In the Company of Vampires

“Don’t forget drinking. We drink a lot, as well.”

The other two nodded.

“It’s too early to drink, I don’t want anyone killed, there will be no pillaging, and since I know one or the other of you is bound to add this to your list, no oiling of breasts, either. At least not out in public. What you do in private is thankfully your own business.” I filled my expression with as much pathos as I could pack into it. “But if you don’t want to look around for signs of Loki, and where he might have gone, I’ll have to find someone else to do it.”

Eirik’s nostrils flared. “We were assigned by the goddess Freya to aid you! You will have no others. If you desire us to scout . . .” He shuddered. “Then we will lower ourselves to scouting.”

“Think of it as being Viking ninjas.” I leaned in and lowered my voice to a conspiratorial level. “Stealthy and covert.”

“Stealthy,” Finnvid said thoughtfully.

“Covert?” Eirik glanced at the others. “Have we ever been covert?”

Isleif shook his head. “No, but I watched a movie about ninjas. They were most deadly and feared by all. Just like us. We will be ninjas, virgin goddess. Viking ninjas.”

“The best kind,” Eirik agreed.

“Sounds good. You go be stealthy, covert Viking ninjas”—really, I deserve an award for being able to say that without so much as one titter or a twitch of my lips—“and I’ll meet you guys back here in a couple of hours, okay? You remember which trailer is my mom’s?”

They nodded.

“We must go shopping again,” Isleif commented as they headed off. “The ninjas in the movie had special armor. We will need the same.”

“Aye.” Eirik’s voice drifted back to me. “We will find the local ninja store, and use the weasel gold to buy everything they have. . . .”

“Heaven help the local shops,” I murmured before eyeing Imogen’s trailer and taking a deep breath.

I was ready. I knew this day would have to come sometime. I lifted my chin and reminded myself that my mother needed me to be strong, and by the goddess, strong is what I would be.

Chapter 5

No sound answered my tap on Imogen’s door. I waited a moment before opening it just a smidgen, enough to poke my head in to see if Imogen was up. The long living area was devoid of anyone. Perhaps she and her Günter were out getting morning coffee and breakfast.

“Best thing is to just wait for her,” I said, ignoring the fact that my stomach did a few excited backflips as I entered the trailer. “Ben is not here, stomach, and Imogen has a boyfriend. Stop being so excited. Ben won’t be up and about until it’s dark.”

Unless, of course, Imogen’s boyfriend wasn’t staying with her. Which meant . . . I glanced down the narrow passage to the door that marked Imogen’s bedroom. It was quiet, very quiet, the sound of quiet that comes when no one else is around. Perhaps I should just double-check to make sure no one was in Imogen’s bedroom. Just a quick peek to ease my mind and calm my unduly excited stomach.

Would Ben be happy to see me? Would he think I’d changed in the last few years? I touched a hand to my short auburn hair. When he last saw me, it had been in a pageboy, and black as night. Would he like the new color and style?

“Stop it. It doesn’t matter what he thinks,” I told myself before I put my hand on the door. “You are here to find your mother and nothing else. Certainly not to see the pushiest vampire ever made. Get to it, Fran.”

I opened the door the bare minimum amount needed to slide through, so no sunlight could sneak in and harm any vampires who might be sleeping therein.

The room was dark and warm. A muffled grunt came from the bed.

“Ben?” My heart beat wildly, and my stomach did flip-flops. It was him! He was right there in front of me. I should leave. I should run away as fast as I could. I should put him from my mind and heart.

I groped my way along the bed to sit on one end of it, pulling off both sets of gloves before reaching out to find him. My hand touched bare flesh.

A light clicked on at the exact moment that I realized the man wasn’t Ben. I snatched back my hand as two surprised hazel eyes met mine. “Was ist es?”

“Er . . . hi. You’re not Ben.”

The man pulled the blanket up over his naked chest. “Who?”

“Ben. Benedikt. Are you Günter, by any chance?” I asked, hastily getting off the bed and backing toward the door, my face redder than a baboon’s butt.

“Ja. You are Imogen friend?”

“Yes, I’m Fran. I’m sorry to disturb you. I thought you would be out with Imogen. And then I thought you were Ben, but clearly you’re not. Where is she?”

“He?”

“No, she, not he. You know, the word ‘she.’ ‘She’ is female; ‘he’ is male.”

He blinked at me. “In trailer,” he said, waving a hand toward the window. “Tattoo trailer.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks. Sorry again about waking you up. Nice meeting you.” I slipped out of the room, closing the door behind me, leaning against it for a moment while I covered my burning cheeks with my hands. “Just when I think you can’t be a bigger idiot, you top yourself. Nice job, Fran.”

I all but ran down the line of trailers until I reached one with familiar artwork. I never had much to do with Gavon, who did tattoos and custom piercings at the Faire, mostly because he struck me as somewhat creepy, but I had a faint memory of Imogen being friends with him.

I knocked on the door, mentally writing an apology to Imogen for barging in on her boyfriend, when the door opened. A woman stood in the doorway. I stared at her bare legs, stared at her thigh-length silk robe, stared at a pretty face topped with a cloud of soft, curly hair. This was not Imogen.

“Yes?”

I gawked at her for a minute. I’d always thought Gavon was gay . . . Maybe I’d been wrong, and this was his girlfriend? “Is Imogen here?”

“Imogen? No. Her brother is.” She continued to stand there, looking me over with narrowed blue eyes. I suddenly felt every inch my six-foot, built-like-a-line-backer self, not to mention the wrinkled T-shirt and pair of jeans I wore.

“Ben’s . . . here?” I groaned to myself. Somehow in the conversation with Günter, we’d crossed our lines regarding pronouns. “Right here?”

“Yes. You wish to see him?”

No. I absolutely did not want to see him. I had not gone through the hell of the last year for nothing. I had made a decision, and I was going to stand by it.

“Yes, please,” I heard someone say, and realized with horror that it was me.

I knew I should have turned around and left. I had to find Imogen, and then make a plan to locate my mother. But despite the desperate need to know she was okay, my feet refused to leave. After all, my brain pointed out, I would be much less distracted once a meeting with Ben was done.

“He was sleeping when I left him,” the woman said in a voice with a faint French accent. “Why do you want to see him?”

My heart shattered. Just like that, it was whole one moment, then in a billion pieces the next. Poof! Dust. Not that it had any right to shatter, but you try reasoning to a heart. It’s impossible. “You’re not Gavon’s girlfriend, are you?”

“Gavon? No. I took over his business. I am Naomi, the tattoo artist. I am Benedikt’s girlfriend. And you are . . . ?”

“Fran Ghetti.” Pain seared my soul with such intensity I had to clutch the side of the trailer to keep from keeling over at her feet. Stupid, stupid Fran! You broke up with him; you can’t be shocked now because he got over