Honestly, I was surprised when she passed on blood spatter or a bite mark in one corner to really drive home she was a vampire. I could picture her listing it below her name—VAMPIRE—as if it were a profession.
“I’ll do that.” He tucked it into his shirt pocket. “You ladies have a nice rest of your night.”
“Oh,” she promised, “we will.”
Her three-point turn, complete with pause to flip her glossy curtain of hair over her shoulder for the sentinel’s benefit, would have done a shampoo ad proud.
“We have a source now,” she announced after raising her window. “You can thank me later. Or now. Now is good.”
Meaning she planned on wining him and dining on him to get intel on what had brought out the big guns.
“Thank you,” I said dutifully. “You’re the very best vampire ever.”
“Aww.” She patted my thigh. “You know what I like.”
“I do know what you like.” I grabbed her wrist. “That’s why I’m going to have to ask you to keep your hands on your side of the car.”
“And now I know what you like.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m a vampire.”
“I’m aware.”
“Your heart almost exploded out of your chest when you recognized Boaz.”
“He could have spotted me. Worse, he would have noticed I was with you.”
Cass was on record as finding Ron’s body. Boaz would wonder, once he realized that, what my connection was to her. I was a Low Society necromancer. I couldn’t resuscitate humans, turning them into vampires. Beyond that act of creation, most necromancers didn’t mingle with their offspring. Let alone with someone else’s.
Tapping the side of her nose, she turned smug. “That’s not what your pheromones said.”
“You’ve told me a hundred times that fear and arousal smell the same to you.”
As a vampire, she provoked a prey reaction in her lovers, so it was hardly surprising.
“No, I told you they smell equally good. That’s not the same thing.”
“I’m glad we cleared that up.”
“Can I stay at your place tonight?”
Another inglorious fact about middle-aged vampires I learned from Cass.
They get lonely.
Really, really lonely.
And once they bond to you, they’re like barnacles on the hull of a ship. You have to chip them off if you decide you want them gone.
“I’ll make up Hadley’s room for you.” I hung blackout curtains with Velcro closures in there months ago for this very reason. Right after The Garlic Incident. “Just remember to lock the door so Dad doesn’t walk in on you.”
“I’m a vampire, not an idiot. I know the drill.” She clicked her nails on the rich leather of the steering wheel. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
“Sure.” She would pass out after the sun rose, and we both knew it. “Keanu or Dracula?”
“Not all vampire movies are about Dracula,” she huffed. “And not all vampires wear black silk capes with red lining.”
“True and true.” I snickered. “I’ve seen your closet, though. You own such a garment.”
“It was for Halloween,” she screeched. “Why must I keep telling you that?”
“Halloween two years ago,” I reminded her. “What’s it still doing in there?”
“Who knows?” She tossed her hair. “I’m a very busy vampire, and I don’t have time to properly organize my closet.”
“It’s not like you’re immortal or anything.”
“What a cruel thing to say. We both know I’m not truly immortal.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry enough to let me cop a feel?”
“Nope.”
“You understand I had to ask.”
“I do, and you understand I had to hard pass or I would start waking up with you curled around me during the day.”
“What a lovely mental picture that provides.” Her chuckle was positively evil. “I could teach you all kinds of things before you marry.”
“I’ve waited this long. I might as well let Boaz teach me all kinds of things after we’re married.”
We hadn’t even kissed yet, so after was good. Much better than me learning ahead of time I didn’t do it for him or that he didn’t do it for me. I would feel more confident in my ignorance once there was a ring on his finger and his escape paths has been barred—mine too.
Seven
The flashy car executing a precise three-point turn tickled the back of Boaz’s memory, but he couldn’t place where he had seen it. The blonde behind the wheel also struck a chord, with that electric hair color, but the tinted windows made an ID impossible from this distance. His night vision was good, but the IED that cost him his left leg nearly took his sight in that eye. The charm he kept on a key ring in his pocket helped, but magic could only do so much.
Parker stepped onto the asphalt beside him and watched the taillights until they burned out. “What?”
“That car look familiar to you?”
“I’ve seen it around. Hard to miss a Ferrari.” The sentinel hooked his hands on his hips. “Pretty sure it belongs to a local vampire.”
“Find out who.” A tightness in his gut told him the car or the vampire or both were important, and that same instinct was what saved his life overseas. “I’ve seen it before, but I can’t put my finger on where.”
He preferred motorcycles, but fast cars did it for him too. A sleek beauty like that would have earned a passing glance. Too bad he hadn’t had time for a closer inspection. Maybe next time.
And there would be a next time.
His recollection of where he had spied a fob to match that spendy car guaranteed it.
“I’ll ask Abernathy for the plate number, and we’ll run it.” Parker made a note. “You’re staying out at the old Whitaker place, right?”
Tension shot through Boaz’s shoulders, curving them in an instinctive hunch as if he’d been caught misbehaving instead of engaging in Society-appropriate conduct for a man engaged to the Whitaker matron.
Then again, he had the next best thing to a girlfriend back in Savannah who would be less than thrilled to learn of his travel accommodations, let alone his recent and secret engagement.
Goddess, he was tired.
Dragging a hand down his face, he wished he could hop on his bike, drive home, and pretend none of this had happened. That he could find another way to save his sister, his family, that didn’t cost him the first woman to make him think, to make him feel.
I am so sorry.
“Yeah,” he rasped. “That’s where I’ll be.” He hesitated. “I would prefer a call to a drop-in.”
Parker, who had known him a long time, shook his head. “Her father know you’re staying with them?”
Boaz ran a finger along the inside of the collar of his tee. “Yeah.”
That was the polite answer, the one that didn’t expose how Addie ran the household and not her father.
And he was about as thrilled with the prospect of Boaz for a son-in-law as learning Godzilla was rampaging through their small town.