Кейти Макалистер - A Girl's Guide to Vampires

I frowned. "What do you mean, what happened to me?"

"You know!" She scooped up another large spoon of preserves and coated her roll with it.

"You'll get diabetes doing that," I predicted sourly, nodding to the roll. She just grinned and licked her fingers. "Assume I don't know what it is you're talking about and fill me in with words of one syllable or less."

"I'm talking about what happened last night after Raphael told you he couldn't peel you off his lap. Did you… you know … or did you talk, or did you get up and cordially wish him a good night and spend the rest of the night touching yourself pretending it was him doing the touching?"

"Roxanne!" I choked, coughing and sputtering on my toast until I had tears in my eyes. I wheezed and snorted as I sipped a little coffee, trying to end the paroxysms.

"I didn't say you got your jollies off, I just asked if you did!"

I hadn't, but the thought had crossed my mind. "No, I did not—not, I might add, that it's any of your business. Nor is it any of your business what I might or might not have done with Raphael. You may rest assured I will tell you anything of importance."

"I can tell you didn't get any last night," she said sanctimoniously, licking the jam from the butter knife. "You're always surly in the morning when you're in a frustrated way."

I gave that statement all the attention it deserved—none.

"So if it wasn't Raphael about to do the blood thing with you earlier in the evening, who are your prime suspects?"

I poured myself another cup of coffee and leaned back in my chair, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight. This late in the morning, we were the only people in the tiny dining room.

"I don't know, Rox, that's the problem. It seems to me the field is narrowed down to just a couple of guys."

"Well, I still think it's Raphael," she sniffed, sipping noisily on her hot chocolate. She licked the whipped cream from her upper lip and added, "For some reason, he just doesn't want you to know it's him. We just have to figure out that reason, and then you can tell him to knock it off and get on with step four."

"That doesn't make sense," I said, poking at the remains of my breakfast. "Have you ever read about a Dark One lying to his Beloved?"

She frowned as she thought. "Mmm. You may have a point."

"No, I think…" I chewed on my lower lip as I pulled out the memories of the past evening. "I think Raphael's telling the truth. It didn't feel like him the first time."

"But you said you saw his eyes, saw him standing beyond the door before he melted through it—which I have to say is a totally awesome thing to see."

I was shaking my head before she finished. "No, I told you I couldn't move, couldn't even open up my eyelids. The stuff I saw—well, it could have just been my imagination. I could have imagined I saw Raphael there, that it was him touching me rather than whoever it really was."

"But then who was it really?" she asked for a third time. I just stared helplessly at her in return.

"OK, let's go about this systematically." She pulled out a tablet of paper and started writing. "One: you say the Dark One is not Raphael."

I nodded. "At least, the Dark One who came to my room last night wasn't Raphael. I thought it was until he kissed me; then I knew something was wrong, that it wasn't him."

"Check. Since it's impossible for more than one Dark One to claim a Beloved, that means the first batch of visions you were having were also from our mystery man, to wit, not Raphael."

I nodded, then shook my head, then nodded again.

"What?" she asked, sucking on the cap of the pen.

"I don't know—it seems to me that it was Raphael that first night. I felt him approaching, felt him feeding, and then, whammo! There he was with Dominic."

Roxy tapped the pen on her chin for a moment before making another note. "OK, that's point two: Who arrived with or just following Raphael?"

"Dominic," I said. "But he's not the vampire, I know that. I can feel that."

She grinned and tipped her head to the side. "You've sure come a long way in just a few days. Once it was 'Oh, no, Roxy, there's no such thing as Dark Ones,' and now you know with just a feeling if someone's a vampire or not. Next thing you know, you'll be believing in leprechauns and the Loch Ness Monster."

I didn't feel like laughing. It wasn't her neck that was attracting rogue vampires all over the place. "This is serious, Roxy."

"Nothing is so serious you can't have a bit of fun at your oldest friend's expense. So, if it's not Dominic, then who? Who've you met since we've been here?"

"Tanya and Arielle," I counted off on my fingers, "but they're women, so they don't enter into the picture. Then there was Dominic and Raphael, but we've already crossed them off the list."

" You have," Roxy said darkly. "I haven't until I see some solid proof."

I let that go. "Then Christian showed up—"

I looked up at her. She raised her eyebrows for a moment as she tapped her pen on her lips. "Naw, can't be," she shook her head. "He ate dinner with us, remember? And wasn't he in the bar much earlier, before Dominic and Raphael arrived?"

I closed my eyes so I could concentrate better on the memory of that night. "I think so—yes, I remember seeing him with a wineglass as he joined a table where some men were playing chess."

"Right. So Christian is off the list."

"Although he did disappear last night," I pointed out.

"Disappear? No, he just needed to go the bathroom. I ran into him just after you left. He went to move his car; then we hung out together until the bands got to him."

I made a face. I was not a devotee of music that was loud for the sake of being loud. "I don't blame him. Were the bands bad?"

"Ghastly," she answered, chewing on the pen. She looked down at her paper. "So who does that leave us with? Is there anyone else you met here that first night who could be a Dark One? The bartender?"

I shook my head, looking out the window and watching as some crows pecked at apples that were rotting on the tree. "Has it occurred to you that perhaps I did not actually see this Dark One directly after the visions? Maybe just being in relatively close proximity was enough to do it, without having to actually be physically near one another."

"Mmmm," Roxy hummed, considering that. "I suppose there's nothing that says he had to be at the same location as you. There are several instances in the books of Dark Ones who knew their Beloveds were approaching well before they did, so I guess that would make sense. But if that's the case, who is it?"

"There's one man we saw last night who, I'm extremely sorry to say, fits the bill of vampire awfully well."

She stared at me. "Who?"

"Milos."

"Milos? Oh, Milos . You think?"

I nodded. "I think. Have you seen his eyes? They're flat, absolutely flat, like there's nothing behind them but empty space. He gives me the willies in a way Dominic doesn't even come close to achieving."

"But, but—Joy, this is your Dark One we're talking about. The man made for you, the one Miranda predicted you'd find here. He's your soul mate, your other half."

"Well, I don't want him," I said with more than a little petulance. "I want Raphael instead. He's… he's right. He smells right and he feels right, and Lord knows he tastes right."

She stared at me in horror. "You can't mean that! You barely know the man! How can you tell me he's the one you want when you just met him a couple of days ago?"

I waved the waitress over to clear the table. "You've been happy as a clam at the thought of me being a vampire's main squeeze; now you're telling me that because he's not one of the bloodsucking night walkers I'm rushing things?"