Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires (76 page)

After an afternoon perusing the Help Wanted section (flipping burgers versus driving a cement mixer), I need a drink. I squeeze through the crowd to the brass rail and wave to Lori at the cash register. She holds up a finger, her lips reciting the drink order to herself as she rings it in. Then she trots over, pale ponytail bobbing.

“Your tan looks amazing,” she shouts over the din of the crowd and the blare of the latest Killers song. She lifts her bangs and tilts her chin toward the light. “Can you tell I was wearing sunglasses?”

“A little.” Her face looks like a negative version of the
Hamburglar. I shouldn't let her go out during the day. The thought reminds me of vampires, so I shove it aside.

Lori slides a napkin across the polished wood surface of the bar. “What can I getcha?”

“Something strong and straight up.”

She scrutinizes my eyes, which I know are bloodshot from too many job ads. “Strong, yeah, but definitely not straight. You need more than booze.” She grabs bottles of Kahlua and vanilla vodka. “Chocolate martini'll cheer you up.”

“How'd you know I need cheering up?”

“Bartender's sixth sense.” Her hands trickle over the bottles in front of her before pulling out Grand Marnier, Frangelico, and Bailey's Irish Cream.

“Looks expensive.”

“My boss is out sick, so it's free. But it means we're short-handed, so I'm totally in the weeds tonight. It's crazy—two bachelorette parties.” She shakes the martini, then pours it into a glass in front of me. “After the crowd thins out, you can tell me what's wrong.” She winks and hurries away.

I scan the crowd for anyone I know—or anyone I'd like to know. A familiar face appears in my peripheral vision at the end of the bar. Before I can get a better look, a brawny brunette in a wedding veil lurches into view.

“Oh. My God. Ciara Griffin?”

And I thought my day couldn't get worse. I force a smile and snap my fingers, pretending to search for my old hallmate's name. “Joanne, right?”

She slaps my shoulder. “It's Jolene! How can you forget? We only had like every business class together.” She snickers. “When you were there, I mean.”

I rub my shoulder and remember how during sophomore
year she and her sorority sisters would shove Kmart sales fliers under my door every Sunday to show their opinion of my clothes. In return, I would soak their towels in the toilet while they were in the shower. “So how are you?”

“Awesome! I just got promoted and assigned to a huge market research project. Plus I'm getting married.” She points her chest at me, and I see that her white tank top has
BRIDE IB
stenciled in black letters.

“I'm so ... happy for you.” Her designer shoes and tight leatherette pants make me feel like a schlub in my knockoffs and last year's miniskirt.

“What are you doing now?” she asks me.

“I'm—” Still in college, six years later. Unemployed and unemployable. No fiance, boyfriend, or so much as a hamster to keep me company two nights in a row.

One of Bride 2B's gold half-hoop earrings catches in her veil. As she tilts her head to release it, the familiar face reappears.

Shane.

Suddenly I have an answer. “I work with him.”

She peeks and gives a low whistle. “He's cute. Mysterious.”

It's true—Shane seems to sit alone inside an orb of silence. The woman on the next bar stool rolls her shoulders and preens in his direction, but he ignores her until she gives up and turns back to her friend.

My former classmate examines Shane's appearance. His charmingly disheveled hair gleams almost blond in the overhead bar light. He wears a similar getup as last night, but with a different flannel shirt over a different T-shirt.

Jolene turns back to me. “So you work for a logging company?”

I pretend not to get her joke. “Radio station. He's a DJ at WMMP, where I'm the head of marketing.”

Her bleary drunken look is replaced by a sly grin. “Introduce me.”

“I thought you were engaged.”

“And this is my bachelorette party. I'm entitled.” With a deliberate gesture, she twists her engagement ring to face her palm.

“I think he has a girlfriend.”

“Is she here?”

The thought of Regina hanging out at the hopelessly bourgeois Smoking Pig makes me smile. “I doubt it.”

“Neither is my fiance. How conveeeeenient.”

The Bride lets out a braying laugh and drags me toward the end of the bar. Her marquise-cut ring digs into the tender webbing between my fingers. She's stronger than she looks, and she looks like she could bench-press a Buick.

Just before we reach Shane, Jolene holds out her index finger and pinky in a salute to her bridesmaids across the bar. The women hurl a group catcall worthy of the skankiest strip joint.

“Hi there!” she says to Shane's left shoulder. It tenses at the sound, but he makes no other movement. She fans her face with his bar napkin. “Woo! Is it hot in here, or is it just you?”

Still no response. She reaches to touch him, but at the last inch her hand jerks back, as if disobeying a direct order from her brain. Smart hand.

Finally she turns and shoves her lip out at me in a pout.

I frown back at her. “Just leave him alone.”

At the sound of my voice, Shane's head turns, pivoting like a praying mantis's. With his hands together on his
beer bottle and elbows propped on the railing, the resemblance to the insect is uncanny. I step back.

A moment after his eyes meet mine, they soften, losing the leave-me-the-fuck-alone aspect. “Ciara.”

“Wow, you do know each other.” The bride-osaurus smooths her veil. I wonder why she hid her ring if she's still got that thing on her head. “I'm Jolene. And you are?”

Shane gives me a quick scan, then shifts on the bar stool to face us. Face
me
, really. He hasn't looked at Jolene yet.

I give him an apologetic smile. “Sorry to bother you, Shane.”

“Shane!” Jolene tries to plop her formidable ass on his lap. “Great name. Do you want to party, Shane?”

He glances at the cleavage she shoves toward him. His eyebrow twitches, and his gaze sticks there for a moment. I suddenly long to wrap Jolene's veil around her throat and pull until she passes out.

“We've got a limo and a hotel room in the city,” she says—not to me, naturally. “There's plenty of room.”

To my dismay, he stands and edges closer to Jolene, letting her press against his chest. I wish Regina would walk in and knock this girl's teeth out her ears.

Shane mouths
Help
to me over Jolene's head.

“Come dancing with us!” She gyrates unsteadily against his hip. “My friends would love you. I promise we won't take too many pictures.” She finds this last statement hilarious.

I take a final loving sip of my martini and wait for a guy passing on the right to walk behind me. When he does, I step hard on his toe. He howls and pushes me forward, sending my drink—and all its chocolaty goodness— cascading over Jolene's fresh white tank top.

She shrieks. “Clumsy bitch! My maid of honor stenciled this for me.”

“I'm so sorry.” I wipe at her top, pressing the liquid into the material. “Go to the ladies' room and I'll come help you clean up.”

“You better.” She stumbles off toward the restrooms, shaking drops of martini out of her veil. “Hurry!”

The moment she's out of sight, I grab Shane's hand. “Let's go.”

We duck out a side exit, which leads to a long hallway. I drag him halfway down at a trot, then realize we're running from a drunken bachelorette, not the Mafia.

When I try to let go of his hand, Shane takes my wrist and pulls me to a stop. “Thanks,” he says. “I owe you.”

I try not to look at the place where our skin is touching. “It was the least I could do.”

“Is she your friend?”

“More like arch-nemesis. But I feel bad for the guy I stepped on.”

“Collateral damage,” he says.

“I didn't know how else to get rid of her. She didn't care that you were ignoring her.”

“I considered glaring her away, but I have to be careful.” He shifts his glance above my shoulder. “It sounds wacked, but some people get a little out of control when I look directly at them.”

“Oh.” I have just enough martini in me to say, “Because you're a vampire.”

He drops my wrist and leans back against the wall. “So you know.”

“I read the brochure.”

“What do you think?”

“I quit.”

“Oh.” He nods, then turns and saunters down the hall toward the exit, his gait suggesting a contained swiftness, like a greyhound on a leash. I accompany him to see his reaction, and because the only other way out is through the bar.

After a few steps he says, “Did you quit because you don't want to work with vampires or because you don't want to work with crazy people?”

“You're not vampires, and you're not crazy. It's a good joke. I just found a better job, that's all.”

“Doing what?”

“Working for an account exec at a PR firm in D.C.”

“That's a commute from hell, but congrats, anyway.” Shane opens the glass door at the end of the hallway, which leads to a painfully bright liquor store. He heads to the beer fridge. “Do you want to get something to go?”

“Go where?”

He opens the refrigerator, then looks at me through the door. His breath fogs a circle on the cold, clear glass. “Your place?”

Normally with someone who looks and moves the way he does, I'd purr, “The sooner the better.” But even I have my taboos. Men who belong to psychos, for instance.

“What's the deal with you and Regina?”

Shane shuts the refrigerator and leans against a pyramid of twelve-packs. “Regina and I have a special connection.”

“Does this connection include sex?”

Shane glances at the gangly guy behind the counter, who watches us without embarrassment, then turns back to me. “Not anymore.”

“How long anymore?”

He squints at the ceiling as if the answer is written there. “Maybe two years.”

He's telling the truth. I've learned a thing or ten about spotting a liar.

I don't trust him enough to bring him home, however. Not yet.

I step forward and open the refrigerator. “Let's take a walk.”

We stroll down Main Street, in the general but not specific direction of my apartment. Sherwood's downtown measures only four blocks by three blocks, so we'll have to double back soon.

The night swelters and the popcorn we bought at the store parches my tongue. I'm dying to break out the beers, but every so often a cop car cruises by, slow and predatory as a shark. Aside from domestic disturbances and drunken students, the police don't have much to do here, so their presence is more annoying than comforting.

“So what were you before you became a vampire DJ?”

“Something much more monstrous. I was a wedding DJ.” He pulls his wallet from his jeans, then hands me a tattered business card.

MCALLISTER MUSIC, YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO
. Aha—I thought I heard a hint of that distinctive Pittsburgh-northeast Ohio dialect.

“Do you still hear ‘The Electric Slide' in your sleep?”

“Actually, I had a reputation as the DJ for cool couples. They knew I'd play what
they
wanted, not what their parents wanted.”

I turn over the card. Small block letters read,
NO CHICKEN DANCE
.

“Problem was,” he continues, “the parents usually paid for the weddings, so I also got a rep for being difficult.”

“I can't imagine you in a tux.”

“Neither could I, which didn't help.”

We stop to sit on a bench in front of the library, where hedges and trees curve around pebblestone paths to form a little park. During the day homeless people hang out here while the shelter is closed, but right now the park is empty.

“So what is it with bachelorette parties?” Shane asks.

“You mean why do otherwise decent women turn into complete ho-bags? Because it's their last chance to be bad, and for some it's their first chance.”

He makes a skeptical noise. “I've seen bridal narcissism from every angle. My sister made our dad take out a third mortgage to give her the same kind of wedding all her rich college friends had. It was bizarre, because otherwise she was so down-to-earth.”

I catch the verb tense. “
Was
down-to-earth? Is she— still around?”

“She's alive, if that's what you mean.” He creases the fold of the liquor store's paper bag. “I just don't see her anymore.”

I give him a moment to elaborate, which he doesn't. “Is your family in Youngstown?”

“As far as I know.”

“But you don't talk to them.”

He rests his elbow on the back of the bench, in a studiously casual pose. “I could explain, but you'd laugh.”

“The vampire thing again?”

He sets down the bag and shifts to face me. The tree beside us casts him in shadow, but his pale blue eyes seem to burn into mine. I recall the alleged power of a vampire's gaze.

Glancing away would make me superstitious, so I don't. I narrow my eyes, challenging him. He just keeps staring.

“I don't know what you think you're ...” My voice fades. I forget what I was going to say. It doesn't matter. Slowly my face goes slack and my vision blurs, but I can't stop it. I don't want to stop it. I want to sit here forever.

Shane leans forward and dips his head close to mine. My skin heats, and my hand reaches for the edge of his shirt to pull him closer.

“Someone's coming,” he whispers.

“There she is!” screeches a voice behind me.

I blink hard, then turn to see Jolene and a posse of Bridesmaids 2B. They stalk down the middle of the empty street, almost in formation, like Sharks preying on a lone Jet.