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“A date? With who?”
“How did he get a date and not me?” Daven complained.
Randa kept her attention on Julius. “You’re going out with Ashley, my therapist. She’s smart, kind, responsible, and pretty. She’s blonde, with blue eyes, and she’s about forty years old…”
“Forty!” Julius interrupted in a scandalized voice. “She’s a baby! We may be desperate for Matches, but I refuse to date anyone who isn’t yet ninety-three.”
“Humans come of age earlier than we do.” Mannus chimed in. “A girl last night told me so. She cannot have a beer until she is twenty-one. But it’s legal to fuck her at eighteen.” He shrugged. “It’s a very odd system.”
Sullivan massaged his forehead in frustration. “There’s still time for you to forget this whole thing.” He told Tallulah Jayne. “You can probably get your money back for the bar repairs.”
Tallulah Jayne ignored Sullivan’s advice, her gaze flicking between the Light Phases. “Hey, Sully? Remember when I tried to shoot that guy on my lawn, and you stopped me?”
“Which time?”
The Elementals were the biggest pain in his ass, bar none. But the second biggest pain in his ass was the spoiled, mean girl beside him. Tallulah Jayne was the wealthiest person in town, thanks to the residuals from her TV show. She’d been a child star on Tally’s Time where her character was adorable and sweet. The actual Tally was not adorable and sweet. She was a viper in designer spandex.
After the show was cancelled, her career had floundered. She’d done some horror films and celebrity dance-off reality shows, before ending up in Mayport Beach. No one knew exactly why a former starlet had picked a small, sleepy Gulf Coast town for her retirement-at-thirty. She’d just built an ultramodern McMansion, which didn’t fit in with the vintage bungalows, and spent her aimless, partying, troublemaking days at the local bars.
“The time when that big mafia-looking bozo set my palm trees on fire.” She explained, narrowing it down for him.
“Alder.” Sullivan nodded, because that day was seared in his memory. It was the first time he saw his Match. Teja came to bail out her nephew, and Sullivan’s life had been forever changed. “I think technically his sister Missy torched your yard. She didn’t like the way Tally Time ended on a cliffhanger.”
Which reminded him, he needed to track Missy down. He hadn’t seen her in days, which probably meant she was up to something horrible. Now that he was related to the Addams Family, Sullivan needed to keep an eye on the supernatural fiends.
“When you arrested whoever-he-was, he was shouting that he didn’t have to follow human laws, because he wasn’t human.” Tallulah Jayne went on in something like triumph. “At the time, I was too mad to really see what was happening.”
“What was happening was Missy and Alder incinerated your palm trees.”
Tallulah Jayne wasn’t buying it. “I grew up in LA. Crystals and horoscopes and reincarnation… I was setting the trends for all that spiritual crap, but I wasn’t getting any real feedback from the universe. I was starting to think maybe it was all just an excuse to wear teeny sports bras around.” A career in acting made her an expert in dramatic pauses. “…Until it happened.”
“It?”
“I was doing my astral projection class, about two years ago, and I had a sudden metaphysical flash of insight.”
Did Sullivan want to know? He probably didn’t want to know. “What’s astral projection?” He asked anyway.
“It’s bullshit.” Tallulah Jayne waved it aside. “The point is, I had a vision of this place. Of this dumpy little town. Something told me Mayport Beach was a gateway to my future.”
“Before the barriers between our realms fell, this is the spot where the veil was the thinnest.” Rysimer interjected, listening to their conversation with deep interest. “This is the gateway you felt, Tallulah Jayne. You no doubt have Elemental blood within you, and it called you here.”
“No doubt.” Sullivan deadpanned.
“My manager and my agent and my makeup artists all said I was out of my mind moving to Florida. I turned down a role on that Hulu show about strippers to be here. But I knew…” She tapped her temple. “Oh yeah. I knew I was right. I listened to my third-eye.”
“You don’t listen with eyes, Tallulah Jayne. I don’t care how many of them you’ve got.”
She grinned in excitement, uncaring about Sullivan’s opinion on her paranormal senses. “Just tell me the truth. I can handle it. These guys are an ancient vampire sect, right?”
“We are Elementals.” Rysimer volunteered proudly. “A species which controls the forces of nature itself. We come seeking mates.”
“My God, I knew he needed to get laid.” Tallulah Jayne breathed. “I’m telling you, Sully, I’m totally psychic.”
“What you are is pronounced ‘psycho.’” Sullivan diagnosed.
“Rye, you are completely ignoring the ‘don’ts’ from my PowerPoint presentation.” Randa protested.
Rye’s attention stayed on Tallulah Jayne. “I’m Rysimer, King of the Light Kingdom, and I am interested in Phazing with you, woman. As I watched you ferociously fend off the other females who approached me in that tavern, I realized you are something special.”
