Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

Tina’s face practically glowed with pleasure. “Shoot. I’m here for you, anything you need.”

“You know that I’ve been working at the Council office to fill my hours, acting as Jane Jameson-Nightengale’s personal assistant?”

Tina’s expression faltered just the tiniest bit. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“And last month, you asked Ophelia to submit a list of her contacts in the area.”

Tina nodded. “Yes, I got an e-mail from Jane asking for a list of her contacts.”

I pursed my lips. Because Jane specifically said she’d never sent Tina such an e-mail. Something was weird here. And some suspicious itch at the back of my head wouldn’t let me drop it.

“Well, Ophelia responded to that request by sending Jane a pretty rude e-mail.”

Tina cringed. “Well, that’s not good.”

“Yeah, the response e-mail has to go into her disciplinary file,” I said, deliberately leaving out the part where Jane considered the e-mail too minor to punish Ophelia. “We have to document every little thing around here. You know how vampires are about keeping records.”

“Sure.”

“So can you send me a copy of your e-mail?” I asked. “I would print it off from our system, but somehow it got deleted from our server. Our IT department tends to purge anytime someone’s Internet activity gets the least bit suspicious.”

“I’m not sure I still have it,” Tina said. “I empty my in-box pretty often.”

Tina’s expression faltered for just a microsecond. I couldn’t tell if it was annoyance or fear that rearranged her face. From what I’d seen while living at New Dawn, Tina jumped at any chance to prove her loyalty and usefulness to any vampire who crossed her path. Why was she being so slow to jump on an opportunity to do a favor for the head-vampire-bitch-in-charge? Or was she afraid because she’d deleted the e-mail and thought Jane would be upset with her for not saving what could be an important communication?

“Well, just give your in-box a look and see if you can find it,” I said.

“Sure thing!” Tina chirped. “So you know, if you need anything—anything at all—you can always call me.”

“Just make sure Morgan and Keagan are doing OK, and Ophelia. They play it tough, but they’re basically people-shaped marshmallows.”

“I will,” she said. “Talk to you soon, Meagan.”

“Thanks, Tina.”



Andrea was nice enough to drive me home to River Oaks, which gave me time to mull over my conversation with Tina. My chat with Morgan and Keagan had been fun and far less perplexing—student government scandals, Homecoming, follow-up stories on the off-campus fire that amounted to no one knowing where the unidentified bodies came from and no one coming forward to claim missing relatives. But Tina’s information I didn’t know how to process. If Jane hadn’t asked her for the list of Ophelia’s contacts, why would Tina make the request? Could someone else at the Council office have done so through Jane’s e-mail account without her knowing? The Council seemed to have pretty tight IT security, and Jane made it a point not to leave her computer or her office door unlocked. Maybe this was something I should discuss with Ben before I went to Jane with my suspicions. Because that was all I had right now, suspicions, and I didn’t want Jane to think I was some hyperreactive Nancy Drew wannabe and therefore unqualified for this job. Not because I loved my job so much but because I had no idea what she would reassign me to.

I came through the door and called, “I’m home!” before I even thought about it. Georgie and Gabriel were still waiting for Jane and Ben to return from work.

“Dinner’s ready. We’ll sit down as soon as our wayward workaholics get here,” Gabriel told me, taking my bag.

“Did you get all of your homework done?” Georgie asked slyly, bouncing on her toes at the foot of the stairs.

“You know, you could enjoy the fact that I have homework a little less,” I responded, taking the stairs two at a time.

“It’s a cool, breezy fall evening, ripe with potential prey, and you spent your night at a bookstore, typing an essay on the economics of preindustrial England and its impact on literary culture. No, I don’t know if I could enjoy that more,” Georgie tossed back as I cleared the landing.

“Keep it up, and I’ll tell Jane what happened to the creepy china shepherdess in the parlor,” I whispered, just loudly enough for Georgie to hear.

Her jaw dropped. “That was an accident! Well, not so much an accident as a happy coincidence, but— You promised you wouldn’t tell!”

“Did I?” I whispered.

“Georgie, please stop teasing Meagan and set the table,” Gabriel called from the kitchen.

Georgie pointed an imperious finger at me. “This isn’t over!”

Laughing, I hustled into my room. Jane and Gabriel had clearly sunk a lot of money into renovating their upstairs bathrooms, putting luxurious showers even in the guest bath. I turned on the overhead rain shower and combined it with the body jets, sighing as the hot water washed over my skin. This was definitely superior to the communal showers back at the dorm.

I reached for my loofah and the body wash that Iris had mixed up for me, a soothing blend of jasmine and cassis meant to calm my nerves. She’d made something for Ben, too, but he was sticking to some body gel he liked because the commercials made him laugh. I flipped the cap of Ben’s bottle and sniffed. It wasn’t quite his scent, but it held a little bit of him, and I inhaled deeply.

Yeah, I had it bad for this guy.

This was embarrassing.

I stepped out of the shower and slipped into my fluffy blue terry robe; the first adjustment one made to dorm living was never going to bathe without outerwear. Outside, tires crunched over the gravel driveway. Downstairs, I could hear Gabriel on the phone, speaking German with someone. Georgie was taking advantage of her limited video-game time. I opened the door a bit to let the steam vent from the room.

“I’m just going to run upstairs,” Ben called.

I chewed on my lip, considering my reflection, and then dropped the robe.

I walked out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around my chest, steam billowing around me like something out of a 1980s rock video.

Ben had a carry-out blood cup in his hands and was sipping the dregs through a straw. He dropped it onto the floor, making the tiniest splash on the hardwood.

“Hey, are you just getting back from work?” I asked brightly, adjusting my towel.

He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah.”

“Long day?” I leaned against the doorframe and tilted my head, drawing attention to the long line of my neck. Because apparently, I was sort of mean to boys who liked me and spent weeks jerking my emotional chains about it.

“Mmmm-hmm,” he mumbled.

“Well, dinner will be ready in a few. I’ll see you downstairs,” I said, passing by him.

And just by the way his mouth hung open, I could tell that the steam that followed me down the hall carried the floral sweetness of my body wash and my own natural aroma, the scent of his sire.