Romancing The Dead
001
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1. - Sun
2. - Moon
3. - Mercury
4. - Venus
5. - Ceres
6. - Mars
7. - Jupiter
8. - Saturn
9. - Uranus
10. - Neptune
11. - Pluto
12. - Eris
Dead Sexy
“Another wild adventure . . . Check out the highly entertaining
Dead Sexy
for a walk on the wild side.”
—
Romance Reviews Today
“The second Garnet gem is a delightful whodunit fantasy [with an] offbeat chick -lit style. Tate Hallaway combines romance, paranormal, and mystery into a fun read.”
—
Midwest Book Review
Tall, Dark & Dead
“What’s not to adore . . . Tate Hallaway has a wonderful gift, Garnet is a gem of a heroine, and
Tall, Dark & Dead
is enthralling from the first page.”
—MaryJanice Davidson,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Dead Over Heels
“Tate Hallaway kept me on the edge of my seat . . . A thoroughly enjoyable read!”
—Julie Kenner,
USA Today
bestselling author of
Good Ghouls Do
“Curl up on the couch and settle in—
Tall, Dark & Dead
is a great way to pass an evening.”
—Lynsay Sands,
USA Today
bestselling author of
Vampire, Interrupted
“Will appeal to readers of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stack-house series.” —
Booklist
"I’m looking forward to more from this author.”
—SFRevu.com
“Unique, intriguing, and a sexy read . . . lively and fresh . . . and the ending will leave you clamoring for more.”
—
Midwest Muse
“Funny and captivating . . . in the style of the Sookie Stack-house series [with] an intrepid and expressive heroine . . . Look out, fans of the paranormal, there’s a new supernatural heroine in town sure to become an instant favorite . . . Tate Hallaway is an author to watch!”
—
Romance Reviews Today
“I love how Garnet handled everything that came her way with grit, humor, and attitude as she kicked some serious butt! . . . Hallaway keeps you glued to the pages.”
—
Romance Junkies
“[Hallaway’s] concise writing style, vivid descriptions, and innovative plot all blend together to provide the reader with a great new look into the love life of Witches, vampires, and the undead.” —ArmchairInterviews.com
Titles by Tate Hallaway
DEAD SEXY
TALL, DARK & DEAD
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. Copyright © 2008 by Lyda Morehouse.
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Berkley trade paperback edition / May 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hallaway, Tate.
Romancing the dead / Tate Hallaway.—Berkley trade pbk. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-436-21491-9
1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Goddesses—Fiction. 4. Booksellers and book-selling—Fiction. I. Title. PS3608.A54825R66 2008
813’.6—dc22
2007046040
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Shawn, twenty-two years together and still going strong
Acknowledgments
As always I must thank those who believe in what I do and continue to support it. A big thanks goes to Anne Sowards, my insightful editor, who always knows better, even when I initially doubt her, and Martha Millard, my agent, the best advocate a writer could hope for. Also, my writers’ group, Wyrdsmiths, deserves my deepest gratitude for, well, putting up with me (and my diva tendencies) and their guidance and support throughout the novel-writing process: Eleanor Arnason, Bill Henry, Doug Hulick, Naomi Kritzer, Kelly McCullough, Rosalind Nelson, and the ever fabulous Sean M. Murphy— extra special thanks to Naomi and Sean for reading the beta version of this book in the midnight hour. Shawn and Mason Rounds also get my love and appreciation for understanding that ima’s job is, in point of fact, writing.
1.
Sun
The masculine principle, husband, or men in general
Could I really see myself married to a ... vampire?
The diamond ring on my finger sparkled in the early morning light. My bicycle nearly ended up in the ditch more than once as my eyes kept straying to the golden band. Married? Me?
It wasn’t that I didn’t love Sebastian. It had been easy to say yes, and I’d meant it. But Sebastian
was
a vampire, and, well, neither of our lives was terribly conducive to marriage. I had a tendency to pick up and run in the middle of the night, although usually that was because I was being chased by Vatican assassins or the FBI or Voodoo Queens or because the Goddess I harbored in my belly had gone all destructo-wacko on somebody.
Things had been calm for a few months now. In fact, I ’d started negotiations with the owner of the occult bookstore I manage, Mercury Crossing, to buy him out with whatever loans and spare change I could patch together. I guess that must have gotten Sebastian thinking about settling. Settling!
Did I mention he’s a vampire?
My mind continued to try to wrap itself around the idea of the white dress when some kind of wild dog jumped out of the ditch. Okay, actually, it was just sitting there on the side of the road, munching on the road -killed remains of Bambi’s mom, but seeing it made me nearly fall off the seat of my bike.
At first I thought it had to be a wolf, except the animal was too mangy and too leggy. As it hunched over the deer carcass, its chin dripped with blood. Our eyes met and I had that freakish feeling of a keen intelligence behind the glittering alien, inhuman gaze. So I did what any Witch who harbored the dark Goddess Lilith within her would do; I shrieked like a girl.
“Argh! Go away, you big, scary thing! Run! Scat!” I pedaled like a maniac, waved my arms, and tried to think bigger, threatening animal thoughts, instead of I-could-totally-be-eaten ones.
The wolf, or whatever it was, cocked its head at me as though it thought I was the biggest dork in central Wisconsin. Then it padded into the cornfield.
At least my close encounter with the wild kingdom got me thinking about something other than Sebastian for at least two or three minutes. But once my heart rate had settled to normal, it shot back up again.
Are there wolves in Wisconsin? Maybe, but was I really ready for marriage?
The sun beat down on the concrete mercilessly, and it wasn’t even eight a.m. yet. Sweat slicked my arms and my legs. Hopping off my bike, I leaned it against the cast-iron fencing around a scrub oak, not bothering to lock it. I’m sure there are plenty of bike thieves in Madison, Wisconsin, but State Street, where my bookstore Mercury Crossing is located, has a kind of hippy sensibility. I’d actually had my bike stolen once . . . and returned. I only knew it had been taken because the lock was broken and very carefully replaced.
Having my bike “borrowed” was one of the reasons I loved Madison. That and the fact that no one even gave me more than a cursory glance in my bright bloodred mini and black, sparkling halter top. I wore spiderweb tights and black Converse high -tops. My hair was a mess of short, dyed-black spikes. I passed a guy in a suit, maybe even a politician, on his way up to the capitol building, and he gave me “the nod” of stranger-small-town greeting.
I loved this town.
Could I see myself living here as a married woman? I chewed on my lip. I’d think about that later. Right now I had a shop to run.
“Hey,” William said with a bright smile. “Raise your right hand!”
I slowly raised my hand, confused. I’d been shelving the discounted remaindered Wiccan books in the used section when William bounded up.
William had been my friend since I started work at Mercury Crossing. He’d recovered nicely from having been possessed by his former girlfriend, the Voodoo Queen. You’d think William might have considered giving up on his constant search for “true”
religion, given that several of the ones he ’d found jumped up and bit him in the butt. But, like our friendship, William was remarkably resilient. In fact, our friendship hardly faltered despite the fact that he had tried to kill me; and William went on to try an online UFO cult the very next day.
Speaking of which, I couldn’t tell what religion William was into today; he looked fairly normal. His mouse -brown hair hung in lanky curls to his shoulders and his round John Lennon glasses perched on the end of his nose. He wore a basic brown shirt, slacks . . . I noticed the red string on his wrist. Aha! Kabala!
“Oh,” William said after studying my upraised palm for a moment. “You’ve got your right-hand ring on the wrong finger.”
“My what?”
“Right-hand ring?” William sounded less sure. “I’ve seen the ads in the
New York Times Magazine
. You know, treat yourself to a ring instead of waiting for a man. Oh. ” I watched the realization slowly dawn in William ’s eyes. “But you’ve got a . . . well, a significant other of the male variety, er, species, or former human, or ex-human. Uhm.”
I thought I’d better put him out of his misery. “Yes, Sebastian asked me to marry him.”
“And you said yes? Are you insane?”
It was a question I’d been asking myself. But before I could reply, he went on. “It’s going to be all
Highlander
, Blossom. Think about it, in a dozen years it’s going to start looking like Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore around your place. After that? Hello, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Well, except gender reversed. You know what I mean. Anyway, yikes! When you’re eighty, people are going to think he’s your grandson. How awkward is that going to be?”
I should never have gotten William a subscription to
In Touch
for his birthday, yet I had to concede that he brought up a rather salient point. If Sebastian never aged and I did, how would we explain our apparent age difference to other people? Then, there was all the physical stuff. I’d have the advantage of always having a hot, young body next to me in bed, but Sebastian, well . . . I shook my head; I didn’t want to consider fifty-six years from now when we hadn’t even set a date for the wedding yet. “We’ll cross that bridge and all that,” I said to William, who was still clucking his tongue at me.