The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire (4 page)

I shuddered, picturing Jane's very human childhood best friend, Zeb Lavelle, and his gorgeous werewolf wife, Jolene, trying to corral their adorable but destructive twins. I babysat the kids once so Zeb could take Jolene on a date night. I babysat them
once.
That was enough to make me question the wisdom of reproduction.

“What's wrong with him?” I asked, pointing to Collin, who, for the record, was still holding me several inches off the ground.

“Collin's feeling a little guilty,” she said. “He thinks he should have seen this coming. You know, with his—” Miranda waggled her fingers around her head in a way that I assumed represented Collin's precognitive gift.

Right. Collin had had a vague and barely helpful premonition over the Christmas break about me being attacked by a vampire. He had predicted that while none of the undead members of my circle of friends would hurt me, a vampire would eventually come after me. It was part of the reason I cooperated when Cal arranged my
Hunger Games
training.

Poor Collin. He hated to be right.

“Collin, I'm fine,” I assured him. “It's not fair to beat yourself up over visions. And technically, you did see it coming while I was home for Christmas. And you took the time to warn me. You just didn't have a lot of details. You did all you could.”

“I never get enough details,” Collin grumbled. “And I could have followed you around in the ensuing months so I could protect you from what I saw.”

“That would have become annoying really quickly,” I assured him. “And we never would have reached the stage in our relationship where we hug for socially inappropriate amounts of time.”

Collin blanched and retracted his arms, dropping me to my feet, while Miranda snickered. By this time, the other vampires had trooped into the living room for what I could only assume would be a debriefing.

“It's really not a big deal, guys. I got grabbed from behind by a vampire, who probably saw me as an easy midnight snack. I proved him wrong. I don't have any serious injuries. I call this one a win. Who wants something not-bloody to drink? Miranda?”

“Gigi, do not make light of this,” Cal said, putting his arm around me to prevent my retreat to the vampire-friendly kitchen.

“Making light of things is how I process,” I retorted. “Besides, who could blame the guy for trying? I'm awesome. What self-respecting vampire wouldn't want a piece of this?”

“And you're so modest, too.” Iris sighed. “You're quitting that job.”

Well, at least she'd skipped “I told you so.”

“I will not have you in and out of that parking lot every night, risking another attack,” Iris said. “You're going to find a nice, safe office job, far, far away from vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, or any other supernatural creatures. I don't care if you have to become a telemarketer. I will keep you safe.”

“I am not quitting that job, Iris,” I told her calmly. “This is a dream job for a programmer. More money and perks than I could make anywhere else, and I haven't even finished my degree yet. I'm an adult, and if I choose to work somewhere, as long as it doesn't involve pasties or a Webcam, you should respect that.”

“We'll talk about
that
later,” Iris said, snorting.

“It could have just been a random attack,” Dick suggested. “It's never happened in this group. But it is possible that Gigi crossed paths with a vampire with bad feeding habits, even outside the Council office, where Ophelia made it clear that such habits will result in quick, bloody, permanent death. Some vampires don't listen and do what they want . . . I'm not helping, am I?”

Andrea patted his arm. “You're trying, sweetie. It counts.”

Now that my heart rate had finally settled down long enough to let me think clearly, my feelings were more than a little hurt. Why had my vampire tried to hurt me? Before, he'd merely followed me around, skulking in parking lots, all broody and observant. And when he kissed me, it was like something out of a ­really good old episode of
Buffy
. Passionate and urgent, just a little bit filthy. I could practically hear the carefully selected indie rock playing in the background.

Was it all a setup? Or had he just wanted to amuse himself by playing with his food? I'd spent all of this time thinking about him, hoping I'd meet up with him again someday. And now I felt like a first-prize idiot for not seeing what was right in front of my face. I was the human equivalent of a cat toy. And through this cloud of brooding and gloom, I heard Cal say, “So I called Nikolai. He can accompany Gigi to work starting tomorrow night.”

My head snapped up, suddenly able to follow the conversation. “Wait, what?”

Clearly, I wasn't
hearing
what was right in front of my face, either.

“Cal's called in a favor from an old friend,” Iris said. “He will be following you to work every night and then home and anytime you leave the house at night. For . . . ever.”

“That giant hamster ball I bought Jane for Christmas is also an option,” Dick suggested.

“Dick, stop helping,” I begged him. “And Cal, what do you mean, ‘old friend'? As in you exchange occasional Christmas cards, or ‘remember that time we sacked Constantinople because we were peckish?' ” Cal leveled an exasperated look at me, which I ignored. “It's a valid question.”

“Please take this seriously, Gigi.”

“It's hard to take this seriously, because I do not need a vampire bodyguard!” I exclaimed. “Don't you think this is just a little bit of an overreaction? It could have just been a random attack, like Dick said. I may never see this vampire again. Besides, people in this little group have been attacked and kidnapped and had deer parts left on their doorstep, and they never hired a bodyguard.”

“Well, do you notice that all those people are dead now?” Jane nodded toward Andrea and Iris. “OK, they're vampires, but still. I think Cal is trying to get ahead of the situation, which is something this group has struggled with in the past.”

“How did you even manage to arrange this so quickly?” I asked Cal, who was looking up at the ceiling, being careful not to make eye contact. Something was up. “Unless you'd already made the arrangements and were just waiting for the excuse to call him?” My brother-in-law was still studying the track lighting. “Cal, don't make me get the flamethrower.”

“I knew he was in town and may have mentioned to him that we might need the help of a vampire you couldn't manipulate,” Cal said defensively when I smacked his arm. “You can't protect someone properly if that person has you wrapped around her little finger.”

“She doesn't have
me
wrapped around her little finger!” Collin protested. “I am an impartial bystander!”

“Inappropriately long hugs, Collin,” Miranda reminded him.

Collin wrinkled up his face in the most undignified expression I'd ever seen him make. “Curses!”

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that the concern Iris's vampire friends showed for one another was part of the reason I loved them so much. Threatening them all with Cal's silver spray would be a poor return for that care.

But seriously, one more hug, and I was going to snap.

“Cal, bringing fanged personnel to the office with me is only going to make me look immature and incapable to my coworkers, who don't show much respect for humans anyway. It's going to make my job that much harder.”

“Yes, because keeping up appearances is so much more important than your personal safety,” Cal muttered.

“Look, you've done everything you can to prepare me for hostile interactions with a vampire, including finding a martial-arts instructor who shouted incorrect Sun Tzu quotes
and
‘Mercy is for the weak' at me while he tossed me around the mat like a rag doll,” I said. “And the good news is that it worked. Thanks to what I learned and the bag of tricks you gave me, I was able to defend myself. The worst injuries I sustained tonight were from falling on my face after the guy ran off. So unless you can protect me from gravity, I'd say you've done all that you can. So I don't need some vampire version of the Rock following me around, checking the bathroom stalls for potential assailants.”

“Actually, a vampire version of the Rock doesn't sound that bad,” Miranda murmured. “Can one of you get on that? For the greater good?”

“Gigi, you have made a series of cogent and intelligent points,” Cal said, his head cocking toward the front door as if he was listening for something. “And you may be right . . . in some small way. I might have jumped the gun in calling in my friend for support.”

“Thank you.”

“But none of that matters now, because he's standing on our front porch,” he said, dashing around me to answer the knock before it was even finished.

“What?” I spat. “Damn it, Cal!”'

I heard Cal at the front door, conversing in hushed Russian with a somewhat familiar second voice. I reached into my purse so I could at least wipe some of the smeared lip gloss from my cheek. The moment our guest stepped through the door, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. There he was in all his blond glory, the guy who had been following, kissing, and, most recently, attacking me.

“Motherfudger!” I yelled, dropping my purse and holding my stake hairbrush in a stabby position.

Iris frowned. “Gigi?”

I clicked the silver stake into place and demanded, “I didn't smack you around enough the first time, jackass? You had to come back for seconds?”

Mr. Tall, Blond, and Bite-y stared, tilting his gorgeous head and staring at me as if I was a particularly interesting specimen at the zoo. He was wearing different clothes, jeans and a thin green cashmere sweater that brought out the lighter amber flecks in his stupid, beautiful eyes.

It was difficult getting past the “so damn cute” to focus on the “violent possible sociopath” of this situation. But I would do it, for puppies and feminism and for no other reason than that I'd already committed to this road by pulling a stake on a guest.

“Gigi, what are you doing?” Iris asked through a tightly wrought, awkward smile. All of the other vampires stood cautiously, not quite sure why I appeared to be losing my mind in front of our guest. “Kind of being rude to Cal's friend.”

“This is the vampire who attacked me.”

Cal scoffed. “Don't be silly, Geeg, this is my friend, Nikolai Dragomirov. Nik for short, because no one needs that many syllables.”

“Well, I'm telling you that your ‘friend' Nik tried to bite me in the parking lot tonight. Which I think means he is no longer a friend but an acquaintance, at best. I don't care what you did in Constantinople.”

Nik wandered closer, towering over me, completely oblivious to the fact that I was pressing the tip of a silver stake to his chest. Seriously, I had time to adjust my placement two or three times to make sure I had the heart, and he didn't even glance down.

“I know you,” he said. “I have seen you before.”

“Of course you have,” Cal said, and when Iris sent him a questioning look, he hastily added, “I sent pictures of the wedding.”

“Which probably helped when you were following me around Half-Moon Hollow during Christmas break. Also, you saw me earlier when you were
attacking
me.
How is that not breaking through?” I asked, digging the stake in just enough to make him wince. And yes, I was still willfully omitting the kissing part, because I wanted to escape this situation without Iris trying to ground me to my room like a preteen.

“What about Christmas?” Iris asked, frowning.

Double damn it.

I tried to cobble together a coherent, plausible explanation for what I had just said, but all I could produce was a series of increasingly twitchy facial expressions that communicated guilt or nausea. Or maybe both.

“Gigi, what aren't you telling us?” Iris asked, her voice deceptively calm.

I locked eyes with Nik, who seemed just as confused as Cal and Iris. Because he wasn't aware that I'd omitted a large portion of our less-than-adorable “how we met” story. And neither was Jane, because she immediately piped up, “Of course he's seen her. One of the first clear pictures I got from Nik was of him standing near Gigi at McDonough's Tree Farm, watching her and wanting to talk to her and . . . judging from the expressions on your faces, I should just stop talking right now, shouldn't I?”

I cringed and nodded. Sometimes it really sucked to hang out with a mind-reader. “Jane, maybe you shouldn't go poking around in Nik's head. It seems like a violation of a lot of different civil rights.”

“Let's worry about vampire Fifth Amendment issues when you're not attracted to a man who seems to have Gigi-based rage blackouts.” Iris snorted. “Also, you were seeing him over Christmas break, and you didn't think to tell us?”

“I wasn't seeing him as in dating him. I was seeing him as in possibly hallucinating him!” I cried. “And I don't know how that is relevant to the current conversation.”

Nik's smile was indulgent as he stepped closer to me. “I am certain I would remember attacking someone as pretty as you,
sladkaya.
”

“What did you call me?” I asked, arching a brow as Iris pushed Nik back a step away from me.

“He called you ‘sweetheart,' ” Cal said, glaring at the back of his friend's head. “He's Russian. He calls every woman he meets under the age of seventy ‘sweetheart.' It doesn't mean anything.” Cal's glare intensified. “It
doesn't
mean anything, right, Nik?”

“Why wouldn't it mean anything?” I growled, though I wasn't sure who was on the receiving end. “Look, you actually spoke to me this time, don't you remember that?”