“Sorry to bother you. I work here,” she explained, holding up her small order pad as if to prove the legitimacy of her claim, and then added, “But I’m also a student at UAlbany.”
“I see,” Pet murmured. The girl had turned to Santo as she’d added that, her ponytail swinging and a huge smile stretching her lips as her eyes slid over his wide shoulders and muscled arms. Pet waited for the girl whose name tag read Brittany to continue, but when the girl just stared at Santo, Pet left her to her ogling and took the opportunity to bite into her fried pickle. If she hadn’t been in public, she would have moaned when the flavor burst in her mouth. Pet loved fried pickles anyway, but hungry as she was they seemed extra delicious today so she wasn’t pleased at the interruption when Brittany suddenly asked, “You teach Women in History, don’t you?”
Pet stopped chewing and glanced up at that question, but relaxed and continued chewing when she saw the girl wasn’t even pretending to look at her. She was still staring at Santo with hungry eyes. Pet shifted her gaze to the big immortal to see how he was taking the attention, and smiled with amusement when she saw that he hadn’t noticed. His focus was totally on the chicken wing he’d chosen from the combo platter and was now demolishing.
Swallowing the bite of pickle, Pet cleared her throat and said, “Yes, I do.”
“Huh?” The girl swiveled her head to peer at her blankly. “What?”
“I do teach Women in History,” Pet said gently.
“Oh, good.” Brittany nodded, and then turned back to Santo as he dropped the bones he’d gnawed clean and reached for another chicken wing.
Oh, good? Pet thought with exasperation. The girl obviously wasn’t the least bit interested in anything she taught. She’d just used her as an excuse to get closer to Santo. Or maybe she was being uncharitable and the girl had really wanted to ask something but got distracted by Santo’s impressive physique. Been there, done that, she thought, and decided to help the girl out by prodding her along with questions. “Were you interested in taking my class in the fall?”
“What?” Brittany glanced around, looking rather annoyed to have her ogling interrupted.
Pet narrowed her eyes but then offered a cool smile and said, “I presume that’s why you came and interrupted my meal? So you could ask questions about the class Women in History?” She didn’t add, and not just to gawk at my hunky dining partner, like she wanted, but simply said, “However, I do have office hours and I’m going to have to insist you use them and leave us to our meal.”
Cheeks flushing with either embarrassment or anger, Brittany opened her mouth, closed it, and then turned on her heel and walked away. Pet was guessing she wouldn’t see her in her Women in History class.
Grimacing, she turned back to Santo just as he started to open his mouth to ask something. To forestall him, she quickly asked, “So, do those nano things make you extra attractive to women or something?”
Santo closed his mouth, considered the question, and then nodded. “I believe so.”
Pet’s eyes widened. She’d actually been joking, kind of. The guy was a big beefcake and would attract female attention anyway. He had certainly caught her attention right away. But he seemed to be suggesting . . .
“Really?” she asked finally.
“No one has ever studied it that I know of,” he said in a slow rumble. “But most of the advantages the nanos give us, such as speed, strength, better hearing, and so on . . .” He shrugged. “They all make us better hunters, to gain the extra blood we need. Making us more attractive to the opposite sex would aid in that too, so it seems likely the nanos make us secrete some kind of pheromone that would do that.”
Pet sat back and tried to look at him objectively without her hormones giving their seventy-five cents worth. Santo was really a super gorgeous man. He was big, muscular, with beautiful eyes and sexy full lips. He would make any woman take a second look. But if he also secreted sexy pheromones . . . well, it was no wonder women acted like idiots around him. Including herself. The thought actually made Pet feel better about her own responses to the man.
“You are a history professor at UAlbany?” Santo asked suddenly.
He sounded surprised, and she asked, “You didn’t know that?”
Santo shook his head. “I knew you worked at the university. Marguerite mentioned this morning that she was going to have to call there and explain your absence. But I did not know you were a professor. You do not look like a history professor.”
That made her grin. “What does a history professor look like?”
“Old and dusty, with glasses and corduroy sport coats with patches on their elbows,” he said without hesitation.
“And male?” she suggested with amusement.
Santo shrugged and picked up another chicken wing.
“So what would you have guessed I did at the university?” Pet asked with interest as she picked up another fried pickle.
Santo considered her briefly. “Something in the arts. Maybe music or dance.”
Her eyebrows rose slightly. “Why?”
“I do not know,” he admitted with a wry smile. “I just think of music when I look at you. Beautiful symphonies and—” Santo paused abruptly, embarrassment crossing his features, before he repeated, “I do not know.”
“Actually, music was my major and history my minor my first year,” she admitted. “But I switched them my second year.”
“Why?” he asked at once.
Pet smiled wryly. “My parents. The idea of my majoring in something as fluffy as music nearly killed them.”
“Music is not fluffy,” he growled.
Santo sounded so outraged, she found herself curious, but merely said, “You have to understand, everyone in my family is a medical doctor. Both my parents are physicians with family practices, and my sister was studying medicine as well. I was expected to join the family business too. The fact that I didn’t was enough to make me the black sheep of the family. But majoring in music nearly killed them.”
“So you switched to history to please them,” Santo said solemnly.
“With a minor in music,” she reminded him. “I still play music. I even used to be in a band.”
“Keyboards?” he guessed.
Pet grinned and shook her head. “Electric guitar. It was a hard rock band.”
His eyebrows rose at that. “I play drums in a rock band.”
“Really?” she asked with interest, and could actually picture him behind a drum set.
“Sì. We are called the NCs, for Notte Cuginos.”
“Notte cousins?” she asked, recognizing the word cugino, and when he nodded, Pet asked, “And are you all cousins in the band?”
“Sì. But we have not played for a while.”
“Why?” she asked at once.
“Gia, our singer, Christian, our violinist, and Raffaele, our keyboardist, have all found their life mates, and all are from here in North America. Christian’s wife, Caro, has business concerns in Toronto she is still tying up, so they spend a lot of time there, Gia’s husband is from California, and Raffaele’s wife, Jess, is from Montana, so . . .”
“So the band has disbanded,” Pet suggested when he didn’t finish.
“For now,” he allowed, and then added, “But it is fine. Julius has decided to open offices here, and Zanipolo and I will split our time between projects in Italy and here once Mortimer does not need our aid anymore.”
Pet’s eyebrows drew together with confusion. She had no idea who Mortimer was. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What offices are you talking about? I thought you guys were Enforcers who hunted bad immortals?”
“Bricker is the only one among us who is actually a full-time Enforcer. The rest of us are presently working as Enforcers to help them out. Mortimer calls it being deputized. Once things settle down and Mortimer has all of his people back . . .” He gave another shrug. “We will return to our usual full-time jobs.”
“I see.” Pet thought about that briefly and then asked, “So is the RV some kind of cover or mobile command center or something?” RVs didn’t exactly jive with immortal Enforcers in her mind.
“No, it is an RV,” Santo said with amusement. “Marguerite and Julius have not actually been working as Enforcers. They were on vacation, an RV tour with J. But when Mortimer got the tape of Parker’s 911 call and realized it originated from Albany, which Marguerite and Julius were driving through, he called and asked them to stop and look into it. Once they’d spoken to the Caprellis and decided it should be investigated, they called him and he called us and had us stop here. We were in Newburyport, Massachusetts, at the time.”
Pet blinked at that. “What were you doing in Newburyport?”
“Driving back to Toronto from New Brunswick using the American route,” he said, and before she had to ask, explained, “We were investigating the purchase of a couple dozen coffins in New Brunswick to be sure it was not a rogue starting his own little army of immortals.”
“Immortals don’t sleep in coffins,” Pet said with certainty.
“No,” Santo agreed with a smile. “But some rogue immortals use the vampire myth to control their turns. They make them sleep in coffins with a bit of dirt in the bottom, telling them they have to sleep there or they will die or some such rot. It ensures they do not run off. They always have to return to the coffin and their sire.”
“Smart,” Pet commented, and then asked, “So, was it a rogue who bought the coffins?”
A look of disgust crossed Santo’s face. “No. Someone calling himself an artist.”
“Artist?” she echoed with disbelief. “Why would an artist need two dozen coffins?”
“To make an art installation,” he said dryly. “He had arranged the coffins in rows in a gallery there, dressed up stuffed animals of all sizes and description, and then ripped off limbs or the head, or slashed open the gut so that the stuffing stuck out, and then he arranged one in each coffin and called it art.”