“Hey, mate,” Will said.
Vlad sucked a leftover splatter of blood from his fingertip and pointed at me. “Sophie’s over there. I need to get ready for my meeting.”
Vlad disappeared into Nina’s room, shutting the door softly behind him. Will looked from the door to the torn blood bags still dripping on the coffee table. The alarm was evident on his face. He held me by the shoulders and looked me up and down, finally tilting my neck. “You okay, love? Did he, uh”—Will bit his lips, trying to choose his words—“hurt you?”
Oh! My guardian angel!
I crossed my arms. “Some Guardian you are. I could have been fang food and you’d come sauntering in here asking if I was okay, love.” I feigned Will’s English accent.
Will narrowed his eyes. “I’m a very good Guardian, which is why I didn’t embarrass us both by rushing in here all ‘good angel’ on you. I knew you weren’t in any real danger.”
The “good angel” jab stung. While most women would adore the fact that two incredibly attractive men moved Heaven and Planet Earth (sometimes quite literally) for their personal protection, the “angel” versus “Guardian” barbs got quite old.
“Besides, I’m here for Nina.”
Let’s get one thing straight: I like Will Sherman. He’s attractive in that sandy surfer with a head full of completely mussable blond-brown hair kind of way; in that sun-kissed skin, English accent, “mind the gap” sort of way. And I’ll admit, in a few instances of utter weakness, I have felt a certain below-the-belly-button twinge when he smiled and his eyes did that mischievous little crinkle thing, or when he said something adorable and Englishy, like “Let’s have a lag-ah and watch telly at the pub.” So I like him, yes. He’s my Guardian—and not in that “until you’re eighteen” sort of way, but in an “until the balance of power has been restored between the good and the fallen, I will protect you” kind of way. Which, when you really get down to it, is hard not to like. But I don’t love him. Which is why getting a tiny twinge of jealousy pricking at my spine was a completely unnecessary surprise.
I felt my eyebrows disappear into my bangs. “Nina? Why are you looking for Nina?”
Will held up a collection of DVDs. “I’m returning her Entourage set.”
Again, I repeat: I don’t love Will. So I am chalking up the cold wash of relief that flooded over me at the presentation of the Entourage episodes as relief that Nina’s DVD collection could once again be complete, rather than the idea that my roommate was making moves on my Guardian.
“I’ll be sure she gets them.” I held out my hands, silently praying that Will couldn’t feel the heat that wafted from me.
Will clapped his hands over the DVD spines and pushed past me. “That’s okay. I’ll wait.” He pulled out a dining-room chair and plopped down. He kicked his feet up on the dining table and crossed his legs at the ankles, displaying his bright red-and-yellow Arsenal Football Club socks.
“Nice socks.”
Will beamed. “Gift from Mum.”
“Get your feet off my table.”
“Ooh, you’re snarky. So who are we after this week?”
“What?”
I followed Will’s honey-colored eyes to Vlad, who had changed into a crisp white shirt, dark brocade vest, and silly-looking ascot. His black hair was slicked back in a precise hair helmet that showed off the deep widow’s peak that he and Nina—and most members of the LaShay clan, I expected—shared. He had a stack of flyers under one arm and was trying to wrangle a handful of VERM protest signs in the other.
“We are not ‘after’ anyone,” Vlad said, setting his signs against the table and rearranging the poof of his ascot. “We’re simply planning a silent protest of Edie Havenhurst’s new book, Fendi and Fangs.”
In one fell swoop Nina pushed through the front door, ditched her size-of-Guatemala shoulder bag and her sky-high booties and landed elegantly on the couch, her lifeless body not making a sound. She pulled up onto her knees, her grin somewhere between excited and maniacal, her coal black eyes wide.
“Ohmigod! I love Fendi and Fangs! I think it’s even better than Dooney, Bourke, and Buried.” Nina leaned over and pulled a worn paperback from underneath the couch cushions, holding it up like a prize. “I love, love, love Eliza Draconie. She’s the reason I went blond.”
Nina had taken her waist-length glossy Prell hair from her supernatural inky black to a sun-kissed California blond. Today she was wearing it in two long, skillfully mussed braids, topped off with a knitted gray beanie and a pair of heavy black-rimmed eyeglasses. Paired with the aforementioned boat-necked Balenciaga, Nina looked like a sexy Calvin Klein ad. Should I attempt the same look, I’m quite sure I would have looked like I had just walked off the set of a “Be Kind to Your Local Librarian” ad.
Nina jabbed a finger at me. “And, by the way, walking into a conversation about a book I love has totally saved your ass.”