I rapped on Will’s door, crossed myself, swore that I would lay off the pinwheels and lay on the treadmill, and tried to chase away the I’m-responsible-for-almost-killing-everyone-I-know vibe. By the time I was able to talk myself off the proverbial ledge and out of my pity party hat, I realized that I was standing in front of Will’s door, still knocking, door still tightly closed.
I dropped my arm, flexing my now-bruised knuckles and pressed my ear to the cool wood, holding my breath, listening.
Nothing.
“Sampson?” I hissed against the door hinge, hoping my throaty whisper would sail through the miniscule crack and directly to Sampson’s canine ears. “Sampson, are you in there?”
I glanced at my watch and told myself that Sampson was obviously just out grabbing a before-the-moon-rose bite, but something—a tiny, niggling bit of doubt—inched at my periphery.
“No,” I scolded myself. “He’s innocent.”
If I were a true private eye—one of those gun toting, leather wearing rebel chicks—I would have spun on my heel and jumped on to my Harley, then beaten some answers out of a low-life in a bar somewhere to locate Sampson and our unsub.
But I wasn’t that girl.
I might have better aim now, but my wardrobe was full of synthetic materials and my head was a cavernous hollow in the “prove Sampson innocent” department. And motorcycle rides made my privates hurt.
Instead, I gave a dejected sigh, turned on my heel, and sunk my key into my own lock. I expected the usually loose-hinged door to pop open, but it stuck. I pushed it and it moved—slowly. I felt the small stirrings of panic starting in my limbs.
“Nina?” I called, imagining the non-look in her vacant eyes as her dead—dead for real this time—body sat slumped against our front door. “Nina!”
My heart clanged like a fire bell when the door was yanked open and Nina blinked at me, her face set in what I had come to know as her “what the hell is it now?” look.
“What?”
I fell into her, wrapping my arms around her, relishing the chill I felt as her skin touched mine. She shook me off her.
“I thought you were dead.”
She cocked her head, a waist-length lock of glossy black hair tumbling over her collarbone. “That’s sweet.”
“I thought your body was crushed against the door, pinning it shut.” I peered around the door. “What was crushed against the door, pinning it shut?”
Nina pulled me in by my wrist, her eyes lighting up with her grin. “Tah dah!” Her spokes-model arms were gesturing toward a tower of cardboard boxes.
I pointed. “What’s that?”
Nina’s grin didn’t falter. “It’s a hibachi. And a barbecue set. And a Kiss the Cook apron. We should have more barbecues.”
“I don’t cook and you don’t eat. And aren’t you afraid of fire?”
She shrugged, noncommittal. Her eyes focused on the stack and she plucked a smaller box from the tower. She gave it a curious sniff, then a shake, and finally ripped off a string of packing tape.
“Yes!” she hissed, dropping the box. “I’ve been waiting for this forever!” Nina slid off three sheets of bubble wrap and pointed some bizarre-looking electronic gun at me.
I ducked.
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s a label maker, silly.” She had the thing on now and was furiously tapping the tiny keyboard. She grinned when a glossy strip of white tape pooped out the muzzle end, the name SOPHIE LAWSON in heavy black ink. She slapped me with the tape.
“Thank you. I always wondered why we never wore name tags at home.”
Nina continued her tapping on the keyboard. “This is going to make everything so handy. I figured as long as I’m stuck here at home, the least I can do is get organized. Getting organized has been my New Year’s resolution every year since 1937.”
“What happened in 1937?”
She rolled her eyes and slapped a CHACHA name tag on the dog. “Let’s just say I know exactly where Amelia Earhart landed. She was such a troublemaker,” she grunted.
“And on that incredibly awkward note, what is all this about?” I gestured toward the boxes.
“I told you, I’m getting organized.”
I raised my eyebrows and Nina frowned, her lower lip popping out. “It’s either this or sit in this apartment, staring at the walls and going bat-shit crazy. And don’t tell me I can go out at night. You know what goes on at night? Nothing. Nothing! A woman can only slink through Poe’s so many times before all the stupid brooding vamp-men start looking the same.”
“And a rollicking good day to you, too,” Vlad said, pushing through the front door with a laundry basket on his hip. He shimmied through the two-foot gap Nina’s boxes allowed and I gaped at his threadbare T-shirt, at the baggy cargo shorts that exposed his marble-white legs.
Then I clapped a hand over my mouth and tried not to laugh.
“I didn’t know the Vampire Empowerment Movement allowed shorts. Aren’t they distinctly non-vampire?”
Vlad glared. “Bite me.” He flopped down on the couch with his laundry basket and began plucking out socks. I didn’t know what was more shocking: Vlad without his stupid ascot or Vlad doing laundry.