The Undead in My Bed

by Katie MacAlister; Molly Harper; Jessica Sims

  I finally choked out a profound “Sam?”

  The awkward silence continued for a few more agonizing seconds before Jane announced, “Well, kids, I think we should be going now.”

  “But we’ll miss the fireworks,” Dick protested, then saw Andrea’s stern expression. He sighed. “Fine.”

  Jane edged Gabriel off his stool while Andrea bumped Dick out the door. Jolene was so busy glaring at Sam that Zeb had to walk around the bar and literally drag her out. Chef Gamling gave Sam a long, speculative look before following the thundering herd out the door. I heard it shut just as Dick said, “If she throws knives and we miss it, I’m going to be pissed.”

  Sam looked around the ruins of the dining room. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Well, I’ve had a little trouble finding reliable contractors,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest protectively. I wanted to round the bar, sit next to him on the stools. But I needed space. I needed a physical barrier to keep from making a complete fool of myself.

  He nodded and picked up a shot glass from Andrea’s plate. He smiled. “You’re really going through with it, huh? The vampire menu?”

  “I don’t see why not. I want to feed people. Whether they have a pulse is irrelevant,” I said, fidgeting with a dishtowel.

  “So, I’ve been callin’ you. A lot.”

  “I know.”

  He frowned. “Oh, so there wasn’t some tragic fire that destroyed your phone . . . which means you’ve just been ignorin’ me. That makes me feel better.”

  “I haven’t been ignoring you. I’ve been giving you space,” I countered.

  “The difference is that when you give someone space, you tell them ahead of time. Otherwise, it’s just ignorin’ them. Look, I know you overheard me talkin’ to Lindy. I don’t know what I said that upset you, but I take it back. I take it all back. I just want you to talk to me again. I tried stayin’ away . . . after the eighth straight day of you not returnin’ my calls. But the house is just empty without you. There’s no light, no music, no weird smells coming from the kitchen. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “You told Lindy I was just a friend. You told her you felt sorry for me. You said you didn’t hate her.”

  And yes, I did realize how lame that last bit sounded, but I wasn’t about to weaken my position with logic.

  “Well, I don’t hate her. I never hated her. I just don’t want to be married to her anymore.” Sam rounded the bar, advancing until his hand ghosted down the length of my arm, never quite touching. He smirked down at me. “Besides, what was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Lindy, I know we still have a real estate and divorce settlement pending, but I want to let you know that I just had awesome sex with that woman who whacked you with a cast-iron pot. Yes, the same woman who helped me swipe the house out from under you, ruining your plan to sell it and keep the money for yourself. And by the way, I also think she’s prettier and far more interesting than you’? Lindy was already ranting and raving like a crazy woman about you, saying you’d ruined her plans to sell the house to some doctor from Louisville. The last thing I wanted to do was give her more reasons to hate you. The fact that I couldn’t wait to get back downstairs because your skin was soft and warm and smelled like honeysuckle was definitely going to make her hate you.”

  I glared up at him, but inside, I was doing the tiniest victory dance. “But what about ‘You know I do’?” I asked.

  He blinked a few times, as if trying to operate on the same insane wavelength as my brain. “You mean the part where she said, ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this divorce?’ And yes, I do. It was just like her to ask that right before the divorce was final. This is just another case of Lindy getting what she wanted and then not wanting it anymore. So, am I glad the divorce is final? Yes, I am. Am I glad the bank papers are signed and the house is mine? Yes, I am. And am I willing to call Lindy right now and describe our awesome sex in detail? Yes, I am.”

  My lips twitched as I squinted up at him. “You know, when I was a little girl and I dreamed of a man declaring his love for me, it did not involve the words ‘Let’s call my ex-wife and give her details about our awesome sex life.’”

  “I didn’t say I was declaring my love for you.”

  “Oh, please.” I snickered, rolling my eyes. “I’ve owned your ass since the moment you kissed me.”

  He pulled me closer, settling his hands at the small of my back. “Oh, you mean the night you tainted my food supply with a dangerous substance?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, grinning, pressing my lips to his. His whole body seemed to relax, to sag against mine as he pulled me closer. I murmured against his chest, “I think you need some time to be alone, to get over Lindy. I don’t want to be that rebound girl who helps you heal up for your next ‘real relationship.’”

  “Honey, it doesn’t get any more real than the girl who pepper-sprays my insides and drips hot candle wax on me while I sleep. Frankly, I have to make up with you. I’m afraid of what would happen if you were angry at me much longer. I don’t need to get over Lindy. We were over a long time ago. I’ve been ready for a new life for a while now. I just needed everything else to catch up.”

  “I don’t want you to rush.”

  “We won’t,” he promised. “We’ll take it slow.” Then he added under his breath, “As soon as we move your stuff back in.”

  “What?”

  “I was thinking, it’s pretty silly for you to live here, in a crappy little apartment, when there’s plenty of room at the house. Besides, we should do it just to prove Lassiter wrong.”

  “So we should live together to break a hundred-year-old curse? That’s a line I haven’t heard before.” I rolled my eyes at him. “So have you told Lindy I’ll be moving in?”

  He ducked his head. “Not important.”

  “She hit you with cookware, too, didn’t she?”

  “Not important,” he insisted.

  “Can I hit her with cookware?” I asked.

  “If you keep doing that to people, someone’s going to file charges against you.” He sighed into my neck. “We’re not going to do anything to Lindy. She’s not an issue for me anymore, and she shouldn’t be one for you. We’re not going to devote any more energy to her. And swinging that wok of yours takes a lot of energy.”

  I supposed that was fair. But I would keep my wok handy.

  I laughed as he squeezed me tight. “Well, I have to warn you, there will need to be some rules.”

  “Such as?”

  “Personal space is overrated. I want to be able to see you at least a few hours a night, even if we have to move around our work schedules.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” he said. “And I promise, I will only remove parts from the doors and cabinets when they need to be fixed, not just to amuse myself.”

  “Very reasonable,” I told him. “I will only threaten you with pans and pepper extracts when you really deserve it.”

  “And the vampire issue,” he said. “Any idea where you stand on that?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “And I don’t know if I’ll be able to give you an answer anytime soon. But for right now, I want to be with you. Bad furniture and all. Besides, I need a contractor, and you’re the only one I know who doesn’t make my skin crawl.”

  He gave me a quick flash of a grin, then covered it with a mocking frown. He slid his arms around me. “I don’t know if you can afford me.”

  I kissed him, pinching his butt just a little bit. “I think we can work out a barter system.”

  Faux Type O Sangria

  1 bottle St. John’s Red

  3/4 cup huckleberry syrup

  3/4 cup mango, peach, and orange juice blend

  11/2 cups orange juice

  Cherries and orange slices for garnish

  Mix liquid ingredients. Serve chilled.

  Makes 8–10 servings.

  (Courtesy of Glisson Vineyards and Winery in Paducah, Kentucky.)

  Out wit
h a Fang

  Jessica Sims

  Chapter One

  Hi there.” A woman with short, perky blond pigtails stuck out her hand in greeting. “I’m Ryder Anderson from Midnight Liaisons. You must be Ruby Sommers.”

  “That’s me,” I said firmly, shaking her hand. Her grip was wimpy, like most human women’s, and there was an odd scent to her that I couldn’t place. Maybe it was just my nerves. I was so anxious that I felt like throwing up or running out the door. Possibly both.

  Ryder gave me a cheery smile. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. Your date isn’t scheduled to arrive for another ten minutes, so I thought I’d finish going over a few things about the dating service with you, if that’s all right?” Her voice was incessantly bubbly.

  “Okay,” I said, feeling overwhelmed despite her efficient attitude. When she waved me forward, I followed her like a lost baby duckling, and I hated myself for it.

  The restaurant she’d picked for the date had a cozy, publike atmosphere. It was dark and intimate, with a small flickering oil lamp on each table. The booths were surrounded by tall wooden panels with green ivy growing over the edges, making each section private.

  I sat down at the table she led me to, tugging my chair in and then wiping my sweating palms over my green linen retro dress. It belted at the waist and had a cute flared skirt. My sister, Jayde, had picked it out when she learned I’d planned to wear jeans and a sweater. “You’ll never catch a man like that,” she’d told me.

  Maybe she was right. It shouldn’t be hard for me to catch a man at all. As a shifter female, I should have my pick, right? Yet here I was, lonely and desperate and set up on a blind date through a dating service. Maybe it was how I dressed. I eyed Ryder’s attire. Her polo top was bright pink and belted into white capris with pink piping. Pink-and-white heeled sandals completed the outfit. She looked as if she was ready to go to the country club, and she looked really eager for my date.

  I didn’t feel half as excited as she looked. Instead, there was a pit of dread in my stomach telling me this wouldn’t end well.

  “So,” she said with a big grin. “Here’s how this works. I’m going to go sit on the far side of the restaurant. It’s like a chaperoned date, but I won’t listen in.” She pointed at her ear. “Humans can’t hear across noisy rooms. It’s just to observe and make sure you feel safe and comfortable. The date will begin and end here at the restaurant. If you wish to meet him again, it won’t be chaperoned, though we will ask you to log each date so we can keep track of where you’re at and any interspecies information you might wish to share with the agency.”

  “I see.” This all sounded a little controlled. I just wanted a date with a nice guy. A little conversation and maybe some flirting to break up the monotony of my life. Someone to talk to who wouldn’t make me feel so alone.

  Someone who would wipe the memories of my last relationship from my mind, because I couldn’t seem to forget about Michael.

  “Now, do you want me to set up a rescue call?” Her blue eyes focused on me.

  “Rescue call?”

  “In case the date is going badly,” Ryder said, pulling out her phone and typing. “I can call you forty-five minutes into the date and say that you’re needed at work. You can choose to answer however you like, but it’ll give you an out.”

  “No, that’s okay. I think I’ll be all right.”

  She winked at me cheerfully. “I think you will be, too. Everyone loves Valjean.”

  “Valjean?” I laughed. “You mean, like the one from the musical?”

  “Musical?” She looked confused.

  “Never mind.” I guessed perky Ryder didn’t spend much time listening to anything she couldn’t work out to. “I just thought it was a weird name.”

  She grinned. “We’ll get to him soon enough. But first, I need to finish filling out your profile. Can I see your Alliance ID card?”

  I pulled my wallet out of my tiny clutch. Another one of Jayde’s brilliant ideas—a teeny, tiny matching green purse instead of my normal serviceable brown satchel. “Here you go.”

  Ryder peered at it, then typed something else into her iPad. “Okay, good. It looks like you didn’t fill out your profession on your profile.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I could feel my cheeks flush. “That’s because I really don’t have an official one.”

  Ryder tilted her head at me, confused. “You don’t have one?” She looked down at her notes on the iPad, then back to me. “But I show here that you’re twenty-six and have some college education. What do you do for a living?”

  I hated this question. “I’m a security guard at an Alliance storage facility.”

  She blinked at me as if it did not compute, and her gaze flicked over my five-foot-nothing frame and my slightly too curvy body. Her response was a polite “Oh?”

  “It’s the nose,” I said lamely, gesturing at my face.

  Ryder looked even more confused.

  “My sense of smell,” I clarified. God, this was so embarrassing. “They hired me because of my predator instincts. We’re good at chasing things down in shifted form. Hunters. Apex predators,” I mumbled.

  Ryder’s smile was brilliant once more. “Oh. Of course.”

  God, I felt stupid. And short.

  “Sooooo,” Ryder continued cheerfully, tapping her fingers on the iPad. “You also left number twenty-five blank. ‘What made you decide to contact Midnight Liaisons?’ It’s a purely optional question, but we like to get an idea of what brings people to the service. I hope you don’t mind me asking.”

  What made me decide to contact a supernatural dating agency? I was twenty-six and alone and couldn’t date humans because of Alliance rules. I worked in a dead-end job and saw no one except my boss when we switched shifts. At the few places I did go to on a regular basis—the library, the movie theater, the grocery store—I couldn’t just pick a guy up on the fly. He had to be vetted by the Alliance before I could date him. Men in my life had to have a tail or fangs or both. And since supernaturals lived on the down-low, I was essentially limited to my circle of friends.

  Which pretty much left my sister and my boss. I didn’t meet new people easily, and were-jaguars were loners by nature.

  But there was a difference between loner and lonely. “My sister suggested the service. She says she’s met a lot of guys through Midnight Liaisons, and it’s been a while since I dated.”

  “Of course,” Ryder said sympathetically.

  “I had a long-term boyfriend, but it didn’t . . . work out,” I added, feeling the need to explain or she’d think something was wrong with me. “We sort of broke off on an ugly note.”

  She made sympathetic noises in her throat, nodding at me. “Of course. Men can be such dicks.”

  Such a vehement phrase from such a perky human. “Actually,” I said, feeling my heart squeeze painfully for the thousandth time since that day, “he was a really nice guy. I broke it off.”

  “Why is that?”

  I couldn’t tell her that I’d been dating a human, since that was forbidden. Humans weren’t supposed to know about people who grew tails and things that went bump in the night. A human might freak out and tell others, and then we’d show up on the pages of the Enquirer. Dating a human put everyone in jeopardy.

  But I’d been so very in love with Michael. Handsome, funny, sexy. God, so sexy. He’d had a sweet smile that would come over his face slowly when he saw me, as if the sight of me instantly made his world a better place. I’d been addicted to him and spent half of my senior year practically living in his dorm.

  Once my father had found out, he’d been furious. Not over the classes I’d been skipping or my slumping grades but because I’d broken a sacred rule. Humans were a one-night stand, and only if it couldn’t be avoided. And what I had with Michael could not be construed as anything but a relationship.

  My father had threatened me, and when I’d ignored his threats, he’d threatened Michael’s life instead. I’d had no choice b
ut to end the relationship, and quickly. I’d ended it badly enough to make sure that there was no chance of us getting back together ever again.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I said. “He caught me with another guy.”

  “Oh,” she said slowly. “I see.”

  Why couldn’t I keep my nervous mouth shut? “It was a long time ago. Four years. Not a big deal.”

  “Of course,” Ryder said soothingly, then patted my hand. “So, are you ready to hear about your date tonight?”

  My stomach gave a little lurch in protest. “Sure.”

  Ryder practically wiggled in her seat with excitement. “Now, you did say you were open to dating all kinds of men.”

  I didn’t remember that, since I’d filled it out in the groggy post-work-shift state. Lord only knew what I’d written down. “That’s fine. I don’t care what breed of shifter he is.”

  Ryder smiled. “Let me tell you a little bit about Valjean. He’s a more recent member of the Alliance. He went to the same university as you, which is a great common ground. I think you’re really going to like him.”

  “What’s he do for a living?”

  She glanced down at her sheet. “I’m told he’s an investor. He loves to travel. I think he recently spent a few years in Europe.”

  Envy flared through me. I’d always wanted to travel to Europe, back before real life beat me down and smothered my dreams. “A world traveler? I don’t know how much we’ll have in common, then. I never travel.”

  Ryder smiled brilliantly. “Then you’ll enjoy his stories! I’m sure you two will get along just fine.”

  “What breed is he?”

  “Welllll.” She tilted her head and lifted her shoulders a little. “He’s a vampire.”

  I blinked. “You set me up with a vampire?”