“Crap!” I muttered, fists on hips.
I padded down the hall and popped my head into the last room on the right: Mr. Sampson’s bedroom. Before I realized it I was in the room, my toes disappearing into the lush, mocha-colored carpet. I tiptoed to the bedside, palming the soft fabric of the bedspread: Calvin Klein Home Collection. Egyptian combed cotton. One thousand thread count—if I had to guess. I was very accurate because by that time I was lying on my back, making snow angels in Mr. Sampson’s silky sheets. Sinking my head in his luscious, down-filled pillows. All the tension was seeping out of me and I felt the heaviness in my limbs, the dull ache of my bruised skin and healing muscles. It was while I was reveling, rolling around in my Goldilocks moment that I looked up, seeing Lucy standing in the doorway.
I rolled over onto my stomach and grinned sheepishly. “I was just looking for clues.”
Lucy crossed her arms in front of her chest, her expression unreadable. “So, where’s the wolf?”
I sat up. “What?”
“Your boss. The wolf. Where is he?”
“Uh … how did you know about Mr. Sampson?”
Lucy crossed the room, and we were eye to eye, hers set and hard. “Get up,” she said.
I swallowed, my eyes dropping to her neck. Clean. Scrubbed pink. No puncture. No cuts.
“I thought you said Vlad—”
“Shut up!” Lucy shouted.
“Lucy—” I went to reach out to her, but suddenly my teeth were rattling in my head, my whole body receiving a ridiculous surge of electricity. I felt my blood boil, every hair on my body standing up on edge.
When my teeth stopped chattering, I looked up at Lucy, incredulous. “You Tased me?”
She smiled, giggled girlishly, and pressed one hand against her mouth. “That was neat.”
“I don’t understand.”
Lucy’s hand dropped to her side. She was still smiling at me, and for the first time, I noticed her two pointed incisors. They were longer and thinner than the fangs every other vampire I knew sported, and a weird, pale yellow.
“Caps,” she said, her tongue darting out of her mouth and licking the pointed edge of her left fang. “For now.”
“Vlad wouldn’t change you, would he?”
Lucy’s smile dropped. “No. But I don’t need him to now. And once I’m changed—” Lucy used her thumb to kick on the Taser again, a crackle of blue light zipping across the metal tines. I automatically shrunk back. “Vlad is going to be the first vampire I tell.”
“Who’s going to change you?” I wanted to know. “There isn’t a vamp in this town who’s going to cross that line.” There isn’t a vamp in this town who’d want to spend eternity with this whiny little twit either, I thought.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Lucy asked me.
“Yeah,” I said, “I would. That’s why I asked.”
Lucy stamped her black-booted foot. “Shut up!”
“Or what?” I challenged.
Lucy flipped the button on the Taser and my stomach dropped. “Or I’ll Tase you again.”
Well, she had me there.
“What do you want, Lucy? What do you want from me?”
Lucy grinned, the Taser gun held steady in her outstretched hand. “I don’t want anything from you,” she said. “It’s what I’m going to get for you.”
“Huh?” I asked.
“There’s a bit of a price on your head, Lawson.”
I gulped. Lucy was working with Parker? “Are you an angel, too?” I said slowly.
Lucy furrowed her brow when I heard the lock tumble on the front door. “Sophie?” I heard a familiar man’s voice sing. “Miss Lawson?” Then the unmistakable sound of footsteps clattering across the foyer’s marble entryway.
As Lucy cocked her head to listen, I saw my chance. I sprung on her, going chest to chest, my arms tightening around her waist, pinning them to her sides. I heard the Taser clatter to the floor; heard the “ooaf!” of air that came out of Lucy’s purple-lipsticked mouth when my body collided against hers. We clattered to the floor, me on top of her, her thrashing wildly, angrily, her black boots pushing against Mr. Sampson’s expensive comforter.
“Let me go!” Lucy groaned.
“Hello?” I called. “Who’s there? Help! Please, I need help!”
Lucy struggled against me and then lurched up, her lips locking against my neck, her fake fangs pressed hard against my skin. I stared down incredulously. “Are you trying to bite me?”
Lucy bit harder, and I struggled against her, the irony of living with a vampire and being bit by a human just an inch away. I let one arm go and used the heel of my hand to push against Lucy’s forehead, working to peel her and her fake teeth off of me. “Stop biting me!” I yelled at her.
“It’s okay, Sophie,” I heard. “It’s the police.”
I gave Lucy a hard smack on the side of the head, and she unhitched herself from me. I scrambled from on top of her toward the bedroom door. “I’m here! I’m in here!” The words were barely out of my mouth before Lucy was on top of me again, sitting on my back and grabbing fistfuls of my hair.