the arm. "Listen to us! Mooning over vampires just like a couple of teenagers with a sparkle fetish! Mysterious and romantic they may be, but they're not for the likes of us. Shall we get started?"
My nose wrinkled as I looked around the entry hall. Directly across from the door was a staircase leading up to murky gloom, the pale fingers of light that managed to fight their way in through the boards on the windows not doing much to light the interior. To my right was a large room that seemed to stretch the length of the house, the dark, stained wallpaper making odd patterns that seemed almost to move when seen peripherally. To the left was a narrow hall with several doors, no doubt leading to smaller rooms. Thankfully, the house was empty of all furniture, nothing but a few torn shreds of ancient newspaper and bits of twine lying in desolation on age-stained wood floors to mark its removal.
"Mice," I said, rubbing my nose against the smell of stale rodent droppings.
"Probably, but it doesn't smell too fresh. Dee says the house was fumigated last month, so there shouldn't be anything alive in here but us. At least . . ." She paused at the foot of the stairs, her face tight for a moment before she shook her head. "No, there's nothing here but us. I must be imagining things."
"Oh, that's not going to give me the creeps," I said, rubbing my arms as I looked around the gloomy room.
Diamond just laughed and ran up the stairs, turning on her camera as she did so. "Don't forget to get several different angles of each room. I'd like to piece together each room's photos into a panorama if possible. Buyers love panoramas."
"Anyone would have to be insane to want to buy this monstrosity," I muttered to myself as I twitched my shoulder aside just in time to avoid hitting a massive cobweb that drifted down from an ornate, but filthy, brass light fixture. "I can only imagine what a barrel of laughs the basement is going to be."
"Just imagine it all fixed up, filled with people and laughter," Diamond called as she started up the second flight.
"If one single mouse so much as sticks his nose out of the wall at me, I'm leaving!" I bellowed up the stairs.
A faint sound of her tinkling laughter was my only answer. Dammit, she even laughed nicer than me. Hers was all lightness while mine came out throaty, as if I were a five-pack-a-day smoker.
"My life sucks," I said to no one as I stomped loudly toward the back of the hallway, checking each room before heading toward the door Diamond had indicated led to the basement. "Everyone has hooked up but me. And what do I have, house? Huh? What do I have? I'll tell you what I have," I said in a loud voice as I grabbed the doorknob. "I have a job that's going nowhere, a deranged vampire murderer trying to drive me insane, and abso-friggin'-lutely no man on the horizons. I swear, what I wouldn't give to meet someone - urf!"
The force of a brick wall bursting through the basement doorway and slamming straight into me not only drove all the air from my body but sent me flying backward, the brick wall falling with me in a tangle of arms and legs, and heads clunking together painfully. My camera fell to the floor, and the tinkle of coins and the smashing of glass warned that the contents of my purse had spilled out under the force of the impact.
It took me a few seconds to shake the stars from my aching head, but that gave my lungs time to reinflate after the brick wall - which I was amazed to see turned out to be a man - rolled off me.
He spoke in some lyrical language, stopping himself to grab my hand and yank me to my feet. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were there. Get out."
"Huh? " I said, rubbing my forehead where it had smacked against his. "Who are you? What are you doing here? We were told the house was empty."
The man cast a glance over his shoulder to where a narrow stairway descended into the yawning blackness of the basement. "Get out now! He knows I found the exit that led to this place!"
"Who knows you're here? Oh, man, if my camera is broken - " I ignored the man when