Playing With Vampires - An Izzy Cooper Novel (3 page)

Although Julius could be devious, and even a little evil at times, I still preferred to look at him as my guardian demon. Not that he was all that helpful, but there were times when he’d surprise me with some real guidance.

Meet me at Pies & Stuff for some coffee
.

I couldn’t understand why it was that I had to meet him. Julius had the maddening habit of popping in and out faster than I could blink. If he wanted to talk to me, he’d just appear, and most of the time that’s exactly what he did, usually while I was taking a bath. He could also send telepathic messages.

Why he was using text messaging was beyond me, but he could be a strange duck at times.

“Ayden … can you swing around to Pier Alley. I need to meet someone at Pies & Stuff.”

“Sure … but how are you going to get back to your car?” he asked.

“I left my car at the Sandbar, so I can just call Annabelle to pick me up.”

I could tell the boss man wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea of leaving me in town without my car, so I thought I better do some extra talking. “I’ll have my friend wait with me until Annabelle shows up,” I reassured him.

Grudgingly, Ayden dropped me in front of a little historic building, located next to the ferry landing

As soon as I got out of the SUV, I caught the scent of cherry pie.

The pain gnawing at my stomach reminded me that I’d forgotten to eat dinner. When I was busy plotting revenge on ex boyfriends, food was merely an afterthought.

My pumps made a loud clanking noise as I walked up the wooden sidewalk to the old Victorian building.

At one time it had been an abandoned fish shop, but with a fresh coat of pastel blue paint and white trim, it looked warm and cozy. Charlie had done a magnificent job of restoring it.

Charlie was standing behind counter, and was in the process of giving Ivan Kent a warm up on his coffee.

Looking up, Charlie waved. “Hello Miss Cooper. You look a bit overdressed this evening.’

Charlie Fox loved wearing pink striped aprons, which was a contrast to the blue-checkered table clothes and curtains of Pies & Stuff. I preferred not to think about why he liked pink, especially at his age. Sure, lots of guys got into pink these days, but that was the younger generation. Charlie had to be at least in his mid thirties, and not really as
feminine as his pink apron would suggest. He had hairy arms, and a thick brown mustache that reminded me of one of those old time barbers.

“I’m just stopping in to meet a friend for a cup of go juice,” I explained.

“Oh … it must be the guy out on the deck.” Charlie pointed to a side door that led to the deck.

On summer days, the deck would be filled with people snacking on pies and ice cream, while they escaped the heat beneath the huge blue and white-checkered canopy.

“Hi Izzy,” Ivan spoke up before I could make my escape.

“Hello Ivan,” I returned his greeting, forcing the corners of my mouth in an upward direction. I hoped it looked close enough to a smile to fool him.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Ivan, but I did prefer to keep him at a distance. When we were in high school, Ivan had stalked me throughout most of my senior year. He was one of those guys who could be as sweet as honey, but still couldn’t comprehend what no meant.

“It’s been a long time,” he said, tipping the blue football cap he was wearing.

I wondered if he was wearing the hat to hide the fact that he hadn’t bothered to comb all that brown - curly hair of his? Even his jeans and T-shirt looked dirty.

Suddenly I felt something pulling on my heartstrings and I didn’t much like the feeling.

Could it be my fault that he’d deteriorated to such a state?

“It has been awhile. What are you doing these days?” I asked.

“Working at the boat salvage on South Point. It’s not much, but it pays the bills.”

“Well I’m sure you’ll find something better soon.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Some of us don’t have a college education, so we have to do what we have to do.”

“Well my friend is waiting for me,” I told him. “I’ll talk to you again soon.”

“Sure thing, Izzy. Hope the family is doing good,” he called after me as I was practically running toward the sliding glass door that led to the deck.

“Yours too … tell your mom I said hello,” I tossed the words over my shoulder.

“Will do!” he said, raising his voice so that I would hear him from the deck.

Julius was sitting at a table near the railing.

He didn’t bother to look up when I approached. “Took you long enough.”

“I thought we were having coffee?” I pointed to the drink in his hand.

He lifted his wide shoulders. “I thought you’d probably like coffee, but I prefer something a bit stronger.”

It figured. If Julius were actually human, he’d probably be an alcoholic.

Charlie had already put a cup out for me and placed a thermal coffee server on the table. Apparently Julius had been confident that I’d show up.

“How’s Missy doing?” I asked, though I didn’t truly care. As far as I was concerned, Missy was the poster child for loose women.

The recently widowed Missy was the woman Julius dallied with when he wasn’t haunting me. I suspected the two of them had plotted her husband’s murder in order to carry on their illicit affair undisturbed, but so far I hadn’t been able to prove it.

“I haven’t seen her lately.” Julius shrugged, his dark eyes practically caressing me from head to toe.

I did my best to ignore it.

Julius was as hot as the fiery pit that spawned him, but he was definitely off limits, namely because he irritated me to no end, but also because I knew what he was up to. He intended to use his natural charisma to seduce me to the dark side.

Still, I couldn’t help but admire how handsome he looked with that dark hair of his curling around his perfect, almost aristocratic features. He was the type of guy that could actually be called beautiful.

If it weren’t for that small problem of him being a demon, just maybe I could have overlooked his sarcastic attitude.

“So what’s up? I know you didn’t call me here just to watch me drink coffee.”

His full lips spread into a wicked smile. “You are astute. I can’t help but wonder how you managed to be dumb enough to get yourself into this situation in the first place.”

No doubt he was referring to my fallen angel status.

I gave him one of my evilest  – damn him to Hell glares. “I’m not in the mood for a sermon. Polly from the Quick Stop was found murdered tonight.”

The news didn’t so much as spur the raising of his brow. That was probably because he already knew. Julius had some kind of ESP going on to where he knew stuff before it happened. I figured it was probably on account of him being a demon.

“Well this has nothing to do with Polly,” he sighed.

Dang it. I was hoping he could give me some clues to help solve the case fast. Most of the time Julius wouldn’t involve himself in human affairs, but every once in while he’d give me a break.

“So what then?” I asked, while I was busy adding too much cream to my coffee.

“You’ll probably want to go to the town meeting tomorrow night. I think it would be a good idea to find out what you can about the new guy.”

These days it was difficult for Julius to surprise me, but I was definitely surprised. He just wasn’t the kind to worry about something as trivial as town meetings and strangers. Actually I wasn’t either, which was why I felt obliged to resist his suggestion.

“Oh I don’t know. I have so much housework to catch up on … and now this new case.” The excuses rolled off my tongue.

“Really Izzy … you should go. Aren’t you the least bit curious about who this Zane character is?”

Actually I was. For the last three weeks Storm Cove had been buzzing with gossip. Everyone wanted to know more about Zane Dupree, the stranger who had purchased the Marsh estate, which was the reason behind the town meeting. The people of Storm Cove weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of a stranger buying that old estate, especially since he had plans to turn it into some kind of resort hotel.

The old fear of Captain Beaufort was alive and well on Mystique Island. According to legend, Beaufort was the captain of the Mystique, the ship that brought all the settlers to the island. At some point during the journey, there had been a mutiny.

As legend had it, Captain Beaufort was buried beneath the Marsh estate, but he wasn’t actually dead due to the fact that he was a vampire. Over two hundred yeas ago, Beaufort had been imprisoned in another dimension by the Knights of the Eclipse, which happened to be an order of werewolves who believed it their mission to rid the world of vampires, especially evil ones.

And Beaufort was evil. He’d recruited a group of special people, such as witches and whatnots, to sail with him to a new settlement. Most of the old witches on Mystique Island believed Beaufort intended to kill the witches in order to absorb their power.

Now Zane Dupree wanted to renovate the Marsh estate, which could be risky. There was no way to know what would happen if Beaufort’s body were disturbed and he awakened.

“Why do you think it’s so important? What happens in this town shouldn’t be any concern to you,” I said before taking another sip of my coffee.

“It’s not.” He laughed. “My concern is you. Unfortunately what happens in this town … happens to you.”

“You’re not fooling me one bit Julius. The sooner I’m dead again and damned, the sooner you’ll be free.”

“So true sweet Izzy, but then again, I might miss you when that happens.”

I wasn’t buying it, but getting Julius to tell you what was really going on was something like pulling teeth, painful and slow.

“Okay, so maybe I’ll drop by there tomorrow night … if I’m not busy,” I added.

“Good. I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

Judging by the brooding look on Julius’s face, I guessed there was something else bothering him. “So you’ve gone through a lot of trouble over a town meeting. You could have told me all this with the free pass you have to my bathroom.”

His dark eyes sparkled with laughter. “I thought maybe if I put some restraints on our relationship … then maybe you’d look at me as just another guy.”

I lifted one brow. “You mean instead of looking at you as the sadistic demon that you are?”

“That cutting tongue of yours, though attractive, isn’t too angelic like,” he said, shaking his head.

He was right. I was going to have to start watching what came out of my mouth. I needed to start acting a little more angelic if I wanted to earn redemption and maybe a halo while I was at it.

The problem was, being angelic didn’t come natural to me, especially when it involved dealing with a demon.

For the first time I wondered what would happen if I did earn back my white wings?

Once I’d managed to rid myself of the bad karma that had sent me to hell in the first place, would my time on earth be up?

It made sense. Technically, my time was up the night I stepped in front of that truck. I was only allowed to return to my life so that I would have the opportunity to change my final destination. If I did everything right, I just might go to heaven instead of hell.

I made a mental note to stop being so snarky to people, and demons.

“Sorry,” I said, giving him a genuine smile.

“See there.” He pointed in my direction. “You drop the tough girl façade and suddenly you have a heavenly glow thing going on.”

I rolled my eyes in response. It wasn’t as if I actually believed that he cared one wit about my salvation.

“Spit it out Julius. There’s something else on your mind.”

“You’re right,” he confessed. “Sometimes I pick up on chatter coming from the old hot box. The word is, I’m not doing my job here … so they may replace me.”

The news was like being hit with a jolt of electricity. True enough, Julius was a pain in the ass, and he was a demon, but he was my demon. The average person might think me completely nuts to care about a devil, but I’d grown quite close to him over the last several months.

“There’s more.” He cut into my thoughts. “Apparently the people upstairs think you’re still slacking. They might terminate the deal.”

“Oh come on!” I groaned. “A girl can only be expected to make so many cakes for the church bake sale. It’s not like I’m not doing my job and hunting bad guys.”

Julius lifted his shoulders. “You’re talking to the wrong person. Doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“Why do you even care? I’d think it would be better for you in hell anyway. There you’d be surrounded with those as depraved as yourself.”

I knew I was taking my frustrations out on Julius, but I couldn’t help it. He was the one who just happened to be there at the time. I supposed that was further evidence of my unsalvageable soul.