Wolf at the Door

chapter Forty-four



“You’re going to have to answer some questions,” the cop who lived with the vampire queen told them.

Whoa. Edward was still reeling from the intros, never mind the murders. Not that he thought murders should go on anybody’s back burner. But a lot of shit had been going down lately. Murders just made it grittier.

He was so proud of Rachael . . . she was aces at everything, absolutely everything she did, and playing diplomat with the undead was the least of it.

She’d knocked on the door, cool as you please, and when the zombie answered, she was all, “Hey, how are ya?” and “Have you met my friend Edward?” and “Do you think we could talk to the lady of the house?” All relaxed and polite! Like this was an everyday thing for her!

Which it might be. He had no idea what her life in Massachusetts had been like, but he planned to find out. Because apparently, Cape Cod was infested with werewolves! And really, it explained so much . . . all that numb shit people usually put on tourists was probably numb werewolf shit.

Then . . . then! Off they go, and Edward wasn’t sure what he was expecting—nothing like a throne room, natch, but something special, like a big fancy living room with thrones instead of sectional couches . . . at the very least, something like that. He was not expecting an industrial-sized kitchen with fruit scattered everywhere and three—three!—blenders cranking out fruit smoothies every ten seconds.

So that’s how he ended up drinking a strawberry-banana smoothie with the queen of the vampires and her ilk at five o’clock in the afternoon.

Right, he’d almost forgotten . . . it was only afternoon, but all the vampires were up! None of them knew they were supposed to lie in their coffins and do impersonations of dead people until full dark. They must not be reading the right legends.

Oh, and can we tell the studio audience that the vampire queen’s lair is also a COMPLETE BABE FACTORY? Because it is!

First he got a look at the one Rachael had referred to as Jailbait. And yep, she was. Looked it, anyway; God (and maybe the vampire queen) only knew how old she really was. Long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail that ended in the middle of her back. A sleek black headband keeping her bangs out of her eyes. A dark red pleated skirt, spotless white blouse (a good trick in a kitchen that had fruit everywhere), red cardigan, spotless white tights, little tiny black flats. And that face! Zow. Pale, perfect, with luminous dark eyes that were almost as pretty as Rachael’s.

Yeah. And that was one vampire. One.

He’d seen the pregnant woman before, of course, and found out her name was Jessica. It turned out she was one of the only two “normal” ones in the bunch. (Three, if you counted the baby, but who knew what was going to come rocketing out of her?) Except Jessica wasn’t just Betsy’s friend, she was sort of like Bruce Wayne . . . Edward had gotten the impression that she funded at least some of their operation with her own money.

Oh, and Betsy. Yeah, Betsy. That was the name of the queen of the vampires. Yet another illusion, shattered.

“I am pleased to meet Your Dark Majesty,” he’d said, all formal and everything (he’d practiced), and the dark majesty started laughing so hard she choked on her smoothie, and Jessica had to bang her on the back four or five times.

When she could talk, she’d greeted him with, “What’s it like, being one of the biggest geeks in the world?”

And he’d come back with, “Back off, you harpy. Why don’t you go pound some strawberries straight up your nose?”

And she’d liked that. She laughed! And her underlings had laughed, too.

The other normal person turned out to be the father of Jessica’s baby . . . and a cop! Edward was filled with admiration. The queen’s minions came from all walks of life (and death). Her info pipeline must be as wide as it was deep. Plus, her husband was Dark Dude! And if Dark Dude made less than ten million bucks last year, Edward would eat all the candles on the guy’s next birthday cake.

So: rich friends in high and low places, friends with and without pulses, plus her very own zombie army of one (so far).

And that was only what he’d been able to find out in five minutes. He hadn’t even tried to find any of that out. He felt lucky to have retained even that info; he was having a very hard time keeping from geeking out.

Every time he realized, every time the simple home truth tried to emerge that he was hanging out with vampires (and their queen!) and a werewolf (who he’d had sex with a lot!) and a zombie (who was just the nicest guy you could ever meet) and a homicide detective (who not only had knocked up his girlfriend but was fine with his baby growing up in this environment) and someone born during the Civil War (the f*cking Civil War!), every time those truths started to emerge, he had to fight the impulse to utterly geek out.

Don’t you dare. It’ll embarrass Rachael. And yourself! And Rachael.

So many questions. So little time. Must . . . squash . . . inner . . . nerd.

So in an attempt to get ahold of himself, to act like an adult, or at least someone so cool they weren’t tempted to nerd up during Smoothie Time, in an attempt to somehow bring all that to heel, he’d blurted, “Too bad about all those murders, huh?”

And from there, it had stopped being silly and started being scary.