La Vida Vampire

“Waves would’ve swamped it.”


“Maybe, but it won’t hurt to see if there’s a boat missing from the neighborhood. See if there were splinters in Yolette’s body.”

“All right, I’m convinced it’s possible,” Saber said with a small smile. He took my hand and tugged to get me moving. I worked at not hyperventilating when he kept his hand snug around mine. “So we’ll call March right now?”

He sighed. “First thing in the morning.”

“But Etienne’s had days now to cover his tracks,” I protested as we neared the Bridge of Lions.

“Yes, but since the murder, the neighbors have been watching him every second he’s outside the house or on the beach.”

Saber waggled his brows.

I pictured Shelly, then a neighbor like Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched, and grinned. “I take it these are nosy neighbors?”

He gave my fingers a squeeze. “Civic-minded. March said dispatch is sending deputies out there at least once a day.”

I chuckled and matched his steps as we crossed the street. The bank parking lot, shrouded in shadows on my right, reminded me that Etienne was our vandal as well as our murderer.

“Etienne trashed my truck, too.”

“Like you said, it was a diversionary tactic, and so was planting evidence at Gorman’s house.”

We passed a Greek restaurant and small shops closed for the night, and I fished in my skirt pocket for my keys. Only steps from home, I wrinkled my nose at the still-lingering coppery odor. Saber gave me a sideways glance.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, holding his hand out for my keys.

“The blood smell is still here, but there’s not a drop of blood on the sidewalk, the stoop, or the walls.”

“Could be some of Gorman’s blood soaked into the soil.” Saber pointed to a planter box nestled against the sidewalk wall. As he unlocked the door, I leaned over the neatly cut shrubs and native lantana and sniffed. “It could be in the dirt,” I conceded, straightening, “but the scent is awfully strong. Like if an artery or vein were opened. You can’t smell it at all?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “No. Don’t take this the wrong way, but is there a chance you’re imagining the smell?”

“As in the power of suggestion?” I challenged him, fists on my hips. “No. It’s too similar to the blood smell on Yolette and on my truck.”

“Then there has to be an explanation,” he said, pocketing my keys and stepping over the threshold.

“Wait, are you saying you believe me?”

“Come here.” Saber came back to the stoop, caught my hand, and gave me a gentle tug up the single step. In another second he’d kiss me right there in the doorway. I saw it in his eyes as cobalt darkened to midnight blue. A sound between a crack and pufft came from the plaza, and Saber’s eyes widened as I lurched into his arms, a blaze of burning pain in my right shoulder.

As he pulled me through the door to safety and laid me in the hall, cursing all the way, I had only two fears: that the shooter was coming for Saber and that the bullet in my shoulder was silver.





EIGHTEEN


I’d never been shot, so I didn’t know what physical symptoms to expect from silver in my body any more than I knew exactly what to expect from sex.

Except I didn’t figure sex would hurt as much.

Turned out the bullet wasn’t silver. It was plain lead, shot from a .22 rifle, according to Saber, who saw it come out of my shoulder and pling into a surgical steel bowl. From there, an officer from the St. Augustine Police Department took custody of the slug as evidence.

Saber insisted on staying with me in the treatment room. The same doctor who ’d changed out my GPS tracker was on duty, and, because my vampire body was already healing the wound, the doc decided to remove the bullet on the spot in the ER. Facedown on the exam table, I cringed when the doc cut away the blouse of my Minorcan costume and my bra, squirmed when the nurse cleaned the wound. The scent of my own blood might ’ve made me woozy, but the doc smelled of lime cologne, antiseptic, and pine cleaner. A freaky combination, but an effective distraction. Of course, Saber stroking the back of my legs from knee to ankle during the impromptu surgery was darned distracting, too.

We left the ER just over an hour after we ’d arrived. I wore a blue cotton hospital gown over a bulky bandage and my costume skirt. Saber wore a scowl so fierce it sent a young ER clerk scuttling back to his desk. The crime scene still crawled with activity when we returned to the condo building. Saber ’s hand at the small of my back, subtly guiding me through the onlookers and some press, was reassuringly warm.