The Vampire And The Nightwalker (5 page)

A mere few minutes later, as she stood surveying the contents of her refrigerator, her phone rang again. Adele. Once more, she let it go to voice mail.

After another five calls, Secret gave up and set the phone to silent. She would never get anything to eat at this rate.

Finally, deciding on a salad and some boiled shrimp, she set out what she needed to fix a light dinner. She just bought the shrimp, fresh the day before, and now was the perfect time to cook them. Starting the shrimp boiling, she made the salad while they cooked. In the middle of her preparations, her doorbell rang.

She froze. Surely Adele wouldn’t be so bold as to simply show up here uninvited or without an appointment. Moving silently to the front of the house, she ducked into her reading room briefly and glanced out the window so that she could see her driveway.

Oh, thank god! It’s only Marielle! What a relief,
she thought.

Secret hurried to the door and opened it for her friend.

“Hey, I didn’t expect to see you tonight!” she said to Marielle.

“Well, I tried to call you a little earlier to see what you were doing tonight but no one answered. Since I was almost here anyway, I thought I would just stop by.”

“You’re just in time for dinner! Come with me to the kitchen. I’m sorry about the phone. I had to turn it off because Adele kept calling.”

“Adele! What did she want?” Marielle asked.

“I have no idea,” she replied. “I didn’t want to answer; at least not until I had eaten. But she kept calling and calling. I haven’t even listened to her voice mails.”

“Hmm, well, do you mind if I listen to them?” Marielle laughed as she picked up Secret’s phone.

“Knock yourself out,” she replied. “By the way, I’m having boiled shrimp and salad. Do you want to join me?”

“Oh yum! Will you make your special homemade cocktail sauce?”

“Of course! It wouldn’t be right otherwise.”

Both women laughed, as Secret went back to her salad preparations and Marielle put in the code for Secret’s voice mail. As she listened, her face went from smiling to outraged to concerned.

“Hey, Secret,” she said. “I think you need to listen to these. She sounds like she might actually be on her way over here.”

“Oh, God! Here, let me have the phone,” Secret said as she reached for it.

“Your first unheard message: ‘Secret, you’ve got to be there! Oh, my God, I’ve got to see you! I need a reading! Sam’s whore has finally done it! She’s made him file a restraining order against me! I’ve got to find out what to do, please…’”

“End of message. Your second unheard message: ‘Secret, it’s me again! I’m on my way to your house. You’ve got to do a reading for me! Don’t say no. I’m almost there!’”

“End of message. Your third unheard message: ‘Don’t you ever answer your damned phone? What kind of a psychic are you if you don’t know when to answer you own phone? I’m almost there. You can’t say no!’”

Secret didn’t bother listening to the rest of them. Deleting the messages, she set her phone on the breakfast bar.

“Well, now what do I do?” she said almost to herself.

“I’d call the cops if I were you,” Marielle said. “She sounds unhinged, sweetie.”

“I can’t call the cops,” Secret said. “I don’t have a great relationship with them. I’m not exactly their favorite person.”

“Oh, please! This is fucking New Orleans! Home of the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. Surely, they can move past the fact that you’re a Tarot reader.”

“If they knew the rest of it, they’d probably tar and feather me. But it seriously isn’t the best idea to get them involved. If Adele is really headed here, I’ll just have to handle her when she arrives.”

“Do you still have that handgun in your nightstand?”

“Yes, but it’s not going to come to that. We’re not shooting anyone.”

“If you say so.”

Just as they were starting to settle back into preparing food, they heard the squeal of tires on the street. Exchanging looks, they set down their glasses of wine and headed to the front of the house. Sure enough, Adele had arrived and was flying up the sidewalk to the front door. Her car was parked across Secret’s small, but carefully maintained yard at an odd angle.

Adele looked like a mad woman.

As they watched her approach through the window of the reading room, Marielle started shaking her head.

“Now can I convince you to call the cops?” she asked.

Secret was actually a bit unnerved by this new development, but she focused on this situation and knew that no one was going to get hurt by it.

“No, Mari, we won’t need them,” she replied.

At that moment, Secret’s doorbell began to ring over and over again. “Secret! Secret! You’ve got to let me in! Please, Secret, I need to see you!” the woman screamed in between ringing the doorbell.

Finally, Secret opened the wooden door, but not her glass storm door. Up close, Adele looked even more frightening than she had coming up the walk.

“Adele, you know this is highly inappropriate. I’m not seeing clients tonight. Call me in the morning and we can set something up. You need to go home now.”

“Secret, you don’t understand what that bitch has done!”

“Yes, Adele, I do understand. I heard it on your message. But I simply cannot see you tonight. If you don’t leave on your own, I’ll have to call the police.”

“No!” she screamed. “You’ve got to let me in!”

Suddenly, with almost superhuman strength, Adele lifted one of the medium size clay pots filled with plants that sat on either side of the front door. Before anyone knew what was happening, she threw that pot through the glass door, completely shattering it.

After that, everything happened so quickly that neither Secret nor Marielle could totally recall the events. What they did know, is that Adele was quite suddenly yanked up and away from the door. In her place stood a rather tall man with jet black hair, aquamarine eyes, high cheekbones, and quite a sensual mouth.

The man was facing Adele, speaking to her in low urgent tones. She seemed to be under some sort of spell as she nodded slowly and finally walked down the steps and back out to her car. As she drove, they all watched her brake lights disappear down the street.

Only then, did the man turn to fully face them.

“I don’t believe that you’ll be having any more trouble from that woman,” he said in a deep, pleasantly modulated voice. There was a slight accent that Secret couldn’t identify but, in the end, that was of little importance.

“Wow,” Marielle exclaimed. “What did you say to her?”

“Nothing too complicated,” he replied with a slight smile. “She needed to understand why her actions weren’t acceptable. She’ll most likely be calling you tomorrow in a highly apologetic frame of mind.”

“Where did you come from and how in the hell did you see her?” Marielle continued to interrogate him.

“I just happened to be out taking a walk and heard her screaming. I followed the sound of her voice and here I am.”

“Well, we can’t thank you enough, right Secret?”

Secret hadn’t uttered a word throughout the exchange. It was clear to her in a flash that this man was her watcher.

“Hey, why don’t you come in and have a glass of wine with us? It’s the least we can do, right Secret?” Marielle continued to try to elicit some response from Secret.

“I’m quite sure that he’s got more important things to do than spend his evening with us, Mari. Will you please go check on the shrimp? I’m afraid it may boil over.”

“Um, sure, okay,” Marielle said in a puzzled voice.

As soon as Marielle was out of hearing, Secret turned back to face the man standing on her front porch.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“I apologize. I’ve neglected to introduce myself in all the excitement. My name is Kane Broussard. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Mr. Broussard, I do thank you for your help this evening. However, I won’t be inviting you into my home. You see, I know what you are. Obviously, my friend does not. I also know that you’ve been tracking me for some time now. I’m not sure what I have that you could possibly want, but I do know that your kind doesn’t stalk someone without a reason. Please go away and don’t come back.”

Before he could reply, she had closed the door in his face. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he was angry or amused. In the end, he decided that he found her reaction to him very entertaining. He also found that he was quite excited by her lack of fear, even with the knowledge of what he was.

Fine, he would leave for now. But this was not going to be their last meeting.

He and Ms. Secret Lavalle had a lot to discuss; and discuss these things, they would. Her beauty notwithstanding, she had a spirit that attracted him like no other woman ever had. He knew that she was still watching him through the peephole in her door. That knowledge made him smile at her and incline his head in a slight nod.

Then, just as she had demanded, he turned and left.

His skin tone slightly paler than most, with a firm build and impressive height, Kane’s raven-black hair and cerulean eyes mystify females in his presence with a hearty flash of desire. Secret senses their inevitable meeting with caution, as he leads her on with his supernatural charm.

The night after Kane and Secret’s first meeting amid shattered glass and psychic fallout, he continues to eye her from afar. One question is on his mind as he waits for their next meeting: Will she know who I am?

Secret is no stranger to vampires. A nightwalker of New Orleans since her teenage years, she first sensed a vampire at the same time she realized she had a special knack for premonition. Not only is she an adept psychic, she also senses superhuman qualities in people when she sees them. Secret remembers her first meeting with a beautiful young vampire temptress, the one who's had a mysterious fear of Secret.

But Kane is unique – he is attracted to her like metal to a magnet. Her preternatural abilities are exceptionally alluring to him and since meeting him, vampires keep appearing on her doorstep, like they sense something they want in her blood....