“But you won’t.” His core of integrity was one of the things I admired about him. “Even if I offered you a free pass, you would still pursue this. It’s who you are—who we are.”
“You’re right.” A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Let me pretend to be selfish a moment longer?”
“Take all the time you need.” I tilted up my chin and kissed him. “The vampires have a history with the house. We can mine them for factual knowledge on the haunting.” Excitement tingled in my fingertips. “Even if they’re not our firebug, we’ve got a real shot at cracking this with their help.”
“They are harder to kill than humans.” He tugged a cobweb from my hair. “All right. Invite them in.”
“For the record, we’ve done extensive testing on the privacy sigil. We’re safe to have wild monkey sex in our room or any other room without vampire hearing picking up the details.”
A flush turned his cheeks rosy. “Goddess, Grier.”
“What?” I rubbed the sigil off the door. “You were thinking it too.”
“I…” He cleared his throat. “Well, yes.”
“You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” I kissed him long and soft. “I mean that.”
A hitch in his voice betrayed him before he got out the words. “I know you do.”
“They’re so cute,” Barb whisper-screamed to her husband as I opened the door. “Adorable.”
Linus didn’t squirm, but a lesser man might have in his shoes. Personally, I feared for his cheeks. Barb looked like a pincher.
Taking his hand, I gave it a squeeze. “You’re welcome to stay with us.”
“On the condition the Oliphants approve,” he added. “This isn’t our home to allow guests.”
“I’ll dial Mr. Oliphant up now.” Benny performed a quick shuffle step. “This is fantastic.”
“He’s a new man once he straps on his dancing shoes.” Barb shot me a wink. “He has moves.”
Most vampires had better than human coordination and reflexes. Based on the sample, I wasn’t sure if Benny got shorted or if he was that used to playing human when he got his boogie on.
Cletus appeared at my shoulder and set his hand there in a protective gesture.
“This is our wraith, Cletus.” I patted his bony fingers. “He won’t hurt you.”
The widening of their eyes told me they for sure saw him, but that was to be expected with vampires.
“Best vacation ever,” Barb squealed, spinning in a circle. “I can’t believe our luck.”
Asking a vampire their age was the height of rudeness, but I couldn’t get a bead on these two. Their choice of extracurricular activities, plus their manners and excitability level slanted them toward the younger end of the spectrum, in vampire years. But there was a near tangible weight to their presence on my senses. Because there were two? Or because they were old? Hard to tell.
“Mr. Oliphant would like a word with you.” Benny passed over the phone. “If you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” Linus accepted the cell and conducted a low conversation with the innkeeper.
“He’s so elegant.” Barb sighed after Linus turned his back. “I’ve seen pictures, but wow. He reminds me of the porcelain dolls my grandmother used to keep seated at her formal dining room table. Perfect hair, perfect clothes.” She touched the golden cowboy boot charm on her necklace. “We weren’t allowed to play with them.” Her mouth thinned. “There was always something so sad about that.”
A pang radiated through me at how well she had pegged Linus within minutes of meeting him. He would hate that. I was just teaching him to leave his masks in storage, and here was someone looking on his naked face and seeing more than he would ever want to share with a stranger. Maybe I was wrong to push him, but I couldn’t shake the mental picture Barb had painted. It meshed too well with how I envisioned his perfect childhood.
The Grande Dame had raised him to be the High Society ideal. He was a prince among practitioners, a god among mortals. But he had been so lonely and so tired of the pretense. I owed it to him to open his eyes to the possibilities before he chose to leave them wide or screw them shut tight again.
“We’re in the honeymoon suite.” I redirected the conversation away from Linus. “You’re welcome to any other room.”
“We’ll stay downstairs.” She winked. “We’ll give you newlyweds some privacy.”
“We appreciate that.” I checked with Linus, who was handing the phone back to Benny. “All settled?”
“Yes.” Linus rejoined me. “Do you want to shower before dinner?”
“Let’s.” I hooked him by the collar then leaned around him to smile at Barb. “Make yourselves at home.”
“We’ll do that.”
The shuffle of feet and murmur of voices relaxed my shoulders, banishing tension I hadn’t noticed racking up since our arrival. Then it hit me. The problem. This house was wood and plaster and not much more. It lacked a soul. The quiet had been grating on my nerves, but I hadn’t understood the root cause.
Fiddlesticks.
I was a grown woman on her honeymoon for pity’s sake.
The last thing I ought to be was homesick.
Halfway up the stairs, I gagged on a pungent whiff of rotten eggs.
Magic peppered the air, but it moved in the opposite direction.
“Do you smell it?” Barb called from the base of the stairs. “That’s how it always starts.”
“Hard to miss.” I covered my nose with the neck of my shirt, but it didn’t help. “Goddess, that’s rank.”
“Just wait.” Benny emerged, slung his arm around Barb’s shoulders, and laughed. “It gets worse.”
“We have photos from previous years if you’d like to see them,” he offered. “They’re in my cloud.”
There it was, the offer I had hoped for, a lead on the mystery, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
With two expectant vampires gazing up at us with starstruck excitement, I had no choice. “Sure.”
The couple scattered, and I thumped my head against Linus’s chest. “Whose idea was it to invite them in again?”
“I believe it was…” he trailed his cool fingers up my right side, the tips brushing my breast, “…yours.”
“Linus,” I moaned, leaning into him. “You’re punishing me.”
“Me?” His lips found mine, and my back hit the wall. “I would never.”
Proving two could play his game, I slid my hand between us and relished his groan. “You were saying?”
“I apologize.” His teeth found my neck and worried the delicate skin. “Profusely.”
Knees liquifying as his hand covered my breast, his thumb teasing my nipple, I almost wet my pants when Barb yelled up at us, “We’re ready.”
“Be right there,” I managed after my lungs remembered what to do with oxygen.
“Go shower.” Linus dropped his hand. “I’ll entertain them until you finish.”
“Are you sure?” I had yet to drop mine. “Really sure?”
Eyelashes fluttering as I explored his length with my thumb, he rasped, “Yes.”
Unable to resist nibbling on him too, I raked my teeth over the shell of his ear. “I love the way your breath catches when I—”
“Do you guys want any snacks?” Benny hollered. “There’s popcorn and cookies in the kitchen.”
“Tell you what, you take the first shower.” I trailed my fingers up Linus’s zipper and across his belt on my way past. “I’ve got a feeling you need one more than me.”
A nice cold one.
Six
Benny, Barb, and I gathered around the table in the dining room, and they vibrated with excitement. I ought to be happy they had proof of their relationship with the inn, but the groan of old pipes made it all too easy to focus on the shower happening upstairs…without me.
“We set up motion cameras in the halls last time.” Benny pivoted his laptop toward me, and Barb mashed the play button, eager to share their findings. “We didn’t catch much activity, but we did get this.”
On the screen, a shadow split into two and then into four. The blurs prowled the hall like cats, their eyes bright in the darkness. Their target was clear. They aimed straight for the tripod, knocking its legs out from under it. One of them leaned in front of the camera and hissed a warning.
Chin on palm, Barb shook her head. “What do you think they are?”
“I have no idea.” I watched again from the start. “They’re bold. That’s for sure.”
“We have run-ins with them each time.” Benny spun the computer around, clicked a few times, then showed me another clip lined up for watching with a date sixty years earlier. “I can’t decide if it’s the same ones or not.”
The scene played out the exact same way. A shadow appeared, it split into multiples, and it attacked the video equipment.
Thinking of Linus’s wounds, I asked, “Have they ever hurt you?”
“A scratch here and there,” Barb admitted, “but that’s all.”
“They were slow to heal.” Benny showed me his arm. “This one stuck around.”
Five thin lines marred his skin, all gone silver. More proof he was a young vampire. An older one would have healed the damage by now. Unless whatever toxin made Linus’s healing complicated also held the power to affect the undead. Anything that potent would explain why his wounds hadn’t wanted to close.
“We have more,” Barb said. “Photos, I mean. That’s the last of the video.”
“I can sort through them,” Linus said from the doorway. “Grier, it’s your turn.”
The vampires watched us like we were a nature special on the mating habits of necromancers.