It was the next morning and being a vampire with no need of sleep, I spent the midnight hours checking out the town, frowning at the all beautiful clothes locked behind plate glass and CLOSED signs, and ultimately decimating two more blood bags than I needed to while watching Susan Lucci hock obscene-looking Pilates equipment and god-awful jewelry. When the sun finally began to peek through my drawn blinds, I gathered up my wares—rolls of gorgeous, plush fabric that was hand-sewn decades before the word vintage was coined (one of the huge benefits of having a shopping habit that spanned centuries rather than seasons), spun gold thread, bugle beads, and my absolute favorite, number-one must have: a good pair of scissors. I rolled the pair I had across my palm, enjoying their heft, the Swarovski-crusted handle, the ultrasharp blades, and the swirled-letter engraving there: Not friend, sister. Love always, Sophie.
It gave me a little pang when I ran my fingers over the words. Sophie Lawson is my San Francisco roommate and though so fashion-challenged it’s terminal, she means the world to me. In my afterlife I tried hard to never let anything get to me, never let anything attach, but Sophie did both of those things. Besides, her constant bad body luck (the dead were constantly dropping out of the woodwork when she was around) kept me really entertained.
Good entertainment means a lot when you’ve been around for every movie from The Horse in Motion to Spiderman (all iterations).
My hand was hovering over the phone when I heard the thunk-thunk-thunk of someone beating the walls in the hallway, then a low, enraged voice echoing through the hundred-year-old architecture.
“I’m know you’re in there! Get out here!”
I poked my head out into the hallway and groaned when I saw that the burly, angry voice was coming from Emerson, and the thunk-thunk-thunking from her clodhopper shoe as she kicked my next-door neighbor’s door.
“What the hell is your problem, Emerson? You’re going to wake up the entire borough!”
Emerson turned to me, nostrils flaring, eyes spitting fire. “It’s Reginald Fairfield. I know he’s in there,” she said, turning her back to the still-closed door. “I know you’re in there!” She gave the door another wallop—this time with her fisted hand—then a few more swift kicks before I grabbed her around the waist, yanking her back.
“Why are you beating on his door like a maniac?”
“A maniac? A maniac?” She wriggled out of my bear hold. “You were probably in on it! You probably let him into my apartment!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Reginald stole my fabric. The whole bolt! All of it!” She was flailing but hitting nothing, and sweat beaded on her upper lip and at her hairline, matting down her blunt-cut bangs. “He’s a cheat! And now he’s hiding out. He won’t even open the door, the coward.” She launched herself at the door. “You’re a coward, Reginald!”
“Dios mio! Ladies, ladies, what is going on here?”
We both blinked at Felipe, Reginald’s paramour, as he stood in the hallway, tanned legs exposed in his plaid walking shorts, muscles flexed as he carried two stuffed grocery bags against his chest.
A new rage roiled through Emerson’s body, the heat coming off her in waves. I held my nose and wrapped an arm around her before she lunged at Felipe.
“Nice to see you again, Felipe,” I said, doing my best to secure Emerson but avoid her stink. “Emerson is under the impression that Reginald stole some fabric from her.”
“It’s not an impression!” Emerson screeched.
Felipe just shook his head and clucked his tongue, unaffected. “My Reginald would do nothing of the sort,” he said in his heavily accented English. “Besides,” he continued, his dark eyes taking in Emerson and her cardboard-colored dress, “Reggie would not use your fabrics. They are so . . .” He let the word trail off, the disgust on his face finishing his sentence.
“He didn’t steal it to use it, he stole it to f*ck me up!”
“How do you know that Reginald was the one who stole your fabric?” I asked Emerson.
She gritted her teeth and spat through them. “He came over last night. Both of them did. We had a glass of wine, and Reginald was touching the fabric, admiring it.”
“He was just trying to be nice,” Felipe clarified, shifting his shopping bags.
“I got sleepy. They must have drugged me. I fell asleep—probably didn’t even lock the door after they left. And when I woke up—gone! The whole bolt. And now the damn coward won’t even open up the door and confront me.”
“Pshhh!” Felipe let out a dismissing puff of air. “Reggie is just a hard sleeper.” He handed me a bag and plugged his key into the lock. “Reggie,” he sang as we trailed behind.
I heard the bag clatter to the hardwood floor first, a jar of marinated mushrooms shattering, the oil oozing toward my shoes. Then I heard Felipe, heard the air squeeze out of his lungs. I didn’t have to see his face to know that it was twisted in horror, and as pearl white as mine.
“Oh! Oh!” He clutched his chest and I set my bag down, then gently pushed him aside. And if I hadn’t seen it before, I would have screamed, too.
A body. Reginald.
A loop of fabric was wrapped around his neck, pinching tight as he hung from the rafter. His head lolled forward as if he had just fallen asleep. But his eyes were open, bulging. They were already clouded and dull. His skin was mottled purple and he swayed an inch this way, an inch that way, his shoes scraping across the glossy finish of the cherry-wood table underneath him. Each time his body moved, the rafter he was tied to groaned. The scrape of his feet and the groan of the rafter seemed like the only sounds in the entire world and I remembered, far before I was turned, my father sitting with me as a child while I held my grandmother’s hand. She lay in bed, wilted, her body ravaged by sickness.
“She’s gone now,” my father said as his hand glided over her eyes.
I squeezed my grandmother’s hand, unwilling to believe, even as sadness locked in my throat. “But how do you know?”
There had been no change in my grandmother from this moment to the last. Not a final word, a sigh—not even a flicker of her soul as it passed through her body.
“The silence,” my father said simply, standing. “It’s dead silence.”
That was what surrounded us now in Reginald’s apartment—dead silence, punctuated only by the scrape and groan.
And then the living came through.
“Oh, Reggie!” Felipe slapped his hands to his cheeks and started to scream—a high-pitched, painful wail, tears welling and rolling over his manicured fingers.
“Oh, God,” I whispered.
“That’s my fabric!” Emerson’s voice was a shrill knife cutting through Felipe’s anguish and my own astonishment as I tried to tear my eyes from Reginald. Emerson shoved me aside, pointing to the ragged-edge loops around Reginald’s neck. “That’s why he stole my bolt?”
It actually was god-awful fabric, even for a suicide.
Felipe heaved and began clawing at the table, his clawed hands going for Reginald’s pant legs as I tried to hold him back.
“Emerson,” I snapped, “forget about the fabric and call nine-one-one.”
I held on to Felipe and he crushed against me, finally giving up, crying silently. I could feel his warmth, the thud of his heart—and I couldn’t look at Reginald anymore. He wasn’t just a dead breather. He had been loved.
Emerson was on her cell phone; I could hear her voice, calm and rigid as she talked to the nine-one-one operator.
“Suicide . . . hanging . . . already dead.” She was shielding the phone with her hand, her back toward the body. She looked over her shoulder once or twice and mumbled into the phone.
“We have to get him down!” Felipe sobbed, tearing away from me. “We can’t just leave him there, hanging like that.”
“No,” I said, grabbing a handful of his shirt, yanking him backward. “We have to leave him, Felipe. The police will handle this.” Back in San Francisco, I had tried to pull my roommate away from enough CSI marathons to be pretty familiar with police procedurals.
“We’re going to call the police? But why?”
“They’re already on their way,” Emerson said, waggling her cell phone as if that explained it all.
“Holy f*ck.”
It could have been the slow motion of the whole situation but the two-word sentence sounded like a full monologue. My head snapped to where the deep voice was coming from. It was my direct intent to rip his throat out for interrupting this horrific moment, but when I saw him, the death scene in front of me faded into oblivion and my entire body went rigid, colder than normal, and on complete and utter I-want-to-eat-him-in-a-nonvampiric-way high alert.
He was handsome in that traffic-stopping kind of way, with brown-black hair that was just slightly shaggy and unkempt. The wave of his bangs licked over his eyebrows and framed chocolate-brown eyes that I would happily drown in. His skin was the most delicious shade of non-New York, non-vampire toasty brown, and, I happily noticed, he had the kind of body that made one think of Greek gods or jungle men in loincloths. He had a tribal tattoo running down the length of his well-muscled arm and though I had never been interested in them before, I was suddenly, wholeheartedly pro-ink.
Even from this distance, I could smell the salty, toasted coconut scent that wafted from his skin.
I was actually salivating.
Though it almost physically hurt to tear my eyes from him I did—just for a millisecond—to glance at Emerson. She had gone from open-mouthed stare to stone still, feet akimbo, hands on hips. Her eyes were hard, narrow slits spitting dagger glares toward the man I intended to spend the rest of my afterlife with.
“What the hell are you doing here, Pike?” she spat.
Pike, Pike! She knew his name! Images of harp-strumming cherubs and Vera Wang floated in my mind while his name pinged around my head like the heavenly music it was. Pi-i-i-i-i-i-k-e . . .
And then it stopped.
How did Emerson Hawk, of utter stink and stolen designs know my new beau, Pike? Which is actually kind of a stupid name (unless you’re a fish, natch) but still, it should never have been able to come out of Emerson’s halitosis-filled mouth.
Pike held up an expensive looking camera. “Photo essay for the contest. But . . .”
Emerson pointed. “Reginald Fairfield.”
“I was supposed to shoot the three finalists.”
Emerson cocked out a hip, still pointing. “Meet finalist number three. A photo shoot is not going to happen.” Her voice was remarkably unaffected and I cringed. Maybe I wasn’t the only one without a soul.
“Is something going to be done about—”
But his deep voice was cut off by the wail of sirens and the marching band-like clatter of police officers as they thundered into the building. They spread out, corralling us as crime scene techs surrounded the body and studied the scene.
“We’re going to need to clear the premises.” The police officer didn’t look at us as he said it, but no one dared challenge him. “But don’t go far. We need to take statements.”
Emerson, Felipe, Pike, and I stumbled out into the hallway, keeping our distance from the flurry of activity flowing in and out of Reginald’s apartment. Felipe was quiet, nose a heady red, cheeks chapped from the constant flow of tears. I patted his shoulder awkwardly. He sniffled and shook like a wet Chihuahua.
“I’m really sorry, man,” Pike said slowly.
Felipe continued to stare straight ahead, teeth chattering, but otherwise catatonic.
I heard Pike suck in a sharp breath and jam his hands in his pockets. As a dead man was hanging not thirty feet away, I shouldn’t have noticed the way that motion—hands in pockets—pulled Pike’s jeans just a little tighter over his ass, exposing his perfect, peach-shaped bottom, but I did.
I remembered the sweet, juicy taste of peaches and licked my lips, savoring the memory on my tongue.
Then Pike turned those mesmerizing cozy brown eyes of his on me. “I don’t think we’ve met yet. You must be Nina, right? I’m Pike.” He held a hand out—a big, wonderful hand that made me think of the old adage about big hands and feet—and I slipped my hand into his feeling dainty and demure—which was refreshing when I’m most often referred to as any variant of “soulless bloodsucker.”
I brushed my long, black hair over one shoulder and pulled back my shoulders—or stuck out my breasts, depending on how you looked at it—and pasted on my most beguiling smile. I may be a little short in the soul/life department, but when it came to flirting, I was a star student and Pike warmed to my gaze.
“Yes, I’m Nina LaShay. And this,” I said, touching Felipe lightly on the shoulder. “This is Felipe. He is—was . . .” I choked on the word and Felipe’s eyes went round and heart-breakingly big. “He was with Reginald.”
“Dios mio!” Felipe started again, huffing and tearing at his hair. “Mi osito de peluche es muerte! Muerte!”
One of the paramedics came toward us and snaked an arm around Felipe, talking in a low, soothing voice and leading him away.
Pike shook his head. “Poor guy.”
There was an uncomfortable pause and I briefly thought of Googling “How to flirt at a murder scene.” I decided to go with the tried and true.
“So you’re—Pike?” I could feel my eyebrows scrunching together unattractively and Pike offered a small smile, his eyes completely transfixed on mine. It was like we were speaking our own incredibly sexy language.
I had every intention of making that language clothing optional.
“It’s short for Paikea.”
Well sure, that was better.
“It’s Maori, but I’m actually Hawaiian.”
I was thinking of my Pike, greased up in suntan oil and smelling like coconuts.
“You have quite a strong grip, don’t you?”
I snatched my hand back, embarrassed, wishing for once that I had an ounce of blood to wash a cute crimson blush across my cheeks. Instead I just smiled demurely, glancing at my soulmate through lowered lashes.
“You could probably get out of here, Pike. There’s not going to be any photo shoot. At least I’m not doing one.” Emerson turned on her heel and disappeared into her apartment, slamming the door behind her.
“Ah, Emerson,” Pike said. “A regular breath of vile air.”
He leaned back against the wall, looking very Diesel-commercial chic. His eyes went over my head, scanning the activity in Reginald’s apartment, and I took a quick moment to revel, taking in every inch of this man who should have been a calendar model.
For every month of the year.
I swallowed back the inappropriate desire to engage him in some sultry dirty talk and instead leaned against the wall across from him. I was about to open my mouth, was working up the perfect post-suicide sentence when Pike hitched his shoulder at me and silently walked away.
I fought the urge to growl and then the urge to crawl under my bed and hide. I wasn’t used to people walking away from me—especially not male people. I was working up a reason to follow Pike when Emerson stopped behind me, close enough that her patchouli scent wafted off her and stuck to me. I grimaced, then immediately pasted on an appropriately demure smile.
“This is awful, isn’t it?”
She actually shrugged. “Hate to speak ill of the dead, but the coward was obviously too scared to show his face after he stole my fabric.”
My voice was a hissing whisper. “Are you kidding me? A man is dead, and you’re still focused on your fabric? God, even Pike,” I said, jutting my chin toward him, desperate to feel his name on my tongue again. “A complete stranger feels more for Reginald than you do.”
Emerson shook her head, that gnat-in-her-ear expression on her face. “Pike is no stranger.” She waved her hand in his general direction. “He’s an ex.”
I hoped to God that Emerson meant an ex to Reginald or Felipe because even finding out that the love of my life was gay was preferable to finding out that he may have once been attracted to someone like Emerson. “He hangs around a lot. Kind of can’t get the message.”
I felt my mouth drop wide open. By the pleased purse on Emerson’s lips, I could tell that she knew she’d hit a nerve. She looked about to say something smart but was silenced by an officer carrying a Ziploc bag stuffed with hideous fabric.
Emerson made a tiny puppy sound, then shoved me out of the way. “Where are you taking that? That is my fabric!” she yelled. “I told you he stole it.” She snatched the whole bag out of the officer’s gloved hand and gaped. “It’s ruined!”
The officer snatched the bag back. “It’s evidence.”
“Evidence?” Emerson said. “But it’s mine. I need it for the competition!”
Pike came over to us, getting in front of Emerson and letting the cop scurry away. “Reginald used that fabric to hang himself.”
“Oh, my God,” I whispered.
“Did he use it all? Do I have enough for my garment?”
I swung my head toward Emerson, astonished. “That’s what you’re worried about? Your stupid fabric?”
“We’re in a competition, Nina, or have you forgotten?”
“We’re at the scene of a suicide!” Part of me wanted to give Emerson’s neck a little slash just to see what kind of demon she was. But I could hear her breath, hear the blood pumping from her heart and pulsing through her human veins. My stomach turned in on itself knowing that someone still in possession of her soul could be so callous. “A man is dead.”
“Can you ask someone about the extra fabric?” she asked Pike.
“I’m just a photographer, but I can ask one of the cops. . . .” he said, though clearly uncomfortable as he stepped back.
“I cannot believe you, Emerson. I knew you were a snake but I didn’t peg you for completely heartless. Reginald is dead.”
“And I’m sorry for that,” she said unconvincingly. “But he was still a competitor.”
I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head and for once, I couldn’t think of a thing to say. That seemed to be just fine to Emerson, who shrugged again.
“And then there were two,” she said before walking back toward her apartment.
I was shaking my head, still shocked, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and blinked into the slate-gray eyes of yet another police officer. This one was short and stocky, with tree-trunk legs and a little leather notebook clutched in his baseball-mitt hands. He used the tip of his Bic to scratch at his receding hairline. “Are you the one who discovered the body?”
For some reason, my voice was stuck in my throat so I nodded, dumbly.
“I just need to take a quick statement. Your name and address, please.”
I must have recited everything properly because the cop seemed satisfied. He looked up from his notebook, eyes laser-focused on mine. “What was the state of the body when you first entered the premises?”
I was trying to think of a kind way to say “hanged,” but nothing seemed to soften the blow. “It was, uh, deceased. Hanging. No one touched it, though.”
The officer, whose name badge read Hopkins, raised his eyebrows. “It?”
“The body,” I said. “Reginald. We went in with Felipe and saw him . . . there. Like that. Then . . .” I waved my hand, gesturing to the chaos.
“So, you were with the others when Felipe opened the door?”
“Yes.” It was barely a whisper.
Hopkins wrote something in his little notebook and I wondered briefly why cops always seemed to repeat your answers back to you. “And the others were Felipe, Emerson, Pike, and uh, Nicolette?”
I suddenly drew a huge blank. “I think.”
Hopkins raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I mean, yes.”
Look—we have an impeccable sense of smell, super speed, and no discernible weight. Memory? Strictly breather-class. It’s not good.
Hopkins cut his eyes to me, then to Felipe, who hung back in the hallway, and back to me. He chewed his bottom lip and narrowed his eyes, à la every incompetent cop I’d ever seen on TV. “What was your relationship with Mr. Fairfield?”
I swung my head. “We didn’t have much of one. We were colleagues. In the fashion industry.”
“So you didn’t know anything about Mr. Fairfield’s emotional state.”
I think it is perfectly obvious that Reginald Fairfield wasn’t of sound mind. No one in Easter-colored seersucker could be. But I pegged Hopkins for more of a by-the-book kind of cop rather than a down-the-runway one. “No, I didn’t.”
Hopkins sucked in a long breath, then tucked his pen in his chest pocket. “It’s likely we’ll have some more questions for you later, okay? You’ll want to stay around.” He turned and disappeared into Reginald’s apartment once more, and Felipe rushed toward me, a bottle of water quaking in his hands. He was no longer crying, but his body already looked ravaged from his grief. His shoulders were hunched and his eyes looked hollow and sunk into the redness around them.
“Since we’re not supposed to leave, why don’t you come inside, Felipe? I’m just down the hall.” I looked over Felipe’s shoulder and eyed Pike. “You’re welcome to come inside as well, Pike.” I liked the way his name sounded on my tongue and yes, I did admonish myself for thinking of Pike in my mouth while a team of police officers were cutting a dead man down next door.
I’m only vampire; so sue me.
I led Felipe into the apartment, Pike behind us. Felipe took a small sip from the water bottle and must have rehydrated. He immediately started crying again, full, body-wracking sobs while he wrung his hands and mumbled, his accent becoming thicker and more pronounced with each word. I might be without a soul but I wasn’t without a heart and mine ached for him. I filled a glass of water and pushed it into Felipe’s hands, then slung my arm over his shoulder and led him to the couch. He shivered under my touch.
“You’re freezing.”
“Circulation problem,” I said automatically.
Pike took a seat on the couch and scooted over, giving Felipe room to sit. I caught Pike’s hot chocolate gaze for a second and I was immediately warmed by the sweet concern in his eyes, and taken by the way his lips still looked full and tasty even when the corners turned down in a slight frown. He nodded to Felipe who crushed himself into the couch and heaved an enormous, hiccupping breath.
Through the open apartment door I could see the coroner and his assistant pushing through the crowd, could hear the squeaking wheels of the gurney as they laid Reginald out and wheeled him away. Thankfully, the din of chatter, police radios, and general city noises must have drowned out the dead sounds for Felipe because he sucked down his bottle of water and blinked repeatedly, the tears actually seeming to dry.
Officer Hopkins ambled down the hall and knocked on Emerson’s door. I watched as Nicolette pulled it open, her face a yellow-hued shade of pale, her eyes small and circled by exhausted purple bags. They darted past Hopkins and took in the scene in the hall, skidded over the coroner as he pushed Reginald away. There was a slight terror in her eyes and I could see the pale edges of her lips pulled down as she murmured to Officer Hopkins. When Nicolette disappeared and Emerson took her spot, I took a step forward, my head cocked.
“Your relationship to Mr. Fairfield, miss?”
Emerson blinked quickly and even from across the hall—and by way of my super-vamp sense—I could hear her heartbeat speed up, could hear the sharpness of the shallow breath she sucked in. I crossed my arms in front of my chest, watching, as Emerson licked her lips.
“He was a designer like myself.”
“And you all three live here in this complex? Is it, like, some sort of shared housing or artist co-op or something?”
I watched Emerson’s head swing from side to side, her straw hair brushing her shoulders. “We’re the three finalists in a design competition.” She bit her bottom lip, her eyes flashing and catching mine. “Well, we were.”
“So you’re competitors?” Hopkins tapped the end of his pen against Emerson’s doorframe, the rhythmic tap like a heartbeat. “Was there a lot of stress at this competition? Was Mr. Fairfield not doing well?”
Emerson straightened up, her hands going to the doorframe and gripping. I caught the smallest scent of sweat on the air.
Emerson was nervous.
“The competition hadn’t really started yet. I don’t see why Reginald would have been—would have thought he wasn’t doing well. Maybe Felipe knows more.” Emerson’s eyes crested over Hopkins’s head and she looked at me. “Or maybe Nina knows something.” She glanced at her non-ironic Swatch watch and shifted her weight. “Are we through now? I’ve got to work on my designs.”
Emerson left Hopkins standing in the doorway. He turned on his heel and we were eye to eye—me, standing in my apartment, door flung wide open, spying, and him, narrow-eyed, chewing on the end of his pen. He beckoned for me to come into the hallway.
“Can I help you?”
“Miss LaShay,” he said, shifting his weight in what I was guessing he thought was some sort of imposing manner. “Is there a reason you didn’t mention that you and Mr. Fairfield were direct competitors in this competition?”
I snaked my arms in front of my chest and mirrored Officer Hopkins’s narrow-eyed glare. “I didn’t think it was necessary information.”
“Might have given someone the motive to harm Fairfield, don’t you think?”
“I would think, had he not hung himself.”
Hopkins shot me a slow, appraising gaze. “Just make sure you don’t leave the county, all right? I might have some additional questions for you.”
Something about the way Hopkins kept his watery eyes fixed on me gave me a slight chill. I had every intention of escorting him right out of my apartment until he checked his smartphone, scanned the room, and asked, “Felipe DeLaCruz?”
Felipe turned and raised a small hand. “I am Felipe.”
Hopkins paused then, his flat-balloon face breaking into what passed as a smile. “Pike! Didn’t expect to see you here.”
Hopkins and Pike did that awkward, manly handshake-to-semi-hug kind of thing and I felt my mouth drop open. I made a beeline for them.
“You two know each other?” I hissed.
“Pike does some photography work for us on occasion.” Hopkins raised his eyebrows toward Pike. “Is that why you’re here now?”
“Actually, I was hired by the magazine to shoot the designers.”
Hopkins’s eyes showed a flash of interest. “So you knew the dec—”
I shot a glance over my shoulder and nudged Hopkins and Pike out of the living room, out of Felipe’s direct line of sight.
“Can you not throw around words like deceased and decedent in front of Felipe? That man just lost the man he loved. Can’t you be a little more sensitive?”
The sentence bobbed around in my head and my spine stiffened. My breather roommate was constantly telling me to “be a little more sensitive.” She was usually the one inundated with dead bodies and detectives.
Guess things were starting to rub off.
Hopkins blew out a long sigh and I made a mental note to drop an inhaler off at the police station—the man obviously had breathing issues. Either that or someone along the line told him that sharp breaths were the way to throw a suspect off. I would have laughed, had I not had the sneaking suspicion that I was going to be one of his “suspects.”
“Mr. DeLaCruz?” Hopkins said, edging his way back toward the living room.
I fixed him with a stare, not entirely sure what I was trying to convey. I was angry, suspicious, sad for Felipe’s loss—and, strangely, a little scared.
“So you and Hopkins, huh?”
Pike broke out into a smile that looked wildly inappropriate amongst the background of crumpled tissues and crime scene techs, but it shot a bolt of fire through me just the same.
“Me and Hopkins? It’s not like we were dating or anything. I just bump into him on occasion.”
I nodded.
“So,” Pike said as he followed me into the kitchen, inclining his head, eyes jutting to Felipe and the officer. “What do you think that’s all about?”
“Probably just routine,” I said, suddenly feeling the need to put space between us. “Can I get you something to eat?” I asked him, wishing to God he’d say no since the entirety of my refrigerator’s contents were six O negative blood bags and sixteen varying shades of OPI nail polish.
“No, I’m cool. So what did Hopkins want with you?”
I spun, my body suddenly colder than normal. “He wanted to know what he should buy you for your birthday.”
Pike scrunched his brow and I rolled my eyes.
“Hopkins didn’t want anything with me.”
Pike gestured toward the hall. “You guys were talking for quite a while.”
I pinched my bottom lip, scanning Pike from tip to tail. He was gorgeous, there was no doubt about that. But, could I trust him?
The last time I trusted a good-looking man, he sucked away my blood and my soul. I had learned my lesson.
“It was nothing. He just had some basic questions.” I shrugged, still feeling uneasy.
I peered over Pike’s shoulder to see Felipe on the couch, head in his hands, index fingers pressed against his temples. Hopkins sat across from him, that stupid pen poised over his little leather notepad.
“No one would want to hurt my Reggie,” Felipe moaned. “He was such a gentle soul.”
“Why is Hopkins treating Reginald’s suicide like it was a murder?” I whispered.
Pike shrugged, his gaze following mine. “Maybe there is more to it than we saw.”
By the time Hopkins had grilled us all and the crime scene and cop brigade had left the building, my body was humming. I could still smell Pike in my apartment, his coconut scent just hanging in the air. But there was something else, too—and having spent enough time with it I couldn’t deny it: the stench of death was heavy in the air.
I leaned against my window, watching the taxicabs honking and tourists walking on the street below, watching people going about their everyday lives in the twilight. They moved in sort of an organized chaos, completely unaware that just a few hundred feet away a life had ended and another had changed completely.
I remembered the last breath of life as it seeped out of me. My body fought to hold tight to it and I felt like my insides were burning. But the handsome stranger—his arms—were tight around me and somehow I still felt safe, willing the life to drip out of me as I licked the droplets of blood on his neck. I needed them. The thirst was overwhelming. I was changing; I was becoming someone—something—else, and all around me life went on. My parents sat in the parlor; my siblings, fast asleep in their beds. And I was outside, dying, living, changing, becoming.
An immense sadness washed over me.
I flopped onto my couch and pressed my fingertips to my temples. I didn’t have a headache—it’s physiologically impossible for a vampire to have a headache—but I could almost swear it was on its way.
That’s why I jumped a foot and a half when the goddamn black bird that had taken up residence outside my front window started squawking like the disease-infested winged rodent that it was. I rolled last week’s copy of US Weekly into a narrow tube, flattened myself against the wall, then slammed the magazine against the glass, willing the stupid bird to exit once and for all. I didn’t have the nerve to look.
It’s not that I’m afraid of birds. Hello? I’m a vampire. I’m afraid of nothing! Except maybe sunlight, shoulder pads, and the very real idea that neon and side ponytails are coming back into fashion. But birds? No. They just disgust me. With their beady eyes and their mean, pointy beaks, and those wings. Disease is carried on those wings, I just know it. So the fact that this, this—monster—had the gall to pace my windowsill on a very regular basis, squawking and clawing and generally just making a nuisance of itself, bothered me to no end.
Seriously, I was considering renting a cat.
When a good minute—a silent, non–wing-beating or squawking minute—passed, I took a two-inch step forward and peered around the window molding, an indescribable relief washing over me when all I saw beyond the clear window glass were a few cabs inching along the street and a woman berating a parking meter.
My relieved sigh curdled into a scream as that stupid bird launched itself into my line of sight, squawking and flapping like a murderous maniac, the tips of its wings tapping the glass.
I was reeling backward, vaulting toward the couch when an insistent knock at my door terrified me five times more and I felt every muscle in my body instinctively stiffen. Though my fangs are always exposed, in times of true vampdom—i.e., when an artery needs ravaging or a bartender spills something on my Manolo Blahniks—the fangs extend an extra half-inch causing that frightening scowl you see plastered all over TV. My hackles were up and adrenaline pulsed through me; even my hair seemed to stand on electrified end. My every thought was savagery and a hiss of air sliced through my teeth as I snatched open the door.
I was met with pursed lips.
And a cocked eyebrow.
And an expression completely devoid of terror or shock.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“What? A guy can’t fly across country to see his favorite aunt?” My nephew was standing in the hallway, framed by chintzy yellow hallway light, grinning like I had just won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. His fangs were small but pronounced, pinching against the edges of his upturned lips.
“I’m not your favorite aunt, I’m your only aunt.” I addressed him suspiciously and the smile fell from his face.
“So can I come in or not?”
In the Hollywood sea of vampires with horrible accents, satchels full of graveyard dirt, and the ability to turn into bats—there was one thing they had gotten right: a vampire can’t enter private premises without first being invited. Even if those premises were home to another vampire. I stood aside and opened my arms. “Vlad, you are welcome to come into my apartment.”
Vlad stepped over the threshold, arms crossed in front of his chest. Looming at just over six feet, he looked down at me with one of those noncommittal teenage expressions. A hint of mischief flickered in his dark eyes and I was instantly seized with joy and sadness. Vlad looked so much like his mother—my sister—that it warmed me. But the feeling almost immediately fled because I knew Sonia was dead, would never know that her son was thriving—though undead—or that his Aunt Nina was taking good care of him. She also would never know that Vlad headed up the West Coast division of VERM—the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement—or dressed like a fashionably suicidal cross between Bela Lugosi and Count Chocula.
Maybe it was better that she stayed in the grave.
I jumped forward anyway, enveloping Vlad in a crisp hug. “I’m sorry. I am really happy to see you! But, really, what are you doing here?”
He stepped back in true teenage fashion as though someone would catch wind of the fact that he had shown a modicum of emotion. Vlad may be one hundred and twelve, but he was forever caught in the moody, brooding, obnoxious sentience of a sixteen year old.
And he never picked up his socks.
He threw an Army duffel onto my couch and grinned again. I could tell he just fed by the deep, ruddy pink of his lips.
“I came to visit you!”
Now I crossed my arms in front of my chest and cocked a brow. “What’d you do?”
A sweet innocence flooded over Vlad’s face. “What do you mean?”
I pulled my cell phone from my jeans pocket and poised a finger over the trackpad. “You know I have Sophie on speed dial.” In addition to being my roommate in San Francisco, Sophie is Vlad’s partial guardian by proxy, and my very best friend.
Vlad held up a silencing hand. “Okay, okay. So, there’s some talk that I may have had a tiny indiscretion with a fairy.”
“Fairies are awful!” Though Walt Disney painted them with big, kind eyes and pursed pink lips, anyone who’s met one will tell you that fairies—and pixies, too—are awful little buggers. Mean, sassy, stuck-up.
And some of them bite.
“So you came out here to escape your fairy lover?”
“Actually, I came out here to escape Kale. You think fairies are bad? Try a jilted teenage witch.” Vlad whipped off his coat, showing off a dark strip on his pale white arm. “This just happened. She made the sun rise in our damn apartment. That bitch could have killed me!”
I slung an arm over Vlad’s shoulder. “Oh, she’d never kill you. Just torture you a little. I like her. And I’m glad you’re here.”
Vlad tugged me close in an awkward hug. “Me, too. It’ll be nice to hang here for a bit. No romantic drama, no bodies dropping from the ceiling or crime scene tape.” He flopped down on the couch next to his duffel and I bit my lip, before perching next to him.
“So, it’s not totally drama-free around here.”
“Oh, right because of your little ‘fashion war’ with that guy and—what’s her name? Kenmore?”
“Emerson,” I corrected. “Reginald and Emerson. And the war is pretty much over.”
Vlad gave me an appraising smile. “You won?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Not exactly.”
He quirked a brow. “Someone drop out?”
“More like dropped dead.”
“Dropped on her own or . . .” Vlad waggled his eyebrows in the universal “don’t-make-me-say-it” style.
“What? Are you kidding me? I had nothing to do with it. It was right next door and it looked like suicide.”
“‘Looked like’ suicide?”
“It’s a long story.”
Vlad pulled a blood bag from his duffel, pierced it with a single fang, and started to suck. He emptied the thing and burped loudly before he addressed me. “So you made it look like suicide.”
I turned to look at Vlad full in the face. “Are you seriously asking me if I had anything to do with Reginald’s death? Because I follow the strictest UDA bylaws and even if I were to stray just the slightest”—I held my thumb and forefinger a smidge apart—“tiniest bit, frankly, it wouldn’t be Reginald Fairfield that I’d off. It’d be Emerson Hawk. That woman is vile.”
Vlad’s eyes flashed.
As if on cue, there was another insistent, thundering knock on my door. “You can stay,” I told Vlad as I went to answer it. “Peace and quiet, however,” I said as I snatched open the door. “Died about a week ago.”
Emerson was standing in the hallway, hip out, arms crossed, beady eyes even beadier though they were rimmed with coal and something hideously sparkly. She had actually brushed her hair and it was in a semi-attractive swoop pinned at the base of her skull, and her black gown had an asymmetrical hemline that was so completely last year it was laughable. But still, the dress was impeccably tailored and the ruched drop waist was understated and elegant, wondrously hiding Emerson’s usual Kentucky Fried Chicken and Yoo-hoo paunch. Nicolette was behind her, back toward me as she hunched, managing two beaded purses in one hand while she struggled to lock Emerson’s door.
“Hello, Emerson.”
Her eyes raked over me, her sour expression not changing. “Aren’t you ready yet? Or is that what you’re wearing?”
“What are you talking about? What am I wearing for what?”
Nicolette, having finally gotten the door locked, rushed to Emerson’s side and handed her a heavy ecru card. My stomach sunk as I recognized it.
“The cocktail reception.”
Emerson nodded.
“Someone just died. Are they actually still holding that? Only the completely heartless and macabre could think of going through with any of the competition activities right now.”
“Everything was already booked. They couldn’t cancel at the last minute and Mr. Forbes said that everything would go forward as planned. Except of course, with one less fashion show.”
“You talked to Mr. Forbes?”
Mr. Forbes was the head of the New York Design Institute and whether or not you knew your Vera from your Versace could be overlooked if Jason Forbes was on your side.
A sly grin rolled across her face. “We may have run into each other a time or two at this quaint little coffee bar I frequent.”
I was gritting my teeth so hard I imagined them starting to powder. “You’ve only been in New York a week.”
“Anyway, Jason”—she stressed the name—“thought that the best way to honor Reginald would be to continue on as planned. So, again, are you wearing that? As far as your designs go, it is one of your better ones.”
My nostrils flared and I felt myself shrink back in my fashion-fail skinny jeans, Ugg boots, and tank top.
“Is that your date?” Emerson poked a bony finger into my apartment, aiming at Vlad.
“Nephew.”
Nicolette’s head peeked over Emerson’s shoulder. I saw her cheeks redden when her eyes met Vlad’s.
“Christ,” I groaned. “I’ll see you at the reception.”
The door had barely slammed before Vlad was at my side, smiling and licking his lips. “Who’s the girl?”
“Emerson Hawk is hardly a girl. I don’t even know if she’s human.”
“No,” Vlad groaned. “The other one.”
“That’s Emerson’s sister and A, anyone with even an ounce of Emerson Hawk blood in her is completely and totally off limits to you and your undead little friend down there,” I said as my eyes skipped over his zipper, “and B, you’re on the run from one woman and you’re running out of safe houses. So keep it zipped. I have a party to get ready for.”