Vlad’s eyes widened. “Do you know one with mausoleum space?”
“Look, just wrap it up and give me fair warning the next time you plan on bringing the fang gang around.” I looked over his shoulder, eyeing the assembled vamps as they flipped through magazines and stuck skinny straws into their blood bags, à la Capri Sun. “You know I’m pro-vamp and I support the movement,” I glanced back at Vlad’s ascot and black-painted fingernails. “At least most of it. But Alex and I have some important business to discuss tonight.”
“The angel is back?”
Vlad’s eyebrows went up, but I stopped him before he could comment. “Yes. But this is just business—another case. So, can you wrap it up?”
“Geez,” Vlad said with an eye roll. “I can’t wait until I get my own place.”
“Not until you’re two hundred,” I muttered parentally as I followed him back into the apartment.
I set my bag down and nodded—graciously, though nervously—to Vlad’s vampire friends as they gathered up their trash and filed out the front door, Vlad in tow. I gave them a polite finger wave and then raced to the bathroom, telling myself that I was freshening up as a polite hostess and nothing more as I dabbed on a drywall layer of deodorant and slapped on some Siena Sunset lip stain. I undid the bun on the top of my head and my hair fell in soft, curled tendrils that swooped romantically around my face and stuck up like wheat grass in the back. I spent the next eight minutes pleading with said wheat-grass hair and finally finagled it in a downward direction with a handful of centuries-old Dippity-do that I found in the back of the medicine cabinet.
Deeming myself cosmetically presentable, I went back to the kitchen and unloaded the armful of takeout containers onto the dining room table, trying to arrange them artfully. If I couldn’t cook, the least I could do was arrange takeout beautifully. I finished off my Hang chow bounty with a meager-looking daisy stuck in a water glass. Not exactly The Slanted Door, but it would do.
I sucked in an anxious breath when I heard the lock tumble on the front door. My heart gave a little pitter of warmth that dropped down into my nether regions and I imagined myself gripping Alex by the lapels and dragging him into the living room, lip to passionate lip. Instead, I crossed my legs and forced myself to look nonchalant.
“Oh,” I sighed when I opened the door. “It’s you.”
Nina gave me a sour look. “Nice way to greet your roommate.”
I wrung my hands. “It’s just that I was expecting Alex.”
Nina gaped. “Don’t tell me you gave him a key now, too!”
I wagged my head and Nina arched an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t sure you were interested in getting involved with him again.”
“What are you talking about? We’re just two old friends meeting for dinner.”
Nina sniffed at the air. “Hang chow?” She sniffed again. “And you sprang for the prawns chow fun.”
“I like prawns.”
Nina squinted and pointed at my pursed lips. “And that’s Siena Sunset. That’s name-brand product. You don’t shell out for shrimp and name-brand product for someone you’re not getting involved with. I bet you even shaved your legs.”
I bit my lip—whoops.
I sighed, a meager attempt to center myself. “I’m not exactly getting involved. I’m helping him with a case.” And possibly out of his clothes.... I put my hands on my hips. “And I thought you were anti-Alex.”
“I’m not anti-Alex. I’m pro-love. You’d be surprised how pro-love one becomes when they’re not getting enough blood to their personal parts.”
“So love is all about what gets to your personal parts?”
Nina licked her lips and winked. “Honey, love can be about anything having to do with the personal parts.”
“Silly me. I thought it was about the heart and all that malarkey.”
Nina waved a dismissive hand, twisting her glossy dark hair around her finger. “Eh, it’s all the same after a while.” She yanked open the fridge door and rooted around for a blood bag, then pulled herself up onto the kitchen counter and kicked off her shoes, aiming them into the dining room.
“So”—she took a long sip that crumpled her blood bag—“back to you and Alex.”
“A case,” I reiterated. “That’s all this is about. Shrimp chow fun, name-brand lip gloss—which was a free sample by the way—and that’s it. Just a case.” I was talking so loudly I was beginning to convince myself. “He’s coming over so we can discuss the particulars.”
“Discuss the particulars?” Nina’s lips went into a sleazy half-grin. “Something tells me I know the particulars you’re interested in... .”
“Uh, hello?”
Alex was standing in the open doorway, head cocked, eyebrows raised. I sucked in a traumatic breath, my body not knowing whether to die of embarrassment or of sheer desire.