Bittersweet Blood (The Order #1)

Some other sort of reanimated corpse, then. Just how many kinds were there? Taking a deep breath, she opened the file.

But instead of reading, she sat back in her seat. She’d been doing her best not to think of Christian, but her best wasn’t particularly good. When she closed her eyes, he was there, in her mind, as she’d last seen him—six-foot-four of half-naked vampire.

Her first ever kiss had been with a freaking vampire. What was it with her? She couldn’t even fall for a normal guy.

She opened her eyes. It was lunchtime, the college library was busy, and they were everywhere—nice normal men, some of them even good looking, and none of them vampires. She banished Christian to the back of her mind, picked up the first sheet of paper in the file, and started to read.

When she got to the end, she wasn’t any closer to the truth than before. The file just contained the evidence Christian had spoken of, including a coroner’s report stating cause of death. Kathryn Collins had died of a broken neck at the site of the accident.

The next sheets were copies of newspaper articles, one about the accident, and a second relating to the disappearance of the body, which had been taken from the morgue the day after she died. Nobody knew why, and no clues were ever found.

What hit Tara hardest was that Kathryn Collins died leaving no family. Her parents were dead and she’d had no siblings. None. Where did that leave Tara as her niece?

Absolutely nowhere.

She rubbed at her forehead to ease the dull ache throbbing behind her eyes. This information brought her no closer to finding out who she was or where she came from.

Frustrated, she went to close the file and noticed Graham’s business card. Without giving herself time to think, Tara pulled out her cell phone and punched in the number.

After a couple of rings, he picked up. “What?”

He sounded grumpy, and she almost put the phone down. Instead, she forced herself to speak. “Hello, it’s Tara—Tara Collins.”

He was silent for a moment. “Tara, sorry, I was asleep—not quite with it.”

Tara glanced at her watch; it was almost one o’clock.

“Hey, I work nights,” he said as if reading her mind.

Of course he would work nights—after all, he worked for a vampire. “Sorry I woke you.”

“No problem. You want to talk?”

“Please.”

“Where are you?”

She told him.

“There’s a coffee shop just round the corner,” he said. “Ginelli’s. I’ll meet you there in forty minutes.”

…

The place was clean, but basic, made good coffee, cheap food, and catered almost exclusively to students. With his long, elegant frame dressed in a silver gray designer suit and a dark blue shirt, Graham appeared like some exotic creature who’d wandered in by mistake. Tara in jeans and a jumper felt scruffy next to him.

He smiled as he sat down. “So, you want to know all about vampires.”

“Actually, I’d prefer to forget that they even exist. I guess that’s not going to happen, is it?”

“No, probably not.”

“Are you allowed to talk to me? You’re not breaking any code of secrecy.”

“I can tell you, but they’d have to kill me, sort of thing?” He shrugged. “There is a code. Humans who get involved with vampires either don’t speak of it or they don’t survive very long.”

“So why are you talking to me now?”

“Christian told me to tell you whatever you wanted to know.”

“But why?”

“Maybe because you need to believe in order to find out what happened with your aunt, but I don’t think that’s it. I think he likes you.”

Tara stopped stirring her coffee. “You do?”

“I do, and that’s not something I’ve come across in the five years I’ve known him. Oh, I’m not saying he’s celibate or anything, but he doesn’t do relationships.”

“We’re not having a relationship.”

“No?”

“I just feel that if I’m going to keep him on as an investigator—and I’m not sure that’s going to be the case—then I need to understand what he’s like, what I can expect.”

“So, ask away.”

Tara took a sip of coffee, stirred it some more. She wanted to know everything, but that wouldn’t sound very cool.

“What are they? Where do they come from? Are they a different species or were they once human? Do—”

Graham held up a hand, a slight smile on his face. “That’s enough questions to start with. I’m not sure what they are, and I’m not sure they do either. I once asked Christian, and he said all they knew was that they were descended from an original group, but no one knows where that group came from, or if they do, they aren’t telling. But I do know Christian was once human. A long time ago.”

“How long? How old is he?”

“I’m not sure exactly. He was born sometime in the Middle-Ages, so over five hundred years, but he doesn’t talk about it much.”