Dead End Dating (2 page)

T
he matchmaking biz
totally
bites.

Not the matchmaking part, mind you. It’s been all of two weeks since I opened Dead End Dating and I’ve yet to actually make a match. It’s the
biz
part that’s started to chew me a new one.

I stared at the stack of bills that Evie (black capris, white mini T-shirt, and a set of pink rhinestone bangles) sat on my desk next to my only two client folders.

Yep, ya heard me. What with 95.7 million singles (75 percent human, 10 percent vampire, and 15 percent Other), I’ve managed to attract a whopping
deux.

I swallowed and tried to ignore the sudden hollowness in the pit of my stomach. Ignorance was good in a situation like this. Bliss. Especially to a card-carrying optimist like myself. There’s simply no way to handle being alive for a gazillion years if you panic at life’s every twist and turn. You have to keep your cool and withhold all hysterics until you’ve got a bona fide problem on your hands.

“I really wasn’t expecting monthly bills until we’d been open a full month,” I told Evie.

“These are hook-up charges for new service. You’ve got your electric, telephone, Internet—the usual.” She handed over another stack. “
These
are the monthly bills.”

Okay, so this was a bona fide problem, but I tried for a smile anyway. “Any phone calls today?” When facing a negative, it’s best to put it in proper perspective by focusing on the positives.

“Only two. The first was Mrs. Wilhelm.” Louisa Wilhelm made up client folder number one. She was a widow—about ten years ago her eternity mate went parachuting and landed a little too close to the sharp end of an oak tree branch. She was also my mother’s best friend. “She wants to know if you’ve found her an escort yet.”

“But she just signed with us last night.”

“That’s what I told her, but she said that the soiree is in three weeks.” “The soiree” referred to the annual midnight ball and charity auction sponsored by the Connecticut Huntress Club, in which my mother served as vice president. Mom also handled the refreshments every third meeting and, along with passing out glasses of chilled AB negative, handed out tidbits about
moi.
Namely, that I’m smart. And beautiful. And successful. And desperately in need of an eternity mate to complete my desperately incomplete life.

But I digress. Back to the soiree.

We’re talking
the
event of upper-crust vamps.

“She said we should hurry up,” Evie went on, “because if she wanted last minute, she could just wait for Marvin Terribone to ask her the day of, like he did last year. She wants to teach him a lesson and make him jealous.” Evie leveled a stare at me. “She wants results by tomorrow.”

I was pretty sure the news qualified as a negative, so I turned to my laptop to find a positive. I brought up my new website—www.deadanddating.com. (Yeah, it says dead
and
dating, but dead
end
was already taken as a domain name, and so I’d had to settle for the next best thing.) The site offered three free matches to anyone who took the time to fill out the carefully worded questionnaire and join the Dead End Dating family database. I’d had ten hits in the past twenty-four hours and all of three applicants.

Three.

And they were all women.

Definitely a negative.

“Maybe Mrs. Wilhelm swings both ways,” Evie offered as she came around to peer over my shoulder. The luscious aroma of mocha latte clung to her and teased my nostrils.

“And maybe I’m the next Miss Hawaiian Tropic.” While vamps were like humans in that their sexual preferences tended to go in various directions, Mrs. Wilhelm was like a trillion years old. As in really
old.
As in really old-fashioned. And snotty. And pretentious. Even if she did butter her bread on both sides, she wasn’t likely to admit it.

Add a capital B to the bona fide.

“I told you we should have advertised in Times Square,” Evie said.

“I’m on a tight budget.”

“How tight?”

“Nonexistent. I’ve maxed out my credit cards, so short of hocking my great, great, great, great, great grandmother’s engraved goblet, the only sign I’m likely to have in Times Square is one I paint and wear myself.”

“If it’s any consolation, you’re having a really good hair night.”

Did Evie actually believe I was so shallow that I could be distracted from a major crisis with a compliment?

I smiled. “I used a new shampoo.”

“And that blush is incredible.”

My smile widened. Hey, we’re talking blush as in MAC. “It’s a new combination blush/bronzer called Sunlight Sparkle. It’s pretty hot, huh?”

“Totally hot.”

“Smoking hot,” I added.

“
Blazing
hot.”

“
Hellaciously
hot.” Now that I’d exhausted my “hot” adjectives, it was back to reality. I sighed, stiffened, and prepared myself. “What about the second call?”

“Your father. He said he has your new uniforms and that you should pick them up this week on account of the fact that you start training in the store at Midnight Moe’s next week.”

Okay, so maybe I didn’t prepare myself quite enough because this news made my stomach do a cartwheel
and
a double back flip. “But I’ve already told him I’m not starting anything next week.” I shook my head. “I’m not working for him.”

“I don’t think he’s clear on that. He also said that he got you your very own name tag. Beige with lime green lettering. To match the shirt.” Evie must have read the look of horror on my face. “Then again, maybe I misunderstood him. It has been a long day.”

If only.

My father had selective hearing when it came to his four offspring—me and my three older brothers. Namely, he tuned out any and everything that didn’t pertain to one of three things: (1) making money, (2) the Knicks, and (3) making money. Since he didn’t consider my new venture anything more than a temporary, and not very well-thought-out endeavor—like the time I told everyone I wanted to be an artist; I did all of three pictures before deciding I would rather sit for a portrait than paint one—making money wasn’t a likely possibility. Unless I managed to lure one of the Knicks into my clutches for a little matchmaking—I should be so lucky—I wasn’t going to hit pay dirt for number two, either. Which meant when I’d turned down the offer to manage the second NYU location of Midnight Moe’s, he hadn’t been paying attention.

He expected me to don the lime green shirt and the Dockers and report for duty just like my three brothers. But the thing was, I wasn’t like them.

I had dreams of something bigger.

I had aspirations.

I had
goals.

Even more, I had good taste.

“I’ll just have to pull out the big guns,” I told Evie.

“Are we talking a Beretta or an Uzi?”

“You’ve been watching too much
CSI.
”

She smiled. “There’s no such thing.” Her expression grew serious. “So are you going to sell the goblet and get us into Times Square?”

It was my turn to smile. “Who needs Times Square when we’ve got two hundred and twenty locations nationwide?”

“I thought the whole point of going into business for yourself was to make your own way.”

“I am making my own way,” I told my oldest brother, Max. Short for Maximillian Gautier Bastien. What can I say? My parents are
so
fourteenth century.

“You’re using our copy machine.”

“True, but I’m running the copies myself.” Did I have to explain everything?

I stood behind the counter at the first NYU location of Midnight Moe’s on West Fourth Street, near Washington Square Park. Long fluorescent bulbs crisscrossed the ceiling and showered the inside in bright white light. Signs dangled here and there, advertising various services, from
BINDING
to
CUSTOMIZED BUSINESS CARDS
. Printers whirred and copy machines
ka-chunk
ed. The sharp smell of paper and ink mingled with the various scents of humans, vamps—both made and born—and Others who filled the store.

“It’s not like I’m borrowing money,” I pointed out.

“You’re using our paper. And our ink. Both cost money.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” I said to Max.

He was tall, with short, dark hair, rich brown eyes, and the typical vamp aura that oozed sex appeal. He’d been twenty-three when he’d lost his virginity and stopped aging. Fairly young for a born vamp since most couldn’t physically have sex (the motor started and the engine revved, but there was no shifting gears into drive) before the age of twenty-five (the dormant period usually required for a certain gene that controlled both the aging process and the ability to orgasm). When the gene reached maturity, the flood gates opened. It was hello Mr. Orgasm and bye-bye aging.

Thankfully, it didn’t take regular orgasms to keep the process at bay; otherwise I’d be dust by now.

My brother was one of the few vamps whose first orgasm had come sooner. He’d been a ladies’ man ever since, his appeal multiplied by the fact that he had an extraordinarily high fertility rating—a little number that reflected how likely he was to hit a bull’s-eye when it came to procreation. While a vamp’s fertility rating meant squat to a human, it made him all the more sought after by his own kind.

Likewise, we female born vamps had our own measure for success—the orgasm quotient, or OQ. Not to be confused with the ever-popular
OC,
which I’d never actually gotten into on account of the fact that I watched very little television. The OQ was the number of times a female vamp could orgasm during a single sexual encounter. The higher the number, the more likely she was to conceive.

I know, I know. Are we a bunch of rabbits, or what?

“Let me get this straight,” Max told me as he watched me punch in an obscene number of copies. “There’s another way to look at this situation that doesn’t involve you mooching off of Moe’s?”

“I’m not mooching off of Moe’s. I’m extracting payment from you.”

“For what?”

“Keeping my mouth shut.”

“You never keep your mouth shut.”

“What about when you moved in with that stripper for six months? And pretended to be human? I still can’t believe she bought it. Then again, I don’t think she was dealing with a full deck.”

“Diane was very smart.”

“If you consider her bust measurement in lieu of an IQ score.”

“Okay, so she wasn’t that smart. She had stamina and endurance.”

“I hate to break it to you, but humping a pole isn’t an Olympic sport.”

A small smile touched his lips. “Not yet.” He turned his attention to a pudgy blond guy who dumped an armload of office supplies onto the counter.

While Max rang up the customer and bagged his purchases, I gathered my stack of pink flyers. The moment he handed over the man’s change and turned back to me, I shoved the advertisements at him. “All you have to do is put one in every customer’s bag.”

He shook his head. “Dad will blow a major gasket if he finds out I’m helping you.”

“He’ll blow one anyway when he finds out his oldest, most reliable son isn’t so reliable, after all.”

“How’s that?”

“Before the stripper, there was that nun from the church over on Forty-sixth Street.”

“She wasn’t a nun, and it wasn’t a church. It was a Catholic girl’s school. She worked in the office.”

“What about that custom jewelry designer? What was her specialty again? Jeweled crucifixes?”

“She admired the shape, not the religious connotation.”

“What about the cop who worked in special investigations? The woman had a sixth sense that could have spelled major trouble for us if she’d started asking questions.”

“She never asked questions. She just begged for sex.”

“The vegetarian.”

“America’s all about freedom of choice.”

“The IRS agent.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll hand them out.” He took the flyers and set them next to the cash register. “You really think this whole matchmaking thing will work?”

I recited the statistics. “You’ve got a mega amount of single people and not nearly enough places to meet and greet. If you do manage to meet someone, you have no way of knowing what they’re
really
like.”

Max gave me a pointed look.

“I’m not talking about vamps. Obviously, we’re hypersensitive and a little more in tune when it comes to the opposite sex. But humans aren’t. And neither are werewolves or the dozens of Others out there.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it. I’m right on this. Say this girl goes out with a guy she happens to meet at the local coffee shop. She’s desperate to stop wasting her time, settle down, and find the right person, but he’s nothing more than a serial dater in an Armani shirt.” I shook my head. “It’s too hit and miss. On top of hooking yourself up, you’ve got blind dating, which is the most unproductive activity
ever.
”

“Since when did you become an expert?”

“Since I’ve been on way too many blind dates.” His eyebrow kicked up a notch. “Okay, so I’ve been recording
Dr. Phil.
It’s strictly for research purposes. He’s a really smart guy.”

“He’s a human.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

He grinned. “Speak for yourself.”

“Let’s face it,” I went on. “The world is full of lonely people in desperate need of intervention.” To make my point, I swept a gaze around the store, pausing on a girl who sat at a nearby computer. “Alone,” I told my brother before shifting my attention to a twenty-something man fighting with a copy machine at the front of the store. “Alone.” Another girl dawdled in front of the Liquid Paper display. “Alone.”

I glanced at a born male vamp who leaned over a nearby color copy machine. I knew he was born because I could smell him. Born vamps had a wildness about them that gave off a sweet, rich, intoxicating aroma. From decadent fudge brownie to carrot cake with cream cheese icing. While the scents varied from vamp to vamp, they were always sugary, potent, and unmistakable. My nostrils flared. This guy smelled like a Twinkie. “Alone,” I gave the verdict.