Chapter Three
It only took him a few hours to read the journal. It started about a month before her dad died and went right until the day she went missing. Julie’s grief and fury over her father’s death were evident in her words and on the tear stains marring some of the pages.
Her handwriting went from being neat and flowing to almost illegible in some passages. On more than a couple of pages were slashes and dents from where she stabbed the pen into the paper.
She used initials instead of names, and it wasn’t until someone labeled as PB entered her life that things changed. That was when she started talking about vampires and an afterlife here on earth. She imagined vamps as beautiful, misunderstood creatures who would help them.
Dante wanted to reach through the pages and shake the girl. Not all of his kind were bad, but Julie was playing with fire. Just like humans, vampires could be violent, soul-crushing monsters who would destroy her. He hoped she hadn’t really stumbled across the truth and was hiding out with this PB somewhere.
Some of the initials in the book matched with the names Mrs. Abbott gave him, but PB entered her life a month after her dad died. Dante hoped some of her friends would know more about the man, but from the way it sounded in her journal, she’d cut ties with most of her old friends before she disappeared.
Mrs. Abbott had told him that she would let Julie’s friends, and their parents, know to expect a call from him. However, he still waited until the next day to make sure she had enough time to notify them before calling her friends.
One of them sat across from him now, sipping her latte and twirling a strand of platinum blonde hair around her perfectly manicured finger. She studied him with a little too much interest for his liking.
“You have to understand,” she said. “After Julie’s dad died, she stopped being Julie. Of course, we tried to stick by her, but there’s only so long you can stand by someone who doesn’t want to be your friend anymore.”
“I understand,” Dante said. “Were you two close before her dad died?”
The girl shrugged. Dante checked his notes for her name before recalling it was Missy.
“Not really.” The tips of Missy’s perfectly manicured, neon green nails flashed in the light as she continued twirling her hair. “Paris was a lot closer to her.”
Dante rechecked his notes and saw he was meeting with Paris tomorrow. “That’s Paris Carter?”
“Yes.”
He’d already surmised that Paris Carter was not the PB from Julie’s journal, mainly because there was already a PC on the pages by the time PB entered Julie’s life. “Paris and Julie were good friends?”
“How good of a friend can you really be with somebody?” Missy asked. “I mean, the only people we ever truly know are ourselves.”
Dante suppressed a groan; God save him from teenagers. But because she was waiting for something from him, he murmured, “So true.”
She grinned as she leaned toward him. “It really is. I mean, think about it, everyone we know is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They’re all hiding secrets.”
No one knew that better than him and every other vampire on this planet. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Julie?”
Missy released her hair to tap a finger against her bright red lips. “Not that I can think of, but like I said, she was closer to Paris.”
“Thank you for your help.”
Dante started to rise when she rested her hand on his arm and gave him a coy smile. “My parents are away for the weekend.”
Dante’s eyebrows shot up at the same time her words brought him back to a time when he was seventeen. He’d been sitting in the lunchroom with his high school sweetheart, Tiffany Myers, as she spoke those same words to him.
Unlike Missy, who didn’t look at all fazed by her words, Tiffany had stared shyly up at him as her cheeks colored prettily. In his excitement over her words, Dante almost grabbed Tiffany’s hand and ran from the lunchroom with her. But, because he was seventeen, he was too cool to show his excitement.
Instead, he chewed his peanut butter sandwich while trying not to reveal that this was the best news he ever heard. Finally, he swallowed and replied. “Cool.”
Tiffany’s blush deepened while he tried to figure out what to say that wouldn’t blow this. “So, can I come over?” he asked and wondered if he sounded as ridiculous as he felt.
“I’d like that,” Tiffany murmured shyly.
Somehow, he kept himself restrained from jumping up and pumping his fist in the air. “Cool,” he said again, and Tiffany giggled.
Back then, those words were exciting and opened the doorway to a whole new world for him. Now, they made his stomach turn.
“Stay safe while they’re gone,” he said and pulled his arm away before she could reply.
He wound his way through the crowd of the small coffee shop and stepped onto the sidewalk lining Tremont street. Having already sunk behind the buildings, streaks of sun colored the sky. People were heading home to their families, but his night was just beginning.
There were three vampire clubs he planned to check out tonight, one in Southie, one on the Dorchester line, and another in Quincy. He’d been to them a couple of times while searching for other missing people. They were places humans created where they could go to pretend to be vampires. He hadn’t seen any vampires there, but they were a place to start.
Before he could hail a taxi, his gaze went to Adler’s piano bar, a few buildings down and across the street. His chest constricted; he was so close to the woman he could almost smell her.
And then, he realized he did smell cherries on the air. Turning his head, he searched the crowd of people on the sidewalk before spotting her a hundred feet
