The Witch Is Back (8 page)

Well, if she believed in the existence of Bigfoot, vampires weren’t that much of a stretch, right?

I nodded, knowing I needed to just come out with it, because claiming to see Bigfoot every Christmas was a far cry from admitting that your boyfriend had a thirst for blood. “Chris, I think Sinjin is a vampire.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment, just stared at me blankly. Then her mouth dropped open as if I’d sprouted another head. “Oh. My. God.”

Neither of us said anything for at least four seconds. We just sat there gaping at each other as she tried to persuade herself that I had not lost my mind.

“You’re being serious, aren’t you?” she said finally.

I sighed and nodded, dropping my eyes to my lap. “Yes, I’m being completely and totally serious, although I wish I weren’t.”

“Jolie, that’s a really big thing to accuse someone of.”

“I know.” I took a deep breath. “And believe me, I’ve tried to talk myself out of thinking it, but all the evidence points to it, Chris.”

“Hmm,” she started.

“I know I sound completely insane.”

“I don’t think you’re insane,” she interrupted and smiled at me reassuringly. “But maybe you just made a mistake, that’s all. I mean, maybe there is a logical reason behind the fact that he seems to be a vampire.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why do you think he’s a vampire anyway? Did he like try to bite you or something?”

I shook my head, although I hadn’t forgotten the way he’d lunged at my bleeding finger. Then again, he hadn’t forced my finger in his mouth or anything like that. “No, he hasn’t.”

“So what makes you think he would?”

What made me think he was a vampire? I glanced out the window, trying to get my thoughts into some sort of order. Then I faced her again and held out one finger. “He’s incredibly cold.” Second finger. “I only see him at night.” Third finger. “Plum freaks out whenever she sees him.” Fourth finger. “He moves inconceivably fast.” Fifth finger. “It’s like he gets transfixed over the sight of blood.” Sixth finger. “I’ve never seen him eat.” Seventh finger. “He has no aura.”

“Wow,” she said, her eyes growing wider.

“There’s more, but I can’t think of all of it right now.” Then I took a deep breath and faced her, wondering what she was thinking. “I know this sounds weird, Chris.”

She nodded, but didn’t say anything for a while. “The night he came here, it was pitch black.”

“Yeah.”

“And when he took the phone from me, I brushed my finger against his hand to flirt with him and I remember thinking he was freezing. But I figured it was just because he’d been outside,” she finished. I could see the wheels turning in her head. “He isn’t super-pale, though.”

“Well, maybe not all vampires are?”

She nodded. “And Plum freaks out when she’s around him?” Before I could respond, her mouth dropped open and her eyebrows reached for the ceiling. “Oh my God, Jules, did you invite him inside your house?”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

She shook her head. “That isn’t good. Not at all.”

“That thought crossed my mind.”

She tapped her fingers against her knee and then faced me. “Jules, we need to find out where his daytime resting place is and we need to stake him.”

“Oh my God!” I said and stood up, aghast that she would even think such a horrible thing. “We are not staking him!”

She stood up and grabbed my shoulders when she realized that I was about to walk away from her. “Jules, think about it. He has an open invitation to your house. That means he can come in whenever he feels like it.”

“Then I’ll just take the invitation back or I’ll stay with you.”

“Those are short-term solutions.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, completely in denial that we were even having this conversation. There was no way in hell I would even consider stabbing … er, staking Sinjin. It was just insanity. “Chris, we are not freaking Van Helsing! We don’t even know for sure that he’s a vampire!”

She frowned and refolded her arms over her chest as if to say,
Two can play this game
. “You were just trying to convince me that he was.”

I sighed. “Okay, you win that argument, but I’m not about to go and kill Sinjin with you! He hasn’t done anything to hurt me!”

“Yet.”

So she wasn’t going to back down. I eyed her and said nothing for a few seconds. “Chris, do you really think we’d be able to take down a vampire? You and me?”

She cocked her head to the side and was quiet for a few seconds before she finally sighed and shook her head, dropping her shoulders in resignation. Thank God. “No, probably not.”

Phew. “Okay, so …”

“But we can find someone who can,” she insisted and started for the counter, where she grabbed her purse. “In the meantime, we need to go to Ralphs and buy all their garlic and then we need to go to Target and buy all their crosses.”

I sighed deep and hard, wondering why I had to put up with this crap. Yep, it had been a bad idea to tell her. Dammit. “They don’t have crosses at Target.”

“Then we need to go to a religious store,” she said and started chewing on her lip, as if trying to bring to mind a religious store close by. I didn’t even know what that meant—or if “religious stores” even existed. “On the way back, we can stop off at my mom’s church for some holy water. But I can’t be gone too long because I have a date with Richard tonight.”

Before Christa could continue plotting Sinjin’s assassination, we both turned at the sound of the door opening. A man entered carrying an enormous flower arrangement, swaying with the weight of it. The arrangement was so massive that it dwarfed him entirely; all I could see were his jean-clad legs.

“Delivery for Jolie Wilkins,” he said as he wrestled with the arrangement, finally setting it down on the counter before he stood up and stretched out his back. I heard an audible crack. “Damn thing is heavy,” he muttered.

“I’m Jolie,” I said, walking up to him. He handed me a receipt and motioned for me to sign it. I did and received a quick smile before he raked Christa up and down (she, of course, smiled flirtatiously at him).

“Hope you enjoy them,” he said, throwing Christa a wink. She didn’t respond, but she watched him slam the door and disappear into his delivery van.

“He was kinda cute,” she said, but I wasn’t paying any attention. Nope, I was focused on the mammoth bouquet. I made no attempt to approach it.

“Well, you have to find out who they’re from,” Christa said.

“I already know,” I answered. My stomach had fallen to the floor. But queasy stomach or not, I couldn’t help admiring how exquisite the arrangement was, with enormous white lilies hovering fragrantly over crimson roses. There had to be more than seventy-five roses.

Christa reached for the card. I didn’t try to stop her, so she broke the seal and pulled the card out, clearing her throat as she did so. “Please forgive me,” she read, then dropped her hand and shrugged. “That’s all it says.”

But I didn’t know if I could forgive Sinjin because it wasn’t a matter of anything he’d done. It was a matter of something that he was.

Six hours later, I was still in my store. I hadn’t had one client all day. Ordinarily, I would have packed up and gone home, but an hour or so earlier, someone had called and begged to come in for a reading. Figuring my wallet could certainly stand to benefit, I’d consented. Christa had already left to prepare for her date, but I
wasn’t too concerned. I usually let her go home early when it was slow anyway.

At exactly four p.m., I heard the door open and I glanced up from where I was sitting behind the counter. I started to smile in greeting, but the smile was immediately wiped clean off my face. For the second time in the course of a week and a half, I was struck speechless by a handsome man. The first time, of course, had been when I met Sinjin. And this time … I glanced down at my logbook to where I’d haphazardly scribbled down his name.

This time, it was … Rand.

“Hi,” I said, jumping down from the stool, and circling the counter to meet him. I gulped hard, wondering why I was suddenly being tormented by incredibly striking men. Men who exceeded the most admirable qualities of humanity.

This guy didn’t say anything right away. Instead, he just stood there—all six-two, maybe six-three of him—and seemed to stare through me, almost as if I were transparent. He was broader than Sinjin, but also shorter by a couple of inches, if I had to guess. His hair was wavy and chocolate brown, the exact shade of his eyes. He had a strong, tan face, sculpted with broad, masculine angles, and a cleft in his chin.

“Um, are you Rand?” I repeated, beginning to feel uncomfortable under his silent scrutiny.

A huge smile softened his face, bookended by two dimples. He was simply magnificent, and I felt myself swallow hard. “I apologize for zoning out,” he said as he shook his head in apparent embarrassment. He spoke with an English accent, and his voice seemed suddenly so familiar. I shook the feelings right out of my head and focused instead on the fact that he was British. What was it with me and gorgeous Englishmen lately?

Oh my God, what if he’s a vampire too?
The thought
tore through my head and I felt myself unwittingly retreating because it suddenly made perfect sense. Maybe this was a friend of Sinjin’s—or worse, maybe an enemy? ’Course, then the fact that this guy actually had an aura—and more so, that said aura was bright, electric blue (like nothing I’d ever seen before)—caused me to reconsider. Maybe it was just Sinjin who didn’t have an aura? Maybe other younger, lesser vampires did? I remained on guard.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” the man continued, moving forward to fill the space that separated us. He thrust out his hand with a large smile. “You are?”

I gulped but didn’t back away. I didn’t want to give him the advantage by appearing nervous or by letting on to the fact I knew he was something extraordinary. “Jolie … Jolie Wilkins.” I glanced down at his hand and, figuring this would be the true test of whether or not he wanted to dine on me, clasped it.

He was warm. Thank God.

But before I could revel in any feelings of relief, a surge of energy traveled directly up my arm from his hand. I pulled away from him in an instant, rubbing my hand against my pant leg as I stared at him in wide-eyed shock.

“Must have been static energy from my shoe brushing against the carpet,” he offered with an apologetic smile.

“You felt it too?” I asked, feeling the relief returning. He just nodded and I shook my head, laughing slightly. “That was some serious static cling!”

“Well, it is very nice to meet you, Jolie,” he said, and I could tell that he wasn’t just going through the standard protocol you follow when you first meet someone. No, he said it like he meant it, like he was incredibly pleased to make my acquaintance, like this was the best
moment of his whole day. It was definitely true what they said about the English—they were damn polite!

“It’s nice to meet you too,” I said and motioned him toward the back room, the hair on the back of my neck still on end even though we were no longer touching. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something … different about him. And of course I had to wonder what he wanted from me. Best to just keep my guard up, give him his reading, and send him on his merry way.

When he made no motion to follow me, I glanced up at him questioningly. He seemed to have completely forgotten why he was here and just kept staring at me in that off-putting way. It was almost as if he recognized me, or thought he did. It made me uncomfortable.

“You’re here for a reading?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, and nervously ran his hand through his hair. “Apologies, I’ve had quite a long day.” Then he laughed.

I just smiled back at him before turning to walk into my reading room, which was at the rear of my store. I was eager to get through this appointment so I could go home and figure out what I was going to do next about my little problem known as “the guy I’m dating is a vampire.” A part of me was nervous about being home alone considering I
had
invited Sinjin over; but if what I knew about vampire lore was true, I could just as easily uninvite him if he threatened me. Yes, Christa had told me that I could stay with her, but I could already see that ending badly when she came home with her flavor of the night and had really loud sex in the room next to mine.

Yeah, no.

“How have you been?” Rand asked, and when I glanced up at him, he seemed nervous. “Er, how has your day been?”

I studied him for a second or two, finding it odd that
such a handsome man seemed … nervous around me.
Nervous
wasn’t even the word for it, actually. It just seemed as if he knew something I didn’t. Of course, it didn’t make sense, but that seemed to be the theme of my life lately. “Um, it’s actually been pretty slow.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything more, just continued watching me as if he was more than content to stare at me all night. I smiled up at him, really not knowing what else to do, and took a seat at my reading table, motioning to the empty seat across from me. He nodded and pulled out the chair, seating himself so that he faced me. I reached for my cards, which were on the table, but he suddenly moved his hand on top of mine, preventing me from grabbing them.

There was that weird feeling of energy reverberating from his hand again, though it wasn’t anywhere near as strong as it had been the first time we’d touched. Given the Santa Ana conditions lately, I guessed there were lots of electrons in the air. But really, I knew I shouldn’t have been focusing on the static electricity buildup in my store—my attention should have been on this man who had come in for a reading …

“I thought you wanted me to read your cards?” I asked, my tone dubious.

“Can you read me without the cards please … Jolie?”

It was the way he said my name. He seemed familiar with it—as if he’d said it a million times. And that bothered me and not just because I didn’t understand it. I’d never told him I could do anything besides reading cards …

“I never said I could do anything beyond reading tarot cards,” I said in an even voice, which was a feat of itself considering how hard I was shaking inside. It was becoming apparent that this man was here for another reason.