Dead Perfect

“Believe me, I’m perfectly safe there.”

“What can I say to convince you?” Hewitt asked.

“Nothing. He’s not a vampire and I’m not in any danger. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going home.”

Hewitt reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a business card. “Call my cell phone if you change your mind,” he said, handing her the card. “I don’t know what he’s told you, but I can assure you that he is a vampire. A very old vampire. I’d hate for you to be his next victim.”

Shannah slipped the card into the pocket of her jeans, then looked pointedly at Hewitt, who slid out of the booth so that she could leave.

She didn’t look back, but she could feel both of the men watching her as she left the café. She thought about what Hewitt and Overstreet had said as she drove home. What if they were right? What if Ronan was a vampire? Was she in danger?

She shook the thought away. If he had wanted to do her harm, he’d had plenty of opportunity.

She had been at Ronan’s mercy since the day she met him. If he was a vampire, he could have taken her blood or killed her at any time. Instead, he had taken her in and cared for her.

She frowned. Why had he done that? He hadn’t known anything about her at the time.

Pulling into the driveway, she parked the car in front of the house, then sat there for a moment, one finger tapping nervously on the steering wheel. What should she do now? Go inside and pretend nothing unusual had happened today? Confront him? Pack up and leave? But she had no place to stay, now that she had given up her apartment, no place to go except home to her parents. Home. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe that had always been the answer.

Why did Jim Hewitt want to know where Ronan slept? The answer popped into her mind immediately. Thinking him to be a vampire, Hewitt and Overstreet undoubtedly wanted to destroy him, and after reading Ronan’s books, she knew that such a thing was best done in the middle of the day, when the sun was high in the sky and the vampire was trapped in sleep, helpless to defend himself.

Did Ronan sleep in a coffin?

Was it somewhere in the house?

Exiting the car, she went up the steps and into the house, careful to lock the door behind her in case Hewitt and Overstreet decided to show up again. Unlike vampires, who had to have an invitation to enter a person’s home, Hewitt and Overstreet could burst in uninvited and unannounced. She remembered the night Ronan had shown up at her apartment. He had knocked on the door, demanding that she let him in. She had expected him to storm inside when she unlocked the door, but he had stood in the hallway and asked if he could come inside.

She shook her head, not knowing what to think, what to believe. She had come to his house looking for a vampire, not really believing that she would find one. But what if she had?

Shannah glanced at the clock. It was only eleven-thirty. Ronan never made an appearance this early in the day.

She stood in the middle of the floor, wondering if she was making a mistake by staying. Was she being foolish, like those silly girls in horror movies who went into the basement when there was a monster in the house?

Was there a monster in this house? Wise or foolish, she couldn’t leave until she knew the truth, heard it from Ronan’s own lips.

Too nervous to sit still, too agitated to go back to bed, Shannah found a cloth and a bottle of furniture polish and began to dust. Moving from room to room, she told herself she was just trying to pass the hours until dusk, but she checked each room carefully, rapping on the walls, checking inside closets and cupboards, looking for hidden doors or passages, running her hands over books and door frames and wall sconces in hopes of finding a lever that would lead to some hidden hideaway, but to no avail.

Moving upstairs, she made a similar search of all the empty rooms, again with no success.

Going into the bedroom where she slept, she checked the walls and the closet, looked behind the furniture and the doors, exploring every nook and cranny, but she didn’t find anything. No hidden doors or passageways, nothing the least bit suspicious.

Discouraged but relieved, she went downstairs and fixed herself a glass of iced tea, grabbed her sunglasses and a magazine, and went outside to sit in the sun.

Leaning back in the chaise lounge, her eyes closed, she murmured, “Ronan, where are you?”

and almost spilled tea in her lap when his image leaped into her mind.

He was lying in a sleek black coffin in a dark room. She wondered briefly how she could see anything at all when there was no light in the room, but she could see him clearly. His eyes were closed, his arms folded across his chest. He wore a black T-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants. His feet were bare. A distant part of her mind found that incredibly endearing.

Gasping, she opened her eyes and the image vanished.

It was true, she thought, he really was a vampire.

She spent the rest of the afternoon trying to decide what to do. One minute she was certain that she should not only leave his house but leave the state as fast as possible, the next she was remembering the soul-stirring passion of his kisses, the fervor in his voice when he said he needed her. He made her feel whole, complete. Loved.

When the sun began to set, she went into the house intending to fix something to eat, only to find she had no appetite.

She was sitting on the sofa, still trying to decide what she should do, when he entered the room.

She looked at him through narrowed eyes, as if seeing him for the first time. He didn’t look like a vampire. He looked like a perfectly normal, healthy male in his late twenties or early thirties.

He smiled as he walked toward her. There was no hint of fang in his smile, though his teeth were remarkably straight and white.

“I was hoping to find you in bed and kiss you awake.” His voice was deep, filled with the promise of dark delights.

She forced a smile, suddenly unable to speak for the cold knot of fear that sat in her belly like a block of ice.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head, her heart pounding as he sat down on the sofa beside her, making her acutely aware of how big he was. His shoulders were broad, his arms long and well-muscled, his hands large and strong.

“Something’s troubling you,” he said. “You might as well tell me what it is.”

“Jim Hewitt and Carl Overstreet came to see me today.”

His eyes narrowed; one hand clenched into a tight fist. “Indeed?”

“All this time, I thought Hewitt was following me, but I was wrong. It’s you he’s after, isn’t it?”