Paris’s tone dripped venom with each of her words. “Does that sound like what a bunch of bloodthirsty vamps do with their weekends? No, it does not.”
Cassidy studied the girl with a raised eyebrow. She’d gone from crying over her friend to being so mad her eyes glittered with fury.
“Of course, I couldn’t tell Julie that either; it made me an idiot. I mean, I understand she lost her dad, and she’s looking for something permanent to grab onto, and these freaks gave it to her, but we were friends for eleven years, and not just friends; she was my best friend. She knew everything about me, and I knew everything about her. And then she tossed me aside for those lunatics.”
Tears glistened in Paris’s eyes again as she focused on her cup and sniffled. Dante was beginning to understand her reluctance to talk to him; someone she loved had tossed her aside, and this conversation was picking at her scab.
“Did you ever go to any of these parties with her?” Dante asked.
“One,” Paris muttered. “She got mad at me because I made fun of everyone there. At the time, I thought it was still a joke, even to her, but that night I realized she was buying into it. I was a little afraid of her afterward. I mean, it’s kind of impossible not to be afraid of someone who’s living in fantasy land, am I right?”
“I imagine it was a little frightening,” Cassidy agreed, and Paris gave her a grateful smile.
“Do you know someone named Preston?” Dante asked.
Paris’s lips flattened into a thin line. He hit a nerve with that question.
“He’s not going to know I’m talking to you, is he?” she asked and glanced nervously around the coffee shop.
“Absolutely not,” Dante said. “Why does he bother you so much?”
“The guy is a freak. I mean a full-on, freak. If it weren’t for him, Julie wouldn’t have gotten mixed up in all this. But she thinks he’s the greatest thing ever.”
“Are they dating?” Dante asked.
“Oh, God, I hope not!” Paris blurted. “But with as weird as Julie is now, maybe she is banging her brother.” Paris clasped her hands over her mouth and looked guiltily between the two of them before lowering her hands. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was mean and weird or not, Julie would never do such a thing.”
Dante wasn’t concerned about Paris’s words so much as what she revealed. “Preston is Julie’s brother?”
Paris paled visibly. “You didn’t know that?”
PB means Preston Brother, Dante realized. He sat back in his chair as he recalled the passages about Preston in Julie’s journal, but there wasn’t much information about the man. At least not anything that would help Dante track him down.
“No, I didn’t know that,” Dante said.
“Shit,” Paris said and sipped her concoction.
“Does Mrs. Abbott know he exists?” If she did, she never mentioned it to him.
“I’m not sure,” Paris said. “The last I knew, Julie hadn’t told her about him, but that was a few weeks ago. He contacted Julie after their dad died, and they started talking. She was so excited. I think she almost felt like she was getting a piece of dad back with Preston, but he was so weird I didn’t understand how she could be excited.”
“Was Julie sure he’s her brother?” Dante asked. “The Abbots have a lot of money; he could have made it up in the hopes of getting some of that money.”
However, Zan did say Preston was a vampire, and Dante didn’t know many vamps desperate for money. They always had a way of getting it. Trying to scam it out of a sixteen-year-old girl was going to a lot of trouble when he could take money off any stranger on the street, and they would never remember it.
But maybe Preston got his rocks off by toying with people’s emotions and scamming them out of money. He wouldn’t be the first vamp who enjoyed fucking with people’s heads before killing them. Was that what happened to Julie? Preston got bored toying with her and decided to kill her?
Dante ground his teeth together and tried not to snap the pen in his fingers. If that were the case, he would make sure Preston paid.
“I said the same thing!” Paris exclaimed and slapped her hand on the table. “But that made me the idiot again!”
“So, Julie has no proof he’s her brother, but she’s convinced he is?” Dante asked.
“Yeah. I have to admit he looks a lot like their dad, and I do mean a lot. Still, it could be a coincidence.”
Dante set his pen down as he contemplated what Paris had revealed. Preston, a vampire, had walked into Julie’s life after their father died, but why? What did a vampire want with his human sister… if she was his sister?
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Do you know why he contacted Julie after their dad died?” Dante asked.
“At first, I thought it was because he was trying to get money, or into the will, or something along those lines,” Paris said. “But Julie said he never asked for money.”
“Do you know anything about his mother?”
Paris glanced nervously around the coffee shop before leaning closer to them. “Are you going to tell Mrs. Abbott about this?”
“This conversation will stay between us,” Dante assured her. He saw no reason to upset the woman further by revealing her husband possibly had another child out there. If it became necessary for him to confront her about Preston, he would keep Paris’s name out of it.
“Julie said she used to work for her dad; she was a nurse or a receptionist or something like that. Soooo cliché if you ask me.”
Paris paused as if she were expecting a response, and Cassidy jumped in. “It totally is.”
Paris gave
