Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo (Southern Vampire Detective Book 2)

by Selene Charles

  One thing about vamps I’d learned in my years of working the beat as SCPD was that very little ever seemed to stick to the cold ones. They had the best lawyers old money could buy, and they used them with some frequency. I didn’t doubt there would be some spin on the whole rotten situation, come morning. I thrust my chin out mulishly.

  “Scar?” Steven’s quiet voice broke through my heavy thoughts.

  Clearing my throat, I looked over at him, brows lifted. That was the first time he’d talked to me since I’d turned that vampire into a pillar of ash.

  His sweet face was calm but also wary. Steven had never looked at me like that before, and I didn’t like it.

  Everyone else had, even Merc, but not my baby brother.

  Gripping the steering wheel, I plastered on a fake smile, trying like hell to make him see me as something other than the monster I currently felt like.

  “What up, whelp?”

  Wetting his lips, he gave a careless one-shoulder shrug, swallowing convulsively every so often.

  I knew what he wanted to ask. Steven had always been an open book to me. It hurt me that he was scared, but I had one of two choices: pretend I didn’t have a clue what was bothering him, sweep it under the rug, and hope it eventually went away, or pull on my big-girl panties and confront the elephant in the room.

  Either Steven was gonna grow up always fearing me, or we were gonna tackle the truth head on right then and hope that as he grew, he knew that, no matter what, I’d always love him.

  Blowing out a heavy breath, I said, “I don’t know what I did tonight, sweetheart.”

  His small nostrils flared. Already, he was exhibiting many of the traits of the wolves, scenting out my words, testing them for truths or untruths. He wet his lips to taste the pheromones in the air, to try to see whether anxiety was riddling my pores. Animals were instinctual by nature, and they could know immediately upon meeting people whether they had good or bad intentions. That was one of the reasons shifters were so private—most Veilers did have bad intentions. As far as they were concerned, keeping some distance from everyone was easier than trying to take the time to figure anyone out.

  I stared deep into my brother’s soft brown eyes. As he grew, they would start to turn neon green during times of high emotion and stress, just like the rest of the pack, but for the time, he was only a child, who’d lost almost everything he loved in a matter of a few short months.

  He didn’t flinch from my gaze, and my heart melted a little. He might have been curious about me, confused, but a part of him still trusted that his vampire sister wouldn’t try to compulse and betray him.

  “Hey,” I said softly, “you know me, pup. I wouldn’t lie to you, right?”

  Lips thinning, he nodded slowly. “I know.”

  It was important to me that he really knew that. I didn’t want lip service, didn’t want him telling me what he thought I wanted to hear just to get me off his back. At the end of the day, Steven needed to know that no matter what, I loved him.

  “Can I tell you a secret, Steven? Something I’ve never told anyone since I died?”

  His eyes grew wide, and he nodded slowly, and the look of adoration and trust in his eyes almost broke me. My throat felt tight, with a hard lump.

  I studied my brother’s sweet, cherubic face, with his smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. His scruffy hair fell in soft curls around his slim shoulders, and a sweet innocence radiated from him, one he’d had from the very first day Lucille came home from the hospital carrying her precious bundle and wearing the biggest smile known to man.

  The alpha bitch and I might not have ever seen eye to eye, but one thing was certain: she’d loved Steven more than anything else in the world. I didn’t doubt that, till her dying breath, she’d fought like a she-devil to make sure he would stay safe from Sharp Elbows.

  However, that innocence was slowly being extinguished by the ugliness of the world we lived in. Mercer and I had tried to keep Steven from seeing that violence too soon, but neither of us could have predicted either what had happened to Lucille or the fact that Steven would have had a front-row seat to the horrific ordeal.

  Steven might not have been blood, but he was family in every sense of the word. I would die to keep him safe.

  “What?” he asked slowly, that one word shivering with a thousand more questions.

  I sniffed and smelled bergamot. Mercer was close and listening. With anyone else, that might have bothered me, but not many secrets existed between Merc and I, in the past anyway.

  Exhaling deeply, I gave him a crooked, soft smile. “I love you. With all my heart, soul, and mind.”

  “You do?”

  I snorted. “C’mon, kid, do you really think I would have gone all Medusa on that vampire’s scrawny ass for just anyone?”

  He giggled, and instantly the heaviness from earlier lifted off my shoulders. If Steven still loved me, then I was doing all right in the world.

  “I’m not even sure Medusa would have gone Medusa on her.” His grin quickly slipped, replaced by a brief shudder as his eyes turned faraway. He was no doubt remembering the feel of that fanger’s body pressing him down into the pavement, locked and staring into the eyes of death.

  Grabbing him, I yanked him tightly to my side and dropped a kiss on his brow. “You’re safe now. I promise you. No fangers are gonna come and snatch you away, not while Merc and I are with you.”

  He looked up at me then, his dark eyes impossibly wise for someone so young. “You’re a fanger,” he said softly.

  I grimaced as my heart flinched. That was the first time Steven had ever really made the distinction between us. He had always known our differences, but I think that night had finally made him realize what that actually meant.

  The animosity between our kinds was legend. The visceral hate and distrust we had for each other were based solely on age-old fears that had no place in a modern world, but they still existed, ingrained deeply within the fabric of our DNA.

  I shook my head. “No, Steven. I’m not. I’m your sister.”

  His brows gathered into a tight V.

  I grabbed his chin tightly. “If you ever start to wonder, just remember who I killed tonight, little one.”

  He swallowed hard. “But she was one of your kind. Didn’t that bother you, just for a second?”

  No, it hadn’t. I’d seen that bitch hanging over my brother, and my mind had gone blank, dark. The same darkness that had helped me fight off Sharp Elbows had come over me back at Devil’s Run, too. I had no name for whatever it was that lived inside me, but something was definitely there—something dark, wild, and not altogether domesticated—and when I’d feared I wouldn’t reach him in time, when all I’d seen were the wide-open and fearful eyes of my brother, I’d stopped thinking and let it consume me.

  The feeling of so much untapped power had been heady, terrifying, and exhilarating. I could have pulled out so much more, done so much more, but fear had made me shove that thing down deep and toss it under lock and key.

  But it was still there, just biding its time.

  I shivered, needing something to ground me, to turn my thoughts away from whatever the hell that demon was, living inside me. I hugged Steven fiercely, needing the gentle warmth of his touch on me as much as he needed mine.

  “Never,” I said with conviction.

  He sighed, his tiny arms banding tightly around me. We were silent, and only the sounds of our breathing and the gentle hum of crickets filled the night. That’s how Mercer finally found us. He’d pulled on some clothes and had a small duffel bag hoisted over his shoulder. Dropping it with a thunk into the bed of the truck, he opened the door, gave us both an unflinching stare, then nodded.

  Sniffing, I squeezed Steven’s thin shoulders one final time before putting the truck into reverse and headed toward Clarence’s.

  When I pulled up but opted to stay inside the truck, Merc said nothing. Steven got out, joining his brother as he went to grab a few
things for his extended sleepover.

  The place brought back nightmares for me.

  I hated every last square foot of it and wanted nothing more than to burn the damn woodpile down to the ground.

  Needing to take my mind off of Sharp Elbows and Clarence’s betrayal, I yanked on that necklace, studying the pendant by the soft, silvery light of the fading moon. The horizon was dotted with fiery orange. We had minutes before the sun rose, and if the boys wanted a ride back to my house, they were going to need to hurry the hell up before I ditched them both for the safety of my room.

  I’d tried once already to get a hit off the necklace, any kind of impression from it, but the only things clinging to it had been the very faint, brief image of an indulgent smirk and a deep male voice rumbling a single name, Juliet. The lips had been soft looking and pink, with a small scar-like nick above the cupid’s bow. I had no idea what to make of that. Whoever the lips had belonged to, they must have made a hell of an impression on Juliet, I presumed, to have been burned into the necklace in that way.

  The only other memory stained upon the pendant had been a killing shadow bearing down on her.

  The killing shadow... well, that’d been me. Seeing myself through her eyes, the monster I’d been, I could see why Steven had freaked out. Nothing of me had been left in that face, stretched and twisted with the wakening of the beast, but I was sure the vampire in me hadn’t been what frightened him. Young though he was, Steven had seen vampires before—just nothing that’d looked like me.

  My eyes, looking down at Juliet, hadn’t been red but an impossibly deep black, and curls of shadow had framed my face.

  Neither memory helped me a whole hell of a lot, apart from the fact that I at least knew who I’d killed. Maybe.

  With a heavy sigh, I kept hoping for a miracle, that somehow a new memory would surface for me to read, or... fuck, just something, anything.

  Then, when I turned the pendant again, I actually sensed something. With a surprised yip, I maneuvered it back toward the weak light of sunrise.

  The glossy red gem, when tilted at a certain angle, gave a faint impression of a black skull inset within a large rose bloom. I mean, I had to really scrunch my eyes and nose to see it, but once I saw it, that was all I could see.

  That couldn’t be accidental. It had to mean something, but what? Hell if I knew. Wrinkling my nose, I looked for any other distinguishing features, but I really couldn’t find any.

  The gem was inlaid within a frame of silver so that it almost looked like an antique mirror of some sort. The silver chain was standard. It was pretty, but I knew that couldn’t be all.

  I’d worked long enough as a detective to develop a sixth sense about things, and right then, my gut was screaming at me that there was a helluva lot more to the thing than just merely being pretty.

  “Gah.” I rubbed at my head. With a growl, I pocketed the necklace when I heard Merc and Steven headed back toward the truck.

  “C’mon, boys,” I said curtly.

  “Guess we’d better hurry before your sister starts melting,” Merc told Steven.

  I gave them both the death glare and raced toward home before Merc had even closed the door behind him.

  I got through my door just as the first faint rays of sunlight danced upon the forest floor.

  Giving Steven a kiss on his forehead, I completely ignored Mercer as I raced for my bedroom door and locked it behind me. I would be forced to sleep for the time being, but the next evening, I was going to try to find out more about what the amulet was, who Juliet was, and maybe if I was real lucky... who the guy with the scar was.

  It all meant something.

  It had to.

  Chapter 5

  Scarlett

  My eyes popped open and I sat up. James had told me a time or twenty that the way a vampire awakened was unnerving as hell for him, telling me it made him think of horror movies where a dead body suddenly shot up from a slab at the morgue. Even after his marriage to Isobel, he’d never quite gotten used to it. Apparently, seeing something dead suddenly reanimate was weird or something.

  I snorted, shaking my head with a soft grin as I thought of the intense highlander, but no sooner had I thought about him then my mind instantly scrolled through the memories of the night before—his dumping me, taking Steven to the mall—and my stomach flipped as I wondered when the fallout would come.

  Vampires and humans had died—one by my own hands.

  I was not going to be able to just skate away from the problem. At some point, I’d be summoned. That’s just how those things went when one of the cold ones ate it. I’d been called to their courts in times past when a case had involved a vampire, but I wasn’t SCPD anymore. I’d been intimately involved.

  Shit was gonna hit the fan, and I was ready for it, as far as I was able, anyway.

  Scrubbing a hand down my face, I reached for my phone, hoping maybe James had texted, but he’d never really reached out to me during our separations in the past, so I wasn’t sure why I was hoping this time would be any different. Maybe because I literally had Mercer in the next room over, I was feeling a little guilty that I hadn’t missed James for even a second in the entire time since he’d left.

  James and I were technically on the outs, yet I knew that if I even hinted at being on the ins again, he’d get back with me. I loved James. I did, but...

  There was always a but.

  Vampires were intrinsically sexual by nature, especially after a fight when we burned through our reserves of blood. If Steven hadn’t been around the night before, I’m not sure what I would have done. Mercer was and always would be my drug. Even while currently hating him, I still wanted him.

  I frowned at the text I had received, but it hadn’t come from James. Rather, it’d come from my one-time partner and a masquerading Sharp Elbows, Carter.

  I still hadn’t forgiven Carter for what he’d done to my real Carter. That still screwed me up badly, knowing that a man I’d trusted for close to two decades, whom I thought I’d known inside and out, hadn’t actually been my real partner at all. Fake Carter had stolen my real Carter’s skin only a few years after we’d become partners. The fact was that the man I’d always known as Carter had mostly been fake Carter.

  That was the man I’d bonded with over beers, and that was the man I’d shared my body with time and again when cases had temporarily driven us closer. That was the man I’d shared just about all my life with, but mired in all that good was the fact that Carter had kept his real identity a secret until he’d been exposed by the alternate Sharp Elbows who’d been his psychotic half-sister and one-time lover.

  Yeah, sick and twisted didn’t even begin to describe that family tree. After Lucille’s death, Carter had managed to get me to finally listen to him. He tried to explain away his past and why he’d done what he’d done, and though I was grateful to him because, in his own twisted way, he was still an honorable man, he couldn’t escape the fact that the skin suit he wore belonged to a man I’d once cared deeply for.

  The body beneath that face was a twisted, deformed, demonic thing of elongated limbs and melted-looking flesh. Sharp Elbows was a thing straight out of a B-rated horror movie.

  However, even knowing all that, I had days when I really missed the bastard—even now.

  Staring at my phone, I inwardly debated whether or not to respond back to his all-caps question from five minutes before.

  YOU AWAKE

  Carter still knew my bedtime habits. Listening to the even breathing of both males in my living room, I knew neither one was awake.

  With an eye roll, I typed back, “Yeah.”

  A few seconds later, a bubble icon appeared as though he’d been waiting patiently by his phone for me to respond. Before killing fake Lucille, Carter had been obsessed with finding his half sister, to help end her.

  When I’d asked why he would kill something he’d once loved so much, his only answer had been a simple, “Because it was my duty to my daugh
ter.”

  Emma had been the adopted human he’d helped raise and eventually buried from cancer at the all-too-tender age of thirteen.

  Monsters weren’t supposed to love, yet he had.

  Goodness existed in Carter, and I didn’t deny that. I just wished life wasn’t always so complicated.

  COME DOWN TO THE STATION. YOU’LL WANT TO HEAR THIS

  Stop yelling at me. I typed back. Carter still hadn’t grasped how to handle caps lock.

  Sorry. He shot back. But come. Now.

  My gut clenched, and I knew, without asking, what it would be about.

  After Carter had helped kill Sharp Elbows, there’d been an internal investigation within the department about him. Basically, whether to euthanize him or not was what the discussion had all boiled down to. The decision—made by Clarence—had been to insert a kill chip into his brain.

  The facts were that Sharp Elbows were legendary, almost Bigfoot-like creatures within the Veiler world. The reason they were so rare was that they’d been hunted to near extinction. Having one of the almost indestructibles work for us was worth its weight in gold, even if it meant we had to turn a blind eye now and then to how he fed and lived.

  Carter would never, ever know freedom again, but he had his life, and he still got to keep his detective badge—a fair trade, as far as he was concerned.

  Does it have anything to do with the strip mall?

  Just come, Scar

  I shot back another response but got no reply and knew he was gone already.

  Yeah, I had a feeling that the other shoe was finally about to drop.

  After dressing, brushing my teeth, and drinking a quick baggie of blood—I grimaced, hating the plastic taste of bagged food—I grabbed my keys out of the fishbowl sitting on my TV stand by the front door and paused for a second.

  I looked first at Steven.

  His breathing was deep and even, and his mouth gaping. He was passed out cold. The time wasn’t quite six in the evening yet, and pups tended to sleep upward of twelve hours if they were allowed to. The sun was just starting to set, and I was so damn grateful that shifters kept the same hours as vampire. Family reunions might have been awkward otherwise.