Wolf at the Door

  And if the weird cool shiny stuff was true about vampires, didn’t that call into question the “mythology” of things like fairies and werewolves and leprechauns and mermaids? That meant there was a whole world out there, not just one he’d never been able to find, but one he didn’t know existed. It proved that although he felt his life had been full of undead shenanigans with Boo and Greg, it was just a sliver. Just a tiny bit. And the thought of how big it all really was, the dreadful sensation that it wasn’t the shark fin but the shark . . . that was terrifying. Iceberg right ahead! terrifying. And he was fresh out of James Camerons.

  Boo said nay. Boo and Gregory said assuming vampires proved the existence of werewolves was like assuming plumbers proved the existence of accountants. And they should know, since Greg had been, in the course of his seventy-two years, an accountant and a plumber. (Also a bookstore clerk, a ship’s captain, and a travel writer.) He’d seen things, terrible awful things. Polio and U.S. Customs and early-release copies of V.C. Andrews books (talk about the fierce undead!). Greg saw those things, knew those things; he ought to know about this.

  But maybe it wasn’t true. And if it wasn’t true . . .

  Right! So he was off! Or, in this case, back to the scene of the crime(s).

  He had worn khaki pants, a red shirt, and a tool belt the first day. He knew he could pass, at a glance, as a utility worker and a Target employee. In this way he was able to skulk in the back lawns, the lawn of the undead as well as the ones on either side of it.

  And what a yard! A gigantic yard, a wonderful yard. Nobody had yards in Boston; they had oversized postage stamp–shaped parcels of land with grass and hostas growing on them. And this yard had a fence, wrapping around the whole thing like the ribbon on a Christmas present. No cool sinister iron doors swinging shut with the shriek of rusty hinges (Eeeeennnnnhhhhhh!) , but the old-fashioned black bars were good enough.

  There was a garden shed and lilac bushes and, on the left, a croquet set. He didn’t want to think about the terrible things the vampire queen could get up to with a croquet mallet.

  The second day, he wore black jeans, a black long-sleeved dress shirt, and his old black sport coat. Black tennis shoes and black socks . . . it didn’t go, but he was hoping no one would care enough about him to get a look at his footgear. Who cared about what kind of shoes you wore to a neighborhood skulking?

  He’d dressed up a little because, if he was stopped today, he’d play Lost Business Guy. Summit was only a few blocks away from all sorts of offices, plus there was a Catholic school and a junior high on the street itself.

  Besides, he felt more comfortable in dark clothing, even in late afternoon (he had been sleeping in each morning and staking out the Summit Avenue Crypt in the late afternoon and early . . . very early . . . evening). He was sure no one had put his aimless wandering together with a supposed Target employee who had been called to recommend what kind of lawn chairs went with a gigantic mansion built in the eighteen hundreds. But that didn’t mean no one would ever spot him, or have questions for him. Thus, the black clothing. It was almost impossible to work up a really good lurk in pastels. It went against nature.

  Today he had seen a few more people come and go; it was busier than last night. The big fat black girl, and a dark-haired guy wearing scrubs. Oh—whoops. Not fat; pregnant. Maybe her obstetrician? Anyone who lived in a big old gorgeous mansion like that could afford her own fleet of doctors, so it only made sense to—

  Oh my God.

  Was the vampire queen growing her own army of evil babies? The undead couldn’t have children, could never know the thrill of suckling life from within, that noble calling, that utter demand from our species that we replenish and replace our population. Could the nefarious woman decide in her own ghastly way that, cheated of ever suckling life, she in turn would cheat other women? Perhaps . . . a score of women? Perhaps . . . perhaps he normally couldn’t use suckling twice in thirty seconds, and was that a good thing or a bad thing? Probably an irrelevant thing.

  He peeked through the branches of a lilac tree and watched the pretty, dark-skinned expectant mother and her (imprisoned? blackmailed?) obstetrician-to-the-damned and gasped with the horror of it. Even in his worst imaginings, he never thought there would be an army of enslaved evil babies to contend with.

  Maybe it’ll only be one enslaved evil baby. Maybe that baby’s special . . . or the mom-to-be is.

  That was when it had stopped being more fun than worry. In fact, that was exactly when it became more worry than fun . . . he was scared.

  And stupid. Until he saw her, he hadn’t truly appreciated the cost to the innocents. It had been more game than mission: try to find out if the newsletter is real or just a big tease; try to get an idea how many numbers the mansion had; try to find out what these Minnesotan vampires were up to.

  Now, though. Now he just wanted to tattle on the vampire queen to Boo and then step aside while his best friend got her feet wet.

  Eight

  Which brought him to the Woodbury Barnes and Noble. Of all the days to meet somebody potentially cool and thoroughly hot. Yeah, this day. Of all the days to think maybe picking up and moving to a patch of the corn belt wasn’t insane. Yeah, this day.

  Now here she was, all kinds of cute . . . and from the Cape, too!

  It might be no coincidence. Perhaps fate has pushed us together, into this modern-day watering hole. Perhaps fate is working through a retail coffee chain to get the kind of scone that doesn’t make this girl throw up.

  “Do you believe in fate?” he asked her.

  The hotness that was Rachael Velvela sipped her Green Tea Frappuccino. “Next you’ll be asking me my sign.”

  He could feel his face get warm as he flushed. “Yeah, not too lame and dated, right?”

  “It could be worse,” she teased. “You could have asked me if I needed sexual healing.”

  Ohhhhh, I wish she hadn’t said that. Just what I need: a five thirty P.M. boner.

  He was surprised it hadn’t happened earlier. Rachael had the most beautiful freckles he had ever seen. Her hair was a rich dark brown. A color to make a sable tear out its own fur in jealousy! Okay, so dark brown. Her skin was lightly tanned, enough so it looked like she went out and about in the summertime but didn’t obsessively lay out on beaches and frequent tanning salons. She had over a dozen freckles sprayed across her nose and cheeks, the kind that increased in summer and sort of hibernated the rest of the time, and lovely dark eyes that tilted just a little bit at the tips. Her eyes almost exactly matched her hair.

  She made her tank top and cardigan and jeans look like wedding finery. He had lived for several years with a woman who never bothered with makeup, and could see Rachael didn’t, either. So it boggled the mind to wonder how gorgeous she could be if she sat down and tried.

  But! He would not be distracted. Because a simple let’s-getacquainted question had become much more important to him. “I’m serious: do you believe in fate?”

  “The jury’s not in yet,” she said after a long moment. He had the impression she was giving the question serious thought, really taking her time to come up with the right answer, or what would be the right answer for her. “A week ago I had no idea, none, that I’d move my entire life to Minnesota.”

  “Get out. Wow, no idea?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, jeez, I hope nobody got hurt or sick in your family . . . It’s none of my business why, but—”

  “No, no, that’s all right.” Another Splenda-infused sip. “I’m sort of in the family business. And when my cousin says go, we go . . . the whole family’s dependant on us going to work when we’re supposed to, and on doing a good job. So it might be inconvenient and arbitrary, but it’s also important. After all,” she added, smiling, “I get access to the company checking account. It wouldn’t be fair if I expected all the perks and none of the work.”

  He had bought a slice of pound cake and a chocolate and banana smoothie (she had i
nsisted, nicely but firmly, on buying her own snack) but was too excited to touch either one. “So you just picked up and relocated? Just like that?”

  “Exactly. Relocated. Yes.”

  “Have you ever been away from your family before?”

  “Not for more than a few nights. Most of us—well, there are two kinds of families that live on the Cape. The ones who have kids who can’t wait to leave and never come back, and the ones who have kids who never leave. Guess which ones we are?” She laughed and shook her head. “It’s only now that I’m out here that I realize what a scared little country mouse I’ve been. Complaining and wanting to scurry back to my hole.” Rachael’s upper lip actually curled, like she was a fox about to bite. It was cute and scary, an interesting combo. “Pathetic. My cousin wouldn’t have believed it to see me. But I didn’t expect . . . everything’s really different.”

  “Do you miss them?”

  “Oh . . . miss them?” She blinked her big dark eyes at him, like a sexy Bambi. With weirdly sharp canines—she obviously wasn’t a vamp, but she sure had a cute overbite. “I haven’t really been gone long enough to . . . well . . . I guess if I think about it . . . yes. I miss them.”

  Her smile widened . . . and then she burst into the fiercest tears he’d ever seen.

  Nine

  “You did what?”

  “Don’t talk like I’ve gone insane. I had to dump the body.”

  “Ah . . . insane? Don’t be silly. Body dumping sounds very sane to me.”

  “You’ve got that tone again. What, you think I’m gonna be dim enough to drive around with a dead body in my trunk?”

  “But surely—the other one—”

  “Yeah, well, I gotta step it up, okay? Nobody noticed the other one. At this point, I don’t care who goes up in flames, you got me? It can be any one of you . . . doesn’t matter who. It’ll still solve all my problems.”

  “All of them, eh?” She would believe that when she saw it. “We agreed this needs to go away.”

  “We sure did. And this is how it’s gonna happen. Quit acting like I enjoy this shit; you know I don’t. So are you gonna help, or are you gonna create more problems for us?”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, followed by what might have been a sigh . . . of frustration or sorrow or fury, he didn’t know. She wasn’t close enough for him to see it.

  He supposed he had some sympathy for her. A little. On the other hand, she was hardly lily-white on this whole thing. He firmly believed there was no such thing as a victim.

  He also believed no one was innocent. Not past the age of five, anyway.

  Another sigh, followed by, “All right. Yes.”

  Then she helped him, as he knew she would. Poor dumb bitch . . . didn’t she know the first thing the bad guys always did was get rid of the assassin?

  Not his problem.

  Whistling, he headed back to his rental car, twirling the key ring around on his index finger and wondering how soon he’d have to kill the next one.

  She was wrong. He didn’t enjoy this.

  He didn’t.

  Ten

  Rachael, a creature of instinct and, during certain times of the month, a creature of the moment who did not comprehend the concept of tomorrow or even later, would never be able to remember exactly how they’d ended up kissing.

  They had been having a nice let’s-get-acquainted chat. And then she was crying—and shocked! Where did that come from? Has that been in me the whole time? She didn’t know if she should be appalled or sad or pleased or embarrassed.

  Scratch that: she should be embarrassed. She was embarrassed.

  Then Edward was there, frantically grabbing napkins and handing them to her as fast as he could while making soothing motions with his hands. She got to her feet and sort of stumbled toward the front of the store, and Edward got up and came after her so quickly he smashed his hip against a magazine display hard enough to make it rock.

  “Rachael, it’s okay. Don’t leave, okay? Please? Come on, come back and sit down with me some more.”

  Anxiety. Concern. Lust.

  Not pity, though. No, not that. And he wasn’t embarrassed that a woman he’d just met was sobbing next to a display of Time, Newsweek, and People magazine’s “Most Annoying People.”

  That was sort of nice. Sort of wonderful, really.

  So she turned back toward him, turned to go back to their little corner table, and he reached for her—probably for her hand, but she would never know for certain—and she reached, too. And for a wonder, her hands were on his face, and his expression mirrored his scent. That was sort of wonderful, too. A lot of non-Pack said one thing while they thought another. Werewolves couldn’t, which is why they tended to keep to themselves.

  And then she was pulling him closer, and he was pulling her closer, and their mouths met. Softly at first, almost carefully, and then—

  Lust. Concern. Happiness. Lust.

  —they were holding each other and his kisses weren’t soft anymore, and she was glad. She was not in a soft mood.

  “Aw, jeez.” From very, very far away, Rachael heard one of the clerks calling a manager. It sounded like he was hailing them from the bottom of a well. “Dave, could you get up here? I got another set of geeks making out in the paranormal romance section. And they are not stopping. Repeat, they are not stopping. Code Vlad, repeat, code Vlad!”

  Which was how they earned a lifetime ban from Barnes and Noble.

  Eleven

  “Lifetime ban. A lifetime ban!” Edward was trying to wrap his mind around the astonishing events of the last twenty minutes. “But I’m a member of their discount club! They can’t ban a member of their discount club, right?”

  “They did, though.”

  Rachael’s voice, low and sweet, also conveyed her extreme amusement. He was glad. Amused was good. Giving him a left cross in the front teeth because she felt molested was not.

  And oh my God, her mouth tasted like a Green Tea Frappuccino. And SHE kissed ME!

  “Listen, Rachael . . .” He reached for her small warm hand without thinking, realized what he was doing, and let his hand drop back to his side. “I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that—”

  “You troll bookstore shelves to pick up babes?” And for a wonder, she reached for his hand, and held it.

  I will never wash this hand again, as Jabba is my witness. By all the gods in the Marvel universe, I will never . . . Pay attention, dumb shit! She’s still talking!

  “Woe to me, then, the latest victim of your Bookstore Nosh.” She laughed. Rachael had a wonderful laugh, sort of deep and bubbly at the same time. It was a little strange to hear it when he could still see the tear tracks on her cheeks. “Perhaps you’re my victim, Edward. Did you ever think of that?”

  “I’ve fantasized about that,” he admitted. He didn’t want to. He absolutely did not. He wouldn’t. Nope.

  He peeked at his watch and groaned.

  “You have to go.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I kind of do.”

  Curse you, evil vampire queen who lives on Summit Avenue and is planning to enslave infants. The first awesome chick I meet in . . . what year was it? . . . the first awesome chick I meet in forever, and I have to ditch her to play I Spy with the undead. “But, Rachael, I swear this isn’t some scam so I can make out with you and then head for the hills like a scalded rabbit, never to be seen again. I’d never do that, and anyone who would do that to someone like you should be strung up by his testicles with fishing line, but—”

  “I know it isn’t a scam.” Her lips had curved into a smile at fishing line. “I know you truly need to be somewhere else, and truly hate it.” And she gave him a smile of such sweet calm, he would have bought her a hundred Green Tea Frappuccinos.

  “Right! Exactly! Duty calls. But I—”

  “Want to see me again.” Again: not a question. He couldn’t recall being so comfortable, so soon, with anyone, never mind a super-hot brainy brun
ette.

  “Anybody ever tell you how easy you are to talk to?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Because you are.” Asking a girl out never used to be this easy. Maybe being out of practice is improving my sex appeal. Or maybe she’s got a fever. “You really, really are.”

  “Many people would disagree.”

  “Morons,” he said with no hesitation, and this time they both laughed. Then they were done with mirth and just looked at each other. He had to leave and he couldn’t, so they stood on the sidewalk outside the “and stay out!” bookstore and looked and looked and looked.

  It won’t work. This is going too well. She’s just being nice. Someone like that? Could have anybody. Anybody at all.

  “We should see each other again very soon,” she said, and he thought he was going to pitch a header into the sidewalk from sheer relief. Or into the storefront window; wouldn’t that please the manager!

  “Tomorrow morning?” he blurted. “Breakfast?”

  She frowned, and faster than he would have believed, it felt like everything inside him had been flash frozen. “I’ve got to meet with a friend of the family . . . She thinks she’s got some clients to send my way. A late lunch?”

  I’ll put off the stakeout until late afternoon again. How much trouble are a bunch of evil suckheads gonna get into during daylight hours, anyway?

  “Late lunch,” he agreed. “Where?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t really know the area. And you don’t, either. Is there a place you want to try?”

  “The Oceanaire,” he said at once.

  “Seafood?” Her adorable nose wrinkled in an adorable way, and she had an adorable-yet-perturbed expression on her adorable face. “In Minnesota?”

  “You got this place all wrong,” he assured her. “It’s good stuff. You’ll never think you have to go to Legal Sea Foods again.”