Wolf at the Door - By MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,58
anymore.”
“Hey, when I need to update my trends and pop culture refs, I’m not gonna check with a vampire. For all I know, you think zoot suits are trendy and you like to relax by doing the Charleston.”
“Voh-doh-dee-oh-doh, baby.” She laughed. “We’re cranking up the blender at four. See ya.”
He clicked off the call and looked at Rachael. “She’s either super-evil or super-cool.”
“Can’t she be both?” Rachael rolled her eyes. “You realize after that surreal chat, I have to take you. I’m sure she’ll have all kinds of questions. Dammit!”
“Aw, c’mon. It’ll be fun.”
Rachael had slipped on the blue Beverly Feldman Bonvivant flats and now gave him a look. “Fun? This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons, Edward. You could get hurt. You could get dead.”
“What about you?”
“They most likely wouldn’t dare. They know my cousin sent me out here to keep an eye on things. And they know who my cousin is.”
“Yeah, well, they also know who my friend Boo is, so I’m just as well protected—or poorly protected—as you are.”
“Careful, Edward. That was almost clever.”
“Hey, I’m almost clever lots of times. And now with my hot werewolf gal pal looking out for me? Evil doesn’t stand a chance. Besides, if they kill us in horrible grisly protracted ways, Boo will avenge us.” He snapped his fingers. “She could be here any hour. If she got a flight out this morning, she could be here any minute. That’s the other reason I had to come with. I want to give Boo all the intel I can.”
“And you want to give me all the stomach ulcers you can. Come on.” She sighed and jerked her head toward the door. “Do you want to walk to our horrible grisly protracted deaths, or drive?”
“Walk. Let’s try to keep our deaths as green as we can. Even in death, I try to watch out for planet Earth.”
He could tell she didn’t want to laugh but couldn’t help it. In fact, Rachael laughed so hard she almost fell down on the porch. Which got him started. What with one thing and another, their giggles didn’t dry up until they were climbing the steps to the vampire’s lair.
If we end up mutilated and murdered, at least we could say we had fun on the way over. It was weird that stuff like that was important to him, right?
Forty-four
“You’re going to have to answer some questions,” the cop who lived with the vampire queen told them.
Whoa. Edward was still reeling from the intros, never mind the murders. Not that he thought murders should go on anybody’s back burner. But a lot of shit had been going down lately. Murders just made it grittier.
He was so proud of Rachael . . . she was aces at everything, absolutely everything she did, and playing diplomat with the undead was the least of it.
She’d knocked on the door, cool as you please, and when the zombie answered, she was all, “Hey, how are ya?” and “Have you met my friend Edward?” and “Do you think we could talk to the lady of the house?” All relaxed and polite! Like this was an everyday thing for her!
Which it might be. He had no idea what her life in Massachusetts had been like, but he planned to find out. Because apparently, Cape Cod was infested with werewolves! And really, it explained so much . . . all that numb shit people usually put on tourists was probably numb werewolf shit.
Then . . . then! Off they go, and Edward wasn’t sure what he was expecting—nothing like a throne room, natch, but something special, like a big fancy living room with thrones instead of sectional couches . . . at the very least, something like that. He was not expecting an industrial-sized kitchen with fruit scattered everywhere and three—three!—blenders cranking out fruit smoothies every ten seconds.
So that’s how he ended up drinking a strawberry-banana smoothie with the queen of the vampires and her ilk at five o’clock in the afternoon.
Right, he’d almost forgotten . . . it was only afternoon, but all the vampires were up! None of them knew they were supposed to lie in their coffins and do impersonations of dead people until full dark. They must not be reading the right legends.
Oh, and can we tell the studio audience that the vampire queen’s lair is also a COMPLETE BABE FACTORY? Because it is!
First he got a look at the one Rachael had referred to as Jailbait. And yep, she was. Looked