Dead Vampires Don't Date (12 page)

17. All My Issues Dancing On My Head.

The son of a bitch.

"Why do you say that?" I leaned against the doorframe. Two could play at this game.

"Your comments from the other evening." He waved his hand negligently around as if it didn't matter to him. I'm quite sure it didn't. He was an immortal vampire. He'd lived his entire life secure in that knowledge.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I lied. No amount of herbs would help me now. My heart picked up its pace. He planned to throw my mortality in my face. I'd played different versions of this game since the day I'd been born.

He smiled, ran his tongue over his fangs. "You're a mortal witch." I took the direct jab square on my chin. It was the truth after all. "Your immediate coven is mortal."

"Yes we are." I tilted my chin out slightly as if daring him to hit me again. I should have known better.

"Half breeds."

His words hung in the air. Sneered at me, prodded at wounds that never healed. I'd taken two steps forward, hands fisted at my side before I caught myself.

"I am not a mongrel." I hissed through clenched teeth.

He flicked his gaze up and down my body. His lip curled slightly. "Half supernatural. Half Human." He didn't bother to hide the sheer disgust in his voice.

Human trash. Who let you into our school?

"You serve us as well as the humans because you can't fit into one world." He gestured at my two offices. "No one in the supernatural community would accept you as anything other than a pet. You're weak. A mortal. Pathetic." He spit the words at me. "And the humans would shun you completely if they knew about your powers."

"You must have hated the prince. Sitting across from him. Talking to him. Knowing you couldn't begin to be his equal. No wonder you hate us. We are your betters and you will never be one of us." He flicked his tongue over his fang. "A total disgrace. You and your coven shouldn't have been allowed to survive."

He blurred in one of those super fast vampire moves to stand before me, just inches away as he leaned down. "I'll find my proof and then I'll kill you." Warm copper misted over my face with his words. "I'll be doing a service to the community."

The supernatural community. The one I would never be a part of.

Somehow the fact that I was his only suspect didn't seem to matter that much right now. Part of me knew I should be
very worried,
the rest of me just didn't care.

I don't know how long I stood there after he left. I was afraid to move. I locked my muscles down on the pain screaming its way through my body. If I moved, it might break free, and if it did I would shatter into thousands of tiny pieces.

Tiny pieces that didn't belong anywhere.

****

"
Chicky?"

I didn't answer. I'd ignored her calls as well. I'd lit several brown sugar candles throughout my office. As if that would somehow erase any lingering trace of him. The aroma wasn't even working to comfort me as it usually did.

I sat at my desk. My mother's desk. I ran my hand over the wood. It needed to be refurbished.

"Hey." Morgan walked into my office. She plopped down into one of the wing chairs. "What's going on? You aren't answering your phone." She drummed her fingers over the arm. "We're supposed to go question more suspects tonight, remember? Life, death, witch detective stuff that . . ." She broke off. "Kate?"

"I should refinish this desk." I traced a long scratch with my finger. "It's old. Gives the clients a bad impression."

"
Kate?
"

"I know it's my mother's, but it wouldn't hurt to fix it up right? Remove the old crap and polish on some new stuff." My fingers wandered aimlessly over the surface. "It's not like she's going to come back and complain. Is she?"

Morgan's cold hand gripped my fingers. "Stop it, Kate." She squeezed until the pain registered.

"Ow! Damn it, Morgan, let go." I frowned at her. "I know you're strong. You don't have to break my fucking fingers."

Morgan dropped my hand. "Wow. Someone pushed all of your buttons, didn't they? I can't smell anyone." She waved her hand through the scented air and hooked her hip over the edge of my desk. "Should I try the guessing game or do you want to just spill?"

I needed time to shove that boiling cauldron of my inner emotionally wrecked self back down. I sat back in my chair and glared at her. Who did she think she was, coming into my office and nosing her way into my business?

"I don't know what you're talking about." I folded my arms over my chest.

"Oh goody, we get to play the guessing game." She narrowed her eyes, slices of emerald perfectly framed under her red brows. "Your pulse is too slow for the demon to have been here." She held up one long white finger. "Your Aunt told me about the fight with Big Al, but you aren't stewing." She held up another finger. "Which leaves the scary vampire assassin."

Morgan considered her fingers then arched her brow at me, "Unless you've run across more trouble while I slept?"

I firmed my lips. Why the hell couldn't she just leave me alone?

"The vampire assassin it is then. Three points for me." She smiled widely. "I just love to win."

A game? I'd been stabbed in the chest so many times I didn't know why my insides were not displayed on top of my desk and Morgan thought this was some sort of fucking game?

"So glad to hear it. It's probably easy for you since I'm mortal." Bitterness crept into every word. "You've got super senses to see and hear everything."

"Yes I do." She tossed her hair, the red tresses rustled over the black leather of her bodice. "I love being a vampire."

"I know you do. Why wouldn't you? No one gets to hurt you." I shoved my chair back and stood. My lungs burned as if the air in the room had disappeared. I needed to get outside.

"You can, Kate." The soft words stopped me dead in my tracks. My legs shook. I grabbed onto the edge of the door.

What the hell was I doing?

She didn't deserve this. I knew it. I'd lashed out - a wounded animal, blinded by my own pain.

"He called me a half breed. Said I shouldn't be allowed to exist." The words fell from my lips before I could stop them. I gripped the door tighter. The edge cut into my fingers.

"Son-of-a-mother-fucking-werewolf!" Her heels clattered as they hit the floor. "That fangless-ghoul-pimpled-racist! He fucking said that?"

A sliver cracked in the ice that surrounded me. I drew in a shallow breath and nodded.

"Let's go drain the fucker."

I laughed. It wasn't much of one, more like the last cackle of a skewered hag, it felt like one too, but it broke off large chunks of my iceberg.

I let go of the door and turned around. Morgan had her hands clenched together as if she was already imagining them around Ivan's neck.

Thank the Spirits for UDBFs. I don't know where I'd be without mine.

"It's not anything I haven't heard before." I couldn't shrug it off so I tried for aloof.

I didn't fool either one of us.

"Maybe not." Morgan acknowledged. "But it doesn't mean you have to take it."

"He's got that really big sword." I reminded her.

Morgan had asked for every detail of my first encounter with Ivan. "True." She nodded. "But you've got me. And Aunt Tabitha. And Big Al."

I took a step away from the door. My legs quit trembling. The room filled with air again.

"Hell, the demon would probably join in too." She wiggled her brows suggestively.

This cackle came out more like a mortal witch facing a dozen sharp objects rather than being driven straight through with them. A witch with friends who didn't care if she straddled two worlds or not. A witch like me.

"He probably would." I smiled, my lips wobbled a little. "Did you know that he is a demon lord?"

Morgan lifted one pale shoulder so gracefully to classify it as a shrug would upgrade shrugs everywhere to a form of ballet. "I suspected he might be. How did you find out?"

"I asked Aunt Tabitha."

It was rare to catch Morgan off-guard. It helped to settle me that much more. "Aunt Tabitha knows something about demon lords?"

"Apparently she knows a bit more than something." I grinned.

"No." Morgan shook her head. Her bright sunset curls caressed her shoulders with each twist of her head. "Aunt Tabitha is so nice and demons are just . . . not." She tapped one long crimson nail against her lower lip glossed in fire engine red. Blood on blood. A good look for her. "Where would she have met a demon lord? What was his name?"

I breathed in deeply. My lungs functioned once more. My skin warmed. "It was back in the day and she never quite got his name." I pressed my lips together to hold in the urge to giggle. "I guess Aunt Tabs used to be quite the little witch."

Morgan's eyes widen a little before she started to chuckle. It trickled out in low, husky notes, foreplay in laughter. "I never would have guessed. How did she know he was a demon lord?"

I shrugged, rather graceless and jerky. "The arm tattoo marks them as a lord. It symbolizes their sin. That and one of his minions might have mentioned it when he tried to keep her." I managed to keep my face perfectly straight as I said it.

Morgan blinked slowly. "Aunt Tabs has been in Hell?"

I raised my hands in a
who knew
manner. We stared at each other then began to snicker. In minutes we were both bent over. I started to snort.

After a while, Morgan leaned back against my desk. "I haven't laughed that hard in a century." She swiped one long, elegant finger under each eye. "Our usual escapades aside." She grinned at me.

I couldn't count on graceful, or minor makeup issues, so I grabbed a compact I kept in one of my desk drawers. Black lines streaked down my cheeks. I pulled a baby wipe out of the package that lived next to the compact.

"That's gotta be hard." I couldn't think of anything much worse than living so long things ceased to be funny.

Morgan flipped her hand as if it didn't matter, but I saw the shadows in her eyes.

"Speaking of demons and their sins, I have the feeling you know more than you're letting on about Ash."

"I'm still gathering information." Translated that meant I wouldn't get anything more until she was good and ready. After several lifetimes of living, Morgan doesn't act or speak impulsively.

"You ready to check out
Clean Beans
?"

My lips twitched. People come up with the strangest names. "Let me touch up my makeup, and I'm ready."

Morgan waited patiently while I re-did my eye liner and shadow. I'd been a witch-scout when I was younger, so I had a fully stocked drawer that included make-up, tampons and my back up wand.

"Always be prepared" had managed to become the motto of several groups, both human and non. Very few people knew the rest of the original slogan, then again times have changed and not many people have "to face an angry mob intent upon burning witches to death."

My mother was not the only witch who had residual issues from the Salem trials.

I took one last look in the compact, snapped it shut, set it back in the drawer and closed it. Morgan led the way to the front door.

I said the words to extinguish the candles and flipped out the lights before turning to lock the door. With my key inserted in the lock I paused, "Morgan?" She turned from surveying the street. I looked her in the eye. "Thanks."

She nodded. "We're friends, Kate." As if that said it all. I thought about it for a minute. I guess it did.

18.
Clean Beans.

The fresh aroma of ground coffee slammed up my nose the moment I opened the door. Rich, powerful and faintly skunky, the odor infiltrated every corner of the coffee shop.

I love a good cup of Joe as much as the next witch, but this was a bit much. If there was ever a coffeehouse on steroids, this had to be it. My hands trembled slightly as if the caffeine had somehow been absorbed through my skin.

"Sweet Glinda and the ruby red slippers!" I muttered.

Morgan coughed slightly. "They take their coffee very seriously here."

"Do they pipe it in through the vents?" My left eye started to twitch. "How can you stand it?"

"I breathe through my mouth."

A thought occurred to me. "Wouldn't this have bothered the Prince?" The aroma was so strong I could only imagine devoted customers – and serious caffeine addicts – would ever stop in.

"You didn't figure out that the Prince enjoyed a bit of pain after last night?" I doubted I'd forget
The Whipping Post
if I lived to be eight hundred and seventy three. My cheeks turned red. "The smell was just a bonus to the Prince," she continued. "He really liked their recycling policy here and all the coffee

is organic." She glared at me. "And quit blushing, it's making me hungry."

"Haven't you eaten already?" I asked, just a touch alarmed.

"Yes, but my guy could only get me some O positive." She growled. I could almost hear her stomach rumble. "I hate O positive."

I took one small step sideways. I felt the sudden urge to put a little distance between us. My harness was in the car. It rubbed my shoulders and I had Morgan with me for safety. It amazed me that she hadn't bled me dry earlier when I was having my meltdown. Two year olds might get cranky when they were hungry. Vamps had simpler, and much bloodier, ways of managing their hunger.

We might need to consider a stop at the ER later tonight.

We'd done that once before. I'd faked an intestinal problem and Morgan had managed to score several pints of A-negative while I'd outperformed any Diva.

Granted, we'd both been slightly tipsy and slightly younger. I still winced at my explanation to Aunt Tabs. Broken broomsticks are not cheap. Luckily, I'd made it to our block before I hit the tree. First and last time I've ever flown drunk.

We skirted a table with two men. One wore a red beret; the other had a blue silk scarf tied around his neck. Their spoons clattered loudly onto their saucers as we passed. I'm sure that at some point I've mentioned Morgan's allure. It truly is universal, whether they're an S&M submissive, snotty caffeine addict or the gas station clerk with the crack showing.

It would be really irritating if I didn't love her so much.

I counted roughly ten tables scattered about.
Clean Beans
took recycling to an all new level. I swear I saw at least two of the chairs this morning on my drive to work waiting for the garbage truck.

Beat up, gouged and fixed with a rainbow of neon duck tape, not a single table nor chair matched. Heck, some of them didn't even seem to be the correct heights for each other.

The clientele didn't appear to mind. In fact, there was a certain smugness throughout the entire room, ratty furniture included. Maybe it had been that air of superiority that appealed to the Prince?

"How often did the Prince come here?"

"From what I was told, every day." Morgan rounded another table, this one empty. "He started off his evenings here."

"He didn't consider this place below him?" I just couldn't picture the smartly dressed Prince sitting on a chair with sunshine yellow duck tape strapped around the seat.

Morgan stopped and spun around. She eyed me for a moment.

"Every supernatural person I know recycles." She paused. "I didn't plan to go into this, especially after your," she winced, "meltdown, but recycling is huge for us. We've got a vested interest in this planet."

My issues threatened to make a comeback, but I swallowed them back down. Since I'm not in the "in crowd" and Morgan and I spend most of our time together getting into trouble, I hadn't realized the importance of recycling to the immortal community. It made sense.

"So the Prince really liked to recycle?" We'd made that point, however it gave me a chance to double check the inner lock on the door to my issues.

"Try fanatic." Morgan turned around. I was pretty sure she was headed toward the corner table with the enormous mountain man at residence. His beard was longer than my hair. Pulled straight.

"He pitched a huge fit at his mother's birthday because the organizer used non-biodegradable cups."

No wonder the Prince had been murdered. He didn't have any sense of self-preservation at all. If there was anyone scarier than Ivan, it had to be the Queen of the United States Vampires. That woman could scare the robes straight off the Inquisition.

Actually, from what I'd been told, three of those robes hung on the wall behind her throne.

"Morgan. Nice to see you." Mountain man's voice resembled a bear. After a long winter's hibernation. Deep, growly and seldom used, it took my brain a moment's lapse to decipher his words.

"Can I get you something to drink?" He frowned at us, voice frosty. "I don't see your cups."

The customers were expected to bring their own beverage containers? Now that was taking reduce, re-use and recycle too far. I couldn't be expected to get dressed properly, let alone remember my mug, before I had at least a cup of coffee in the morning. And if I got my fix at home, what would be the point of stopping at
Clean Beans
? Maybe they catered to an afternoon crowd? Or caffeine addicts who drank all day?

Hmmm. A caffeine addict? People with addictions did crazy things to get their fix. Even murder. I couldn't see killing someone over coffee . . . never mind. Take away my wake-me-up in the morning and there would be hell to pay. I still could not imagine
killing
anyone over it, but I'd never had anyone try to steal my coffee either.

And why would a Prince steal anyone's coffee?

Damn Ivan. Our encounter earlier rattled me a lot more than I wanted to acknowledge.

"We're not drinking tonight." Morgan pulled out a chair. I did the same. Strips of cheerful green tape covered a large section of the seat. Large enough to make me wonder about its sturdiness.

My black outfit might have a lovely slimming effect, however, I am all too aware that it is just an effect. A sometimes size ten butt is not for sissies.

I held my breath as I eased onto the seat. Why I thought holding my breath would help, I have no idea. The seat remained firm, no splintering into tiny pieces. I began to wonder if my night might be turning brighter.

"We just wanted to ask a few questions." Morgan indicated me. "This is Kate. She's a rep from a recycled paper company. She wants to put together a website for the company on recycling and how it's changing people's lives. She's looking for people to tell their stories."

Mountain man leaned forward, arms planted on the table as if he intended to leapfrog over it. The table groaned. I inched my chair backwards.

"What company?"

I blinked rapidly. We hadn't come up with a name for the company. Reduce, re-use and recycle – I was pretty confident someone had used some version of those words for their company. They all began with R . . .
aha
. "The three R's of planet earth."

Aunt Tabs used to talk about the three R's when helping me with my homework. It never made any sense to me back then. It still doesn't. Why use "the three R's" to talk about reading, writing and arithmetic when writing and arithmetic start with different letters? Sure, they have an R somewhere in them, but that's like saying 'A' stands for zebra when . . .

"Never heard of it." Mountain man sat back in a disappointed huff.

Focus, Kate, focus.

Damn that Ivan to every corner and shadow of Hell.

I re-grouped and thought back on mountain man's comment. He knew every recycled paper goods company out there? That's a bit creepy. I could picture him, late at night, looming over his computer with a green, 100% recycled notepad in hand, writing down company after company with his self-crafted goose feather pen.

I blinked several more times. "We're a new company. Just getting started."

He leaned forward again. His hazel eyes glittered. "New, huh?"

I slid my chair back a few more discreet inches.

"Kate, this is Ed."

Ed? I had something more along the lines of Ted and Bundy and substituting pollution for young women. But Ed missed Ted by one letter, sort of like the three R's.

Oh, never mind. I yanked myself firmly into the present and finding a killer.

"Yes." I beamed. It was Ed's turn to sit slightly back. "We're hoping to have our site and company up and running in a couple months. Right now, I'm collecting data and stories for our website."

Ed wrapped a giant paw around his chipped, dirt-brown mug and took a large gulp. "What would you like to know?"

"What are your experiences with recycling? How has it changed your life? And do you happen to know anyone else who is passionate about recycling?" Morgan had assured me that if I mentioned passionate and recycling in the same sentence I'd get a hit on the Prince.

She was dead on in her prediction.

Apparently no one, and I mean
no one
, was as passionate about recycling and saving Mother Earth, than the Prince. It almost made me sad about his demise.

Then I considered my own life and my agency. Call me shallow, but my life as well as my business and livelihood trumped recycling any day. Besides I put all of my aluminum cans, plastic bottles and papers in their perspective bins on a daily basis. Heck, I even brought my old batteries to the recycling station.

Okay, okay. I only did it that one time, but it still counts.

The Prince could stay dead, all the aggravations his death currently caused me aside. Really, did it matter? The Prince was dead, truly dead, no matter what.

Which left me still trying to find his killer and save my own hide. I was making zero progress so far with Ted. I mean Ed.

Ed had quite a bit to say about his own recycling methods. When I gently steered the conversation in the direction I wanted it to go, he had even more to say about Xavier.

All of it good. Really good. Like seriously crushing on the Prince – in a very manly way, of course – good.

Morgan and I tried the next table. And the next. And the next. And even the next one. I met some extremely
interesting
people. Most of them I devoutly hoped I'd never see again.

E
veryone loved the Prince. He was hands-down the Prince of Recycling. Rather, he had been. I had to keep reminding myself that he was indeed dead. You'd think it wouldn't be that hard, but everything I did and had done in the last few days was a direct result of him. It sort of kept him alive in my own mind.

****

"
Why did you think we should interview the people here?" I asked Morgan. We sat at our own table, a couple of empty tables away from anyone else.

This table had been painted an ocean blue at one point. Now the paint had so many chips and scratches it resembled a three-year old's painting of an ocean, squiggly lines and all.

The mismatched chairs were not much better. At least they hadn't collapsed under us. Under me. I couldn't see a one-leg chair buckling under Morgan.

She scowled. "When I asked around,
The Whipping Post
,
Spike's
and
Clean Beans
were the places the Prince frequented the most. Considering the choice of weapon used on the Prince, I thought we might find someone here with a grudge against him."

Morgan glared at the table as if blaming it and everyone in the coffeehouse for
not
wanting to kill the Prince. She didn't like it when her plans did not come together.

I understood that all too well.

Ivan's visit earlier had ratcheted up my need to find the true killer to a level of Impending Doom. Any more missed trails and I wouldn't have to worry about tightening the screws on my case file. I feared there wouldn't be enough pieces of me left big enough to stick a thumbtack through.

"I'm going to the bathroom." I bolted towards the appropriate sign near the display counter before Morgan could say anything. My stomach bobbed and weaved like a small boat on a stormy sea.

I'd added the gruesome visual to my last thoughts on Ivan.
Note to self: never
ever
add the visual to any thought even remotely related to Ivan.

The bathroom door had a sign taped in neon orange to it that read "Bathroom Closed. Please use facilities in back →
↑
!"

I hurried down the dim hall. They'd forgotten at least one curve in their arrows. I rounded another
corner. I pressed my hand to my uneasy stomach and began whispering a spell.