A buzz in my pocket almost made me jump out of my skin. “Cheez-It.”
Notorious for forgetting my phone, I realized Cass had done more than cop a feel while I was dressing. She had stuck my cell and my ID in my back pocket, and her fancy-pants car was pairing with my phone without first asking permission, like it was doing me a favor.
“You’ve got to learn how to curse like a big girl one day.”
Ignoring her, I answered the call. “Hey, Gustav.”
“Your collar has been cornered,” he rumbled in a thick accent. “Get to the pier.”
“The pier?” I craned my neck at Cass. “What happened to the railroad museum?”
“That was two nights ago.” A car engine roared to life in the background. “Cassandra’s intel is old.”
“Suck it,” she yelled at our boss, who could hear her just as well as she heard him thanks to their heightened senses. “We always get our man.”
Boss wasn’t the right word, but it did the job. Cass was answerable to her master and her clan, and I was answerable to the Society and my family. Working for Gustav, a warg, created an interspecies loophole that allowed us to join his bounty hunter guild without any messy affiliations getting in the way.
“With pleasure, Häschen.” A husky chuckle flowed into the car with us. “Name the place and the time.”
The fact our boss called her a bunny, or maybe it was cute little bunny? I could never remember. It made me think it was a vampire joke since he was a warg. Maybe he thought it was funny implying she was Bunnicula. Or maybe he still had his tail in a twist because, regardless of how she pestered me, she had rules about sex with coworkers. It got a big, fat no from her. She preferred anonymous sex, and lots of it. Hard to keep it anonymous if you had to chat over a watercooler with the guy/girl you banged and fanged the night before then ditched as fast as your superhuman speed allowed.
And yet she had the gall to lecture me on relationships when I was the one committed to a guy I couldn’t outrun.
Okay, fine. Put like that, it was clear neither of us should ever open our mouths and let romantic advice fall out.
“This is sexual harassment.” Cass’s eyes glinted with mirth. “Careful, or I’ll file a complaint with HQ. I already bought silver-tipped boots to wear when your ass needs kicking.”
I must be an absolute dud in the hormones department. Maybe there was something biologically wrong with me? Maybe I’d crushed those impulses until all I had left south of my belt was the Sahara.
Another call interrupted Gustav with a persistent beep-beep, and I gulped when I recognized the number. Dampness coated my palms, and I almost dropped my cell while attempting to switch lines.
“Hey.”
A hard thud rattled my heart against my ribs. “Boaz.”
Cass ignored the traffic in favor of gawking at me.
“I wanted to check in.” He hesitated. “See if you were okay.”
See if I had decided to back out, more like it. It wasn’t like I had given him a ring, just my word.
“Any particular reason why?” I leaned over and physically turned Cass’s head forward. “It’s nice, but it’s…unexpected.”
No emotional attachments on either side would make this whole ordeal so much easier to swallow.
“Your dad called,” he admitted after another awkward pause. “He sounded…”
“Drunk.”
“I was going to say worried about you.” Boaz cleared his throat. “He said you were upset.”
“And you wanted to make sure I wasn’t having second thoughts.”
“No one knows we’re engaged. Only you, your dad, and me. You can break it off before it gets announced without a slap on the wrist from the Society or any hard feelings from me.”
“You asked me to marry you—” a totally backwards and human thing to do, “—and I agreed. That’s where it starts and stops for me. I’m a woman of my word.”
“I never doubted.” He softened his voice. “I’ll let you go then.”
“When will you be back?” I blurted before I caught myself. “To, um, finalize things?”
“Miss me already?” he teased with the ease of a man who found humor in everything. “You’ll see me sooner than you might think.”
“Okay, that was vague.” I struggled to sound professional, but my default setting gave me fits when I was around him. “I’ll put a rush on getting the papers drawn up then, so they’ll be waiting for you.”
“Will you be?”
Certain I had missed something, I backtracked. “Will I be what?”
“Waiting for me.”
Panic coated the back of my throat, and I rushed out a hasty, “Good night, Boaz.”
“Night, Addie.”
He was gone before I could remind him only my friends called me Addie.
“That’s interesting.” Cass radiated smugness. “Very interesting.”
“That Gustav wants in your pants? It’s hardly a newsflash.”
“Nice try.” She snorted. “You’re not going to distract me with thoughts of Gustav naked and rubbing me down with butter.”
“I…didn’t mention butter. And now I might never eat it again. Thanks for that. Anything else you’d like to ruin for me tonight?”
“One last thing.” She flicked me a glance. “You like him.”
“We’re getting married.”
“Your pheromones shot off the charts when he answered.”
“Just nerves.” I tucked my phone back in my pants. “Pre-wedding jitters.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” She chuckled. “This certainly makes things more interesting.”
“Stop saying interesting in that tone, and eyes on the road, missy. One of us is still alive, you know.”
Cass mimed buttoning her lips and left me to stew over the fact my gut was tight and my palms were sweaty.
Clearly, I was having an anxiety attack. I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for a guy with his reputation. After I got home, I would pop a Zoloft. Problem solved. Until then… “You missed the turn for the pier.”
“Ron’s not at the pier.”
“Gustav—”
“Parroted rumors at us that I planted six hours ago.” She scoffed. “Do you really think I would tell him where our mark is hiding? He’s the boss, and he’s all about the bottom line. He gives those tips to everyone to better his chances of landing the mark, which means the pier will be swarming.”
“You’re amazing.”
“I know.”
Settling in for the short drive to the museum, I pushed all thoughts of Boaz Pritchard out of my head and prepared to bag and tag a baby vamp worth three house payments. Who knows? Maybe I would go nuts with the bonus, if we got to him first, and buy myself a bottle of the nail polish I had been eyeballing. The rich brown with golden swirls reminded me of…
Oh crap.
Boaz’s eyes.
Three
Railroad museum sounded much fancier than the reality. It was more of an abandoned train station you donated five dollars to self-tour than a brick-and-mortar museum. That meant no handy walls to pen in our vamp. He would bolt if he scented us, scented me, since necromancers smelled alive in a way that parched vampire throats. Cass was old enough to smell like the rustle of brittle pages in an aged book. Unless she had eaten recently. Since baby vamps were prone to bloodlust, she fasted while on the job.
Music throbbed in the darkness ahead. “Do you hear that?”
Cass rolled her eyes so hard she could have counted her own vertebrae. “What do you think?”
“Dumb question.”
“Yes, it was.” She patted me on the head. “But you’re adorable for asking.”
With a growl, I snapped my teeth at her.
“You’ve spent too much time with Gustav if you’re trying to bite people for petting you.”
“I’ll tell him you said so.”
“Please do.” Her smile turned wicked. “It’s no fun pulling his tail if he doesn�
��t feel it.”
Signaling for her to hush, even though I had been the one to blab first, a rookie mistake I blamed on the call from Boaz yanking me out of my zone, I drew an ash stake from the holster on my thigh and began stalking the origin of the pounding beat.
Effortless in the way of vampires, Cass strolled beside me on the loose gravel without making a sound.
I envied her stealth when my best was nowhere near her worst, but not the cost of it.
Cass never talked about who resuscitated her or why, and I didn’t ask. She didn’t talk about why she belonged to a different clan than the one she had been born into, and I didn’t ask about that either.
A prostitute in her day couldn’t have afforded to pay a necromancer for the service. That meant a vamp had paid for it him—or her—self, had wanted Cass by their side for centuries longer than the decades granted to a human, and yet she lived alone.
I was curious, but I didn’t want to poke her tender spots any more than I wanted her to poke mine.
Under a longnecked overhead light, the newest of the engines gleamed ahead of us. Its paint, once the color of ripe tomatoes, had turned rusty as old blood over time. The music poured from a compact Bluetooth speaker propped on the left rear wheel. The range on the device connection couldn’t be far, maybe twenty feet or so. He must be within that radius.
A familiar series of hand gestures informed me of Cass’s intentions to circle the outer perimeter in case our heartbroken runaway got feisty on us.
Careful to keep several of the behemoth antiques between me and the speaker, I began my hunt in earnest.
A dozen steps later, the front of the engine came into full view, and I found our runner.
Used to blood and death, I didn’t lose my lunch, but I tasted it perched at the back of my throat.
Ron had been staked through the heart and groin with railroad spikes the killer left in him. Spread-eagle over the tracks, he stared up at the night sky. Or he would have, if his phone hadn’t been balanced over his eyes like a sleep mask.
Out of my depth, I held my position, waiting on Cass to circle back to me.
“Well, that was easy.” She didn’t bother crouching, a sure sign we were alone, and snapped on a pair of the blue nitrile gloves she was never without. Germs were everywhere, you know. “Let’s bag and tag him.”
“He’s dead.”
“For about the last six months judging by his current state of decomp.”
Baby vamps were still…juicy…when they died. Only the old ones turned to dust like in the movies. Whoever was responsible for this bit of theater knew that. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have bothered with the symbolic staking or the placement of the phone.
“Okay, smartass. I get he was a vampire, and therefore dead.” I pointed at my chest. “Hello, necromancer? I mean he’s dead-dead.” I reached for my phone. “True dead.”
“Please stop thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“This was murder. A ritualistic killing.”
“This is a paycheck.” She rubbed her fingers together. “A big, fat paycheck.”
“Cass.”
“Addie.”
“Cass.”
“Addie.”
“Boaz is a sentinel,” I confessed, hating how his name popped right into my head. “An Elite.”
“If you called to tell him you found a dead vampire in a closed railroad museum, he would nail you to the wall, and I don’t mean in a fun way. He would pick and pick and pick at you until you confessed all.” She flung her arm toward Ron. “Do you really think he’ll want to introduce a vampire hunter fiancée?”
The creation of vampires was the Society’s bread and butter. They wouldn’t care that there was one less vampire in the world. That just made room for more. They would worry such a young vampire’s untimely true death might provoke his clan into demanding a refund. That, they would find abhorrent.
“I didn’t say I was going to call him.” I rubbed my palms over my face. “I don’t know why I mentioned it.”
“He’s posted in Savannah, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
Used to her flexible morals where bounty met the law, I scowled at her all the same.
“Here’s your problem,” she continued. “You’re feeling guilty because he thinks he’s buying Suzy Q Homemaker with his money, but you’re more like Buffy. I’m more of a Spike myself. Oh! Or maybe if Willow and Spike had a baby. That sounds more like me.”
“Bisexual badass. Gotcha.”
“Yes.” She toyed with the laces on her corset, exposing a hidden pocket with yet more gloves. “But I would have had to have been born during one of those alternate universe episode deals. Otherwise, you’d be changing my diapers, Buff. I can’t help you kick ass if I can’t even wipe my own, you know?”
A sigh gusted past my lips. “Does this have anything to do with me and my situation or…?”
Vampires often got swept up in their own mythos, donning silk-lined capes and fake Transylvanian accents, but Cass didn’t have that problem. Not exactly. She didn’t binge every single vampire movie and TV show, read every comic and book series, for the entertainment value. She considered it research. On how to kill vampires. Or even slightly inconvenience them. And then she did everything in her power to avoid those things happening to her.
Just my luck the one vampire I actually liked turned out to be a hypochondriac.
“You’re thinking how often we clash with law enforcement.” She was still chugging full steam ahead. “You’re wondering if you can give this up after your problems are solved by hopping in the sack with your husband, since he’s got enough money for you to retire and do whatever dull thing Society matrons do with their time.”
“You…might be onto something.” I hated admitting it, but there you go. “Who am I after I marry him?”
“A woman who did what she had to for her family.” Cass brushed her fingers across my cheek, comforting me instead of perving on me for a change. “We painted ladies don’t cast stones, Addie. Stop hunching like you expect to get hit.”
Forcing my shoulders back, I shrugged off her kindness, unable to stomach it.
“You kept your sister alive.” She wasn’t done with me yet. “You kept a roof over her and your father’s heads. You’ve busted your ass to make sure he doesn’t have to swim up from the bottom of the bottle he’s always floating in these days.”
Throat tight, I withdrew. “That’s enough.”
“He’s not the only one grieving. You lost your mom. You lost your sister. And now you feel like you’ve lost yourself.”
Crushing my eyes shut, I blocked out her and her acid-churning truths. “I have to call this in.”
“I’ll do it.” She shoved me toward the exit. “Go home.” She dug in her pocket then tossed her keys at me. “Take my car. I’ll find my own way.” She adjusted her breasts. “Handsome sentinels can be so gosh-darn helpful when properly motivated.”
The metal bit into my palm when I closed my fingers around my escape. “Are you sure?”
“I can take the heat.” She reached for her phone. “I’m out of the closet.”
Until I tied the knot with Boaz, I had to keep my extracurricular activities hidden from him. Otherwise, he would call off the engagement. After all, he was buying my family’s good name to expunge the scandal from his own. He would cut me loose in a hot second if I couldn’t uphold my end of the deal. If he found out about my unladylike pursuits, he would wash me off his hands before the mud splattered from my family name onto his.
Society engagements could drag on for years, but I didn’t have that long. As much as my heart wished otherwise, my obligations would force my hand. Until I put a ring on his finger, and he made a deposit into my account, I was the sole provider for my family.
I could not mess up with him. Could. Not.
Twitchy from the murder, and cold from the bargain I had made, I didn’t give Cass’s car a second appreciative
glance. I had been brought too low for it to be more than transportation, too mad to care it was a dream to drive.
I startled when my phone rang through the speakers, the number familiar. “Hello?”
“Where are you?” Boaz laughed softly, I think at himself, but I didn’t get the joke. “I brought takeout and a movie. I guessed on both. I hope you like dim sum and Keanu Reeves.”
The strain in his voice from trying caused a sympathetic twang in my chest. It’s not like arranging a marriage was his idea of a good time either. Neither of us had much say in our engagement, not with our families in such rough shape.
His little sister had gotten into trouble in Savannah. He didn’t want to talk about it, but it was bad. Bad enough he wanted to give her Hadley’s name to start over fresh somewhere else. Bad enough he was willing to court a woman far beneath him. Only the scandal had brought him so low, and wasn’t that depressing? Not half as grim as me agreeing to his terms in order to save what I had left, but still.
“You’re here?” I squeaked. “In town?”
“Surprise! I figured you’d be home this late.”
“I went for a drive.” My palms slipped on the steering wheel. “I have no objections to dim sum, but which Keanu are we talking here? Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure? Speed? A Walk in the Clouds? The Matrix? John Wick?”
“You recited those like you’ve got a list in front of you.” He chuckled and seemed to mean it. “I might be in over my head here.”
“My best friend watched Bram Stoker's Dracula one too many times and fell in love with Jonathan Harker. Well, the actor who played him. Not the character.”
Cass viewed movies as falling into one of two categories: vampires and Keanu Reeves.
“Since you’ve already seen John Wick, I can download something else—”
“John Wick is fine.” I almost smiled. “I can respect a man who goes on a killing spree over his dog.”
“Bloodthirsty,” he teased. “I’m going to chalk Keanu up as the first thing you and I have in common.”
Common ground? He cared about that? It was more than I expected from him, and I couldn’t tell yet if it made me happy he cared or downright terrified I would flub this on some compatibility component.
The Redemption of Boaz Pritchard Page 2
