Kim Harrison - Hotter Than Hell

It didn’t help Darrow’s case that he’d moved into the building right before people from the neighborhood started to disappear. Charlie on the first floor, who everyone knew hit his wife when he drank too much. The often-obscene panhandler who’d been a regular on the southeast corner for as long as Claire could remember. That punk who’d robbed old Mrs. Bernard and gotten off with a slap on the wrist. All of them gone in a mere six weeks. Just gone . The people who’d disappeared would not exactly be missed, but she couldn’t allow that to cloud her judgment.

Add the insignificant detail that Claire had been reading quite a few vampire novels lately, and it all made perfect sense.

The common belief was that vampires didn’t exist, but Claire knew to the pit of her soul that there was more to the world than most people realized. Granny Eileen had spoken often of ghosts and were-beasts, of vampires and curses. There had been a time, a span of several years in fact, when Claire had chosen not to believe the tales her grandmother had spun so effortlessly, but in the past few years it seemed that her eyes and ears had been opened. Legends had to be based in fact, and it wasn’t her fault that most people had to deny that fact in order to survive from one day to the next.

Her overactive imagination didn’t hurt matters at all.

It was obvious that something was going on with her neighbor, and like it or not, vampire made sense. The dirt, the howl, Fluffy, the missing people…yes, it made perfect sense. No one would believe her if she didn’t collect proof.

Claire walked down the hallway on quick tiptoes, hoping that when she glanced around the next corner she’d catch a glimpse of her neighbor as he made his way to the stairwell. The elevator was out of order once again—no surprise there—and to reach the stairs she and everyone else on her end of the floor had to walk two and a half short hallways. Down the hallway, right, and then right again before reaching the stairs.

She wouldn’t follow her subject outside, she hadn’t entirely lost her mind, but she had decided to keep a detailed record of his comings and goings as best she could. One never knew what small detail might be helpful.

When she reached the corner she flattened her back to the wall as she had before, and she listened. She heard nothing, but then her neighbor did have an easy step, even in those heavy black boots he usually wore. Another vampire trait, she supposed. The easy step, not the boots. Maybe he was floating an inch or so above the floor, since he didn’t know anyone was watching. She leaned slowly forward to take a glimpse down the hallway…

And found herself nose to chest with her vampire neighbor.

Claire caught and held her breath, as her heart threatened to break free of her chest. There was no way she could outrun him, whether he was a vampire or not. That meant she’d have to wing it. First, she had to regain the ability to breathe.

“Are you stalking me?” he asked, a touch of humor in his deep voice.

“I…you…of course not.” Claire managed a tight smile. “I lost an earring. I thought maybe I dropped it earlier this evening, on my way in after work.”

“Too bad. I was rather hoping I had a pretty stalker.”

Yes, there was something unnaturally hypnotic about his eyes, which were such a dark brown they were almost black. She could feel herself being sucked in by those eyes. That had to be a vampire trick.

He thought she was pretty?

The man, who was taller up close than she’d imagined he would be, offered his hand. “Simon Darrow. I live next door to you.”

After a moment of paralyzing fear, she put her hand in his and shook. “Claire Murphy. I know.” His hand was oddly warm, for someone who was possibly undead.

He released his grip and leaned casually against the wall. “So, what does this earring look like?”

“What earring?”

“The one you lost,” he said, that hint of good humor remaining in his hypnotic voice.

“Oh, yes.” This was the perfect opportunity for her first real test. Since arriving at her suspicions about her neighbor she’d been wearing a small gold cross all the time. She slept in it, showered in it, wore it when she went to the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She grabbed the cross between her fingers and held it up so he could see. “It matches this. A tiny little cross with a teeny diamond chip in the center.”

Simon—quite an old-fashioned name, eh?—didn’t touch the cross, but he didn’t recoil, either. She had to judge that test as inconclusive, since she wasn’t quite ready to leap forward and press the cross against his forehead to see if he began to smoke or howl in pain. He turned away from her and searched the dingy carpeting, his eyes scanning the faded fibers. Claire pretended to do the same, though her eyes often flitted to her neighbor. Oh, he really was studly, more so up close than from a distance. His dark hair was shaggy and a tad too long but was not completely neglected, and he had a very finely sculpted masculine jawline. The body, as she had already noted, was not bad at all. She took it all in, appreciatively and as surreptitiously as possible.

“I don’t mean to hold you up,” she said after watching him bend over to examine what turned out to be a piece of lint. “I imagine you have somewhere to be.”

“I’m not working tonight.”

“You work at night?”

“Not much call for jazz musicians during the day. The club’s closed until the weekend. Some sort of plumbing issue.”

Her head crept up slowly so she could once more check out his face, which was much more interesting than the old carpet. Simon Darrow wasn’t pretty—his features were too masculine to be called pretty—but his face was definitely fine. “You’re a musician?”

“Piano. I have a small electric keyboard at my place, but I practice while you’re at work so I won’t disturb you.”

A considerate vampire. “I’m sure I wouldn’t mind hearing you practice,” she said, determined to be no less considerate as she took a couple of unnecessary steps and her eyes scanned the floor for a nonexistent earring. This was an opportunity she could not let slip by. “So, if you’re not playing tonight, where are you headed?”

“Just out to grab a bite,” he answered.

Interesting choice of words. “Oh, really?”

“I thought I’d check out that sandwich shop down the street.”

“They close at seven so you’ve already missed them, and to be honest their food is better at lunch.”

“I’ll find someplace else, then.”

This was a golden opportunity that might never come again. She had her neighbor right where she wanted him, and he had no idea that she suspected his secret. “Maybe you can…” she swallowed hard and gathered her courage, “have dinner with me.”

“I knew it,” he said in a lowered voice touched with gentle wit. “You are stalking me.”

“I am not,” she protested. “You’re new to the building. I’m simply adhering to the Southern Women’s Code, Section One, Paragraph Three. Feed Thy Neighbor. I could make spaghetti,” she said before he could argue again that she was stalking him. “And garlic bread.”

He didn’t sneer at the garlic bread any more than he’d sneered at her cross. Hmm. Maybe she was wrong about him. Even though she was drawn to Simon Darrow in a way that had to be unnatural, and there were a number of unanswered questions about him and his life, and Claire knew to the pit of her soul that there was more to the night than what made the newspapers and the evening news, her neighbor might be exactly what he appeared to be. A man with a mysterious past who’d had the misfortune to move into the building just when people in the general area started disappearing and someone spilled dirt in the hallway.