used the oldest female trick in the book. He was still very close to me and I rose up on tip toes, caught his shoulders, and closed my lips over his.
That same weird reaction happened, yet again. Me and this dead guy had some serious chemistry going. Everything dropped away when we touched. Every nerve came to life and I sank into blissful, if increasingly frustrating, fire.
Sven’s low whistle separated us. I spent a moment in Vance’s arms, looking into eyes gone glowy blue. “What is
up
with you two?”
“Something.” Vance’s voice turned soft and thoughtful.
I backed up. Well, it ended the conversation, anyway. And as soon as I could breathe again, I would think of a way to keep my hands off the dead guy. Who would have thought I was a necrophiliac?
As I turned away from him, Vance’s soft laugh made me smile.
~
Once sanity returned to myself and the bloodsucker, the three of us decided we should discuss what each learned today regarding the murders. Well, what those of us who had been awake during the day learned needed to be shared with our undead friend, anyway. I got voted to get drinks from upstairs, and we all settled in the windowseat to talk.
Sven interrogated as many witches as he could find and discovered the witches had nothing to do with any of it. Nice to know and all, but seemed somewhat obvious to me. They quickly corrected me. Apparently, not all witches were nice and the bad ones had reasons to want Vance offed, too.
“Does anyone
not
want you dead?”
Vance shrugged. “I don’t live my life to be popular, I live it to make a difference. After this many years, it has been all I had left.”
“Oh.”
Well, that is deep.
I filled them in on my day, skipping the enrollment of Vickie portion. No one needed to know my mother had irritated me today. “Then Mia said I should try to talk to Max, the Master Magician, so I went to the Galley in Jefferson.”
“Was Chance with her?” Sven’s forehead creased.
“No, Mia was alone.”
“Not her, silly—”
A giant man had just called me silly. Hehe
. “I meant Max.”
“Oh, no. Max was with a woman.”
“That’s weird. Lately the two of them have been thick as thieves.”
“I dunno. All I know is that the woman with Max let it slip that she knew who staked Vance.”
Vance looked confused.
“Describe the woman to me.”
I thought for a moment. “Well, she was skinny and had this sour look and—”
“That was Max.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Max was the Master Magician. He had green eyes and—”