Dates From Hell

“Thank you, Officer Tamwood,” the insurance officer said cheerfully over the sound of a pencil scratching. “Thank you very much. I’ve got your number on my screen, and I’ll do just that.”

Embarrassed, Ivy hung up. Still trying to get the worst of the ink off her, she felt a stirring of excitement. It wasn’t in any report that the tear wasn’t functioning. This had possibilities. But she couldn’t go to the basement with her suspicions; if Art had promised someone down there a cut of money, her suspicions would go nowhere and she’d look like a whiny bitch trying to get out of giving Art his due blood. That she was doing just that didn’t bother her as much as she thought it would.

Balling up the inkstained tissue, Ivy reached again for the phone. Kisten. Kisten could help her on this. Maybe they could have lunch together.

5

The muted sounds of the last patrons being ushered out the door vibrated through the oak timbers of the floorboards, and Ivy relaxed in it, finding more peace there than she’d like to admit. Extending her long legs out under the piano, she picked up her melted milkshake and sipped through the straw as she pla

The light coming in the expansive windows was thin, and Ivy looked from her pages set in neat piles and stretched her laced fingers to the distant ceiling. She was usually in bed this time of day—waiting for Kisten to finish closing up and slide in behind her with a soft nibble somewhere. More often than not, it turned into a breathless circle of give and take that left them content in each other’s arms as they fell asleep with the morning sun warming their skin.

Focus blurring, Ivy plucking at the itchy fabric of her lace shirt, her thoughts returning to Mia. Banshees were known for inciting trouble, often hiring themselves in to a productive company and putting old friends at each other’s throats with a few well-placed words of truth, whereupon they would sit back and lap up the emotion while everything fell apart. That they usually did this with the truth made it worse. She loved Kisten, but to call it love when she took his blood? That was savage need. There could be no love there. Eyes dropping to the papers surrounding her, she pushed at them as if pushing away her thoughts, bringing her hand up to slide a finger between her neck and the collar of itchy lace.

Ivy felt like a vamp wa

She had been here at the piano for hours, having called in sick after meeting Kisten for lunch, blaming it on bad sushi. Kisten wasn’t convinced putting Art in jail by dumping Piscary’s mistake in his apartment was a good way to get promoted, but Ivy liked its inescapable justice. Going to the I.S. would gain her nothing but their irritation for interfering. True, Mr. Demere wouldn’t be going to jail for murdering his wife, but that didn’t mean he was going to walk away from it. She’d take care of him later when he thought he had escaped unscathed.

It surprised her that she was enjoying herself. She liked her job at the I.S., working backward from where someone else’s plan went wrong to catch stupid people making stupid decisions. But plotting her own action to snare someone in her own net was more satisfying. She was headed for management, but she’d never stopped to ask herself if it was something she wanted.

And so after she had discussed it with Kisten, he had reluctantly bought her car for cash, and she had gone shopping with the untraceable money. She had felt ignorant at the first charm outlet she had gone into, but the man had become gratifyingly helpful once she showed him the money.

Fingers cold from her melted shake, Ivy set the wet glass on a coaster and reached for the sleep amulet safe in its silk bag. She had wanted a potion she could get Art to drink or splash on him, but the witch refused to sell it to her, claiming it was too dangerous for a novice. He had sold her an amulet that would do the same thing, though, and she felt the outlines of the redwood disk on its cord carefully through the bag, satisfied it would work. The man had cautioned her three times to be sure there was someone there to take it off her or she’d sleep for two days before the charm spontaneously broke for safety reasons.

A second, metallic amulet would give her the illusion of blond hair and take off about eight inches of height, making her closer to the size and look of Sleeping Beauty. She didn’t know how witches in the I.S. managed to make any money, seeing as the two charms had cost as much as her car, and she wondered if the witch had upped the price because she was a vampire.

She had been sitting here writing out contingencies for nearly two hours, and she was growing stiff. The I.S. tower had cleared out by now, and Art was home. He had called her cell phone shortly after sunset, feeling her out as to what she was doing avoiding him, and with her charms literally in her hand, she had agreed to a date with him. Sunup. His place.

Agitated, Ivy clicked her pen open and shut, imagining he had probably spent his time in the office talking himself up big as to his plans for tonight. Her eyes fell on the purple stains in her cuticles from breaking her pen earlier, and she set it down.

A creak on the stairway brought her heart into her throat. She hadn’t told Piscary what she was doing, and only he or Kisten would be coming up. But then her eyes went to the windows and she berated herself. Piscary would never come up here so close to sunrise.

Determined to keep her back to the stairs, she hid her unease behind turning off the table lamp and shuffling her papers, but she didn’t think Kisten was fooled—he was gri

“Who are you trying to be?” she asked sharply, rarely seeing him in a suit, much less a tie.

“Sorry, love,” he said, using that British accent. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

He bent to slip a hand around her waist and give her a soft tug, but she ignored him, pretending to study her papers. “I don’t like your accent,” she said, releasing some of her tension in a bad mood. She smelled someone on him, and it made things worse. “And you didn’t startle me. I smelled you and some tart halfway up the stairs. Who was it? That little blond that’s been coming in here every payday to make black eyes at you? She’s early. It’s only Thursday.”

Fingers sliding from her, Kisten edged a step away. Eyes down, he picked up a paper. “Ivy…”

It was low and coaxing, and her jaw clenched. “I’m doing this.”

“Ivy, he’s an undead.” With a soft sound, he sat beside her on the piano bench. “If you make a mistake…They’re so damn strong. When they get angry, they don’t even pretend to remember pity.”

They both knew that all too well. Her pulse quickened, but she kept her face impassive. “I won’t make a mistake,” she said, scratching a notation on her paper.

Kisten took the pen from her and set it atop her papers. “All you have is a few witch charms and the element of surprise. If he has any idea that you might betray him, he’s going knock you out and drain you. And no one will say anything if you went down there looking to tag him. Even Piscary.”