Sex and the Single Vampire do-2

by Кейти Макалистер

  The Tower of London was said to be the most haunted spot in all of England. It was a paranormalist's version of Disneyland.

  "Did you? See anything interesting?"

  He shrugged. "Couple of orbs, a hand coming from the wall, and we felt one or two cold spots, but nothing we caught on film. You a Summoner?"

  Normally I don't admit to my job to laypeople, but the driver seemed to be copacetic with the whole idea of ghosts and ghoulies, so I nodded again.

  "Thought you might be. What's with the dark specs?"

  I waited until he was stopped at a light and lifted the glasses to my forehead for a moment.

  His eyes widened as he whistled. "That natural?"

  I laughed a harsh, bitter little laugh. "It's nothing I want, believe you me."

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I guess not. Must make for some odd looks, eh?"

  And odder responses, responses like people screaming and dropping things, claims that I was doing it just to get attention, and worst of all, accusations that I was a freak.

  The rest of the ride was conducted in silence. I looked out at London at night and wondered if my optician wasn't wrong—the last time I'd tried contacts, I'd managed to wear them almost a week before my eyes started ulcering. That had been over a year ago. Maybe now they could handle the contacts…

  As I left the taxi, the driver pushed a card into my hand. "In case you ever need a chauffeur to take you outside of London. I do that as well."

  I thanked him and joined the throng of people streaming into the new bookstore.

  "How many copies do you want?" a harried bookstore employee asked me a few minutes later as I shuffled forward in a line so long it was guaranteed to leave my leg aching.

  "One of whichever is the latest book."

  "One?" She looked me up and down as if I were an insect that had donned human clothing. "Just one? One?"

  "Oh, you want more than one, dearie," the woman in line behind me said as she tugged my arm. "They're ever so good."

  "I've never read them. I'm just doing this for a friend."

  "Never read them!" The woman gasped as I accepted a hardback book from the store employee. "Never read them! Well, you just have to read them. Here, you, give this lady another copy. You'll love it, you truly will."

  "No, thank you," I said as I pushed the second copy back to the employee. "One's fine. I'm sure they're very nice, but I'm not into this sort of book."

  The woman's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, this sort of book?" She shook the three copies she held at me. "These are beautiful books, wonderfully written and full of dark, brooding men and the women who save them!"

  "And the sex is good, too," a woman behind her added.

  The woman behind me nodded emphatically. "Just lovely love scenes, very creative and hot enough to melt your knickers. Here." She shoved a book into my hands. "You take this. Read it. You'll be a believer in no time. The way Dante writes… it's positively unearthly."

  I lifted my glasses just enough so she could get a good look at my eyes. "Trust me, I don't need to read a book to know what unearthly feels like."

  She choked and hurriedly dropped her gaze from mine. I pushed my glasses back down and gently returned the book she'd shoved in my hands, turning around to face forward in the line. I hated calling attention to myself in that manner—my limp was enough to make people stare—but if there's anything I dislike, it's a rabid fan.

  Those were my thoughts until the line slowly snaked its way down the rows of bookshelves, close enough for me to see the group of people gathered around a table situated in the middle of the store. Bodies shifted and moved in an intricate dance of color and pattern. I stood, bored, mentally drawing warding spells to protect me from overeager readers, until suddenly every hair on my arms stood up on end. The person directly at the front of the signing table shifted and moved far enough to the side that I could see the man who was sitting behind a stack of books, his head bent over a copy as he signed it.

  Long, shoulder-length black hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, but a strand had escaped and framed one side of a hard jaw, a jaw that led down to a familiar squared chin. The man looked up at the person he was signing for and smiled. I staggered back as if I'd been punched in the stomach, literally feeling as if all the air had been sucked from the room.

  It was the man I'd seen first in my dream, then later in the inn, the crazy man who had cut himself all over his really nummy body and then disappeared… or had that been a fantasy, nothing but the deranged ramblings of an overtired mind? I rubbed my forehead, unsure of whether that whole episode had been imagined, or if he was… My mind came up with a blank as to an explanation, if he really had been at the inn. No one could have cleaned up that room and gotten rid of the table in the ten minutes I was gone. No one human.

  C. J. Dante, famed vampire author, the man who came to me in my dreams and begged me to help him. A tormented man, one whose anguish I could feel without even opening my mind up to him. A man who sliced himself up like a loaf of bread, then got testy when I tried to help him.

  "Just who—or more to the point, what… is he?" I muttered to myself.

  Unfortunately, I had no answer.

  Chapter Three

  As I saw it, I had two choices. I could either assume that the past evening spent in the presence of a mentally disturbed individual who thought nothing of inflicting horrible tortures upon himself was not real, something my mind dredged up for some purpose or other, or I could rip that black sweater from Dante's manly chest and look for healing cuts, calling loudly for the police and the nice guys in the white suits.

  In the end I decided to take my cue from the man himself. If he recognized me, I'd know the episode was real. If he didn't, I'd know that I had the most vivid and realistic vision I could ever possibly imagine, one that had left red fingerprints all over my notebook.

  As the line slowly crept forward, I kept myself hidden by the chunky woman in front of me, just in case Dante spotted me and started making a scene. One of the store employees was escorting people to him, handing him the books to be signed, then making sure the fan was hustled off so the next one could take her spot. I looked behind me, then back to the front. Every single person in line was female. Hmm. I peeked around the shoulder of the woman in front of me and studied Dante. He was every bit as handsome as I remembered him, more so because he wasn't dripping blood everywhere.

  "Some men look really, really good in black," I said without thinking. The woman in front of me turned and nodded her head emphatically. I gave her a cheesy smile in return. I felt something behind me, a sort of rippling in the air, and turned to see a tall, very pregnant woman waddle past the line of people waiting. She was accompanied by a short woman with one of those pretty heart-shaped faces that I had always secretly coveted. Both of them grinned and circled around behind the table to greet Dante. He stopped signing long enough to kiss both their hands, and speak with them for a few minutes before apologizing to the person who was waiting for her book.

  So he has groupies, I told myself. So what? You can't expect a man to go around looking like he does without having great huge hordes of women falling all over him. Means nothing to you, unless of course the slice-and-dice scene last night was real; then you have to do something about him before he starts cutting up others.

  I gnawed my lip and tried to decide what to do as the line snaked ever so surely forward, but in the end I just kept myself hidden behind the chunky woman until I was next in line. The bookstore woman grabbed my book from me.

  "Just signed, or inscribed to someone?"

  "Um… inscribed, please. To Corrine. Two Rs, one N."

  The woman nodded and turned back to look at Dante as the chunky woman giggled and told him he was no better than he should be. He smiled and the bookstore woman handed him Corrine's book, leaning forward to give him the information. He bent over the book, writing with an elegant hand that reminded me of Victorian copperplate.

&
nbsp; "I hope you enjoy the book," he said as he signed his name with a flourish, his voice as beautiful as I remembered it. It slid over my skin like silk, raising the hairs on my arms with the pure, rich tone. He looked up and smiled as he handed me the book, then froze like a pointer spotting a pheasant.

  "Christian?" The pregnant woman looked between the two of us standing still as statues.

  I stopped breathing. Even through my dark glasses I could feel the pull of his eyes. It was as if I were being sucked into them, teetering on the edge of an abyss.

  "Christian?" The woman touched his arm.

  Without being aware of it, I unguarded my mind and felt myself plunge down into the depths of his eyes, down into a blackness that surrounded me, filling me with grief and anguish and hopelessness without end. I was overwhelmed with his pain, filled with it, unable to catch my breath under its suffocating presence.

  "Christian, are you okay?"

  Desperately I tried to reguard my mind, bringing down as many mental barriers as I could to keep him from filling me with his torment.

  "Who are you?" I asked in a whisper that was all I could manage after the experience of looking into his mind.

  His eyes darkened.

  "More important, who are you?" the shorter woman with the pretty face asked. She looked at me curiously, eyeing me from toes to nose before turning to Dante and whapping him on the shoulder. "I told you this was a good idea! See? We got her after only a half hour! Good. Now I can go home."

  The bookstore woman nudged me, and when I didn't do anything but stare at the man in front of me—who, it should be noted, was staring right back at me, his eyes dark with mingled surprise and pain and no little amount of speculation—she took the book from his hand and shoved it at me, giving me a little push to get me going. I stumbled forward, unable to tear my gaze away from Dante's until the pregnant woman put a hand out and touched my shoulder.

  "You're probably going to think this is very strange of me, but I wonder if I could talk to you for a few minutes?"

  I blinked and dragged my gaze off Dante's tortured eyes to look at the woman standing next to me. She was a few inches taller than me, and had pleasant eyes and an aura of friendliness that I could feel without dropping my guards.

  "Um…" I said, still feeling more than a little bit dazed. I mentally shook my head and gathered my wits. Summoners were in control at all times. To be out of control was a dangerous thing; it opened the Summoner up to all sorts of horrible eventualities. I couldn't let a little thing like a meeting with… My eyes drifted back to where Dante was sitting. He was watching me even as the woman before him prattled on about how much she loved his books. I took a deep breath and turned back to the woman, who was also watching me closely. I had at least a thousand questions to ask about Dante; his groupies were likely to be a good place to start. "Sure, I can spare a few minutes."

  The woman smiled, warmth glowing around her like a halo. "Good. Rox?"

  "Right with you," the smaller woman said, grabbing my arm. "Let's go to the espresso stand. I don't know about anyone else, but I could sure use a latte right about now. It's hard work, hunting Beloveds."

  I peeked at her out of the corner of my eye. She must have noticed, because she grinned and tugged me forward until I was frog-marched between the two of them, feeling like nothing so much as a prisoner being escorted to a cell.

  The tall one stopped after a few steps and glanced down at my leg. "I'm sorry; I'll walk slower."

  I shrugged off her concern and limped forward. "It's okay. My leg doesn't like it if I stand around too much."

  "So what's with the shades?" the smaller woman asked as she walked next to me. "You got an eye condition or you just like to look cool?"

  "Roxy! Don't be so rude! You'll have to forgive her," the pregnant woman said as we stopped before the in-store latte stand. "She was dropped on her head when she was a baby. Several times, as a matter of fact. Two double tall skinny lattes, and… what would you like?"

  "Americano," I said, wondering just what sort of man attracted such strange groupies. And was that his baby the tall one was carrying? More important, why did I want so much for it not to be his?

  She gave the order. "And I'll take one of those lemon muffins, and that piece of pastry with the cherries on it, and… um… that mocha brownie." She turned to us. "Do either of you want anything?"

  "You're going to explode if you eat all that," the smaller woman said with a pointed frown at the pregnant belly. I shook my head, then allowed myself to be herded over to a nearby table.

  "I expect you're a bit curious about this," the tall one said, giving me a reassuring smile. "First off, I'm Joy, this is my friend Roxy, and you are… ?"

  "Allie. Allegra Telford."

  "You're American, too?"

  "Yes." I squirmed a bit uncomfortably in my chair, wanting for some reason to go back to Dante so I could stare at him a bit more.

  "Cool," Roxy said. "The big question, of course, is do you believe in vampires?"

  "Roxy!"

  She turned to her outraged friend. "What? It's important!"

  "Yes, but you don't just blurt it out like that! You work up to these things cautiously, carefully. Most people get all weirded out if you start talking about vampires and Dark Ones and all that. You have to approach the subject with kid gloves. I'm sorry, Allie; she has no delicacy or tact."

  Delicacy? About the paranormal? Around me? Laughter burbled up inside of me until I couldn't keep it in any longer. I whooped until my eyes streamed, forcing me to grab a napkin and mop up under my glasses. Both women stared at me as if I had a ghost of a three-legged cat standing on my head.

  "Sorry, it just struck me funny. What you said. In answer to your questions, Roxy, yes, I have an eye condition, although it's not sensitivity, if that's what you were thinking. If you really want to see, I'll show you, but most people find my eyes… unnerving. And I'm not weirded out by stuff like vampires, Joy, although I have to admit I've never seen any proof that they exist. You don't happen to know what a Summoner is, by any chance?"

  Both women shook their heads, then Roxy, on my left, leaned in close and squinted to see in behind my glasses. I rolled my eye toward her. "Oooh, cool, you have really light eyes. What is that, gray? Silver? Yeah, it's a bit strange to have eyes the color of a full moon with a dark ring around the outer edge, but I don't see what's so unnerving about them."

  Joy, on my other side, tipped her head to look in the right side of my glasses, then frowned. "She doesn't have light eyes, you idiot! They're kind of a hazely gold with patches of a darker brown. That's interesting how the color varies within your iris. Still, I have to agree with Rox—it's different, but hardly unnerving."

  I sighed and made sure no one was near, then pulled my glasses off. Both women gasped.

  "Oh, that is so totally cool! Your eyes are two different colors! Are those contacts?" Roxy asked, leaning close to peer at my eyes.

  "No."

  "You were born like that? Very cool!"

  I couldn't help but smile at her. She was the only person I'd ever met who thought my eyes weren't creepy. "It's a condition called heterochromia irides. It's fairly rare, and most cases don't have the extreme variation in eye color that I have, but it's not, as some people believe, a sign that I'm marked by the devil."

  "Well, of course not," Joy said. "Personally, I like the effect. It makes you look… unique."

  I snorted. "Unique, that's a nice way of saying it. The silver eye would be bad enough by itself, but coupled with the dark eye…" I shrugged and put my glasses back on. "Most people get nervous around me when I'm not wearing my glasses."

  Roxy peered in the side of my glasses again until Joy smacked her arm and told her to behave. "It's unusual, Allie, but not unnerving. Don't feel like you have to hide your eyes from us."

  "So what's a Summoner?" Roxy changed the subject abruptly as the waitress brought our drinks and Joy's food.

  I chewed on my lip for a mo
ment. Something was bothering me; some vague sense of unease was growing. I took a long look at the two women next to me, but the feeling wasn't coming from them.

  "A Summoner has the power to talk to ghosts." I turned my head to scan the people in the espresso area, my gaze moving beyond to the line of people visible waiting for Dante to sign their books. The line was smaller now, just twenty or so people left, but something nagged at me, pulled at my mind as if I were missing something important.

  "Cool!" Roxy breathed. "And you're one? You can talk to ghosts? Do you use a Ouija board or something?"

  "Wait a minute," Joy said, her brow furrowed as she tapped out a tattoo on the tabletop. "I think I read something about that in one of Christian's books… isn't a Summoner someone who can raise the dead?"

  I gave the line one last worried look, then turned back to shake my head at Joy. "Not really, no. We can only call those spirits who are already present, tied to a location, not ones who have passed on to another existence. But once we call them, they stay bound to us until we release them. Summoners are used primarily in cases of hauntings that trouble the living, poltergeists and the like. The spirit is Summoned, then Released to move on to where they were meant to go."

  "We? So you're a Summoner?" Roxy asked, her eyes big.

  I nodded.

  "Wow. Can anyone do it? I mean, is it a matter of just a few magic words and voilà, you got yourself the ghost of Great-Grandpa Joe?"

  "Don't be so flippant, Roxy; this is a serious matter. If Allie is Christian's—" She stopped and gave me a toothy smile. "Well, regardless, I'm sure she is uniquely qualified to do what she's doing."

  "Oh." Roxy eyed me. "Yeah. I see what you mean."

  "I don't," I replied, looking from her to Joy. "I take it Christian is C. J. Dante?"

  Both nodded at me.

  "Would either of you happen to know if he's riddled with at least a hundred cuts on his torso, arms, and legs?"

  As if they were in unison, both their mouths dropped open in surprise.