Page 39 of Only Fangs

“Not quite. Carlisle.”

Fuck’s sake. Carlisle is literally ten miles from the Scottish border. I dated a girl from there in my early twenties and fell madly in love with her. She cheated on me with her neighbour. And one of her colleagues. And a guy from her gym. I shudder at the memory.

Ari reaches out and takes the phone from my hand. “We’ll take the appointment tomorrow morning in Aberystwyth,” she says. “Thank you for everything. You’ve been such a help.” Then she ends the call and hands the phone back to me. “We need to leave in one hour. I’ll book a hotel. You get your car.”

“Yes ma’am,” I say and offer up a salute. A road trip with my seriously sexy vampire boss. What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter 21

Ari

While Brody goes to get his car and some overnight stuff, I start the trawl through hotel websites. Or at least, I thought it would be a trawl. It turns out that Aberystwyth isn’t much bigger than the last time I was there in 1934 and so there’s very little choice on the accommodation front for this evening.

In the end I find a rather nice hotel in the next town with a proper bar – that serves what appears to be Sanguis when I zoom in on the tiny pictures – and a view over the sea. It’s pricey, certainly far more than I should spend, but by this time tomorrow we should have all the funding in place for Only Fangs and so it’ll all be worth it.

The drive to Wales starts fairly uneventfully. Brody is quiet, his tongue trapped between his front teeth as he navigates the unfamiliar roads and the surprisingly heavy traffic for a random weekday afternoon. I know I should offer to take over for a while, but I think we’d both appreciate arriving in one piece.

We stop at a service station on the M5 because Brody spots a sign for some noodle place and is adamant we need to carb load for the rest of the journey. I’m not the kind of girl to stand between a man and his caramel drizzle chicken, especially when he claps his hands like a seal at the very thought. We also take the opportunity to get some snacks for the car; Haribo and diet coke for me, Werther’s originals and a cup of tea for him.

“Are you actually a pensioner?” I ask him when I see what he’s chosen.

“You can’t beat the classics,” he replies.

An hour later I’m grateful for his remaining Werther’s originals – I obviously ate all my Haribo in ten minutes – when we hit a huge traffic jam. I check Google maps, but it lies and tells me the route is clear.

“I could check,” I say.

“Check?” he turns in his seat as he replies.

“Just a little float around, see what’s happening.”

“People would see you.” He sounds almost shocked.

“So?” But just at that moment Google maps updates and shows a thick line – the red so dark it’s almost black – snaking into the distance. I point to it and Brody groans.

“We should have got more car snacks.”

It’s gone nine by the time we finally pull up to the hotel. It’s gorgeous; almost a castle, light spilling out of the windows and illuminating the turrets against the night sky.

But it all starts to fall apart when we get to the closed front door.

A man finally lumbers over from his position behind the front desk to open it. “Can I help you?” he asks in clipped tones. He’s wearing a rather shabby looking shirt with an unbuttoned waistcoat.

“We’re here to check in.”

He sighs loudly and looks at the space on his wrist where a watch would be if he was wearing one.

“We got stuck in traffic. There was an accident on the A479.”

“Check in closed at eight.” He sounds bored, as if our presence is wholly inconvenient to him.

“Actually,” Brody steps forwards with his phone in hand, “your website says check in is available until eleven.”

“Fine. Whatever,” he mutters. “Come in.” We follow him as he crosses to the check in desk. “Name?”

“Haywood.”

He clacks a few keys and a small printer next to him spits out two small pieces of card. He mutters a few things under his breath but I try to take deep breaths and tune him out. I know I shouldn’t say anything about the shoddy level of customer service; after all, the last thing I want is for Brody to think I’m a Karen. But his final sentence is directed directly at me, loudly enough I can’t tune ignore him. “I’m afraid the restaurant is closed.”