Honeymoon of the Dead (6 page)

“Good God, no. I try not to do anything worthy of an entry in Wikipedia—makes it much easier to live forever without people noticing. No, it was Adam. I mean, Professor Weishaupt from the university.”

I scratched at the back of my neck. “Adam? I take it we were close?”

“You know my attraction to university and university types.” It was true. Sebastian seemed to have spent most of his natural and unnatural life haunting various colleges and institutes of higher learning. He even taught a few extension courses in horticulture at the University of Wisconsin. And then there was the cute little comparative religion studies major in our coven I didn’t even want to talk about he found alluring—intellectually, that is!

“Adam taught canon law,” Sebastian continued. “I was on the science faculty. We had opportunity to talk. I thought he was brilliant.”

My tone was all teasing: “Did you sleep with him?”

“No,” Sebastian said, a tiny bit more forcefully than necessary.

He hated it when I teased him about that sort of thing. It was a big burden, apparently, to be the only straight vampire in the history of his kind. And what could I say? I found it utterly hilarious.

“You know I don’t go that way without a lot of effort,” he continued. “Adam wasn’t that cute. It was more of an intellectual crush.”

“Sure,” I teased. “Your passions were inflamed by the desire to rule the world together. Oh! It was totally Anakin Skywalker at the end of that movie we both hated.”

“One of the Star Wars ones, was it? Ugh, tell me again why you insisted we go?”

I was secretly kind of a fan girl, but I confessed the real reason to him: “Ewan McGregor is hot.”

“Even in a bathrobe?”

I shrugged. “I like
you
in a bathrobe.”

“Hmm. Good point. I thought he looked scruffy.”

“I thought you didn’t notice boys.”

Sebastian flashed me a vaguely exasperated look and then rubbed his mouth with his hand. He let out a long breath before reaching for his wine. His eyes strayed to where his stalker sat sipping coffee. “I wish those conspiracy theory nuts would give up. It was several hundred years ago and, anyway, it’s over. The whole Illuminati thing with Adam was a fad, a flash. We disbanded in less than a decade. And, for the record, we called ourselves Perfectibilitists, not Illuminati.”

“It’s no surprise that first one didn’t stick. Illuminati is a lot easier to say.” I smiled, taking a bite of my cooling fish. “Anyway, you don’t have to convince me.” I jerked my head in the direction of Sebastian’s stalker. “This—is it James? He’s the guy you need to convince.”

“How likely is that?” Sebastian sighed, rubbing his forehead like he was developing a sudden headache.

“This guy, is he dangerous?” I asked, stealing another glance at the very forgettable man in the ho- hum clothes, who seemed completely absorbed admiring the slow, soft drift of flakes outside the window. As I watched, he picked up a book and started reading. I could almost read the title, something about the secret architecture in America’s capital.

“He could be,” Sebastian said. “Larry, my accountant, is very good at keeping people like James from connecting any dots. But it wouldn’t take much to blow my cover.”

“No one would believe you’re a vampire,” I reminded Sebastian. “No way.”

Most people didn’t know vampires were real. Or, more accurately, they were in denial.

You see, there was a kind of veil that existed between the general populace and the truth about things that go bump in the night. If pushed, you might get a “rational” person to admit to having had an experience with a ghost or something else supernatural, but most of the time people just close their eyes and plug their ears, singing “la, la, la,” to the things that make up the majority of my everyday experience.

It’s my opinion that’s why there is always a collective hunger for those cheesy, nonfiction exposés about haunted houses and reality shows featuring ghost hunters and psychics. It is because, on some level, everyone
knows
. They understand that this stuff is really out there just beyond their perceptions. All they really have to do is open their eyes.

I closed mine for a moment and pinched the bridge of my nose. “But what I want to know is this: This James guy,” I said, “he’s not going to jump out of the bushes with a knife or anything, right?”

“No,” Sebastian muttered glumly. “He’ll probably blog about me.”

“Horrors,” I snickered. “Maybe he’s Twittering right now!”

“Laugh it up, but it’s people like him that have kept me on the move my whole life and probably why the FBI put the screws to me.”

“You think?” I’d mostly finished my fish and started in on the last of the veggies.

“Those guys knew more about me than I would have liked.”

“Really? Like what?” My mind filled with visions of stake-wielding, garlic-waving G-men in matching suit coats and ties: Homeland Security of the Dead!

The waitress chose that moment to ask us if we found everything to our liking. We agreed that it was all lovely. She smiled pleasantly and after waiting another beat or two, finally moved to join a group of similarly dressed waiters loitering at the bar.

“So what did they ask you?” I kept my voice low, hyper-aware of the bored waitstaff and potential blogger/stalker who might be listening in.

“Well, they used the term
wealthy businessman,
which isn’t really the persona I use in this country. Nothing in my visa suggests it either. In fact, my main occupation is listed as adjunct university professor, not usually a profession people consider terribly wealthy.”

My brain sputtered at his use of the term
persona.
That made him sound very
Bourne Identity
. I wondered just how many personas he had. My mouth moved to ask, but the brain hadn’t quite recovered enough to let me form anything coherent.

Sebastian didn’t notice. His eyes had drifted to the condensation-steamed window. “It makes me wonder if I’m on their watch list as well. But why?” he asked mostly to himself. “That whole incident in Amsterdam is decades old. It was the 1970s, for God’s sake. I was just a student; everyone was into that whole scene, you know? Anyway, I was using a completely different name at the time. How could they have connected me?”

I had no idea. In fact, I wasn’t even born in the 1970s, had never been to Amsterdam, and was beginning to suspect I’d married a guy who’d been a part of every secret society since the dawn of time. “Did you bomb somebody or something?”

“No,” he said. “It was just a building. No one was in it.”

I choked on the wine I’d been swallowing.

Sebastian raised his hands, motioning me to relax. “It wasn’t nearly as outlandish as it sounds. Or at least it made sense to me at the time. Look, it was cool back then to be a radical, antiestablishment, antigovernment. Everyone was into it. It was easy to get swept up. I fell in with the wrong crowd.”

“What, again? Jeez, Sebastian, I never took you for such a joiner!”

“I’m social,” he said with a sniff.

“Why don’t you just join the Moose Lodge?”

“I have,” he said, quite seriously.

“You have?”

“Sure, they have great dinners. I’ll take you some time.”

“Cripes, did you join the Illuminati for the food too?”

He laughed. “Come to think of it, they had some pretty excellent desserts!”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Honestly, you crack me up. But what I really want to know is who else you are when you’re not with me. Who are all these other personas of yours?”

“Well,” Sebastian said, a smile returning to his face. “I’m a real-estate magnate, but you knew that.”

I did. Sebastian owned several business properties in Madison. In fact, we once had run- in with the Goddess Hel in one of his office buildings, but that was another story.

“I’m a car mechanic, botanist, alchemist, mountain climber, and a father.”

“Tell me about someone I don’t know.”

“I raised goats in France.”

I smiled at the image. “What century was that?”

“The twentieth. It was actually right before the whole Amsterdam thing, in the sixties. My lover ran a commune near the Côte d’Azur. It was really gorgeous countryside, but, for your information, goats stink—both literally and figuratively. And I really never got a taste for their milk.”

“Was your lover a boy or a girl?” I asked precisely because I knew it would tweak him a little.

“Hmmm.” He smirked in a way that for a moment made me think he wasn’t going to tell me out of mischievous spite. “Free love, baby. Everyone at the commune was, uh, experimenting, but it was Estelle that brought me into it.”

“Estelle. She sounds pretty.” I couldn’t believe I was jealous of a woman that had to be dead by now.

“No one holds a candle to you, my love,” Sebastian said, reaching across the table to stroke my cheek. Despite the nearby fireplace, shivers ran down my spine.

“I want to continue this conversation upstairs,” I said, feeling the sudden, irrational desire to assert my wifehood all over him and his Estelle memories.

“Indeed.” Sebastian smiled wickedly. “So do I.”

Getting up from the table, I took his hand: “Let’s go make this honeymoon official.”

 

 

Knowing that Sebastian was now my husband made
me strangely shy. It wasn’t like we hadn’t made love on our wedding night, but, honestly, that whole wonderful day was kind of a happy blur. Then afterward, we’d been so busy making plans and getting ready for the honeymoon that we’d . . . well, neglected certain things.

I’d packed a special, lacy outfit just for this moment and now wondered if it was too trashy or too silly.

The suite was dark. Outside, the gray wind yowled restlessly and spattered angry splotches of snow against the pane. Sebastian, who could see perfectly, of course, led me through the rooms. It was so quiet that I could hear his breathing, shallow and anticipatory.

I doubted he needed the lace.

Despite his obvious interest, a stab of self-doubt raced through me. Would I still be sexy as a wife?

Wife
was such a loaded word, and, tripping clumsily through the lavish and expensive honeymoon suite, I felt all its weight settle on my shoulders. What if this moment disappointed? Would he question his commitment?

At dinner Sebastian had said that people like James were the reason he’d kept on the move. Now that we were married, picking up and leaving would be more complicated to say the least. I’d settled him. Is that what he’d been brooding about?

We reached the bedroom. Sebastian took both my hands in his and held me at arm’s length. “Let me look at you, my wife.”

Eek, there was that word sounding so foreign and fraught on Sebastian’s lips. I tried not to flinch.

I should have known the dark wouldn’t hide my reaction from a vampire. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m having a little performance anxiety,” I admitted with a ghost of an embarrassed smile. “This is it. The big night.”

He shook his head, but I couldn’t read his expression in the muted light that filtered in through the window. “Every night is special with you,” he said.

Aw.

His words helped, but I still felt an enormous pressure to live up to the expectations of this night, the label “wife,” and, well, everything.

“Just relax,” he coaxed, drawing me closer.

I tipped my head back, ready for his kiss and for everything to be all better. Lilith chose that moment to rouse from Her usual slumber. Every time I thought too much about marriage, She bristled. I felt a white- hot surge of power encircling my wedding ring. It burned.

“Ow!” I shook my hand, breaking the moment with Sebastian. Clenching my teeth to suppress the desire to pull the ring off and throw it to the floor, I hopped around uselessly. My fingers pinched hard on the gold, keeping it on my finger. “Ow! Ow! Ow!”

Something nudged inside me, and Lilith relented. Her sudden release made my limbs feel like wet, limp noodles. Luckily, before I hit the floor, Sebastian caught my elbows.

“Lilith?” he asked.

I nodded mutely, still trying to shake the phantom burning sensation.

“What was She objecting to now?” Sebastian sounded really angry. “Is She planning on joining us, perhaps?”

Except She was always between us.

I didn’t want to make things worse by reminding him of that fact, though. “Forget about Her. Let’s get back to where we were, shall we?”

Reaching up, I stroked the planes of his face. Stubble scratched my palms pleasantly. I made a noise of appreciation of his manliness, and shifted my hips to press closer to him.

My ploy worked. I could sense his mood shifting, softening.

He ran his fingers through the spikes of my hair, pausing, as he always did, to tousle the shortest hairs at the back of my neck, as though he liked the prickly feel of them.

I closed my eyes, heightening the sense of blindness, and let my hands slowly trace the outline of Sebastian’s body. I felt the strong lines of his long, aristocratic neck. Then I let them trail the lean muscular frame of his broad shoulders. A sigh escaped my lips, only to be caught up in his mouth.

Sebastian kissed me with a similar tentative exploration. It was as though we kissed for the first time. His tongue gently, slowly probed my mouth. We played, back and forth, controlling the kiss. When it was my turn, I was careful of his fangs, though I let the tender skin of my tongue glide past their sharp edges. I let them cut just enough to give him a small taste of blood.

His whole body quivered slightly, as though instantly more alert.

My hands had come to a rest on the firm muscles of his chest. At his response to the blood, I let my hand drift down to the growing bulge beneath his belt.

My attention spurred Sebastian to reach his arms around my back. He felt for the clasp of my bra under the thin fabric of my shirt. Finding it, he expertly undid the hook without even lifting my shirt, releasing the heaviness of my breasts. Taut with excitement, my tender skin felt exposed under the loosened bra. My nipples brushed lightly against the fabric with every quickened breath.