Will slid in and Nina slammed the door behind him, marching to the driver’s side. “Nina seems really pissed. What was that all about?” Will asked.
Nina, my beautiful, fine-boned roommate and best friend, was tall and ballerina slim. Her normally dark hair and wide, coal black eyes, set in her flawless pale skin, gave her the look of an innocent nymph. She carried herself with an air of confidence and grace that was all at once comforting and unsettling. Though several centuries have passed, she still retained the fine manners and gentle demeanor of her French aristocratic upbringing.
When she was content, she was like Marie Antoinette with fangs.
When she was angry, entire armies died.
“Hold these.” Nina dumped a stack of books onto my lap as she snapped on her blinker and pulled the car into traffic.
Nina grinned, fangs pressed over her lower lip. “It’s brilliance is what it is. People are making millions on vampire stuff.”
“And apparently, this bloke is making millions off proving that vampires don’t exist,” Will said, shaking the tome.
I turned around in my seat and took Harley’s book from Will. “‘
I flipped to the back cover, where Harley, looking distinguished and all-knowing, was hunching in a cemetery, one arm draped nonchalantly over a moss-covered headstone. “Well, that’s a nice touch.”
“I suppose he’s going to have a bit of a rude awakening at dinner tomorrow night, isn’t he, then?” Will leaned into the front seat and Nina rolled her eyes, taking her annoyance out on the Lexus’s gearshift. We all jerked to one side.
“Hey, Vlad, why isn’t VERM—sorry,” I said, catching myself, “the Vampire Empowerment Movement protesting Harley?”
Vlad shrugged, popping a single earbud from his right ear. “Why would we?”
“Because you can’t be a fearsome bastion of Hell if you don’t exist.”
Vlad pulled his iPad out of his messenger bag. “But we’re not sparkling, wearing jewelry, or falling in love with breathers. Let him think we don’t exist. No skin off my nose.”
“Oh.” I felt oddly deflated.
“So how are you going to break the news to Harley?” Will asked.
“Harley doesn’t need to know anything,” Nina replied, yanking the wheel again. “So, as I was saying, vampire novels are clogging the bookshelves. They’re in theatres, on TV. They’re everywhere!”
“I suppose if they weren’t, the VERM would have a little more time on their hands,” Will said, settling back into his seat.
“Who knows better about vampires—and vampire romance,” Nina continued, “than me? I’m a vampire, and, well, look at me. Romance has never been a stranger to Nina Michele LaShay.” Nina held up a single finger. “The first.”
“So?” I asked.
“So I am going to become the next great vampire-romance novelist!”
Nina was gesturing wildly, her joy evident, her car veering toward oncoming traffic. I grabbed the wheel and clamped my mouth shut, lest my heart leap out and flop into my lap.
“Hands on the wheel!”
“Isn’t that brilliant? Me, a novelist!”
“It is brilliant,” I agreed.
“Lovely. Are you going to quit your job to take on this endeavor?” Will wanted to know.
Nina snorted. “Of course not! I’m just going to write a quick little book. How hard can it be? And besides, I want to get started right away.”
Nina turned to me and I glanced at her from my periphery, trying to focus on the road. My fingers inched toward the once-again abandoned steering wheel. I was certain that I would grind my molars into dust before we reached Van Ness.
“Can I use your laptop when we get home?” Nina asked.
“If we get home, you can
Chapter Four
Once we got home, and I was able to unclench my fists, I handed Nina my laptop. “Knock yourself out,” I told her.
She looked over my head, a serene smile on her face. “Once my vampire novel becomes a best seller, Harley and I can go on book tours together.”
“That would be nice. The author who writes about vampires that don’t exist, and the vampire who loves him.”
“You have no emotional depth.”
I sighed while Nina tucked my Mac under her arm and pierced the blood bag she was holding, then sucked voraciously. “Thanks. Sorry about Will.”
I shrugged. Though I was semi-used to Nina’s driving, Will was not. He’d spent the majority of the ride with his head tucked between his knees. Before the car had even come to a complete stop, he was hightailing it across our apartment building’s underground parking lot, frantically mashing the elevator’s UP button.
“He’ll recover.”
“Uh, Soph?” Nina gulped. “You have a message.”
I glanced over my shoulder to where Nina had the laptop open. The glow from the screen made her pale skin look an odd, translucent silver.
I spun the laptop to face me and read the subject line slowly. “‘Someone has responded to your request from yourfamilytree.com.’” I blinked at Nina. “What should I do?”
“You should open it.”
Before I could think better of it, I clicked the icon and an animated tree popped up, a single green leaf blinking jauntily begging me to Click and see who’s looking for you!
My heart thundered against my chest and my stomach churned.
“Who is it?” Nina’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I can’t. What—what if it’s him?”
I had grown up under the care of my maternal grandmother. She was the most amazing, special, intelligent woman I have ever known. Of course, when I was an overemotional preteen, she was horrendously embarrassing, odd, and loud. She wore scarves and costume jewelry that made more noise than a tambourine trio; she read palms, tea leaves, and right into my deep-seated fear of forever being an outcast. She died just after I graduated college; and not too long ago, began the unsettling habit of appearing in shiny or glossy objects (cut cantaloupe was a particularly disconcerting fave), giving me advice and ominous clues about my parents and their shady past. Namely, that my mother had committed suicide to protect me.
Oh.
And also that there was a pretty good chance that my dad was Satan. Not the “Your dad is a really bad guy —bad like the devil!” but more the “No, really, your dad is the absolute Prince of Darkness.”
“Just look. You don’t have to do anything about it. Don’t you want to know?”
My finger hovered above the track pad and I focused on that stupid little leaf.
Nina crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Come on, Soph. What are the odds that el Diablo would sign up on Your Family Tree? I would think he’d have better things to do, you know, like Filet-O-Fish Genghis Khan or whisper in J.Lo’s ear or whatever. If anything, I think this is probably a good sign.”
