Dead Over Heels

He ticked our options off on his fingers. “One: leave town. Now. Tonight. Two: interview every vampire in this building. Thr—”

“Pardon me, Your Majesty.” We all looked up and saw the bellboy (bellman) who’d tried to help unpack my shoes when we got here. “The rest of the staff has arrived and await your convenience.”

“Thank you, O’Neill. I’ll meet with them when we’ve finished here.”

“As you wish, Majesty.” He bowed in my direction. “My queen.” He ignored Jessica and Nick, but Sinclair must have said they were okay, because otherwise he wouldn’t have come up to the table in the first place.

And then he trotted off. I was relieved that he hadn’t drowned himself or jumped off a high building after I’d snapped at him our first night, though I’d had no idea he was a vampire.

“You dog!” Jessica exclaimed. “That’s why you weren’t in the room earlier . . . you were out interviewing suspects.”

“Of course. I am not unaware of my responsibilities, though it is always refreshing to have someone less than half my age point them out to me.”

Score! I thought it, but didn’t say it. Nick had the grace to look abashed. Or was it annoyed? Then he went back into jerk mode and said, “I want to be there for the interviews.”

“No,” Sinclair said coolly.

“Sinclair, you’re not a cop. There’s stuff you might miss.”

My husband laughed politely.

“Maybe you should—” Jessica began tentatively.

Doing an eerie impersonation of Nick, Sinclair started ticking points off his long fingers. “One: he’s out of his jurisdiction. Two: even if he wasn’t, this is a vampire matter. Three: with his prejudice, he will be more a hindrance than a help, and four: although there is a killer in the city—perhaps more than one—I owe my people protection. Which does not include letting a human policeman find out they’re undead.”

“Besides,” I said, “you have to help me do something instead. Now that Sinclair’s going to be tied up.”

Nick managed to look mollified and pissed at the same time.

Chapter 11

I knew I looked like a dork, twirling around like Maria in The Sound of Music, but I couldn’t help it. “Oh, it’s all sooooo beautiful!” I cried. “This is a shoe store,” Nick informed me.

“This is the Beverly Feldman shoe store,” Jessica said. “It’s Betsy’s Graceland.”

I rushed from one gorgeous shoe to the next. Pumps, flats, sandals! Lace, leather, sequins! Ballet flats! I tried to talk but gurgled instead.

Nick picked up a gorgeous pump with white lace and a brown bow. “This one is called ‘Calm.’ So maybe you should buy it.”

“Oh, I’ll buy it. I’ll—miss?”

The saleswoman, an attractive brunette in her thirties, glided over to me. Unobtrusive, yet helpful: just the way I liked ’em. “May I help you?”

I whipped out one of my wedding presents . . . a Black American Express card. I hadn’t even known they made them in black. Turns out if you spend more than—I forget exactly, but I think it was two hundred grand—if you spend more than that with Amex in a year, you get a black card. Sinclair had given me mine the day after we got married.

The saleswoman smiled at it.

“I’d like to see Calm, Dabble, Mystery, Ravish2, Splendid, Adore, Amazing, Angelic, Heaven, Infinite, Neat, Phantom, Goblin, Fairy, and Rosella. Oh, and will you deliver these to my hotel?”

“Of course.”

“You can’t remember to buy milk,” Jessica said, “but you memorized most of the Fall Feldman line?”

“Do not ruin this for me. Do not.”

Once the saleswoman disappeared, Nick took out his gun. I wasn’t sure if he was going to shoot me or himself, and frankly, I had other things to worry about. Luckily, he put it away when she came back, staggering under the load of shoe boxes.

I actually clapped my hands like a kid when I saw her.

Chapter 12

That bastard,” Nick fumed in the cab on the way back to the hotel. “He knew what he was getting out of. And he knew what you were sticking me with.”

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t so bad.”

“Six hours of shoe shopping!”

“It was only two.”

“Well, it felt like a thousand.”

“Hey, you wanted to come along on this trip.”

“Yeah, well, I was expecting treachery and betrayal and felony assault. Not this!”

“Knock it off, you two,” Jessica ordered, massaging her temples. “I’ve got a splitting headache.”

In a nanosecond, Nick became a totally different person.

“Babe? You okay? Maybe we better get you back so you can lie down.”

“I’m fine, Nick, it’s not the cancer. I just have a headache.”

Nick was in the middle; I was on his left, and Jessica was on his right. If she hadn’t been so thin, it never would have worked. But it did work, which is why I opened my purse, rummaged, then handed Nick a bottle of Advil. He shot me a look of pure gratitude—I almost fell out of the cab—and shook two into his palm, then gave them to Jess, who dry-swallowed them.

“Thanks for coming along, you guys.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” Jessica said, leaning back and closing her eyes.

“She’s only speaking for herself,” Nick added.

“I still can’t decide which pair is my favorite,” I said dreamily. “Infinite, or Fairy.”

“How about Goblin?” Nick muttered. “You just—hey, you’re going past our hotel!”

“Sorry, mahn,” the driver said calmly. “Got to admit, tough to see dis place on de street.”

He had that right. The Grange really blended, which was weird, given how scary and old-fashioned it looked.

“That’s okay,” Nick said. “Just take a left and drop us off around the corner.”

“Not at all, mahn. I will get you dere.” I could see his dark eyes in the rearview mirror, heard him pop the car into reverse, and then we were speeding backward.

“This is a one-way street!” Nick practically shrieked.

“Dis is New York, mahn.”

We came to a shuddering halt right outside the lobby steps, and Nick and Jessica couldn’t scramble out fast enough.

I handed the driver my last fifty and said, “You got some plums on you, big guy. Keep the change.”

He touched two fingers to an imaginary hat and grinned, his teeth very white in his dark face. “Anyt’ing for a pretty lady.”

I got out and watched him drive away.

Now that was cool. Hideously dangerous and illegal, but cool.

“New York, New York, it’s a helluva town,” I hummed, trotting up the steps to catch up with Nick and