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Authors: Jess Tami; Haines Angie; Dane Alexandra; Fox Ivy

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Jon.

“Why do you keep doing that?” I said, not hiding my exasperation.

“What do you mean,
me?
I was just looking for you. You’re the one who keeps slamming into people. You need to watch where you’re going.”

“I do watch where I’m going. You’re so freaking quiet and sneaky, I don’t see or hear you coming.” I started to push to my feet. I got a little help from Jon.

He dusted my ass, then gave it a pat. “I’m not sneaking up on you on purpose. When I didn’t see you in the house, I got worried.”

“Okay. Fine. Thanks for coming after me. As it turns out, you had good reason to be worried.” I started toward the house, Jon falling into step beside me.

“What happened?”

“I ran into a pack of dogs. Big ones.”

“Were you hurt?”

“No. Not at all. They didn’t seem aggressive. Although there was something really weird about them.” At the front of the house now, I glanced back.

“Weird? Like what?”

“I don’t know. Just ... something.” I wrapped my arms around myself as a little shiver shot up my spine. “One of them had a dead animal in its mouth. It brought it to me, dropped it at my feet. Like it was some kind of gift.” I stepped up onto the porch and checked the welcome mat. Dead animal–free.

“I’ll call animal control tomorrow.” Jon reached around my side and opened the door. “I think it would be better if you stayed inside after dark until those animals are caught. It’s after midnight. What made you go outside in the first place?”

“I heard voices.”

“Voices?” he echoed, stepping into the foyer.

“Yeah. Women’s voices. I thought it might be Erica. And maybe Samantha. So I came outside to check.”

As Jon reached for the door to close it, the soft sound of a woman’s laughter carried through the still night.

“There it goes again! Did you hear that?” Pushing past Jon, I rushed back out onto the porch, following the direction of the sound with my eyes.

Not far away, I caught sight of a tall shadow. Thin. “Samantha?” I called as I skipped down the front porch steps. I halted in the middle of the front yard, realizing there were shadows bouncing around the taller one. Big, dog-shaped shadows. Taking a step backward, I bumped into a walking brick wall. “I think those might be the dogs I saw before. Is that Samantha? She’s not afraid. Are they her dogs?”

“Uh, you might say that.” Jon looped an arm around my waist, hauling me up to him.

“But ... I didn’t know she had dogs. I’ve never heard barking, never seen them outside doing their doody—”

“We shouldn’t disturb them. Let’s go inside.”

I took one last look at the strange scene—straight out of
Dances with Wolves
—then let Jon lead me back into the house. This time, he shut and locked the door as soon as we were inside.

Feeling even more shivery than before, I asked, “Is it just me, or do you think it’s a little strange that Samantha is outside after midnight playing with her dogs?”

“Some people might think a lot of what goes on in this neighborhood is strange.”

That statement got my attention. “Like what?” I asked.

Jon shrugged and, taking my hand, headed toward the stairs.

I yanked my hand away, planted my feet, and refused to budge. “Jon, what did you mean by that? Ever since I arrived, I’ve been feeling like things around here are a little ... off. Is there more going on than a few dead stray cats?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He swept my hair over one shoulder. There was no doubt what he was about to do next.

I shrugged away before he got his first nibble. “Jon.”

“Chrissy.” He cupped the back of my head, pulling me into a kiss.

Just as his mouth settled over mine, I shoved him. “It’s not going to work. You’re not going to distract me. What aren’t you telling me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not keeping anything from you.” Undeterred, he lunged forward, tackling me, looping his arms around my knees. I flopped over his shoulder like a big bag of ... something ... as he stood up.

I smacked him on the back, once for each step he ascended, the sound of each strike punctuating my words. “Jon.”
Smack
. “You can.”
Smack
. “Get all caveman.”
Smack
. “On me.”
Smack
. “But I’m not giving up.”
Smack
. “Tell me.”

He set me on my feet at the top of the stairs and gave me some seriously hungry eyes. “Have I told you how sexy you are when you’re annoyed?”

Argh!
I shoved past him, slamming the door behind me and locking it.

Jon knocked. “Baby, let me in.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on. You’re hiding something. What is it?”

He audibly sighed. “You’re going to have to ask them. I can’t say.”

“I left my job, my home, to come here. You should be able to tell me anything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fine,” I said, giving the door my best mean eyes. “You can sleep in the guest room.” Frustrated, I flopped onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Six hours later, I gave up. There was absolutely no chance I was going to fall asleep. Feeling groggy, confused, foggy headed, and slightly depressed, I jumped into the shower, hoping some scalding hot water would wake me up a little. It helped. Figuring a half of pot of coffee would help even more, I staggered down to turn on the coffeemaker.

When I rounded the corner, lumbering into the kitchen, I stopped dead in my tracks.

There was a wire dog cable lying on the kitchen floor.

Right where Michelle had died.

Was this some kind of warning? A joke?

Telling myself it was nothing, absolutely nothing, a weird, terrible coincidence, I dashed outside, down to Samantha’s house, and up her front porch steps. She answered my knock dressed in yet another adorable vintage dress, her hair and makeup picture-perfect. Like always. “Good morning, Christine. What a surprise.” She looked me up and down. I knew I wasn’t looking my best, but who would in my shoes?

“Good morning,” I snapped, trying to peer around her. I didn’t hear any barking. Surely there’d be barking from those huge dogs.

What the hell was going on?

“I need to talk,” I said.

“Sure.” She escorted me into the kitchen.

No sign of dogs.

She invited me to sit at her breakfast bar and poured a cup of coffee.

No sign of dogs. Or kids, for that matter. The kids, I might guess were still sleeping. But the dogs ... ?

She asked, “What do you want to talk about?”

“What I saw last night, for starters. And then what I found this morning.”

Her lip twitched, but otherwise she remained as cool and collected as usual. “What did you see last night?”

“You. Outside. At roughly midnight. Playing with some ... dogs?”

“That couldn’t have been me. I was sleeping. And I don’t have any dogs. After I came home from the party, I took a Xanax and had some wine... .” She slumped onto the stool next to me. “Okay, I’ll admit, I don’t remember anything about last night. All I recall is going to bed and waking up this morning.” Staring down at the counter, Samantha clasped her hands in her lap. “My feet were a little muddy.”

“Did you black out?”

Samantha nodded. “I guess so, if you’re sure it was me you saw.”

I wasn’t one hundred percent certain. “Are you taking more than Xanax? And Valium?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you have a drug problem?”

She shot to her feet, hurried to the sink, and began scrubbing an empty, presumably dirty, pot.

I didn’t like what I was seeing. Not one bit. Maybe Samantha had seemed a little too perfect at first. And maybe I hadn’t trusted her because of that. But seeing her like this, the perfect, flawless veneer cracking wide open, I wanted to help her. If she’d let me. “Do you need help?”

“No, I’m fine.” Her lips curled up. As if a wilted smile would convince me she was telling the truth.

“Samantha—”

“I don’t want to be rude, but I have a lot to do before the twins get up. Was there something else you needed to talk about? You mentioned something about this morning.”

“Yes. You’ll never guess what I found this morning, lying on my kitchen floor. Right where Michelle died.”

“No clue.”

“A dog cable.” Weighing Samantha’s nonresponse, I added, “Do you think it’s a coincidence?”

“I don’t know. Did you ask Jonathan about it?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t have a chance.” I wasn’t going to tell her we slept in separate rooms.

“I don’t think it’s anything to—” A crash upstairs cut Samantha off. She gave me another semi-wilted smile. “The monsters have risen.”

Taking the hint, I stood. “I’ll head home.” I reluctantly left.

CHAPTER 10

I
scuttled back home and cautiously entered the house, listening for sounds of a would-be killer. Silence. Feeling slightly tense, I went into the kitchen. The cable was gone. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Or maybe neither.

I headed upstairs.

Josh was gone—hopefully at school.

The bed in the guest room was made. I guessed Jon had gone to work. No good-bye. As usual. After checking every room in the house for an unwanted visitor, I showered, dressed, then headed down to the girl-cave. Flipped on the lights. As I headed toward my drawing desk, there was a loud buzz and a zap and then everything went black.

Standing in the middle of the room, I blinked, frozen in place, instantly terrified. Was this a trap? Or merely a short circuit? My heart thumped against my breastbone. My ears strained, listening. Nothing. Just silence.

One second passed. Another. Nobody grabbed me. Nobody clobbered me over the head.

A short circuit. That was all it was.

Slowly, gradually, I started breathing again. My heart rate settled into a more normal pace. Already becoming disorientated in the blackness—I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, literally—I turned around, extended my arms, and took one, two, three baby steps. I hoped I was heading in the right direction! I took a few more, expecting to feel the wall enclosing the side of the staircase any time now ... any time ...

Crack.

Crash.

Instinctively I dove forward, away from the earsplitting noise. Something had fallen. Something huge. Finally, my hands smacked into a wall. I flattened my body against it and caught my breath again.

Dust choked me.

I was feeling closed in, suffocated, trapped. Using the wall to support me, I sidestepped five, ten paces. Hit another wall. I groped. It was the cubbie wall. Damn, I’d gone the wrong way! I was cowering in the far back corner of the room. Which meant the thing that crashed was probably blocking the exit. This was not going to be fun.

I reversed directions, walking carefully until I couldn’t go any farther. Something big and wooden was lying in a heap on the floor, directly in front of the staircase. Fortunately I discovered—after feeling my way around like a blind woman—I could climb over it. When I stepped foot on the staircase, I gave a little shout of victory.

I threw the door open and squinted against the bright light. All it took was one quick glance in the kitchen to see the power hadn’t gone out in the whole house. Just the basement. Lucky me. I looked down the steep staircase. The light spilling from the floor above illuminated part of the rubble at the bottom. Looked like one whole section of the cubbie wall had fallen. I was damned lucky I hadn’t been standing there when it had given way. I might have.... I could have been....

If I’d been standing just a few feet over, I very well would have been the second woman to die in this house.

Another coincidence?

Feeling a little sick, I flopped onto a bar stool and let my head fall. It landed on the cool granite countertop.

I’d almost died.

Was it an accident? Or not?

I sat there, stunned, staring at the back of my eyelids for who knew how long. A knock at the front door brought me out of my stupor.

I opened my front door to discover I was having guests for an early lunch. Samantha, Lindsay, and Erica were standing on my porch, each of them holding a covered dish.

“I brought a salad,” Lindsay said. “That’s one thing that not even I can burn.”

“Pasta from Juliano’s Restaurant,” Erica said.

“And I brought dessert,” said Samantha, following the other two ladies into the house. “I hope you don’t mind our little surprise visit.”

“No, I don’t mind at all.” I shut the door and followed them in the kitchen.

Finally, one of them clued in on my dazed condition. “Christine, are you okay?”

“Um, I’m not sure. Something just happened. Downstairs.” I pointed and all three of them looked toward the basement.

“What happened?” Lindsay asked, plunking the salad bowl on the counter. “You look absolutely petrified.”

“I think I almost died.”

“What?” Lindsay rushed to me, eyes flying over me, probably looking for injuries.

“I went downstairs to work and the light went out. It’s freaking dark down there when there are no lights. And then I was trying to get back upstairs but there was a crash, and, and ...” I swallowed but my mouth and throat were stone-dry. Lindsay rushed to the refrigerator, grabbed a water bottle, and handed it to me. After thanking her, I continued, “The built-in shelf fell, right in front of the stairs. If I’d gone the right way, instead of back—I got a little turned around—it would have landed on me.”

All three women gaped at me. Then two of them looked at Erica.

Quietly, she said, “Adam built those shelves.”

“We didn’t think about him,” Lindsay said.

“Michelle would let him into the house without a second thought,” Samantha said, softly.

We all looked at Erica.

Erica shook her head. “No, it couldn’t be Adam.”

“Were you home with him that day?” Samantha asked.

“No, I wasn’t.” Erica fiddled with her hair.

“Then you can’t know that for sure. Right?” Lindsay asked.

“I know he wasn’t home,” Erica repeated, sounding absolutely certain. We all waited for her to tell us why she was so sure. She sighed. “I came home early that day. His car was gone.”

“Maybe he drove it around the block and parked it?” Lindsay reasoned.

“No, he didn’t do that.”

Everyone, including me, gave Erica a pitying look.

“Dammit, don’t look at me like that. I’m not fooling myself. I know for a fact that Adam wasn’t home because I sent him and the kids to my parents for a long weekend. I wanted some time to myself.”

Okay, that made sense. But why had it seemed so difficult for Erica to spit it out? She was acting guilty, like she was hiding something.

“That was the weekend I found out Matt was cheating on me for the first time... .” Lindsay said softly. She seemed to be talking to herself, not to anyone in particular.

Now I understood why Erica had tried to avoid telling us she’d been home alone.

Lindsay lifted her gaze to Erica but didn’t say a word. I think she understood, too.

“We should eat before everything gets cold.” I jumped to my feet. After setting out all the essentials and pouring drinks, I sat down at the dining table with my three friends. Over heaping plates of pasta, we talked about the case. Turned out the doctor was a dead end. Erica had been able to sweet-talk Theresa into checking his schedule that day. He’d delivered not one, not two, but three healthy baby boys that day. He didn’t leave the hospital until after five
P.M.
And that could be confirmed.

The doctor wasn’t the killer.

Which left ... the three women sitting around me and ... ?

Josh skulked into the kitchen just as I was about to say something. He looked ... strange. Tense. His eyes snapped to mine. They were dark. Cold. Empty.

That was one person we’d never considered.

“Josh ... ?” I said.

He knew the victim.

He had access to the victim.

But two years ago he would have been just a child. Much too young to do anything so horrid.

A sick feeling swept through me.

“No school?” I asked.

“I’m sick.” Josh jerked his gaze away and left the room. A chill skittered through my body.

Could it be Josh?

“I don’t know what the problem is with Josh lately,” I grumbled, not really expecting anyone to respond. “I thought we were getting along okay, but the last few days, he’s been so ... tense.”

“What if it was Joshua?” Lindsay whispered as if she’d read my mind.

“Why would he kill his own mother?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer. Lately it seemed he’d gone out of his way to stay away from me. But that was expected, normal. After all, he was a preteen. They were prone to mood swings. And getting adjusted to having a new adult in the house took time. There’d been no sign of instability, no sign of hostility. At least nothing out of the ordinary. Every teenager got cranky sometimes.

Could a ten-year-old child really kill his mother? Could a child live with that kind of guilt for years? Would a child who had killed his mother even feel guilt? How would he hide what he’d done from everyone?

“Erica, I started to tell you something the night of the party,” I said, intentionally shifting the conversation. I wasn’t comfortable with the direction my thoughts had drifted.

Erica nodded. “Of course, Josh,” she said, ignoring me. “We should’ve thought of that possibility sooner.”

“Your cat’s dead,” I said.

Erica didn’t respond. Didn’t blink an eye. “Christine, have you noticed anything unusual around here?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Anything. Anything at all.”

“I’ve noticed ... neighbors getting wasted and dancing around their front yards in the middle of the night. Having affairs because they hate their husbands. Becoming lesbians because they’ve been heartbroken one too many times. But I’m thinking that’s pretty normal stuff.”

“No, you’re right. That is pretty normal stuff, compared to—” Erica cut herself off. “I’m thinking more like finding dead animals at your doorstep?”

“Yes. Why?”

“That’s it.” Erica slapped her flattened hands on the table. “They’re gifts. For Jon. A plea for forgiveness. It makes perfect sense, and it explains why we suspected Jon in the first place.”

“Huh?” I said, not following.

Lindsay agreed with a nod. “He knows the truth. We smelled the deceit.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“He’s protecting his son,” Samantha explained, her pretty ice-blue eyes full of understanding. “Jon has been protecting Joshua all this time.”

“But why? Why would Josh kill his mother?”

“I’m guessing it was The Change,” Samantha said, shaking her head. “He probably couldn’t help himself.”

“What change?” I was so fricking lost. Would somebody explain it in simple terms? “What about the shelves falling? The dog cable?”

“An accident, I’m guessing,” Lindsay said.

“Adam built some shelves in our house, too. They fell,” Erica admitted. “The cable was probably left by Jon. He might’ve been trying to secure Josh.”

“Secure Josh?” I echoed.

Samantha pulled a pill bottle out of her purse, studied it, then dropped it back in. “How terrible for Jon. To lose his wife and then face the stigma of a police investigation. Not to mention, I’m sure he was terribly worried about what would happen to Josh if anyone discovered the truth. And here, I thought
I
had a lot of stress to deal with.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

Samantha, Lindsay, and Erica exchanged glances. Finally Erica spoke, “There’s something you don’t know about us. All of us. You see, we’re not exactly what you think we are.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You were right.” Samantha emptied her purse onto the table. I counted five prescription bottles. “I am addicted to prescription drugs. Lindsay is sexually confused. And Erica hates her husband and is sleeping with a younger man. But that’s not the worst of it. Not by a long shot.”

I held my breath, knowing I was finally going to have the answers I’d been searching for.

Samantha folded her napkin and, after dry-swallowing a handful of pills, clasped her hands in her lap. “I started taking Xanax years ago. For anxiety. Then I added Valium to my daily diet. And sleeping pills. I couldn’t handle it anymore. The stress. My husband is a demon, and I do mean that in the most literal sense. If you have any doubt, just look at my children.”

Demon spawn? They were a little loud, slightly wild, but hardly the offspring of the devil.

“And I have my reasons for resenting my worthless husband,” Erica said. “He’s a dragon. Because of his hair-trigger temper, he hasn’t been able to keep a job for more than a month. And he won’t try anger management therapy.”

“My run-around, cheating ex-boyfriend was a fae. I’m telling you, they cannot be monogamous. It’s simply not in their blood. I know that now. And we”—Lindsay motioned to Samantha, and Erica—“are werewolves. So was Michelle. You saw us. With Samantha.”

My gaze snapped back to Samantha’s eyes. Ice-blue. “There’s no such thing as werewolves,” I said.

“Oh yes, there is,” Lindsay said. “You’re not only sitting at the table with three, but you’re living with one, too.”

BOOK: The Real Werewives of Vampire County

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