Underdead (Underdead Mysteries)

by Liz Jasper

  Her dark eyebrows disappeared up under her spiky red bangs. “Of course not. We have to get that pitcher while we’re here, or Hot Man will think you came over just to get a closer look.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.”

  “C’mon.” She pushed me in the direction of the bar, holding on to me as if I might do a bunk. Which I would have, had we not been boxed in by the crowd.

  I ignored the man in black and fixed my attention on a random point behind the bar. It wasn’t any sort of flirtatious coyness—I was legitimately embarrassed. I mean he had caught us staring at him, and now we were heading in his direction like lovesick groupies. Well, to the bar, really, but he didn’t know that. As we were even with him, I felt Becky’s hand leave my waist to tug my arm. Furious, I ignored her and pushed forward. She gave my arm another, stronger tug. As I half turned to tell her to knock it off, I was pulled off balance and spun around. But instead of frowning down into Becky’s mischievous brown eyes, I was glaring at a man’s chest. A very nicely built man’s chest. I tilted my head up and met blue eyes, the blue of the night sky just before the sun totally disappears.

  The censure for Becky died on my lips as I got lost a second time staring at the hot man.

  His eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, and he broke the fraught silence with a simple hello. His voice was low and gravelly with an accent I couldn’t quite place. It made my knees weak. I’ve always been a sucker for an accent. Oh, no. I was definitely in for some trouble with this one.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  “I hope I didn’t alarm you just now,” said the man in black, “but you looked like you needed rescuing from your dinner party.”

  The kitschy disco ball above the adjacent dance floor started to spin, showering him in twinkling fragments of color as if gift-wrapping him in fairy dust. I felt a giggle bubble to the surface and ruthlessly tamped it down.

  “You’ve come to save me from certain-death-by-boredom? How wonderful.” I stretched out a hand. “I’m Jo. You must be Prince Charming. How nice to finally meet you.”

  “Not quite.” His lips twisted briefly in a wry smile. “Will.” His handshake was good and firm.

  “Jo’s an unusual name for a woman,” he said.

  “It’s short for Josephine,” I admitted. Why had I told him that? I never told anyone that. Even my bank knew me as “Jo”.

  The band had launched into a funky, ironic rendition of an old disco tune and the crowd around us surged with enthusiasm. I had to place a hand against the wall to keep my balance.

  “It’s getting a little crowded in here,” Will said, raising his voice to be heard over the din. “Maybe we should go out to the back porch where we can talk?”

  He pointed toward an open doorway at the back of the dance floor where a heavyset bouncer stood guard, but my attention was turned in the other direction.

  Becky had scuttled back to our table. She and Carol were pointedly looking elsewhere and Roger was fully absorbed in whatever he was saying, but the rest of my colleagues were getting restless. Hunky Bob was pointing to the band with one beefy hand and Kendra’s new blonde highlights glinted as her head swiveled to follow. After four hours of talking nonstop sports, they’d picked now to run out of things to bore people with?

  I gave in to the inevitable. It was one thing to be talking to Will while waiting in line for the bar, quite another to be seen leaving with him. Even if it was only to the back porch.

  As I opened my mouth to decline, a strong jab pushed me off-balance and I lost my footing. Will caught me and held me upright.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, thanks…”

  He was holding me at a respectful distance, but really, twenty feet was too close to this man. His beautiful blue eyes had darkened with concern and I felt a strange recklessness. My nosy, gossipy co-workers could take pictures for all I cared.

  “Maybe some air would be good,” I said. The words seemed to tumble out on their own.

  The crowd opened up for us as if by magic and Will steered me out into a relatively private nook another couple had vacated. The porch area was about the size of a four-car garage and enclosed by two-story tall cypress trees. It might have been claustrophobic but for a clever arrangement of potted green ficuses and red Japanese maples that divided the area into smaller, inviting alcoves. Everything was strung with those fat multi-colored bulbs that had been big in the Seventies. I’m sure the effect was supposed to be ironic or retro or something, but to me it just looked pretty and festive.

  I knew all this because conversation had ceased between us and I was looking everywhere but at him. We were practically alone out there, and with this man I definitely needed a chaperone. I snuck a glance at Will from under my lashes. He seemed far away, an odd look on his face I couldn’t interpret.

  The silence became too much for me and I had to say something, anything—so long as it was witty, clever and engaging.

  “I’m afraid I’m not very good at small talk,” I said.

  Jeez.

  “That’s all right, we don’t need to talk.” He gave me a lazy, slightly wicked smile that made me clutch the railing for support.

  For some reason I couldn’t explain—maybe I was on auto-stupid-pilot—I did the only thing that could make it worse. I launched into a long, unnecessary explanation.

  “I’ve never been good at small talk; I never know what to say. That’s why I usually avoid this sort of place. You’re not supposed to discuss anything controversial, intellectual, or personal. Pretty much anything worth discussing is taboo. Why can’t people talk about something interesting when they meet, like…” I threw up my hands. “I don’t know, what book they’re reading? Instead you’re stuck with insipid and inane topics like the weather and that hardly varies in Southern California. Oh, never mind,” I said, a little confused myself at how it had come out.

  Will regarded me narrowly, as if I were a kitten that had suddenly sprouted horns, and took a step back. Great. Maybe, if I was lucky, the Earth would open up and swallow me whole.

  When he finally spoke, it was the last thing I would have expected.

  “If you cannot think of anything appropriate to say you will please restrict your remarks to the weather.” Then he smiled, a genuine full-blown grin. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding and relaxed back against the railing.

  “I see you know your Jane Austen. I suppose you saw the movie.”

  “I read the book, too.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” I’d never met a man—a straight man anyway—outside the occasional English teacher forced to include Austen in his curriculum, who had read Sense and Sensibility, much less was willing to admit to it.

  “Had sisters, growing up.” He shrugged and lean muscles moved under his shirt.

  “Tell me then, Jo, who finds small talk inane, have you read anything interesting lately?” He spoke nonchalantly but watched me keenly, as if my answer mattered.

  All I could think of was the half-finished mystery on my nightstand and the pile of Regency romance novels I bought for a quarter at the library and hoarded in a pile under my bed for particularly nasty days. Judge me when you start teaching thirteen-year-olds.

  “What genre?” I asked, stalling shamelessly.

  His eyes took on a challenging glint. “I’ve been reading some intriguing works by Rousseau on the nature of society. But we can discuss whatever genre you like.”

  French philosophy? Great. That’s what you get for being such a babbling prude, I told myself. No doubt it was karmic payback for my stupid theory about his intelligence. “Why don’t we start with Jane Austen and work our way up to solving the world’s problems.”

  I half expected him to turn away in disgust, but he laughed good-naturedly and we proceeded to discuss books. As he appeared to have read everything ever written, the conversation drifted all over the place. The enclosed porch filled and emptied several times, though I barely notic
ed the other people. We might have talked for ten minutes or ten hours.

  I was lightly lampooning his theory that Utopia could exist outside the pages of literature when the conversation took an abrupt right turn.

  “Do you believe in destiny?” he asked.

  It was the worst pick-up line since “Hey, baby, what’s your sign”.

  I didn’t realize I’d said the words out loud until he gave a small shake of his head and said, “You misunderstand me. I’m asking whether you believe our lives are governed by fate or free will.”

  I let out a breath of relief. He hadn’t turned into a freak on me, after all. “Free will,” I said, “though it’s less a well-formed philosophy than wishful thinking. If I didn’t think I had some choice in what happens to me, I wouldn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.”

  In reply, he muttered something in Latin.

  A light bulb went off in my thick skull. Not that I understood Latin. I didn’t. But I was familiar with people suddenly shifting into the dead language. I’d seen it at work a hundred times. My eyes narrowed. “You’re an English teacher,” I accused him.

  “No.”

  “Philosophy? History?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I just read a lot.”

  “What do you do then?”

  The laughter seemed to fall from his face, and I wondered if I had inadvertently brought up a sore subject.

  “I guess you could say I’m in…Human Resources Management. Nothing exciting. And yourself?”

  “I teach middle school science, but my background’s in ecology.”

  My degree is officially in biology, but I had loaded up on ecology classes because the labs were mostly held outdoors. I discovered early on that I much preferred wearing heavy boots and tromping around in mud to the more traditional latex glove and petri dish route. I liked studying outside so much that I’d signed up for astronomy and geology classes as well. Of course, there’s a price to pay for a self-indulgent education. Mine was that the only job I could find upon graduation was teaching earth science to eighth graders.

  “Ecology,” Will said. “That’s a subject I know little about. I so rarely get out during the day. It’s only at night that I have the flexibility to study things that interest me.” His voice was flat, the animation I’d glimpsed earlier gone.

  Great. In addition to being financially useless, my educational interests repelled men. I shifted the conversation back to books.

  “I like to read Thomas Hardy novels at Christmas,” I said. “They’re so outrageously depressing that even if you have to spend your holiday hearing about your aging relatives’ medical issues, and then go home to find your tree on fire and all your presents stolen by pirates, you still can’t help but feel as if you’re having the best Christmas ever.”

  This got him to laugh again and his eyes, lightened to a brilliant sapphire, met mine in shared amusement before the humor in them gave way to something else. My breath caught as he stepped slowly, purposefully, into the space that separated us. I was dimly aware that the band had started up again after a short break and the porch had emptied. Completely. We were alone out there.

  He spoke in a low gravelly voice that intensified his faint accent. “You’re not at all what I expected.” He reached forward to capture a long lock of my hair and watched it slide slowly through his fingers as if mesmerized. “Gold and orange and red, like the sunrise.” He traced a finger lightly down my cheek. “You’re as lovely as daybreak.”

  He closed the remaining distance between us.

  I’m a “third date, first kiss” kind of girl but that night I didn’t care. Soon—too soon—he broke away abruptly and studied me for a long silent moment at arm’s length.

  An odd mix of triumph and regret seemed to war across his face, but before I could decide what I’d seen or ponder what it meant, he pulled me tightly against him and I was lost once again in his kiss—until a sharp, ravaging pain jerked me out of my hormonal fog. I wrenched myself away and took a staggering step back. What the hell did he think he was doing?

  He had bitten my neck.

  Hard.

  I wanted to yell for help, to give him an earful of what I thought about weirdoes who bit people, but the words froze on my lips. I just stood there staring wonderingly into his eyes, those blue, blue eyes as he pulled me toward him. I was terrified yet curiously unable to move away, as if I were in one of those dreams when you try to run and nothing happens. He pulled me closer, closer, and as his lips hovered an inch from mine, the simmering attraction between us caught fire again and I forgot about running away altogether. He lowered his teeth again to my neck and bit again.

  The pain woke me partially out of my stupor and the years of self-defense classes my father had made me take kicked in, giving sudden strength to my limp legs. Almost automatically, I pulled a knee sharply up into his groin. He gave a startled cry and loosened his grip for a brief moment, but almost immediately grabbed my shoulders and yanked me back toward him. But the break had been enough. My mind cleared, as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water down over me.

  Instead of resisting, I shifted toward him. It caught him off guard and he was forced to step back to keep his balance. I used the opportunity to crack an elbow into his jaw. It was all I needed. Clutching a hand to my throbbing neck, I ran blindly for the door back into the bar and ran smack into another hard chest. I let out a strangled scream.

  The owner of the chest, a tall, brown-haired man with intense light grey eyes and a crooked nose, pushed me away and held me at arm’s length. His eyes raked my face and seemed to linger at my neck, though I was sure he couldn’t see what I could only imagine as the world’s nastiest hickey, since my hand covered it.

  “Are you okay?” His voice sounded harsh, urgent.

  “I’m fine,” I said. I forced myself to remain calm as I scanned the dining area urgently for Becky and Carol. They were still at the table, a half-full pitcher of margaritas between them. They didn’t seem to have moved since I left them.

  I realized the man was saying something to me. I brushed off his polite concern and hurried back to our table. Gathering up my long hair in one hand, I pulled the thick mass around my neck and let it hang down the front of my chest. I have a lot of hair. Anything on my neck that needed to be hidden would be.

  Becky was waiting eagerly for a report. I bent to collect my purse. “I’m going to head home,” I said.

  “So soon?”

  I pitched my voice louder and said to the group at large, “I’m sorry I have to leave early, but I’m not feeling too well. I think I’m coming down with something.”

  Becky’s grin faded and her brow furrowed as she exchanged a glance with Carol.

  Roger spoke portentously from the head of the table. “I’m not surprised. Many people, especially the new teachers, are only able to hold off a cold until the holidays.”

  His smug response got my back up, but now was not the time to deal with Roger.

  Carol was watching me with a concerned look. “I’ll drive you,” she said, standing up. “I’m parked just down the block.”

  I forced myself to speak lightly. “No, you stay and have fun. I’d planned to take a taxi anyway—it’s only ten bucks, I live so close.” It was only a partial lie—I definitely planned to take one now. After a few more minutes of saying goodbye to everyone and fending off offers of company I didn’t want for the ride home, I managed to escape. I wasn’t kidding when I’d said I felt crappy. My neck hurt, my stomach was churning with a potent combination of disgust and tequila, and the room was starting to spin. Fortunately, a taxi was waiting outside the restaurant and the driver handed me neatly inside.

  I managed to give him my address before slipping into darkness in the backseat.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  Bright rays of morning sunlight jolted me back into consciousness like a slap in the face. Never before had I felt so reluctant to be alive. My head hurt, my body h
urt—even my eyes hurt, as if the lids were insufficient protection against the light. With what seemed like an absurdly large amount of effort, I shifted my head back into the shadows and opened my eyes.

  My mind wasn’t working very fast, or very well, and I took things in slowly. The first thing I noticed was that the small, sparsely furnished room needed some serious maid service. The small bedside table and wide matching dresser were simple, cheap and nearly invisible under their heavy loads of picture frames and unfolded laundry. Unframed posters, an erratic mix of impressionist art and nature scenes, splashed color on generic white walls. A stack of books listed determinedly toward the door, as if trying to escape back to the orderly seclusion of the library. Maybe they knew they were overdue. I did. The library had left messages.

  While I had gone through the sluggish process identifying my own bedroom, the sun had crept back across my face with the sly grace of a water buffalo. I pulled a pillow over my head and tried to go back to sleep, but it was abundantly clear I wasn’t getting any farther before I consumed a handful of aspirin and a bucket of water.

  I hauled myself out of bed and stumbled across apartment-beige carpet toward the adjoining bathroom that seemed miles away from my bed instead of just ten feet. I am never drinking tequila again, I promised myself fervently. Never ever.

  I squirted a rather crooked line of toothpaste onto my toothbrush and went to work scouring the cotton out of my mouth while I drummed up the courage to stop avoiding the mirror. If I looked anything like how I felt, there would be an ogre looking back at me. I rinsed my toothbrush, carefully patted my mouth dry with a towel, and then risked a peek.

  Ooh, even better. Two ogres. I closed my aching, bloodshot eyes for a moment and regrouped, trying to ignore the dizziness that suddenly swamped me. When the room stopped spinning, I rubbed my eyes and tried again, squinting a little against the fuzziness.

  I was all that was lovely. I looked like a carrot-topped banshee. My face was flushed, my hair was a tangled mess and my neck was throbbing. Will’s kiss—and its creepy denouement—came rushing back. How had I forgotten that? What else had I forgotten? I began to panic. It had finally occurred to me that I didn’t even remember coming home. I looked down at myself. I was still dressed in the clothes I had worn to dinner.