She grimaced at the idea. They lived forever, so it was likely that they were immune to human diseases. But what did she know? Maybe he had the vampire flu.
With a toss of her head, she plopped down on the sofa. He was probably just trying to make her miss him and, damn his hide, it was working.
By Saturday morning, she was tired of waiting and worrying. After taking a quick shower and downing a piece of toast and a cup of coffee, she jumped into his Corvette—noting that the gas tank was full—and drove to town. The car was insanely fast.
She pulled over to the curb when she saw Marti, Rosemary, Shirley, and Chelsea huddled together outside the grocery store.
She switched off the engine, then joined the others on the sidewalk. “Hi,” she said brightly. “What’s going on?”
“Mona passed away.”
“Who’s Mona?” Kadie asked.
“She’s the elderly lady who lived across from Chelsea.”
“Oh.” The old lady on the porch. Kadie recalled seeing her a couple of times. “What happened to her?”
“She died in her sleep. Donna found her when she went to check on her this morning.”
“And that’s not all,” Marti said. “Leslie is missing.”
“Missing?” Kadie glanced from one woman to the next.
“How could she be missing? There’s no place to go.”
“It’s a polite way of saying she’s . . .” Rosemary choked back a sob.
“She’s what?” Kadie asked.
“Dead.” The word whispered past Marti’s lips.
Kadie heard the tears beneath her words. “What happened?”
“What do you think?” Shirley exclaimed. “One of those monsters killed her. Sooner or later, they’ll kill us all.”
“How do you know she’s dead?”
“No one’s seen her since Tuesday night,” Marti said. “I went by her house yesterday afternoon. Her things were gone.”
Tuesday night, Kadie thought. That was the last night she had seen Saintcrow. The night she had refused him. Had he taken his anger out on Leslie? Kadie shook the thought from her mind. He hadn’t been angry. “But, if no one’s seen her, how do you know she’s dead?”
“Because her house has been cleaned out,” Shirley explained. “It’s happened before.”
“Have you told the others?”
Shirley nodded.
“Why would the vampires kill her?”
“It might have been an accident,” Chelsea said without conviction. “That’s happened before, too.”
“Do you know who did it?” Kadie asked, dreading the answer.
Chelsea shook her head. “We don’t know, for sure.” Kadie glanced at the other women. “You don’t think it was Saintcrow, do you?”
“I think it was Quinn,” Marti said. “He saw her the most.”
“What difference does it make who did it?” Rosemary wiped the tears from her eyes with the edge of her scarf. “Leslie’s dead and one of those monsters killed her. Any one of us could be next.”
Those words echoed in Kadie’s mind as she drove back to Saintcrow’s house. She pulled up in front, then put the car in reverse and continued down the road, hoping she was headed in the right direction.
As luck would have it, she found the cemetery without any trouble. Exiting the Corvette, she stared out over the grave sites. The two new ones were easy to find. The wooden crosses were untouched by wind or rain, the ground freshly turned.
How was she to know which was which? Did it really matter?
She would come back with a knife tomorrow and carve Leslie’s name on one of the crosses and Mona’s on the other so that they wouldn’t be forgotten.
By the time Kadie reached Saintcrow’s house, she was thoroughly depressed. She curled up in a corner of the sofa. She hadn’t seen Saintcrow in days. She would probably never see her family again. And a woman she had known, however slightly, had been murdered. She remembered Rosemary saying any one of them could be next.
But they didn’t need to be killed. In a way, they were already dead, sealed off from the rest of the world. How long before her parents stopped looking for her? So many people disappeared these days, never to be seen or heard from again. In time, they were declared dead and life went on.
Kadie had always felt sorry for the people left behind who never knew what had happened to their loved ones. Did they ever really get over the loss? Ever find any kind of closure? And now she was missing.
Tears stung her eyes as she imagined her father holding back his own tears while he comforted her mother and sister. No doubt they had all imagined the worst, she thought with a bitter smile. But they never would have imagined anything