Mina: Is that a prediction, or wishful thinking?
Dora: I don’t do magic, remember? That’s Isis’s domain.
Komal: Sure, Dora.
Isis: Dora’s right. On account of my amazing psychic powers and Winnie being smitten with the not-murderous vampire, I predict that she’ll be sticking around. And I AM magic, so I would know.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WINNIE
Mina: Winnie, it was so fun to see you again you last night. Isis is sorry about all her vampire talk. I’m sure your boss is totally human and a completely normal guy who just happens to look damn fine in a frock coat. We’d love to have you back at next week’s book club … that is, if you haven’t decided we’re all bonkers!
“Good evening, Lady Winifred, Countess of Clean. Did you enjoy the book club?” Alaric asks the next day as he enters the ballroom, his hair damp from his evening swim and his face an unreadable wall of sexy stone.
I can’t decide if I’m happy or disappointed that he’s wearing a shirt this time.
I managed to stay in bed until 2 pm today. I didn’t sleep, as usual. The nightmares woke me around 5 am, my sheets damp with sweat, my body crawling with invisible bugs. And then I stared at the ceiling while my brain swirled around everything the book club said about Alaric – all these oddities that, if I were a characterin a paranormal romance, would make me believe that I was unwittingly working for a centuries-old vampire.
But I’mnota character in a book. I’m a totally normal, slightly neurotic clean freak with an odd, grumpy client who is definitely not a murderer. Or a vampire.
I told myself over and over that I didn’t believe Isis’s nonsense, but I still couldn’t make myself stop thinking about the way Alaric held me when I fell as if I weighed nothing at all, and touching the graze on my neck where his sharp teeth scraped my skin …
In the end, the only way to shut my brain up was to pick up another book from the stack Mina sold me. I started a new series the book club insisted I read – about a heroine who was going blind and worked in a magical bookshop that brought infamous fictional villains to life. The heroine had three love interests – Heathcliff fromWuthering Heights, Moriarty fromSherlock Holmes, and a shapeshifting raven named Quoth, and they solved murder mysteries around a quaint English village. Mina told me that she wrote it under a pseudonym and I could see why she hadn’t put her name on it – the books were inspired by her real life (minus the magic and the fictional villains brought to life, obviously), and they wereracy.
A blush creeps over my cheeks just thinking about them.
Or maybe that blush is caused by the intensity of Alaric’s anthracite gaze, or the curl of dark hair plastered to the side of his face that my fingers itch to tuck behind his ear. Or the crazy thought that if hewerea vampire, I might not care.
“Book club was fun,” I tell him. “I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.”
I hate to admit how true that is.
Patrick and I didn’t laugh much. He was serious and driven, focused on building his bespoke window company, which at the time was what IthoughtI wanted in a partner. Someone who had their life together, who had career goals and valued experiences over stuff.
I did all my laughing with my oldest friend, Claire. She knows all my secrets. She’s the only person I’ve ever trustedwith the truth about Mum. Not even Patrick knew the full extent of it, although he lived with the fallout. More than once he called me a clean freak or a drill sergeant after I threw out something he wanted to keep or he found me scrubbing the bathroom in the middle of the night after one of my dreams.
But Claire had been inside Mum’s house. She helped me clean the first time the council threatened to evict Mum. She could have spent her holidays in Majorca, but instead she spent them trying to convince my mother that she didn’t need twenty-two tea cosies or five boxes of expired hot sauce. I thought Claire was a real friend.
Now I know better.
“I’m pleased that you had a good time.” Alaric moves nearer, his leather boots clicking against the marble. “And you had no trouble in the village? No would-be murderers crashing your meeting or lurking in the shadows?”
I open my mouth to tell him about that face staring in the window, but the dark tone in his voice makes me pause. He studies me, fire flaring in the corners of his eyes. Even though the fire Reginald lit barely penetrates the chilly room, warmth pools inside me, as if the butterfly has made itself a tiny campfire.
I think of the way he leapt in to rescue me at the pub and the protective way he held me, as though I were something more to him than just a stranger.
I think of Danny O’Hare, infamous menace to women, lying in an alley with the blood drained from him.
I force a smile. “Not a murderer in sight. Besides, I have my dagger. Not that I know how to use it.”
“As long as you aim the pointy end at the monster, you should be fine.” Alaric’s shoulders relax. “Speaking of pointy things, I got rid of the swords.”
“I see that.” And I saw Reginald wink at me as he handed me my evening hot chocolate, so I know he’s stored them away somewhere.
“I have found someone to move the loom. They will arriveMonday evening.”
“Monday?” I wince. “That’s not much time to get all these tapestries out of here so they can get to it.”
