Accidentally Dead, Again
Page 3
Nina’s fingers dropped from his mouth, leaving it slack and wide open. She cornered the woman in preylike fashion, looming over her by maybe an inch. “Yeah. I’m Nina. Now who the fuck are you, Flame-haired Barbie?”
The woman, though shorter than Nina, didn’t cower when growled at by the fierce vampire. There was only a slight tremble of her peach-glossed lower lip to indicate she was intimidated.
Instead, she sighed with a roll of her eyes. “Wow. You really are cranky, aren’t you? Ah, well. I should have known better, but silly me and my impatience.” She waved a gloved hand under Nina’s nose, making her large hoop earrings sway. “Never mind. Listen, we really need to talk. Is there somewhere private we can go?”
Nina’s eyes narrowed. Whoever this woman was, she either sucked at social cues, or she was a glutton for an ass whoopin’, because Sam noted, she didn’t back down. “Did I not speak in words small enough for you to understand, lady? Because I’m kinda busy here. Now who—the—fuck—are—you?” she repeated, intentionally condescending and slow.
The woman’s shoulders slumped just a little from Sam’s vantage point, but she took a deep breath and straightened. “I really don’t think you want to do this in front of your colleagues and … well … Mr. Fancy Pants.” She waved a dismissive hand toward Sam and winced.
Hey. He was not fancy and he wasn’t wearing pants.
Shut up, Sam. Red dress and heels. ’Nuff said.
Right. Shut up. Plus, he was too weak to even consider responding, though not for lack of trying. When he attempted to move, he fell to the side of the chair in a heaping slump.
Marty and Wanda were instantly at Nina’s side, tugging at her arms. “Nina!” Wanda admonished, her brow furrowed. “Back off!”
Nina gave them a hard shrug and growled. Like really growled into the new woman’s face. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me who the hell you are and how you know me.”
Marty jumped between the women, placing a firm hand on Nina’s shoulder. “Nina, back up! Let the poor thing breathe.” She turned to face the redhead, a smile on her face Sam could tell was phony even from his blurred observation. “Now, what’s your name and how can we help you, dear? Oh, and pretty hair. I want to accuse you of getting it from a bottle, but that would just be me sick with envy.”
The redhead smiled, preening at Marty’s compliment even with Nina’s evil eye glued on her. “Thank you. I take great pains to keep it in tip-top shape.” She stuck her hand out to Marty. “I’m Phoebe Reynolds. A pleasure.”
“Well, that settles it,” Nina crowed. “I don’t know anyone named Phoebe. So conversation over.”
Phoebe stepped around Marty and reached for Nina’s arm, clasping it. “No. It’s not over.”
Noooo, don’t do it, Phoebe. Vampire red alert! Sam wanted to warn, but couldn’t manage.
Even in his growing stupor, he recognized Phoebe had just made an epic mistake, and he couldn’t do anything to save the poor woman from the wrath that was the crabby Nina. Instead, his mouth fell open wider and his body began to slide from the chair to the floor like he was some kind of human slinky.
And his legs had spread open. No fine, upstanding lady would ever allow that to happen—even under such trying circumstances.
Nina looked down at Phoebe’s hand like it belonged to Lucifer himself. “I know you didn’t just put your hand on me, princess.”
Phoebe’s eyes glinted determination. “But I did, and if you’d please just listen—”
“I’m busy here. I don’t have time to listen to whatever you’re selling, lady.” Nina swung back around with flashing eyes and a menacing stance. “Now take your hand off my arm. Or I’ll chew it the shit off.”
Damn. Phoebe was too cute to be eaten alive so young, Sam reflected when his spine became Jell-O and his legs crumbled beneath him. He slid completely to the floor, his mouth now impossible to close due to the size of his teeth—which, ironically, had grown in seconds.
Phoebe’s eyes widened, then went soft as though she understood Nina’s outrageous reaction toward a complete stranger. She smiled again—this time with a definite appeasing hint to it. “You’re exactly like my mother described, er, times ten maybe, but exactly. But it’s okay. I knew we’d have some bumps in the road upon our first meeting. It’s to be expected. I’ve caught you unaware. Still, I’m convinced we can make this work. So as soon as you’re done here, let’s go somewhere quiet, maybe have a latte and chat? On me, of course.”
“Your mother?” Nina ground out her disbelief, her stance ominous from Sam’s still semiconscious vantage point on the floor where, excuse him, no one seemed to remember he was ex … Expiring? Excommunicated? No. Nina’d said expunging. Yes. He was going to expunge in a roomful of angry, perfumed, supernatural females while Nina tore Phoebe limb from limb and he wore a dress. How inhumane.
“Yes,” Phoebe answered in solemn tones. “My mother.”
Nina appeared to Sam as though she’d been caught off guard. “That’s it! Lay the fuck off the cat and mouse and tell me who the hell you are!” Nina roared, making Sam wince from the floor—where it was hard, and he was trying not to peek up Phoebe’s skirt. But he couldn’t move his head, no matter how hard he willed his body to work in his favor.
Phoebe wavered then. Not a lot, but just enough for Sam to see she was indecisive. Then her expression changed and the look of determination returned in full force. Squaring her shoulders, she tilted her chin upward in a defiance that rather resembled Nina’s and said, “All right. But please remember, I did ask you for some privacy.”
Nina poked her in the shoulder. “Spit it the fuck out, princess!”
“I’m your sister.”
Wow. Silence really did have sound to it.
Nina’s angry glare made the hair on Sam’s arms rise. Oh, Phoebe. From the very little I’ve borne witness to, I’d advise you to run long from the Nina experience, but my tongue’s out of order.
The sharp gasps from Wanda and Marty, followed by the eerily long silence one could only describe as the calm before the all-out tsunami, might have deafened him. Except, as described by Wanda, he now had bionic hearing and he could hear blood coursing and heartbeats pumping wildly.
When Nina finally replied, it was low and threatening. “My what?”
“I said. I’m your sister. S-I-S-T-E-R. You know, sisters. Like the kind that tell each other secrets, share clothes, and stay up all night talking about boys? Okay, I’m only your half sister if we want to be crazy technical, but we’re family regardless. So I don’t see why it would prevent us from talking about boys or all sorts of things, for that matter,” Phoebe said with a breathless almost excited hitch to her words.
And then, at least from Sam’s point of view, things got a little unnecessarily out of control. As a point of reference, should he decide these women were the best candidates to help him through this paranormal crisis, he’d make damn good and sure he remembered Nina was like a snake, easily riled, always coiled and waiting to go in for the venomous kill.
Now there was the rush of footsteps as Marty and Wanda came to someone’s aid, hopefully poor innocent Phoebe’s, because it was clear they understood their friend Nina’s short fuse. Phoebe, as brave as she’d like to appear on the outside, was no match for Nina the Hun.
Next, someone stepped on his index finger in a tangle of rutting feet—which was okay due to the fact that he couldn’t feel it anyway. Observing it, knowing he should react to it was rather like an out-of-body experience.
And there was the cursing. Creative and punctuated by more than one cautionary, “Nina, remember your strength!” and “If you harm one hair on her head, we’ll be forced to put you in the duct-taped time out!”
Sam thought what ensued next could be described by some—okay, him—as euphoric and others as catastrophic. It just depended on whether you were a glass half-empty or half-full personality.
Nina, as Nina was clearly wont to do, went in for the kil
l. Or maybe kill was too harsh a word, but when she stalked toward Phoebe, covering the inches between them in seconds, she, in her defense, probably hadn’t planned on Phoebe actually backing down.
Though, Sam didn’t blame her one iota for doing so. The mask of death Nina wore would make even those with the ability to cold-bloodedly kill cower in fear.
The trouble with that, Sam realized while he lay motionless and numb from head to toe, was Phoebe had picked the worst time ever to not just back down from her warrior sister, but back away from her, too.
As Nina took those threatening steps toward her newly found relation, Phoebe, her bravado gone, stumbled on Sam’s—dubbed ghastly by Wanda—high heels, tripped, and fell backward to land on his chest. Thus jamming her cute butt right up against his slack mouth.
He heard her scream of shock, and assumed it was probably mixed with some pain.
The pain having to do with his overgrown fang imbedded in her bottom to at least a quarter of an inch deep.
Which covered the euphoria part for him.
Huh. Nina was right. This feeding thing definitely made him feel better. How unexpected and maybe even a little gory all at the same time.
The catastrophic part, well, he figured that was on Phoebe.
Surely she’d find it catastrophic that, if the chain of vampirism was as he’d been told, because his teeth had pierced Phoebe’s flesh and he’d tasted her blood, she was now a vampire, too.
And he’d done it all while in drag. Nice.
Though, somehow, Sam had the distinct impression Phoebe, in all her obvious good taste in clothing and makeup, wouldn’t mind at all if she ended up sparkling in the sunlight.
CHAPTER
2
Phoebe woke with a start and a rush of white-hot heat coursing through her veins. It stung sharply, making her spring upright with a jolt so hard she nearly flung herself from the unfamiliar couch she was propped up on.
Her fingers squeezed the fabric beneath her hand to keep her body firmly planted on the furniture. What she assumed to her practiced hands was leather, crunched, then began to split, making her fingers almost sink deep into the foam. Phoebe yanked her hand away in guilty horror at the mess she’d made, placing her clenched fist in her lap.
Hey, couch killah, where the hell are we?
Her first thought was, this was a lot like the time Marvella Constantine from one of her all-time favorite soap operas Connections woke up in a strange place. That place happened to be Kazakhstan where Marvella’s evil, jealous niece by marriage, Drucilla, had her dumped after a gang of traveling gypsies kidnapped her to keep her from marrying Enrique—the mayor of Maple Dell. Or something like that.
Not that she’d ever be so lucky to have something so exotic happen to her. She was probably going to open her eyes in some trailer park in Idaho. So she opted to keep them closed and imagine a far-off place like Istanbul.
“So, how’s it going?” a deep, resonant voice rumbled with just a hint of a Southern twang.
Phoebe forced an eye open at the gravelly silken tones of a man’s voice. But just one, because she had a headache throbbing with such intensity between her eyes she should be blind from it. As her vision came into focus, she sighed.
Or gakked, depending on how one looked at it.
Wait. Where was that release of air that typically followed an exhalation of audible discontent? Where was the relief she so needed to ease the tension in her chest? Phoebe tried once more to sigh, only to make a dry-heaving noise that sounded much like her cat, Optimus, when he was hacking up a hairball.
Huh.
“Are you all right?”
Her right eyeball strayed to her left.
Oh, look. RuPaul. Or aka the man whose mouth her backside had been in. “What happened to me?”
He shifted on the couch beside her and shrugged his broad, red-sequined shoulders. “Some stuff,” was the solemn yet evasive reply.
His vague answer made Phoebe open her other eye and fully take him in. The dark stubble caressing his cheeks and hard jaw revealed the hint of a handsome man hidden beneath his too-red lipstick and the frosted blue eye shadow he’d so mistakenly chosen to highlight his deep chocolate brown eyes with.
Her nose twitched when she took another sidelong glance at the color of his lipstick. Literally, she could smell the scent of it. She knew it well. Pack Cosmetics had a scent and a flavor for every hue in their new lipstick line. Marketing genius as far as Phoebe was concerned. The aroma she detected had a splash of cinnamon in it. Rip-Roaring Red. That was it.
Curious.
But her momentary bionic ability to smell lipstick was forgotten. Shifting positions on the couch, Phoebe turned to face this man and made herself focus on his mouth to keep from laughing out loud at his unevenly penciled eyebrows and the stray false eyelash stuck to the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. Where were we? Oh, right. Stuff,” she offered. He’d said stuff had happened.
“Oh, yeah. Lots of stuff.”
“Care to explain stuff?”
“I’m Samuel McLean. Or just Sam.”
“That’s not an explanation, that’s an introduction. I need more in order for us to have a fulfilling beginning to our relationship. And I’m Phoebe Reynolds.”
He nodded and fluffed the platinum blond wig in his hands before letting it fall to his lap. “Yeah. I heard. You know, from my place on the floor. Anyway, I’m not sure I’m mentally ready to say the words to explain what the stuff is out loud yet. I’m in what those three”—he nodded his head in the direction of her newfound sister, who stood by an enormous fireplace with the other two women who’d kept Nina from killing Phoebe—“call the third stage of denial. Grief. I think. I don’t know. I can’t remember the number of the stage. I just know I’ve exceeded most who encounter this strange new way of life, and thus far, they claim I’m their star pupil at OOPS.”
When Phoebe had begun the search for her only living relative and she’d found out that Nina was part of an organization titled OOPS, she hadn’t known the meaning of the acronym. Nor had she spent a lot of time researching it due to her excitement over finally finding the address where her half sister worked.
So, OOPS plus the stages of grief plus Sam had to equal out of the cross-dressing closet—like out big in Sam’s case. What the letters p and s could possibly stand for escaped her.
The last information she’d found on Nina had her employed as a dental hygienist. How you went from cleaning tartar and fluoride treatments to counseling men who liked to dress in women’s clothing was a leap she hoped to be able to sit and talk about with Nina someday.
Well, when she wasn’t so hostile and violent, that was.
But that didn’t explain what Sam’s stuff and the stages of grief had to do with her.
Right now, it hurt to think. So she didn’t. Instead Phoebe said, “So what does your lifestyle and denial thereof have to do with the stuff that happened to me? I mean, I love makeup, obviously, and heels and shiny dresses, too, but I’m not conflicted about it. Not even a little.”
His expression went from attentive to confused, his dark brows knitting together. “I’m not conflicted about it, either.”
She patted him on the knee, avoiding the bare spot where his shredded nylons revealed thatches of springy dark hair on his thighs. “Good. That’s so healthy to feel free enough to be you, even if you need a lesson or two in makeup application. You’ll get it with more practice. It’s all about the blending. I’m a personal stylist by trade, so when I locate my purse, I’d be happy to give you my card and maybe you can make an appointment and we can discuss … er, this.” She waved her hand in a sweeping up-and-down motion at his choice of outfit.
Sam cocked his head, his garish red mouth a perfect O.
And yet another crazy thought struck her. “You know what this reminds me of?”
His glance was wary. “That it reminds you of anything ever gives me great pause, but I’ll bite. What does this remind you of?”
Sam nodded his head in serious confirmation, but his beautiful eyes glimmered. “Oh, yes. I can see where this is almost exactly like that.”
Phoebe smiled at him, sensing he understood that she had a zero tolerance for bigotry of any kind. “So we’re on the same page? And I hope, after I figure out why I can’t remember getting from point A to point B, B being this unbelievably gorgeous house, we can sit and swap makeup tips. But for right now, I just want to know where I am and how I got here.”
Sam’s deep brown eyes clouded with bewilderment and then obvious concern. He braced his arm on the back of the couch and leaned in to examine her.
Despite his melting makeup and smeared lipstick, he had a presence. One that demanded female attention in the way of hard muscles and sculpted upper arms that rippled when he shifted positions on the couch. He pried one of her eyes open wide and peered into it as though he were inspecting something, then let go with an abrupt removal of his finger. “You really don’t remember …?” Sam shook his head. “Forget it. How do you feel, Phoebe?”
What a gentleman. She’d all but punctured his lung by landing ass first on him, and he’d just come out of the proverbial closet—which had to be freeing and frightening all at the same time. Yet, here he was asking how she had fared.
So decent and maybe even a little bizarre, if she were to judge the intensity of his eyes when he asked the question …
But what about this day hadn’t been bizarre? It had been filled with bizarre. This man in the shiny dress, lying on the floor in a heap of women’s shoes, for instance. Or the two women who’d rushed to her defense and shouted words at her half sister like superhuman and the phrase, Remember you can take out a Sherman tank singlehandedly! just before Nina had made her trip and fall. Or Nina herself, who gave the title antagonistic bitch a shiny new meaning.