We met Jolene at a place on the northern edge of the city, where the coast met the foothills. The view was breathtaking, and I could see the appeal of their outside terrace in the summer. The menu was aimed at an upper-class clientele, and the lunch crowd appeared to be mostly well-dressed women. A case of baked goods we walked by on the way to our table was enough to add pounds simply by proximity.
“Can I afford this place?” I asked before opening my menu.
“Barely,” Lizzy said. “We don’t come here for dinner.”
“Unless someone else is paying,” Jolene said with a laugh.
But the food was great, and the dessert we split three ways was obscenely delicious, so I didn’t mind digging a little deeper than normal to pay the bill.
As we were leaving, a woman drove up in a cherry-red sports car and got out. I stopped in my tracks and stared. Stunning was an often-overused word, but she deserved it. From the top of her immaculately-coifed blonde hair to the thousand-dollar shoes, she was perfect. Tall, blonde, gorgeous, young, and rich.
“Wow. I wonder who that is,” I said. “A movie star in Westport?”
Lizzy shrugged, but Jolene said, “Michaela Gallagher, rich society heiress. Her granddaddy started the largest waste-hauling business in the area, and she inherited it.” Jolene shook her head. “Amazing that you can turn trash into that kind of money.”
I thought she looked damned good for someone a hundred and fifty years old.
I asked Lizzy to drop me off at my apartment so I could pick up a couple of things I’d forgotten—like my hairbrush.
“Do you want me to wait on you?” she asked.
I remembered her saying that she tired easily, and she didn’t look like her normal perky self. I checked my watch, and it was only two-thirty.
“No, I’ll be fine. It’s a long time until dark, and I feel like walking.” I laughed. “It’ll help with all those calories from lunch.”
I went upstairs and found my hairbrush, shampoo, some clothes, and also a novel I’d been reading. I checked where I had left off in the book and remembered it was just getting to an interesting part. I didn’t notice time passing until the light began fading. I looked at my watch and discovered it was getting late. The sun had been setting even before my five o’clock shift started. I had just enough time to get to the bus stop and get to work.
Grabbing everything I had gathered, I raced downstairs and out the door.
When I walked out into the parking lot, I realized I had really misjudged the time. Not only had the sun set, but a black limo was parked in front of the building. The only limousines I was familiar with belonged to vampires, and I immediately shielded.
“Miss McLane,” a voice called from the car. The back door of the limo swung open, and Harry Gallagher got out.
I stopped but remained wary.
He approached me and said, “I felt badly about the way we parted the other evening. I apologize.”
“That’s all right. I was busy, and it was a stressful time,” I said, furiously thinking, trying to figure out what he wanted.
He smiled. In the building’s porch light, he was a striking figure. His expression was soft and welcoming, his eyes… Oh, dear gods, his eyes.
“Please,” he said, “I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you all right? Feeling better?”
He came close enough to bump into my shield, and the expression on his face changed.
“Is that necessary? I’m sorry that Rodrick has frightened you, but I wouldn’t harm you, Erin. You have my word on that.”
I dropped the shield, wondering as I did so if I was being stupid. Gallagher stepped closer, and I took an involuntary step back, running into the wall. He took another step and reached out. His fingertips stroked my cheek.
“I don’t know why you affect me the way you do,” he said. “It’s been a very long time since I felt so attracted to a woman.”
“You probably say that to all the girls,” I said, my voice shaky.
“I assure you, I don’t.” He leaned close, and his lips touched mine.
My heart was racing. His lips were soft and warmer than I expected. I had thought a vampire would be cold. He drew back slightly, looking into my eyes. I fell in, unable to look away. He kissed me again, more fully, and I responded. My bag slipped from my fingers, and I wrapped my arms around him.
The kiss deepened, and he parted my lips with his tongue. His hands slid around me, fanning out over my ass, and pulling me to him. I felt his thigh push between my legs, and then I was pressing and rubbing against him. The kiss went on and on and all my thoughts were replaced by the way he felt against me. His hands, his lips, his hard, broad chest.
I wanted him, like I had never wanted a man before. For the first time in my life, I wanted—needed—a man. Not just any man, but him. I wanted to melt into him and feel him inside me.
Warning bells went off. Red lights flashed. I fed ley line energy into my hands, put them on his chest, and gently pushed him away.
“Not like this,” I said. “No.” I was breathing heavily, and I felt as though I had been running a race. I looked into his face, his eyes, then looked away. “Too fast. I can’t do this. Please, let me go. I need to go to work.”
He took a step back. “I’ll give you a ride.”
I shook my head. If he got me in that car, I had no idea what I might do. I had come close to losing control, and had no faith in my ability to say no a second time.
“It’s all right. I have a ride coming,” I lied. Picking up my bag, I slid across the porch, then turned and jogged toward the apartment complex office. Eleanor still hadn’t closed for the night, and I went in.
“Can I borrow the phone?” I asked.
She glanced up. “Sure, go ahead.”
I called the bar and asked Sam if he could come and get me. While we talked, I saw Gallagher’s limo pull away.
“Are ye all right?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I, I just lost track of time, and it got dark. It gets dark so early nowadays.”
“Okay. I can’t leave Liam here by himself, but I’ll send someone to pick you up.” Liam was a great bartender, but autistic. He did fine in a controlled environment, but was a strong mage and couldn’t be trusted to handle situations that confused him.
Fifteen minutes later, Trevor’s car pulled into the parking lot. Oh, gods, I thought. Of all the people I have to face right now.
As I left the office and crossed to his car, I thought I saw a figure in a cloak with a peaked hood standing at the corner of the building, but when I turned in that direction, no one was there.
I was glad it was dark and Trevor couldn’t see my face, because I knew it was bright red. He tried to make small talk driving to Rosie’s but I could hardly put two words together. I was embarrassed, ashamed, and my body was aching so badly I could almost cry. Aching in places and in ways far different from the pains caused by the beating I received from the vampires.
I worked my shift in a daze. All I could think about was Gallagher’s lips on mine, his hands on my ass, and his body pressed against me. I longed for the night to be over so I could go upstairs and curl up in a ball. But what I really wanted to do was crawl in his bed.
Something was going on out in the city. All evening long, people were coming in, talking about fights and police and a lot of other stuff I just couldn’t track.
At about ten o’clock, Cindy Mackle came in, looking harried, and strode over to the bar.
“Detective Mackle?”
“Gimme an Irish coffee,” she said.
“Rough night?” I asked as I pulled the whiskey off the back bar and took it over to where the coffee pot and cups were kept. I glanced back once at her. “Sugar or whipped cream?”
“Whipped cream.”
I took the finished drink over and set it on the bar. She pushed some money toward me and took a sip, coming away with a whipped cream mustache.
“If another cop comes in, this is just cof
fee,” she said.
“Of course. What’s going on? People have been riled up all night.”
“More damned vampires. Harry Gallagher was driving from this direction toward town with three cars. Someone put a mine—an IED or something—in the damned road and blew the lead car to kingdom come. Then a horde of vampires comes out of the woodwork, and a huge bloody battle ensues.”
The sound of the ocean in my ears made it hard to hear, and Mackle’s voice suddenly seemed to be coming from far away.
“Gallagher?”
“Yeah. Don’t know what happened to him; we didn’t find his body. All the other vamps with him were slaughtered. Cut the heads off of every damned one.”
She turned her cup up and drank about a third of her coffee.
The room wasn’t stable. I put my hand on the bar and used it for guidance, then stumbled into the kitchen and sat down on a chair. I put my head down between my knees and gulped air.
“Hey, are you all right?” Steve asked, putting his hand on my back.
Gone. He was gone. Just like that. A bitchy little voice in the back of my head said, Well, solves that problem. I drew a ragged breath and sat up, feeling tears running down my cheeks. Steve’s worried face swam in and out of focus. He knelt down and put his arm around my shoulders.
“Yeah, sure, I’m fine,” I said. “Why shouldn’t I be?” After all, I barely knew the man.
The next thing I knew, Jenny and Mackle were also standing there.
It took me about fifteen minutes to wash my face and put myself together enough to go back out to the bar. My daze from earlier in the evening was replaced by a new daze.
I managed to make it through my shift, but as soon as Jill came in to relieve me, I went upstairs, locked the door, and curled up on the bed. Eventually, I cried myself to sleep, and I wasn’t even sure why. I had just met Gallagher, and his death shouldn’t have hit me so hard.
Chapter 10
When I awoke the following morning, I felt rested and better than I had in days. My mind flashed to the previous day and Gallagher’s death. I couldn’t figure out why I was so upset. Even more, I couldn’t figure out why in the hell I’d been so turned on when he ambushed me at my apartment. And why was he there? How did he know I would be there? Was every damned vampire in town stalking me? I was not flattered.
As I swung my legs out of bed, I felt something brush my chest. The little necklace Gallagher had given me as a tip. A round disk about the size of a nickel with a Celtic knot embossed on it. Gold? I had always thought it was gold, but that morning it seemed dull. I took it off and examined it. It didn’t look like anything special, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I had been wearing it.
After a long hot shower, I traipsed downstairs with my hair still wet. It was mid-morning, but I stopped when I saw Jolene and Lizzy sitting at the bar, their faces turned to me. Concerned faces.
“Hi.” I smiled. “What brings you guys out so early? Drinking before noon?” I ran my hand across Lizzy’s back as I passed her. “You doing okay?”
Lizzy nodded, then her expression turned from concerned to puzzled, and her eyes lost focus as they did when she was Seeing something.
“We heard you weren’t doing well last night,” Jolene said.
I hopped up on the barstool next to her. “Yeah, don’t know what that was about.” I pulled the necklace out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Is there such a thing as a love spell?”
She examined the pendant. “Not really. Compulsion spells, attraction spells, things like that. Not terribly ethical. What is this?”
“Harold Gallagher left it as a tip one night.”
“Cheap bastard, isn’t he? It isn’t even gold, just gold plated,” Jolene said. “There’s a faint trace of residual magic, but that could come from you if you’ve been wearing it.”
Sam came over, and I ordered breakfast. After he walked away, I said, “Suppose it was a charm. Why would it suddenly stop working?”
“Suddenly? Well, the easy answer is that the person it was keyed to might have died.” She eyed me very suspiciously as she said that.
“What in the hell happened last night?” Lizzy blurted out.
So, I told them about Gallagher ambushing me, then about my breakdown after Mackle told me he was probably dead.
“But I feel great this morning, and the idea of Gallagher meeting the final death doesn’t bother me any more than reading an obituary about someone I vaguely knew.”
Jolene shook her head. “I don’t think he was dead last night.” She hefted the necklace in her hand. “But I think he is this morning. That’s why the charm stopped working. But why would he do that to you? It’s not like he had a lack of women.”
Her head jerked up, and she stared wide-eyed at me. “That didn’t come out right. I mean, I don’t mean, that you aren’t desirable.”
I laughed and patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I knew what you meant.”
One of the girls who worked in the kitchen brought my breakfast out, and I dug in.
“By the way,” I said as I washed the first few bites down with coffee, “I would really appreciate if no one found out about what happened at my apartment last night. Especially Sam or Trevor.”
“Yeah,” Lizzy said, “I don’t think Trevor needs to know about that.”
Just before midnight, I felt a strange burst of magic from the front door. To my complete surprise, Michaela Gallagher stood there in a calf-length white fur coat, looking around. When she finally turned toward the bar and saw me, she came my way with long, confident strides.
Her blonde hair was parted on the side and fell across her shoulders down to her breast. The dress under her coat was also white, tight, with a plunging neckline and an asymmetric swallowtail hemline. Three strands of large pearls adorned her neck, and I assumed they were real.
The noise level of the bar dropped to almost nothing as she crossed the distance between the door and the bar.
“Erin McLane?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that makes things easier. Is there a place where we can talk? Privately?”
“I’m working, Ms. Gallagher. I don’t get off until after two, so perhaps sometime tomorrow would be better? We do serve a lovely brunch, and things are much quieter then.” Hell, the place would have to be closed to be quieter than at that moment. Everyone in the place was watching us.
She eyed me speculatively. “Do you live here?”
“I feel safe here.”
She jerked a nod. “I can relate to that. All right, tomorrow, then.”
“May I get you a drink?” I asked.
Her eyes widened a little, and her expression changed from serious with a bit of haughty to surprised. She scanned the bottles on the back bar, then said, “Yes, that would be nice,” and sat down on one of the barstools. “A Mai Tai, please.”
I mixed her drink with top-shelf rum and noticed that the decibel level of the bar increased as people turned back to their conversations. The click of pool balls resumed. But it was still quieter than before she walked in. Lizzy hadn’t known who she was, and Jolene hadn’t identified her as a supernatural. I wondered how many people in Rosie’s recognized her.
“That will be fifteen dollars,” I said, setting her drink down. “Have you heard anything about your father? I was told he’s missing.”
Michaela took a sip of her drink and nodded. “That’s good.” Then she raised her eyes to mine. They were filled with pain. “His head was sitting on Necropolis’s front porch when they opened this evening.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
My mind raced. If Rodrick Barclay personally killed Gallagher, which seemed likely, then all of Gallagher’s children and their children—in other words, all his followers—immediately became Barclay’s. That threw the balance of power in the city heavily to Barclay’s side. The message to Eileen Montgomer
y was clear. She could no longer sit on the sidelines. She needed to choose either Barclay or Flynn.
But what I didn’t understand was what happened to Michaela and Gallagher’s other dhampir. She was the only one who was actually his child—and in the normal sense. All the others were… I had no idea what their relationships were with any of the vampires. Were they even aware of who their fathers were?
“I was told he was coming back from seeing you when he was ambushed,” she said. “He came to ask for your help and you turned him down.”
“Uh, who told you that?”
“That’s not important.”
“Well, I don’t remember him asking me for help with anything. What I do remember is him attempting to seduce me using a compulsion charm. He didn’t seem to need my help, or my consent. He was perfectly content to just help himself.”
She studied my face, then looked down and shook her head. “That sounds like something he’d do.” She sat there for a while, then suddenly asked, “Are you really a Hunter?”
“Do you really think a Hunter would be working here?” I asked in return.
She looked thoughtful. “My father and George Flynn, and probably Rodrick Barclay, think you are.”
I sighed. “Barclay accused me of that once, and yes, I think Flynn believes it. Ms. Gallagher, I don’t own a sword. Not even a pretend one that people play games with.”
“Call me Michaela, please. I’m not sure using my surname is a good idea at the moment.”
I glanced down the bar and saw Jenny waiting for me to take a drink order, so I went over to her.
“We have some of the strangest people show up since you started working here. What in the hell is she doing in here?” Jenny asked.
“Mourning, I think,” I said, glancing back at Michaela, who was sipping her drink and staring off into space. “They found her father’s head this morning, and Barclay’s taken his followers. I’m not sure she even has a place to go.” I looked Jenny straight in the face and said, “You asked me once where I would have gone if not for Rosie’s.”
Night Stalker (Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill Book 2) Page 7
