Not wanting my roommate to carry his tantrum to other rooms of the house, I took cautious steps through the melee of messiness and invited him to sit next to me on his bed. He collapsed next to me, his shoulders slumped in defeat.
I put a comforting arm around his shoulders. “Now, make me understand so I can help. Who are they?”
“My girls. All the women who I’ve courted.” Beau listed off a bunch of names, some that surprised me to no end.
“Wow.” The word hung in the air between us as I processed the sheer number. “That’s practically all of the women of a certain age in Honeysuckle.”
My vampire roommate sighed. “I know. And it’s all Cordy’s fault. She’s the one who got them all riled up, and now they want to go on a cruise to some tropical destination.”
I’d met Cordelia Jenkins at the retirement home when I went there to investigate the death of my old teacher, Mrs. Kettlefields. I remembered Cordelia as a very enthusiastic friend of Beau’s and could see how she might be a natural ringleader to some shenanigans.
“What’s so bad about a cruise?” I asked.
Beau fidgeted and gazed up at me with pleading eyes. “It’s one thing for us vampires to live here in Honeysuckle. We get to be ourselves, just living our lives. I’ve always had issues in places that are new, and it takes me a while before I feel…comfortable enough to be me.”
When I’d first connected with him after Uncle Tipper’s death, he’d been so distraught that I questioned whether or not he could function on his own. Because of my initial pity for him, I’d invited him to stay with me when I inherited the house. Over time, he had flourished into a Casanova figure for the elder ladies and a staunch friend to me.
Glancing around us, I gestured at the clothes and items strewn about. “If you don’t want to go, why go through your things?”
“I’m stuck, Charli. A part of me wants to go with them, so I was looking for appropriate attire. Which, there isn’t any for such a sunny destination.” Beau picked up a nearby outdated flowing puffy shirt with long sleeves and flapped it in my face like a flag of surrender. “We vampires can walk about all we want, but too much sun still isn’t such a good idea.”
“So, you’re saying you’re stuck between wanting to go in theory and thinking it wouldn’t be a good idea?” I clarified.
My vampire roommate nodded, his big puppy-dog eyes glistening with fresh tears. “They’d be gone for so long, and maybe they’d each find someone new who liked to travel.”
My lips twitched into a slight grin, a little amused that Beau’s jealousy was at the root of his despondency. I patted his arm in sympathy. “When are they supposed to leave?”
“I don’t know,” he pouted again. “Cordy’s having issues getting ahold of the travel agency. She keeps calling them but nobody answers.”
That little detail captured my attention. “Do you know if she’s using a spell phone to call?”
He shook his head. “No, she doesn’t like the newfangled technology. Says she doesn’t trust it.”
My gut churned, and I noted the bigger communication problem developing in Honeysuckle. “I might bring this up at the town hall meeting.” I pulled him to his feet. “Come on, let’s go together, and maybe we can figure out your problem later.
“Thanks, Charli,” Beau muttered, accepting my comfort with a grin. “I’ll try to sit between Cordy and Flossy and convince them to do something local. Maybe a staycation! Perhaps I could host it here since you’ve been staying over at your grandmother’s place.”
The thought of my roommate wooing several women under my own roof gave me the heebie-jeebies. Not wanting to crush his heart any further, I uttered the only answer I could. “Maybe, but don’t make any promises.”
When I left his room, I gagged a little at the mental images swimming in my head and did my best to cleanse them out with a hot shower. Before I left my bathroom, I snagged a small compact mirror from the drawer with my rarely used makeup and shoved it into the opposite pocket from my spell phone just in case Mason tried to get in touch.
Beau and I walked into the center of town together, and I suffered through each of his ideas of what he and the ladies could do on staycation. We joined the throng of residents walking up the steps into the town hall, and I breathed a sigh of relief when Beau left my side to join a few of his girlfriends.
Blythe waited for me with Ben and Lily. “Why do you keep shivering and gagging?”
“You do not want to know,” I assured her. “Where’s Lavender?”
“She’s still at the flower shop, talking with Nick,” her cousin Lily tattled. “She said there’s something fascinating about his aura.”
“I’ll bet there is,” I snickered. “No shame in a single woman like Lav having a little flirty time with a hot new guy.”
“That’s what I told her,” Lily exclaimed, patting Ben’s hand. “Not the hot guy part, sweetie.”
The advocate let her off the hook far too easy. “I knew what you meant. Besides, I don’t mind if you look as long as that’s all. I’m going to go inside and make sure Lee’s helping to save seats, not just sitting there trying to solve the phone problem.”
Lily huffed after he left. “Sometimes, I wish he’d be a little jealous. Then I’d know for sure where I stood with him.”
Blythe reassured her before leaving us to talk to Mrs. Wilkes. I offered Lily my arm to act as her escort. “Is there something wrong between you two?”
“No,” she huffed, accepting my invitation. “But I wish our timelines for our future together were in