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  There’s some cursing, and a few sounds that resemble the noise made by presumably a fist hitting the wall.

  “What now?” one of them says.

  “Damien fucking Morpheous just went to Georgina’s home, asking about the dead girl we have in our closet. She’s called a meeting with the covens to investigate.”

  “Why? Everyone knows the Portocale gypsies handle their own, no matter what. Why does he suspect vampires in the foul play?”

  “We killed something they wanted to play with, and it was all for fucking nothing. I told him this was a stupid idea. We could have found another Portocale. But he’s such an arrogant…”

  The words trail off like the man is walking away and lowering his tone at the same time.

  This is why I woke up too soon. They’re not quiet, and my mind only likes to slink into unconsciousness for so long. The inside of my head is actually scarier than the world I’ve seen so far, so I can’t blame my mind for wanting to run back into the safety net of reality at the first opportunity it can find.

  “I bet as a ghost,” Anna says on a sniffle, “you’d be so much less boring. I’ll bet you’d miss your vagina as much as I do.”

  My eyes shut just as the door opens, and I remain perfectly still as someone’s hands clasp over my ankles.

  “What the actual hell is she wearing?” another voice asks, as I’m dragged out of the closet.

  “Looks like bad curtains. Some gypsies, man...they’ll wear anything.”

  A few good-spirited chuckles over my dead body at the expense of my terrible wardrobe sets the tone for the types of guys I’m dealing with. I was really hoping for hysterical, guilt-ridden first-timers who are prone to panic attacks.

  The chuckling dies off, and I hear the spinning of thread somewhere in the room…the very subtle whirring of it they surely don’t notice.

  “I can’t wait until her spirit jumps out. She’s so going to explode the two of you. I bet gypsies ghosts are badass,” Anna states before she starts actually barking.

  I imagine she’s bouncing around, since the barking is coming from all sorts of directions. If she were a dog, she’d be a damn miniature schnauzer.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Shit. How the hell did they notice the thread? Who pays attention to any fabric in the room ever?

  I remain still, deciding it’s still the only trick in my pony’s saddlebag.

  “I don’t know. Looks like…soft pink stitches or some shit,” the other voice says as though he’s truly puzzled.

  If I wasn’t playing the role of a stiff corpse, I’d totally relax.

  “Someone sewed her up?”

  “With satin?” another man asks as the scrape of calloused fingers touch my cold body.

  The hardest thing in the world to do is lie still and not panic when two men, who have already tried to kill you once, touch the still painful wounds they’ve left you with.

  The gentle whirring of the threads continues, as the subtle tugging sound of it across hardwood only finds my ears because they’re so close to the floor.

  “So that’s not just in my head then. That’s really there,” Anna says as though she’s impressed. “Maybe I’m not crazy after all.”

  The most gratifying thing in the world is hearing two shocked yelps erupt as those calloused fingers are ripped away, and that crawling sensation I have vanishes with the arrival of the upper hand.

  I hear the telling sound of two bodies crashing on either side of the room. I jackknife to the seated position, eyes flying open as I do, and Anna’s wide, horrified eyes meet mine just inches in front of my face.

  For a second, we just stare at each other as the two men strangle against either wall and struggle in vain.

  Then Anna’s face falls, her mouth opens, and she releases an ear-splitting scream that seems endless.

  Grinning, I leap up to my feet, glance over, and…try not to piss myself as my grin turns to a shocked, gaping-distorted-mouth sort of thing.

  Those black eyes I barely glimpsed before they slit my throat are there. Fully black eyes, in fact. That wasn’t a loss-of-blood hallucination.

  My head moves from man to man, watching as their fangs—freaking fangs—elongate. Well, this day officially sucks worse than it already did.

  Anna continues screaming like she’s in the seedy backseat of a car at the start of a horror flick.

  “That…is so not normal,” I say under my breath as the…vampires begin struggling really damn hard against the threads, making the only sound they can—bone-chilling, feral hisses.

  Vampires.

  Freaking vampires are real. This is really happening.

  Later, Violet. Now’s not the time to go into shock.

  The threads are a cool trick, but they don’t actually stay so strong for very long, and those vampires should totally be dead by now. But vampires don’t die by strangling in the movies.

  As paranoid and delusional as the concept of vampires makes me feel, my they-won’t-fall-for-it-twice dread kicks in and I spring into action. Sort of.

  Swallowing thickly, I glance around the room, spotting a wooden table.

  Anna comes right in front of me as I sweep the lamp off it, and she grabs—or tries to grab, rather—my shoulders. Then she screams even louder.

  I’d say it’s almost like she’s seen a ghost, but I hate a bad pun.

  “Oh, horror movie obsession, don’t fail me now,” I say as I slam the table onto the ground like they do in all the movies when they’re hurting for a good wooden stake.

  The table hits, vibrates really hard through my arms, and I fall down on top of it, feeling pain shoot up my leg when my knee bangs a hard angle all wrong.

  This is my mother’s fault. Because my mother wouldn’t let me become a badass. I stupidly let her dictate my life to make up for the fact she had a monster for a daughter.

  “What are you doing?” Anna shouts, still partially screaming.

  “Trying not to panic because panicking is very bad!” I shout as I struggle to kick at the legs of the table.

  All that happens is that my hip is jolted. The sturdy table remains unfazed. At this rate, I’m well on my way to doing more damage to myself than the vampires did to me.

  “Did they feed off me?” I bite out, kicking a little more aggressively, to no avail.

  “Yes. They fed a lot. You lost a lot of blood and they all orgied and took turns sucking your neck,” Anna says, pacing back and forth.

  “I really hope that’s a lie,” I gripe as I release a frustrated sound, unsuccessfully still kicking the shit out of the unrelenting table leg.

  “You look ridiculous and they’re going to kill you again!” Anna shouts.

  “What the hell? Is this the best piece of furniture ever made or what?” I snap as I push to my feet, sliding across the slippery surface of the hardwood.

  My stomach gets a little queasy. I’m pretty sure that’s my blood making the floor slippery.

  Spotting a fireplace poker thingy, I grab it and run back over to the table before whacking the hell out of the table leg closest to me.

  “Buffy would so kick your ass,” Anna informs me like it’s her duty to do so.

  “I lost a lot of blood. It’s a little weakening,” I grunt at her in between my failed whacks.

  “Excuses won’t save your life, and I suck at saving your life!”

  “Well aware,” I bite out just as pieces of wood finally splinter off the damn incredibly well-crafted table.

  I grab two chunks that look nothing like the pretty stakes in the movies, and I run to the man who is nearest.

  He snaps those fangs at me, eyes still black and red veins bulging on his face, as he strangles but finds himself unable to die. Been there. Sucks.

  He should learn to properly faint.

  Fortunately, he’s restrained enough for me to slam the stake into his heart. Apparently, I miss.

  So I stab him again. And again. And—

  Fourth t
ime’s the charm, because his veins start quickly filling in black as his struggle ceases. That’s extremely anticlimactic after all that work.

  The other one starts panicking and struggles in a frenzy to escape when he sees his comrade dead.

  “They’re supposed to turn into dust! You did it wrong!” Anna shouts, causing me to hesitate, but I don’t have time to overthink things.

  The threads strangling them fortunately silence their screams for help.

  But…the racket I stirred by making stakes probably did enough damage in the noise department.

  “Never mind! He’s dead enough!” Anna gasps as she examines the first dead body.

  Racing over to the other, I stab as hard as I can this time, really driving it deep. I don’t miss on my second vampire of the day.

  “I really hate the sight of blood,” I groan as it drizzles from his wound.

  Shuddering and making sure their blood isn’t on me, I start sprinting toward the window.

  “Why the second floor?” I groan as I look down.

  “If you can’t die, just jump!” Anna hisses.

  “Bones still break, and it takes a while to mend. My bra is empty. I can’t feel a single vial in it, which means no healing potions. That means an even longer time to heal.”

  “They totally felt you up as a corpse,” Anna says, making me wish I’d killed them a little harder.

  Maybe seeing the flailing lunatic I am best their vampire selves was enough misery in their final moments.

  I jog through the only doorway that doesn’t lead to a closet or balcony, and my eyes drop to a chest that is sitting open, spilling over with very pretty wooden stakes.

  Anna and I both simply stare down at it with disbelieving expressions.

  “I bet you feel a little silly now, don’t you?” she asks, clearing her throat.

  I glare. “I hate you,” I tell her.

  Unfortunately, I hear two voices coming our way, so I drop and land like a bad puppet whose strings just got cut, suppressing the groan I want to release when I rupture a kidney or something.

  My life sucks so hard sometimes.

  “What the hell is the dead chick doing in the hallway?” one guy snaps.

  “I’m going to kill those worthless sons of bitches,” another growls.

  At least there’s a chest of stakes right beside me this time, as the whirring of threads subtly drifts through the air.

  I’m really, really not ready for this to be my life.

  “For the record,” Anna says as approaching footsteps vibrate the floor slightly, “you just got severely less boring.”

  Chapter 19

  VANCE

  I almost don’t believe what I’m actually seeing when I spot a familiar missing gypsy on the side of the road…wearing…a lot of awful things. Three and half days of nothingness, and suddenly she’s right in front of me after feeling compelled to turn down just one road?

  She glances over her shoulder, and I can tell she doesn’t look quite so thrilled to see me as I pull over. As I lean over and push open the passenger door, I pull my phone out.

  My gaze flicks to the rearview mirror where I can see her just glaring at the back of my car like she’s weighing her options.

  “Hello?” Damien answers, sounding high with just that one word.

  “I’ve found our missing gypsy,” I tell him, brow furrowing as I take in her ridiculous choice of clothing.

  “Is she happy to see you spying on her through the window on her impromptu, mental health holiday, you hypocritical fuck?” he quips.

  “She’s wearing a floral jumpsuit with a zipper down the front.”

  “What?” he asks incredulously.

  “The fit is all wrong, and that material looks unnaturally stiff—”

  “Why the hell are you calling me?”

  “Not to mention the hideous orange scarf that clashes with the yellow backdrop on the fabric with all the loud, bright red and pink florals.”

  “Are you seriously calling me to discuss your Portocale girlfriend’s shit taste in clothing right now?” he asks like I’ve lost my mind.

  “She’s on Martin’s road,” I tell him more seriously as Anna, the ghost who has been missing this entire time as well, chatters about being Buffy before a spike of some sort killed her.

  “Funny. Thought you said Martin swore there was no way a Portocale gypsy was in town,” Damien says quietly. “He pretended to have no knowledge of her existence.”

  “Martin wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring her anywhere close to his residence if he knew we were searching her out,” I’m fast to point out. “And Martin is most definitely on the other side of the country right now. There shouldn’t be anyone on his road.”

  “Is she hurt?” he asks with something akin to reluctance in his voice.

  “I’m not entirely sure, but I can smell too much of her blood from my car. Fill Emit in.”

  “Why the hell can’t you do that?” he asks as Violet starts and stops and then starts again, moving toward the passenger’s side with angry strides.

  “Because it looks like she’s just made a decision,” I say as I hang up.

  A massive, snow-covered boot lands in my floorboard, and snow sprays all over the black interior. Lovely.

  She takes a seat, bringing her other snow-covered boot into the car with the same lack of concern.

  “Is it my imagination, or have your feet grown three sizes since last we met?” I drawl as she shuts the door and puts on her seatbelt.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she states like she’s experiencing a bit of ire. “But can we please get out of here?”

  I put the car in drive, turning around and heading back toward town.

  “Nice…outfit,” I manage to say with a completely neutral expression.

  “I don’t want to talk about that either,” she says on a huff.

  “I suppose the scarf is off limits as well then? Been to Grandma’s house lately?” I muse, flicking at the orange monstrosity when the long tail of it tickles across my hand.

  “Grandma is a wolf!” Anna shouts right in my bloody ear, and I damn near forget not to react.

  I hate that infernal pest.

  “I really, really don’t want to talk about it,” Violet says again, staring out the window.

  “Hey, he’s a vampire hunter. Ask him for some tips on being Buffy,” the ever-so-random ghost suggests.

  “There’s not much time to adjust to this world I’ve unintentionally stumbled into, is there?” Violet asks almost absently.

  “How old are you?” I ask, pretending as though I don’t already know she’s twenty-five.

  “I doubt I need to answer that. Care to explain your perverted interest in me?” she volleys.

  “I’ve let it be known how intriguing you are,” I state unapologetically. “I feel, given the circumstances, Emit and I were appropriately respectful of boundaries by looking in and seeing what anyone who was looking on from the outside would see,” I add with a reasonable tone.

  She exhales very harshly.

  “Emit too?” she asks in exhausted exasperation.

  I’m never going to hear the end of this. He’ll accuse me of tattling like Damien rushed to do. Fucking infants.

  I’m the one to exhale harshly this time, as she groans.

  “Damien’s the only one who crossed a line,” I carry on, deciding to give her the right person to focus her anger on. “You’re only so sensitive because you’re too young to know better.”

  “He’s usually better with smooth talk than this,” Anna says from behind me, making no sense at all.

  I’m not trying to talk her into bed; I’m trying to talk her away from the ledge.

  She’s clearly fragile, given the fact she has no clue what’s going on around her, and I’ve forgotten how to fucking be sensitive to the extreme she requires. How do I even handle something that delicate?

  “Any chance you want to talk about where you disappeared to a
fter you shredded all your clothing to threads and left us on a wild chase?”

  “Why chase me at all?” she fires back immediately, sounding truly tired of all of this.

  “You don’t seem to realize just how many enemies you have.”

  “Apparently more than I thought, and that has happened since moving to town and becoming fascinating to all of you,” she states a little accusingly.

  “What?” I ask as I shift gears, completely confused.

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it,” she grumbles.

  Infuriating female. This is exactly why I elect to forgo sex. Women are too bloody complicated, and sex grows boringly monotonous and tedious after centuries flit by like years. It’s simply not worth it.

  Shifting gears again, I drive us quickly toward town. At least now my restlessness to hunt her down is settled and I can finally sleep again.

  “How did you just happen to be driving down that road at that moment?” she asks.

  “Let me tell you a little bit about my curse,” I state as I cut down another road, taking a slight detour. “When someone I’ve pledged protection to disappears without a word, I’m compelled to hunt for them. I can’t sleep, eat, or even rest until I’ve recovered them.”

  She bristles. “So you’ve been forced to hunt for me this entire time because you’re a Van Helsing and that’s how it works?”

  “Far more complicated than that, but sure. We’ll start there,” I say with a bitter smile, my eyes trained on the road. “I drive. I feel compelled or I don’t feel compelled to go places. I felt compelled to finally turn on that road just a few minutes before spotting you. First time I’ve felt anything in days.”

  She bristles once more.

  “Is it weird that I was kind of hoping for anyone to drive by, since I was freezing and can’t walk in these boots—”

  “Why are they so big?” I ask…simply because I can’t help myself.

  “Because they were the smallest ones I could find, and I don’t want to talk about it,” she says in exasperation. “Anyway, I had the thought I’d even settle for one of you. Then poof. There you were.”

  She gestures at me a little wildly.