I blinked back the tears and the sadness that pressed on me. I sat on the floor, terribly forlorn and broken. I was a big, broken Janie doll. There was a ripple in the currents of the air around me and he arrived. The root of all evil. My biggest problem and the cause of my weakness. Chance appeared and peered down at me. He had come because he sensed my sadness. Like sonar, or some kind of sick radar, he had honed in on my emotions and had come to fix whatever bugged me. When he saw the offending telephone, he looked at a loss.
Well, that made two of us. I waved him away, but as usual, Chance did pretty much what he wanted and leaned on my dresser.
Since he could read my mind if he wanted, shooing him seemed futile so I focused on the conversation. “I just want you to be happy, Vance.” I tried to keep my voice from being too watery.
“You make me happy.” But he answered quickly. It wasn’t something he’d thought about, it was only the automatic answer he gave.
I blinked again and the tears pressed harder. “Vance, I can’t talk about this right now. I need to solve the Hammer stuff and focus on my work.”
“I’ve said mostly what I wanted to say. Oh, and about the Hammer…when I left last night it was because I smelled blood. I found Julia outside. You have no reason to believe me, but I wanted to tell you. I don’t know if it matters or not, but I want there to be truth between us. I am trying to eliminate the lies or untold truths because this space between us…well, I want to fix it, you know?”
I was silent again. I breathed raggedly. “I gotta go, Vance.”
“Yes.” His sigh came heavy over the line. “Know that I’m here for you and always will be, Janie. And always from me is a really long promise.” His attempt to lighten the mood fell short.
I wasn’t feeling it. “Okay.” I hung up. Chance knelt in front of me, took the phone, and I crumpled into his arms. “I have to talk to Julia.” I wailed the words. But that wasn’t why I cried.
He held me. He knew why I was crying, but he said nothing.
“You made me into a monster.” I accused him and gave his chest a feeble thump.
“Nah.” He was flip in his answer. “You have always been a monster, you were just in denial.”
I snuffled. It was not a ladylike noise. “No. I munched nachos not neurons.”
He laughed. “When did you come up with that one?”
“A while ago.” I sniffed again. He stroked my hair back from my face and I closed my eyes. “I have to talk to Julia.”
“Okay.” He seemed to be waiting for something more from me.
I was working up to it. “I don’t think I am nearly as nice as Vance or even as nice as Vance thinks I am.” This was a huge confession on my part, and I looked at him for a response.
He met my gaze. “I know that.”
I snuffled again and wiped a hand across my nose. Again, not an attractive gesture. My hair probably stuck out at all angles, my face was probably red and swollen from crying, and I leaked all over the place. But he continued to gaze into my eyes, waiting.
“All along, you saw me for what I really am and you liked me anyway. Mostly because you are as big of a jerk as I am.”
His face crumpled in a scowl. “We are not jerks. Realistic. Survivors. Tough, yes, sure you can call us all of those things. Jerks, no. You really must learn that what we are is not necessarily a bad thing.”
“I wanted to be one of the good guys.” A new wave of tears threatened.
He placed a finger over my lips. “So be a good guy. Just don’t be a dumb one.” He quirked a brow at me. “Whoever said there had to only be gullible good guys?”
I scowled at him. “You cannot be a manipulative, cheating good guy.”
He grinned. “I am.”
The expression turned wolfish and he kissed me, snotty tear face and all. Okay, maybe he pulled off being a good guy while being altogether too delicious to be good for me. Mostly. The man was like cheesecake. It can’t be good for anyone but it is sooo good.
So were there gray areas? Somehow, I doubted it. There were no gray areas in life when it came to good and bad. Those things remained pretty black and white. I wondered if I’d be forced to trade in my hero cape for a super villain outfit simply from hanging out with him.
As his hand closed on the back of my head and tilted it to the angle he preferred, I wondered how much longer I would remember to care whether he was a good guy or bad guy.
CHAPTER Thirteen
Julia was a Wiccan stripper. A virgin, Wiccan stripper…well, Julia was the picture of how not to read a book by the cover. I wondered how many other pages I’d left unread about her.
Julia and I had gotten along well during the short time I’d known her. I even considered her a friend, if a new one, prior to this whole Vance issue coming between us. On the way to Peaches, I called mostly to drill her about the murders going on in our peaceful burg, well, guilt nagged at my conscious. I glanced at my fairy fiancé, who tagged along for the ride, and figured I had enough to guilt trip over. Questioning friends fell pretty low on the list of things to worry about.
Especially since Julia had not rushed to tell me she discovered her soul mate who, by the way, was my boyfriend. Or that Vance had found her beside the body, and she had basically pointed the finger of guilt at him instead of explaining her presence.
Perhaps my feelings for Vance swayed me to believe that he had nothing to do with the murders. A ghost inhabited someone. It could have been Vance. But really, if it had settled in my boyfriend, wouldn’t I know it? Actually, if it inhabited any one in my inner circle of friends, how could I miss it?
Besides, Julia had tried to scratch my eyes out. I was one to hold a grudge. Even with the whole soul mate thing. I wouldn’t defend Chance. Not a chance, no pun intended, at least not while I was awake and had control of myself. Not even now, when he and I had bonded, would I go to the mat for him. Not that I had tested that theory yet. But, still.
When Julia answered her cell, she seemed nearly as surprised to hear my voice as she would have been if Santa called her. “Janie?”
“Yeah, hi.”
“How are you tonight?” Julia has one of those throaty whispery voices with a funny accent that I could not quite pin down.
“Good. Hey, what are you up to? I had a few questions I wanted to—”
“I am working so, yeah, I can’t really talk about anything tonight.”
I raised my brows and remembered to smooth them. When a girl gets to a certain age, in my case, almost forty, she really must think about future wrinkles. “Well, what time do you get off?”
“Late. But, I guess maybe we could talk soon, okay?”
And she hung up on me. Even strip clubs gave employees a break. Ohio laws held in strip clubs, didn’t they? They had to. Peaches wasn’t a sweat shop. I repressed a giggle at the thought of exactly how much sweat that particular “shop” generated and then went back to being annoyed. If Julia had wanted to talk, she could have. Obviously, she didn’t want to.
Too bad. I had been to Peaches before, albeit with Vance, but nothing said I couldn’t go on my own. I glanced at my fiancé. “How do you feel about going to a strip club?”
“A what?” Every so often, I forgot that Avery had not lived above the fairie mounds. Even though he was older than me by a hundred or so years, he wasn’t up to date on topside life.
“Strip club. Men pay money to watch women take their clothes off.” I figured that pretty much summed it up. “And they serve alcoholic drinks…spirits?”
He perked up immediately. “This place sounds very nice. Perhaps you are my favorite fiancé.”
I grinned. “Yeah, you haven’t been bad so far either. Sorry I’m going to have to dump you.”
“I had a feeling you were not becoming attracted to me. Perhaps if we mated?” He offered it with a raised brow. I glowered at him and he laughed. “Perhaps not.”
“Nope. Too many people want to mate with me lately as it is. I’m a one man woman.”
He snorted.
I continued to give him a dark frown. “Hey, cheer up. I’m taking you to see naked women.”
“Whatever you say, princess. You are a one man woman.”
“That’s more like it, Jeeves.”
“Avery, princess, my name is Avery.”
I rolled my eyes and focused on the road. The snow had started again. Freaking Ohio weather. I turned up the radio and resisted the urge to sing. No sense driving Avery mad. Poor little guy had trouble firing on all cylinders to begin with.
We pulled into the lot of Peaches, and I had to park a ways from the building. Considering the economy, I had expected a smaller crowd on a weeknight. Apparently, the stripping industry had not taken the hit the news from Vegas implied. Seemed men always had money for nudity and booze. I guess it’s good to have priorities in a time of crisis.
We walked in together and the bald eagle tattooed man who worked the door nodded to me and asked for ID. I showed him and he turned to Avery and asked for his ID. I had a brief moment of panic. Did he have one?
Apparently, my mother thought of such things because he did. He and the doorman shared a brief nod. I paid his cover because although my mother gave him an ID, she had not furnished him with cash. Thanks, mom. We went through the inner door covered with lewd stickers. Avery read one of them aloud. I gave him an elbow jab, which would have landed midsection on a normal man to shut him up. Avery caught it in the ear and yelped. Oops.
As I entered the bar and went to buy drinks, we caught a few glances from the mostly vampire patrons. At least this time I didn’t smell of blood, so I wouldn’t get mobbed. If the mortals in the crowd knew about the undead around them, they would probably find their breast enjoyment safer and cheaper at home on their couches. But what mortal men do not know, they do not fear and that is life.
I got myself a Corona and asked Avery what he wanted. He proudly asked for a Guinness. I glared at him. “We aren’t in Ireland.”
“They don’t have Guinness?”
“No.”
“Do they have Lambic?”
I glanced at the bartender. She shrugged and waited for him to order something domestic. Her breasts in her lingerie jiggled, and I repressed a shudder. “No, Avery, you are in Ashtabula, guy. How about a Sam Adams?”
“A man?” The fairy seemed confused.
I ordered a winter lager for him and he peered at it warily. Fairies. You could dress them up…
Within moments, with his glamour turned on low, a nearly drunk Avery had attracted a nice group of naked to the waist women. Turned out he liked Sam and Sam liked him. Also, it turned out he was a cheap drunk.
Once rid of him, I went in search of my prey, I mean Julia. Peaches seemed odd filled with people after spending so much time there alone with Chance. Corona in hand, I felt strangely comfortable for a woman alone in a strip club. Then, I saw Julia. She sat at a table by herself and talked frantically into her cell, arms waving. The red leather skirt that barely met the black fishnet stockings stretched across her mile of leg provided more cover than she had worn the last time I had seen her at the club. Red heels emphasized her tiny ankles and matched the halter-top that left her creamy mounds overflowing. An acre of red hair cascaded down her ivory back in a wash of curls while dark and sultry Cleopatra-style make-up completed the hot stripper façade.
I stalked across the bar to join her. I caught part of her conversation as I reached her table.
“You can’t mean that. No one just casts it out. You can’t. No, really you cannot choose because there is no choice!” When she saw me, she gasped and snapped the phone closed. “Janie!”
“Hey.” The guilty look on her face struck me as odd, but I had too much on my mind to get sidetracked by her issues. “I had a few things I wanted to touch base with you about, and I wondered if you had a minute.” I sipped my Corona and waited.
Her nostrils flared as she tried to breathe evenly. “Vance is my soul mate. He’s the one Old Mother meant.”
My brows shot up and, for once, I did not even think about wrinkles, I swear. Darn it. Everyone was more honest than me.
“I saw the silver cord. We were drawn to each other. I have absolutely no clue how you fight it or why you would want to. Anyway, I wanted to tell you. I had no idea it would happen and it never happened before the other night. It was there all of the sudden. I wanted to say I am sorry because, well, not that I had anything to do with it, but you are my friend and I felt bad that it happened at all.” She waved her hand helplessly and looked near tears.
I took a long gulp of my beer. Darn it, she tried being a good friend.
“But I have to say I liked it.”
Or not. Longer gulp. My eyes narrowed on the ceiling. I could almost feel them flash. I sensed the air shimmer behind me and pop.
“And I really don’t want to fight it. You must understand that.”
Chug. Chug. Hands closed over my shoulders like steel bands. I ran out of beer and studied the bottle, which now only held a defeated slice of lime. I looked through the bottle at Julia’s warped image. Chance tried to back me up a step. I can’t say I cooperated.
“So, I’m really not sure what to do at this point.” She waved her arms again and gaped at me for the first time. She took in the empty bottle and Chance, who had not been there when she began talking.
The empty beer did not signal good news for Julia. This meant I had nothing to fill my mouth and shut me up. I opened my mouth.
Chance popped us out.
The pop and shift left me staring at a red curtain. I batted at it and he spun me in his arms. I smacked at him instead.
“Would you stop doing that?” I actually hit him for all I was worth, and he stood there staring at me with those green eyes glittering in a red glowing light, which made them almost brown. “I had something to say.”
“Not something you would have wanted to say. Your power spiked and you were about to lose your temper.”
“I was not. Where did you pop us? You are such a jerk! Would you stop?”
He spun me in the opposite direction and pinned me to the wall. A bench ran along the one wall beside me. Where were we? A red light, a bench, and a curtained wall…a closet?
Then his lips closed over mine and my brains oozed out my ears. His mouth, which I had not felt on mine practically all day, took my lips and challenged me not to respond. He stole all thought and the very breath from my body with that one embrace. After a moment, my bones melted, and I went limp in his arms. I clung to him with what strength I had left as if he were a raft in a sea of feelings.
“Huh.” Was all I could say when he finally let me come up for air. I felt like I had all the bone structure of a wet noodle. He had to be supporting all my weight because I certainly wasn’t.
He smirked. “You did not call me. I figured you would have needed to feed by now.”
“That wasn’t why you came.” I tried to rebuild my skeleton. I tried to remember that I did not like him and why.
His hands stroked up my body possessively. I buried my face in his neck to keep from making a sound.
He hiked me up. Like a living scarf he wrapped me around his body and pinned me firmly against the wall…I became the butterfly he was the pin.
Logically I wanted to resist. Physically, I wanted retaliation. I went with physically for the moment and figured we could get to logic in a sec. I licked along the shell of his ear and bit down. I wriggled in his arms, not to get away, but so he would feel me. I stroked my hands under his shirt and then caught his lips and made some demands of my own. His breath went ragged. I so rarely responded to him of my own volition, and never when not attached by the soul threads that bound and tied us. I could almost feel his confusion. When my hand slid between our bodies, he shuddered before I touched him.
“Why now?”
Why? Because I was tired of him driving me to distraction and never getting even. I wanted him to ache with need. I wanted him to want me, and
then pop out on him for once. I wanted to leave him burning like he usually left me. Mostly, Chance was the why. He had taunted me for weeks. All of this rolled through my head in a wave when my hand closed around him. Although my mind had seen and touched already, I crossed a physical barrier that had been taboo.
His breath hissed between his teeth. “Because it’s me?” He groaned and shifted his hips closer. “I’m not sure which feels better, your reasoning or your hand.”
I tightened my grip and he stiffened. His hands closed over my arms and he whispered my name. “God, not here, let me…I can’t think.” His eyes closed.
I could feel what he wanted, but he couldn’t organize his thoughts well enough to do it.
His face was tight, and his breathing grew uneven. “I want to take you somewhere. Alone. Somewhere safe. We’re in a strip club, Janie.”
He sounded desperate and my mind cleared. His confusion created the opposite effect he usually had on me, and probably not what he intended either. He had not popped us out of the strip club. My brain rattled through information. If we were in Peaches, we were probably in one of the lap dance rooms. I could still corner Julia. My eyes flashed, and I removed my hand and shoved at Chance.
He groaned. “You are killing me, woman.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I abandoned him, and he went to his knees.
I shoved past the curtain. On the upside, his brain had not cleared. I had left him, for once, muddled and needing. Nice. Now that I knew I could…
Once I found my bearings, I stormed back into the main bar from the lap dance hall. No one seemed to notice me, but then again, no one had seen us go back there. Which explained how I managed to sneak up on Julia and my vampire. I saw them, and I went still. I even stopped breathing.
I had entered the bar from behind them, past the T-shaped stage. I could clearly see Julia, whose red hair and beacon red outfit made her conspicuous against the dark woods of the bar. Vance did not stick out at all. He was the color of liquid night, and I had to admit, against his backdrop of black, Julia’s red stood out like blood and looked oddly lovely.
Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) Page 18
