B008DSVE7O EBOK Page 16

  Searching through a never-ending sea of websites, I started paying attention to reviews. The place with the best reviews had a better chance of having a person who could actually communicate with the dead. I quickly narrowed my list to five people.

  Fourteen

  “You haven’t called me in like two days,” Laura said, walking into my house.

  “I don’t think it’s been that long.”

  “It’s been forty-eight hours, for sure.”

  “Well,” I said, “you haven’t called me either.”

  “I feel you should have been the one to call me.”

  “Why? Because there was a bloody vampire in my living room? You can’t hold that against me. Remember the summer before senior year of college?”

  “You swore you’d never bring that up.”

  “Well, if you still want to roll with me…”

  “Roll with you? Really?”

  “If you still want to be my friend,” I rephrased. “You’re going to have to get used to weird shit happening all the time.” I grabbed my purse from the table and opened the front door to find three demons standing on the porch. Their eyes were glowing brightly so they must have just sucked up some poor soul. The one in front, a beast of a woman, didn’t even have a chance to lunge at me. I snapped her arm in half and broke her neck with the other arm. The man, on the other hand, got into the house.

  Laura screamed, but I remained focused and eerily calm. I kicked the legs out from under the man, and when he hit the floor, I punched his chest so hard, my hand got stuck in the flesh. Instead of getting my hand free, I lifted his body up and used it as a makeshift battering ram. I aimed directly at the third demon, a woman standing watch on the porch. Once she was down on the ground, with the other body on top of her, I snapped her neck too.

  When I turned around, Laura was peeking out from behind the sofa and Meowser, was standing on the armrest, his back fully arched and his tail super puffy. “Geez, Meowser, could have used your help there. You brought nothing but a puffy tail to a demon fight? That’s not gonna cut it, buddy.”

  “Weird shit like that?” Laura asked.

  “Yeah, you could say so. You okay?”

  “I should be asking you that. Yes, I’m all right.”

  “Good, phew! I’m going to need a quick shower before we go out,” I said, crossing to the kitchen to get paper towel. I dabbed at the blood on my arm, uselessly.

  “Are you sure they were bad? What if they were selling Bibles or xsanguina?”

  “No… I’m pretty sure they were demons.” I looked over by the front door to make sure. “Yeah, see? They’re already disintegrating.”

  “Should we call the police?” Laura asked.

  I laughed as I walked over to close the door. Good thing the house was beyond anyone’s view from the road.

  “No, I’m serious, Olivia. Should we call the police?”

  “Not unless you want to explain the blood, missing bodies, and inhuman DNA results. I’m going to call Benjamin and ask him to send someone to clean this up.”

  Laura remained my main focus for the next few moments. I was waiting for her to go into shock, but she remained cool. She did, however, pick Meowser up in her arms and carry him with her throughout the house.

  I insisted that Laura lock herself in my room and wait for me while I cleaned up. Benjamin picked up on the second ring and I told him what happened as I undressed for the shower.

  “Darling,” Benjamin said, and I took an unnecessary breath to quell the longing I felt for him at the sound of his voice.

  “Three demons just attacked me at the house, Ben.”

  “Did you get them all?” he asked.

  “Of course, but there is a huge mess and I have plans with Laura. Also, have I mentioned that I’m not very good at cleaning?”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  “Can you clean it?” I asked, playing up the sweetness of my voice.

  “Three of them were there?”

  “It’s pretty gross.”

  “I’ll be by soon to get it. You’re still planning to take Laura and go out on your ghost hunt?”

  “Actually, I’m with her now so we’ll be heading out soon.”

  “She was there during the attack?” Benjamin asked, his voice full of reproach.

  “Yes, and she’s perfectly fine.”

  “Olivia, I warned you about this.”

  “And I’ve got to get cleaned up. Bye and thanks! We’ll talk about the demon thing later.”

  “Olivia, wait,” he said. “Are you sure you’re unharmed? I’m already on my way.”

  “I took care of it like a pro, Ben. Promise.” I ended the call before he could say anything else.

  After the shower, Laura still appeared calm and Meowser wasn’t puffy anymore.

  “Let’s try this again!” I said, stepping over demon goop and opening the front door. “ Boy, am I glad you don’t get queasy around blood.”

  The first two businesses on my list were closed. Would it kill them to say their business was closed on their website? In retrospect, it would have been smarter to call ahead, and I did so with the next place on the list before we drove there. We arrived at the local shop off US-1. The modest parking lot barely accommodated a vehicle the size of Laura’s Jeep.

  “I drive by here all the time, but I can’t remember ever seeing this place.” Laura parked the car in a slight diagonal. I worried that the car might get dinged, but she seemed unconcerned.

  The bright, neon, “Open” sign turned off just as we reached the door. “You’re kidding me,” I said. “It’s only eight o’clock. They can’t be closed.”

  “Why don’t we knock? They might reopen if we tell her we just called.”

  “That was like half an hour ago,” I said.

  “Well, she should know that it takes half an hour to get anywhere in this city.”

  A woman did open the door. Her ash hair was cut short to her scalp and she wore red reading glasses. The first thing I noticed, however, was that she didn’t have purple eyes.

  “I’m sorry ladies, but I’m closed for the night.” The woman’s long, cotton dress, all blue, flowed around her. “Why don’t you call tomorrow for an appointment?”

  I eyed Laura for a moment. “You know what? This is taking too long.” Then, I turned to the woman. “I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Miss Beverly,” she replied.

  “Beverly, let us inside.”

  “Why don’t you ladies come in?”

  “That’s crazy,” Laura said, following me in.

  It was a long shot. But what the hell, right? “Beverly,” I said, snatching her attention back to my voice and me. “Do you know anyone in Miami with purple eyes?”

  “Where are you going with this?” Laura asked, in a low whisper.

  “Why are you whispering? It’s not like you can influence her.”

  “I don’t know anyone in Miami with purple eyes,” Beverly whispered.

  “Beverly, don’t whisper,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “But I do know someone in Key Largo that has purple eyes,” Beverly said, at normal volume.

  Bingo!

  “Beverly, who is it that you know with purple eyes in Key Largo?”

  “Competition. She is good. Pretty, young thing speaks to the dead.”

  “That’s great, Beverly. What’s her name?”

  “Domino Reed.”

  “Thank you. Beverly,” I said, leaving for the door. I left a few dollars I had in the pocket of my purse. I felt like she deserved a tip. Beverly may not have been the real thing, but she helped me out.

  I was eager to tell Benjamin what I’d learned. “Looks like I’m going to the Keys,” I said, as we drove away.

  “I want to go, too.”

  I frowned, not sure what to say. “I don’t know, Laura. It could be dangerous.”

  “Oh, come on. I can help you during the day. Right? Wouldn’t that be helpful? This demon lady is awake
during the day. Maybe I can help somehow.”

  Damn, she had a good point. “Benjamin’s not going to like this.”

  “I’m sure you can persuade him. Olivia, nothing exciting ever happens to me.”

  “What about the fall of 2003?”

  “You swore,” she said, pointing her neatly manicured finger at me.

  I laughed. “I know, I know.”

  Laura left me at my house and seeing the Jaguar outside told me that Benjamin was home. “You’ll never guess what I found,” I said, closing the front door behind me. “You should call Jeremiah.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach him with no luck.”

  “Is anyone here?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, I think I found Jeremiah’s demon lady friend, and she’s not in Miami. She’s in Key Largo.”

  “Key Largo?” Benjamin said, sitting down on the leather chair in the living room.

  “Purple-eyed lady that speaks to ghosts. I don’t know about you, but it sounds pretty logical to me. It’s probably too late to go tonight. We can leave tomorrow evening. Oh, and Laura wants to go too. She says she can help us during the day.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Skip it, she’s going with us.”

  “Olivia, why won’t you listen to me?”

  “Look, I know you’re super old and wise and what not, but she’ll be fine and she has a point. She’s normal and maybe she can find the demon lady during the day for us.”

  “Jeremiah can do that,” Benjamin insisted.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Jerry, doesn’t exactly blend in with the locals well.”

  “Oh, it’s Jerry, now?”

  “I’m tired of saying Jeremiah; it’s like a million syllables.”

  Benjamin’s eyebrows drew together for a second. “It’s as many syllables as Olivia.”

  “Huh, well, speaking of old Jer, tell him to come over so I can tell him. And if this turns out to be her, I get all the credit.”

  “Okay, I’ll make sure to tell the underworld king that you found the only one who can threaten his reign.”

  “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”

  He smiled and his face dimpled in all the right places. Sitting in the chair, leaning back, Benjamin radiated sexual attraction. I crossed the room quickly and crawled into his lap.

  “I was wondering when you were going to stop talking,” he said, wrapping his arm around me, tucking me into his body.

  “Nice.”

  “I joke, my darling.” He coaxed my chin up and met my lips with his own full lips.

  “Do you?”

  “Do I, what?”

  “Love me?”

  “What does love mean to you?” he asked, adjusting his neck so that he could look at me while I spoke.

  I immediately regretted bringing it up in the first place. Couldn’t he just have said yes? Talk about awkward situations. “I guess it’s different for everyone,” I said.

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “You didn’t answer mine either.”

  Benjamin’s phone rang, thank goodness! I hopped off his lap so I could refill Meowser’s food bowls. The bowl had to be washed, leaving no trace of old food because Meowser was a picky kitty. He never ate what he deemed were leftovers. With the bowl filled halfway with gourmet cat food, Meowser trotted over to the kitchen and ate. For the most part, he seemed to have adjusted to the move well. The back of the couch was getting a mean scratching every once in a while, but I didn’t think Benjamin had noticed yet, so that was a plus.

  Meowser finished eating just as Benjamin walked into the kitchen. He was still on the phone. “Did you hear that?”

  “I try not to listen to your conversations. Do you listen in on my phone calls?”

  “They’re going to kill Jeremiah,” he said to me, returning to his phone. “Thomas, we’ll meet you there.”

  I hurried out the door, following Benjamin, and locked the door while he started the car. We drove away, speeding down the residential streets. My only comfort was that Benjamin’s instincts and driving skills were so good, there was no way he’d accidentally hit a pedestrian.

  “What happened?” I asked, hoping not to get carsick. I wasn’t even sure I could get sick, now that I was a vampire.

  “Thomas got a brief call from Jeremiah. They’re going to kill him, but first, they will interrogate him using torture. They think he knows where the demon heir is hiding.”

  “Oh crap!” I said. Note to self: don’t tell anyone else that I know where she is. “How do you torture a demon?” I asked.

  Benjamin turned to face me, his eyebrows and lips set into straight lines.

  “That bad, huh?”

  We were heading south, which surprised me. Demons were invading more of the populated parts in the north, at least, according to all those maps Thomas and Benjamin left in the dining room.

  “Are we going to the Keys instead?” I asked, thinking that maybe we were going to find the demon princess instead of saving Jeremiah, which seemed like an awful thing to do.

  “Jeremiah is being held in an abandoned home in the Redlands,” he said, increasing the Jaguar’s speed to one hundred miles per hour.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Anything south, meant residential areas, and I didn’t like the idea of creepy demons around all the families living in the suburbs. The Redlands, an agricultural community, gave the demons the advantage of large, vacant land not usually found in South Florida. Each residence stood on a plot of at least five acres. The residents enjoyed a certain level of privacy, to say the least.

  “Can’t we call for some vampire reinforcements?” I asked. “I know you are unbelievable in a fight and everything, but what if there are a lot of them?”

  “The vampires have left the area and the few that remain do not care to help.”

  “Especially, not to help a demon.”

  Benjamin nodded. We were far away from lights. It was pitch black in the rear and side view mirrors.

  “If all the vampires have pretty much flown the coop,” I said, coming to a seemingly important conclusion, “then, really, I have only one question. Where the hell are they getting enough vampire blood to survive in this realm?” It was a good question. To sustain the demon population as the demons were managing, they would need a constant source of vampire blood. Did we need to start a roll-call system? Was somebody missing and chained to the wall like an animal?

  “That, darling, is a good question,” he said, not sounding at all impressed with my logic.

  “You’ve already been wondering the same thing, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  We stopped at a roadside fruit stand just coming into Redlands. Benjamin parked the car next to Thomas’ SUV.

  “You’re not going to just leave the Jaguar out here like this?” Thomas asked. He was dressed in forest green cargo pants and a black t-shirt. Sensible. Benjamin was, of course, wearing a damn suit, and I? In the rush, I’d forgotten to change my shoes. I was wearing black pumps. I was about to go fight for my friend’s life in black heels. Typical. The heel of my shoes kept sinking into the dirt like I was the queen of aeration. I was going have to walk with all my weight focused on the balls of my feet.

  “We’re sneaking up to the house on foot, then?” I asked.

  “Yes, it’s about two miles east,” Thomas said. “Jeremiah was able to give me the address before they took his phone.”

  “Is this a ‘Kill every demon in a ten block radius’ kind of mission? Or more of a ‘Grab the friendly, rational demon and bolt out of there’?”

  Benjamin and Thomas looked at each other for a moment. “Kill em’ all,” they both said in unison.

  I could live with that. I followed after Thomas and Benjamin and found it interesting that I was now faster than Thomas. I had to slow myself down since I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t even know which direction was east and I wasn’t any goo
d at xsangu estimates. If someone asked me to go two hundred feet due west, I’d have no idea where to start.

  We reached the property quickly and waited, crouched down amidst a row of avocado trees. I hated thinking that the demons had probably killed the family living here. Maybe the house was under foreclosure and abandoned. Although, it didn’t seem likely the demons would take the time to find an abandoned house. We moved in from behind the house, past the pool and the back patio. Thomas hopped up, scaling the side of the house, and Benjamin followed. Okay, sure, I can do this, I thought.

  Thomas and Benjamin had already reached the second floor balcony while I was still trying to figure out how exactly I was supposed to get my four-inch heels up on the siding. And really… in a skirt? It was jeans and a tank top everyday from now on. I never knew what kind of situation I was going to find myself in. That’s when I saw movement in my peripheral vision. I crouched down, peeking into the house through the living room window. There were two demons walking through the living room, followed by two vampires, Duncan and Natasha. At first I thought, “Oh good, backup has arrived.” But quickly, I realized that the blood-sucking bastards were talking with the demons. They were working together.

  Shit. Thomas and Benjamin were upstairs, thinking they were headed into a demon fight. I wasn’t entirely sure how they’d fare in a lots-of-demons-plus-two-powerful-vampires fight. I looked up at the back of the house, but the boys were nowhere in sight.

  Crap.

  I stood and walked to my right where the French doors were located. Just my luck, the door was unlocked. I opened it and walked right into the living room where a couple of the demons and Natasha and Duncan were standing.

  “Hey guys,” I said. “Funny running into you here.” My primary goal was to alert Benjamin and Thomas that these treacherous vampires were also in the house.

  “Olivia?” Natasha asked. I would have paid money to have a photo of the incomparable look of surprise on her face.

  We heard a scuffle upstairs. Presumably, Benjamin and Thomas had found Jeremiah and were setting him free.

  “Get up there,” Natasha barked, her short, blonde hair bobbing around her face. The two demons followed Duncan upstairs and I was left to deal with Natasha. I went through my mental list of how to kill a vampire. Fire, sun, decapitation, stake through the heart. Okay, didn’t have fire, or a sword, but a fire poker might do in a pinch.