Maybe this more self-assured Woolly was the result of Boaz dropping in so often he might as well start paying rent. Or Amelie traipsing around at all hours. Or Keet tweeting his head off in front of the picture window. Or the influx of new visitors. It was hard to tell what had been the tipping point, but her rooms were full of laughter and conversation. She had a family again. That’s all she’d ever wanted. I was happy one of our wishes were so easily fulfilled.
I was still thinking on Amelie when I reached the garage and bumped into Boaz and the gleaming monster that must be his new ride. I loosed a slow whistle and circled the bike, admiring her curves. Much like Jolene, she was crimson and chrome with a dash of black for contrast. The two bikes could have been siblings.
“Hello, gorgeous,” I breathed.
“Hi yourself.”
“The bike,” I clarified, not that it did much to wipe the smug grin off his face. “How’s your leg?”
“Still attached.” He caved under the intensity of my glare and gave me a report. “I’ve got some bruising and soreness, but it’ll heal. Happy? It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
Call me cynical, but I doubted he had gotten off that easy. The lines bracketing his mouth told me he was in pain but doing his best to mask the ache of impact on his left leg. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t sound so suspicious.” He had the nerve to act hurt. “I came to offer you a ride to work.”
“Thanks to you, I have a ride.” I pushed the button on my fob to raise the garage door. “Besides, I have a date with your sister after work. No boys allowed.”
“Here’s the thing.” He rubbed the base of his neck. “I stayed up last night thinking about…everything.” He cut his eyes toward the shadows like he expected one to break off from the cluster and start gunning for me. “You’re pinging on the vamps’ radar. They might not know exactly what you can do, but I’m betting there’s a reason Volkov popped up when he did, and I’m guessing that means the Grande Dame isn’t the only one with contacts inside the prison.”
“That makes sense.” I leaned against the side of the building. “The guards are necromancers, but the inmates are all kinds.”
“You get what that means, right?” Boaz waited for me to piece it together. “You can’t go out alone. Not until the dust settles, and we know what we’re up against.”
Leave it to Boaz to lump us together. I might as well be an honorary Pritchard considering how he treated me as if I were one of their own. The feeling of belonging, well, it didn’t suck.
“You can’t babysit me. That’s not fair to you.” I fingered the fresh plastic in my pocket, newly activated, and considered him. “I could hire you. Plenty of military and law enforcement guys do security.”
He snorted like I’d told the most hilarious joke ever. “Get on the bike.”
“You’re not the boss of me.” I followed up that zinger by planting my feet and refusing to budge. “I’m not going to take advantage of you.”
“Crush my dreams, why don’t you.”
“Can you be serious for five minutes?”
“I want to take care of you.” His eyes narrowed to irritated slits. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” I wilted at his exasperation, hating how he viewed my craving for independence as rejection. Boaz smothered me because he loved me, I knew that, but I was tired of accepting his handouts without ever giving anything back. Even tonight, when I ought to hop on and avoid risking a ticket, I couldn’t unstick my feet without saying my piece. “I just want to take care of myself for a change.”
“We can get you there,” he said after a minute. “But you have to crawl before you can walk, and, Squirt, you’re still on your back with your legs kicking in the air like a flipped baby turtle.”
Amelie was right. He really did have a weird fixation about getting me on my back.
“Gee, thanks.” I glowered at him. “I’m humbled by your faith in me.”
“You want your independence? Fine.” He grinned, a slow and feral thing. “Earn it. Work with me on self-defense. I’ll have time to teach you the basics before I leave, and I’ll hook you up with a former army friend. Taslima.” He sighed at my finger quotes around the word friend. “I didn’t have sex with her. She shot me down. So you already have that in common. Taz can keep the classes going.”
Working all night and then coming home to a butt-whooping from Boaz before dawn? I could think of a million things I’d rather do, but not a single one I ought to choose over what he was offering. I had too much riding on my ability to fend for myself to turn up my nose at his offer.
“Well?” he taunted, and stuck out his hand. “What do you say?”
For better or for worse, I shook his hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
Twelve
Boaz dropped me off a half-dozen steps from the front doors of Haint Misbehavin’, like I could manage to get in trouble between him and the entryway. I wasn’t sure if I ought to be insulted six feet was as far as he trusted me or grateful I didn’t have to risk another late-night rendezvous with my stalkerpire.
“Shift ends in six hours.” I climbed off the bike. “I’ll catch a ride with Amelie to Mallow. Are you headed home?”
“I’ll be around,” he said vaguely. “Got your phone?”
“Yes, Mom.” I patted my cross-body purse. “I have ibuprofen in case of headaches and bandages in case of blisters too.”
“Good girl.” He let my sarcasm slide right off him and twisted his mouth up into a smile that promised nothing but trouble. “Have fun.”
Worried about what that smile promised, I hurried inside and bumped into Amelie.
“Was that Boaz?” She craned to see over my shoulder. “I thought I heard that stupid bike of his.”
“He gave me a ride.”
Her nose crinkled. “How literal are we talking?”
“For the millionth time, I’m not having sex with your brother.” Or any sex at all, despite the ridiculous injection of testosterone my life had received. “But since you spend so much time imagining us bumping uglies, if our uglies ever do bump, you’ll be the first person I call with all the juicy details.”
“You could have just told me to keep my nose out of your business.”
“We’re practically sisters.” We had been stuck like glue since I came to live with Maud, way before my boy-crazy phase made me forget about that time I caught Boaz eating his own boogers on a dare. Mostly. Okay, so not even hormones could erase some horrors. “That makes it my solemn duty to inflict as much emotional distress and mental anguish on you as humanly possible.”
“If that was your plan, then you succeeded beyond your wildest dreams.”
Voices drifted down the hall from the room where Neely held court, meaning we had a few minutes until our turns with hair and makeup. Amelie led the way into the women’s parlor, and we started pulling on our costumes. Her gown was buttery yellow and complemented her golden-blonde hair and warm, brown eyes.
The room bustled with the other female Haints prepping for the long night ahead, so we kept conversation light and didn’t talk about any of the things that mattered until Neely called for us.
While Neely worked on Amelie, I thumbed through a few of the magazines he kept scattered around his workspace. Several sported blank sticky notes over brunette models with builds similar to mine, confirming my suspicions that I dressed so poorly he had resorted to shopping for me in his head as a form of therapy.
A petite woman edging toward fifty popped her head in the room. Dressed in a black satin swing dress straight out of the fifties, with her blonde hair pinned in victory rolls, Cricket was less Southern belle and more rockabilly in mourning.
“Neely,” she mouthed around an unlit cigarette. “Enough with the primping. Amelie, get your butt in my office.” She snapped her fingers. “Move it.”
Being a good little employee, Amelie hopped straight to her feet and followed Cricket out.
Neely guided me into the chair then leaned around the corner to make sure the coast was clear.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Amelie, but I’ve been dying to ask.” He vibrated with excitement. “How did your date go with Volkov?”
“It was…” life-changing, terrifying, amazing, “…not bad. He’s a decent guy.”
Decent in the vampire sense of the word, which was not quite the same as the human one.
“That hardly sounds like a declaration of undying love.”
Undying. Good one. “I haven’t known him long enough for him to inspire more than the occasional hot flash.”
Honestly? I wasn’t sure how much of that was true attraction versus the lure, and I might not ever be.
“Chemistry is important.” He tapped my nose with the end of his brush. “It’s not as important as mutual respect, financial solvency or humor, but it’s up there. It’s been my experience the better you know a person, the more connected you feel to them, and the more attractive they become to you.”
Comforted by the tickle of soft bristles over the bridge of my nose, it struck me why these sessions appealed to me when I was ultimately too lazy to learn how to apply more than mascara and lip gloss. Neely’s medium might not be ink, but his brushes had been the only ones on my skin for the longest time.
“What about Boaz?” Neely shot me a look that dared me to deny we shared a spark. “The polite thing to do would have been to go with a man on each arm. They both put so much effort into impressing you. Seems a shame you had to choose. Why let one go to waste?”
“I’m not starting a harem.” Though a blond and a brunette wasn’t a bad place to start…
The grapevine would be buzzing after last night with rumors circulating about whose arm I arrived on and whose car I left in. None of that factored in Boaz’s swoon-worthy save either. I would have appeared quite the social butterfly, or worse, when nothing was further from the truth.