The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires (38 page)

“How do I know that you’re not going to walk out on me again the next time things get rough?”

“I don’t do that. Not anymore.”

“Considering that you just did it, I have a hard time believing that,” I shot back with a little more vitriol than I’d intended. I blew out a long breath, ruffling the bangs curling into my line of vision. “You hurt me.”

“I’m sorry. But you can trust me never to do it again. Open my wallet.”

I sighed. “If you offer me an obscene amount of money right now, I think you should know that I am capable of hurting you. You’re bigger than creepy John, so it may take me a while, but I
will
take a chunk out of you.”

I flipped open the expensive-looking leather contraption, and an engagement ring slid out into my open palm. He slid the ring onto my finger. I took a moment to admire the respectable square-cut diamond, offset by little flowers engraved in the platinum band. He kissed my hand and tucked it against his chest. “I’m thinking a Halloween wedding. Gigi would appreciate it. And think of the many ways you could use trick-or-treat candies as part of the theme. Candy corn and chocolate kisses as far as the eye could see.”

I laughed, pleased at how well he knew me. “I’ve already got two weddings booked for that night. Newly made vampires just love getting married on Halloween,” I replied. “How about next spring? It would give me more time to plan.”

“Winter solstice. The longest night of the year,” he countered.

“I’m still saying spring.”

“Which means you never quite learned how negotiating works.”

Why did everybody tell me that?

I barely resisted the urge to smirk at him. “How badly do you want to marry me, Mr. Calix?”

He grumbled. “Done.”

“I love you,” I told him.

“I love you more than anything I have known or seen in my long, long life. Marry me, stay with me.”

“Done.” I laughed and kissed him. “So, did you have a plan B if I said no? Because it would be hard to bounce back from lying prostrate on the floor in the dark with any dignity.”

“I have several extra-large bags of M&M’s stashed in your china cabinet,” he admitted.

“You think I can be bought with bulk candy?” I asked, lifting a brow. He smiled winsomely. “OK, you were close to the mark.”

I wrapped his arms around my shoulder and tucked my face into this throat. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings when you asked if I wanted to be turned. I just wasn’t ready yet. I’m still not. There are some loose ends I need to wrap up, with the business, with the human world, with Gigi. I want to have some time with her yet, to say good-bye to things like cheeseburger night and talk to her about wills and health insurance. I want to take her on a real vacation before she starts college, somewhere sunny. I can’t exactly do that if I’m a vampire.”

Cal nodded, pressing a kiss to my temple. “I understand.
Beachcombing is considerably less fun when you’re worried about bursting into flames.”

“How about we wait until Gigi’s sophomore or junior year of college?” I asked. “She’ll have time to adjust to the idea of me being turned. She won’t be around for the scary new-vampire phase. By the time she comes back for a visit, I shouldn’t be a danger to her.”

“Done. But what about your business?”

“Right now, it’s going great. I’ll have time to build it up a bit, hire some daytime people, and move into a more managerial role.”

“What will you tell Gigi?”

“I will tell her that we love her. And we’re her family, whether we’re living or not. And with a three-thousand-year-old future brother-in-law, she will have the coolest family sitting at graduation.”

“Graduation?”

“Graduation, birthdays, Christmases, and any number of events that require you to wear a silly sweater or staple twisted crepe paper to the porch. This is the price of being part of a family,” I told him, toying with his shirt buttons. Cal grimaced. “Too late to back out now.”

“In terms of the sweater, how silly are we talking?”

“Cal.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Cal!”

“Am I allowed to negotiate terms?”

I cupped his chin in my palm. “It will make Gigi happy.”

“Damn it, you know my weakness.”

“I love you.”

He groaned. “That’s my other weakness.”

“And by that, you mean …”

“I love you, too.”

“Wonderful. Now, let’s get you off the floor,” I said, slipping my hands into his. At my hip, my BlackBerry jangled to life with “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Cal’s eyes flicked toward the offending device, apparently resigned to the idea that he would be sharing me for eternity with a ridiculous novelty ringtone. Nuzzling my nose against his throat, I unclipped the phone from my belt and slid it onto the countertop. He grinned down at me, kissing me soundly. I wound my arms around his neck and sighed.

“Let it ring.”

Turn the page

for a sneak peek

of the next entertaining romp by

M
OLLY
H
ARPER

Witch Hunt

Coming soon from Pocket

If you are fortunate enough to receive a message from the other side, pay attention to it.

—
A Guide to Traversing the Supernatural Realm

M
y week started with spectral portents of doom floating over my bed while I was trying to have anniversary sex with my boyfriend. It was all downhill from there.

Stephen had not been pleased when I’d pushed him off of me, rolled out of bed, and yelled, “That’s it! I’m going!” at the image of a crow burning against my ceiling. I mean, I guess there are limits to what men are willing to put up with, and one’s girlfriend interacting with invisible omens is a bit out of a perfectly nice investment broker’s scope. He seemed to think I was huffing off after taking offense to that counterclockwise tickle he’d improvised near the end.

Of course, telling him about the increasingly forceful hints I’d received from my noncorporeal grandmother for the last two weeks would have made the situation worse. Stephen tended to clam up when we discussed my family and their “nonsense.” He refused to discuss my Nana Fee or the promise I’d made to her that I’d travel all the way from our tiny village to the wilds of America. So I’d tried ignoring the dreams, the omens, the way my alphabet soup spelled out “HlfMunHollw.”

I tried to rationalize that a deathbed promise to a woman
who called herself a witch wasn’t exactly a binding contract. But my grandma interrupting the big O to make her point was the final straw.

And so I was moving to Half-Moon Hollow, Kentucky, indefinitely, so I could locate four magical objects that would prevent a giant inter-witch-clan war and maintain peace in my little corner of northwestern Ireland.

Yes, I am aware that statement sounds absolutely ridiculous.

Sometimes it pays to have a large tech-savvy family at your disposal. When you tell them, “I have a few days to rearrange my life so I can fly halfway across the world and secure the family’s magical potency for the next generation,” they hop to do whatever it takes to smooth the way. Aunt Penny had not only booked my airline tickets, but also located and rented a house for me. Uncle Seamus had arranged quick shipping of the supplies and equipment I would need to my new address. And my beloved, and somewhat terrifying, teenage cousin Ralph may have broken a few international laws while online “arranging” a temporary work visa so I wouldn’t starve while I was there. Not everybody in our family could work magic, but some members had their own particular brand of hocuspocus.

Given how Stephen felt about my family, I’d decided it was more prudent to tell him I’d accepted an offer for a special six-month nursing fellowship in Boston. The spot came open when another nurse left the program unexpectedly, I told him, so I had to make a quick decision. He argued that it was too sudden, that we had too many plans hanging in the balance for me to run off to the States for half a year, no matter how much I loved my job.

I didn’t want to leave Stephen. For months he had been a bright spot in a life in need of sunshine, with the loss of my Nana Fee and my struggles to keep the family buoyed. And yet, somehow, here I was, sprawled in the back of a run-down cab
as it bumped down a sunlit gravel road in Half-Moon Hollow, Kentucky. The term “cab” could only be applied loosely to the faded blue Ford station wagon, the only working taxi in the entire town. We had a fleet of two working in Kilcairy, and we only had about four hundred people living inside the town limits. Clearly, living in Boston until my early teens hadn’t prepared me for life in the semirural South.

Yawning loudly, I promised myself I would worry about cultural adjustments later. I was down-to-the-bone tired. My skirt and blouse were a grubby shambles. I smelled like airplane sweats and the manky Asian candy my seatmate insisted on munching for most of the thirteen-hour flight from Dublin to New York, which had been followed by a two-hour hop to Chicago and another hour on a tiny plane-let. I just wanted to go inside, take a shower, and sleep. While I was prepared to sleep on the floor if necessary, I prayed the house was indeed furnished as Aunt Penny promised.

While the McGavock clan had collectively bankrolled my flight, I needed to save the extra cash they’d provided as “buy money” for my targets. Living expenses were left to me to figure out. I would have to start looking for some acceptable part-time work as soon as my brain was functional again. I squinted against the golden light pouring through the cab windows, interrupted only by the occasional patch of shade from tree branches arching over the little lane. The sky was so clear and crystal blue that it almost hurt to look out at the odd little clusters of houses along the road. It was so tempting just to lay my head back, close my eyes, and let the warm sunshine beat hot and red through my eyelids.

“You know you’re rentin’ half of the old Wainwright place?” the cab driver, Dwayne-Lee, asked as he pulled a sharp turn onto yet another gravel road. I started awake just in time to keep my face from colliding with the spotty cab window. Dwayne-Lee continued on, blithe as a newborn babe,
completely oblivious. “That place always creeped me out when I was a kid. We used to dare each other to run up to the front door and ring the bell.”

I lifted a brow at his reflection in the rearview. “And what happened?”

“Nothin’,” he said, shrugging. “No one lived there.”

I blew out a breath and tried to find the patience not to snap at the man. Dwayne-Lee had, after all, been nice enough to make a special trip to the Half-Moon Hollow Municipal Airport to pick me up. Dwayne-Lee had been sent by Iris Scanlon, who handled various business dealings for my new landlord. His skinny frame puffed up with pride at being tasked with welcoming a “newcomer,” he’d handed me an envelope from Iris containing a key to my new house, a copy of my lease, her phone number, and a gift certificate for a free pizza delivered by Pete’s Pies.

Anyone who tried to make my life easier was aces in my book. So from that moment on, I was a little in love with Iris Scanlon. Less so with Dwayne-Lee, who was currently nattering on about the Wainwright place and its shameful conversion from a respectable Victorian home to a rental duplex after Gilbert Wainwright had moved closer to town years before. I closed my eyes against the sunlight and the next thing I knew, the cab was pulling to a stop.

Wiping furiously at the wet drool trail on my chin, I opened my door while Dwayne-Lee unloaded my luggage from the trunk. Separated from the other houses on the street by a thicket of dense trees, the rambling old Victorian was painted robin’s-egg blue with snowy white trim. The house was two stories, with a turret off to the left and a small central garden separating the two front doors. Given that the opposite side of the front porch seemed occupied with lawn chairs and a disheveled garden gnome, I assumed that the “tower side” of the house was mine. I grinned, despite my bone-aching fatigue.
I’d always been fascinated by the idea of having a tower as a kid, though I’d long since cut my hair from climbing length.

The grass grew scrabbled in patches across the lawn. A section of brick had fallen loose from the foundation on the west corner. Knowing my luck, there was a colony of bats living in the attic to complete that Addams Family look.