Sex and the Single Vampire

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SEX, LIES, AND VAMPIRES

SEX AND THE SINGLE VAMPIRE

A GIRL’S GUIDE TO VAMPIRES

THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY

NOBLE DESTINY

NOBLE INTENTIONS

IMPROPER ENGLISH

“Yes,” she said, her dark eyes considering me as she munched on a lemon muffin. She licked crumbs from her lips and glanced at Roxy. “Christian is a very dear friend of ours. We promised last year to help him find … someone.”

“Someone? Like a blind date?”

Roxy snorted.

“Not quite,” Joy said, popping another piece of muffin in her mouth.

I didn’t believe her. She was trying to match Christian up with someone; I could feel her concern about him. Still, that had nothing to do with me—nothing unless it turned out he really was in that inn last night, and then I had a few questions for him, questions like what on earth he was doing cutting himself up like that, and who were the people he was waiting for, and how did he get rid of everything so quickly without me seeing him … suddenly the word
vampire
echoed in my head. I blinked. “He’s a vampire?”

The message waiting for me at the hotel desk was short and concise:
Either you come back from England with bona fide proof of a spiritual entity, or you needn’t bother returning to the office. There’s no room in UPRA for crackpots and never-beens.

It was signed by my boss, and the head of the western U.S. division of the United Psychical Research Association, Anton Melrose II.

“Well, isn’t that just Jim Dandy fine,” I muttered to the message as I crumpled it up and tossed it into the appropriate receptacle, situated at the end of the reception desk, wishing as I did that I could Summon up a demon or two, minor ones, just bad enough to scare the bejeepers out of my employer. “I’d pay good money to see him eat his words.”

The woman at the desk smiled as she passed me the key to my room. “I’m sorry, Miss Telford; we’re not responsible for the quality of the messages. We have to deliver them no matter what they say.”

I smiled back, secure behind the sunglasses I wore everywhere. “That’s okay; it’s just my life falling apart, nothing to worry about. Is there a computer free now, do you know? I’ll only need fifteen minutes.”

Tina, the receptionist at the St. Aloysius Hotel in jolly old London, checked the log for the two computers kept in a small, dark room for the use of those businesspeople who couldn’t live without an Internet connection. “It’s all yours.”

I gathered up my bag, ignoring the clinking that came from within, and mumbled my thanks as I limped down the short hallway that led to the computer room. One of the two computers was taken up by a skanky-haired young man of about twenty, who raised one pierced eyebrow as I carefully set my bag down next to the chair of the second computer. The clink of glass bottles was loudly evident.

“It’s holy water,” I told him when his pierced eyebrow rose even higher. “For the ghosts. Nothing drinkable. That is, you
could
drink it, but I’ve had it on the best authority that holy water tastes like tap water that’s oxidized for a couple of days.”

He blinked at me.

“Bland,” I explained, then turned my attention to the computer. I waited until he was busy with his own screen before pushing my sunglasses up so I could better see the computer screen, logging quickly into the e-mail account I’d set up for those rare times UPRA had seen fit to send me outside of the Sacramento area (which is to say, twice), just as quickly scanning the six messages collected. “Spam about an herbal product guaranteeing to make my penis grow larger, spam about low mortgage rates, e-mail from Mom, spam about something to do with furry barnyard friends that I’m not even going to open, e-mail from Corrine, and spam asking me if I’m single. Well, it’s nice to know I’m missed.”

The young man snickered and logged off his computer, pulling up a briefcase that had the name of a major software company embossed on the side. “Do you see lots of ghosts, then?” he asked as he stood and shoved in the chair.

I pushed my sunglasses into their normal position and gave him a little moue of regret. “So many I hardly have a moment to myself. They’re very simpleminded, you know. Really no different from a puppy. Just a kind word or two,
a little pat on the head, and they follow you around forever.”

He stood staring at me for a moment, as if he couldn’t decide whether I was serious or not.

I held up both hands to show him there was nothing up my sleeves. “I’m joking. No ghosts to date.”

He looked relieved, then managed to twist his relief into a familiar sneer common to all young twenty-somethings. I ignored him as he left, pulling my glasses off as I scanned my mother’s e-mail, filing it to be answered later before I clicked on Corrine’s.

“Mmm. What a shame. The C. J. Dante key chain was mysteriously left at home,” I told the computer as I logged off and popped my sunglasses back on just in case I ran into anyone in the hallway. For a moment I just sat, exhausted, listening to the sounds of the hotel and the noise outside the window of London on a busy winter afternoon. Anton’s message did nothing but add to my exhaustion. I had seen the handwriting on the wall for
the last six months—”Produce or else” was his motto, and I was lamentably lacking in the proof department.

“This is it, Allie,” I said aloud to the empty room. “Put up or shut up time, and I have to tell you, the job openings for an unproven Summoner are pretty slim.”

My voice echoed in the room as I continued to sit and dwell on my grim future. It almost seemed like too much trouble to push myself out of the chair and haul my bag of tricks upstairs to the small corner room that had been allotted to me, but a glance at my watch got me up and heading to the bed that promised a few hours of much-needed blissful nothingness before I had to go off to a haunted inn and hunt ghosts.

The dream started even before I felt myself relax fully into sleep. It was dark, nighttime, the air damp and musty-smelling. I walked through an empty house, its walls stained with mold and age and unsavory things that my mind shied away from identifying, my footsteps echoing loudly as I moved from room to room, searching for something, a place, somewhere I was supposed to be. Small black shapes skittered just beyond my range of vision in every room I entered, faint, soft phantom noises trailing behind me like a wake. Mice, or something more disturbing? I wondered as I let my fingers trail over a dusty banister that led me downstairs into a dark pool of inky blackness. Fearless as I never was in real life, I pushed opened the door at the foot of the stairs and saw a man stretched out on a table.

A man? Even in my dream I modified that word. He was no mortal man; he was a god, a perfect specimen of masculinity created just for my pleasure. Long black hair spilled onto the table, a halo of ebony against the light wood. His eyes were open, dark, but not as dark as his hair, almost mahogany in color, rich with browns and
reds and even a bit of gold flaring around the edges of his irises. The long, chiseled lines of his jaw and squared chin were still, as if he were sleeping, but his eyes followed me as I moved into the room. He was naked but for a piece of cloth covering his groin, his body striped with what looked to be hundreds of small cuts, blood dripping slowly from the wounds onto the floor beneath the table.

I approached him, wanting to touch his wounds, wanting to heal them, but his voice caught and held me in a net of immobility when he spoke my name.