A Witch's Handbook of Kisses and Curses (37 page)

“Fine,” I shot back. “Where do you want to go?”

But he’d already passed out.

“And she was never heard from again,” I muttered.

*  *  *

A few miles later, Gruff Sexy Voice stopped bleeding, which could mean that he’d started to clot . . . or that he’d gone into shock and died. My optimism had reached its limit for the evening.

Keeping an eye on the road, I pressed my fingers over his carotid and detected a slow but steady pulse. I took a deep breath and tried to focus. I’d been through so much worse. It didn’t make sense to panic now. How had I gotten myself into this? I’d worked so hard to avoid this kind of trouble. I’d kept my head down, stayed low profile. And here I was driving around in a possibly stolen truck with a possibly dead body slumped over in the passenger seat. If I’d had one operating brain cell in my head, I would have run screaming into the bar the minute I’d heard the men arguing in the parking lot. But, no, I had to help the injured stray, because living with the less-than-civic-minded side of humanity over the last few years had apparently taught me nothing.

I saw a sign ahead for Sharpton. Since he didn’t want to go to the clinic, I’d turned off the main highway and stuck to the older, less traveled state routes. I tapped the brakes, afraid I would miss some vital piece of information hidden between the words “Sharpton” and “20 Miles.” As the truck slowed, the Big Guy slumped forward
and snorted as his head smacked against the dashboard.

Good. Dead people do not snort. That was my qualified medical opinion.

“Hey, Big Guy?” I said loudly, shaking his shoulder. “Mister?”

He snorted again, but did not wake up. I laughed, practically crying with relief. I gently shook my . . . passenger? Patient? Hostage? What was I going to do with him? He didn’t want a doctor, he said. But as much as I needed a vehicle, I didn’t have it in me to just leave him on the side of the road somewhere and drive off.

Just over the next rise in the road, I saw a sign for the Last Chance Motel, which seemed both ominous and appropriate. I took a deep breath through my nose and let it slowly expand my lungs. By the time I exhaled, I’d already formed my plan. At the faded pink motel sign, I turned into the lot and parked in front of the squatty dilapidated building. There were two cars in the lot, including the one in front of the office, which seemed to double as the manager’s quarters.

I reached toward the passenger seat and gently shook the Big Guy’s shoulder. His breathing was deep, even. As carefully as I could, I raised the hem of his bloodied shirt and gasped. The bullet wound, just under his ribs on his left side, seemed too small for such a recent injury. The edges of the wound were a healthy pink. And the bullet seemed to be lodged there in his skin.

I pulled away, scooting across the bench seat. That . . . wasn’t normal.

Calm down, I ordered myself. There’s no reason to panic. This was good news.

Maybe some weird act of physics kept the bullet from penetrating deeply in the first place, I reasoned. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the wound while I was playing action hero in a dark parking lot of the bar. In my panic, it must have looked much worse than it was. Either way, the wound looked almost manageable now.

“Just hold on tight,” I told him, placing my hand on his shoulder again. He leaned against my touch, trying to nuzzle his cheek against my fingers. “Uh, I’ll be right back.”

It would appear that I was footing the bill for this little slice of heaven. I couldn’t reach his wallet, as it was in his pocket, firmly situated under his butt. I had just enough cash in my wallet (a twenty and a few lonely singles) to cover one night. After that, I was dead in the water. The rest of my cash had been stashed behind a dresser in my motel room near Emerson’s.

I jumped out of the truck and tried to look calm and normal as I walked into the motel’s dingy little office and saw its creepy-as-hell occupant. There must be an Internet ad somewhere that read, “Do you give off a sex-predator vibe? Do you have lax standards regarding personal hygiene? Well, the field of out-of-the-way motel management is the career opportunity for you!”

And this guy fit the bill perfectly. It took no less than three refusals of a “room tour” from Night Manager Larry to be permitted to trade a portion of my precious cash supply for a little plastic tag attached to the oldest freaking room key I had ever seen.

“Two beds, right?” I asked, taking the key.

He shook his head, leering at me. “Single rooms only. We like to stay cozy here in the Great North.”

“What if a family of four needs a room for the night?”

“It’s never come up.”

“Is there a pharmacy anywhere around here?” I asked.

“In town, about four miles down the road. Opens in the morning, around eight,” he said. “But if you’re feeling poorly, I have something in my room that might perk you up.”

I gave him my patented “dead face,” turned on my heel, and made a mental note to prop a chair against the outside door once I got to the room.

I opened the passenger-side door and saw that the Big Guy had managed to sit up and had his head resting on the seat back. He was snoring steadily. I spotted a bulky duffel bag in the backseat of the cab and threw it over my shoulder. I unlocked the room door, tossed the bag inside, and steeled myself for the task of hauling his unconscious ass into the room. Careful to keep his bloodied side away from the manager’s window, I hoisted his arm over my shoulder in a sort of ill-advised fireman’s carry and took slow, deliberate steps toward the open door. The movement seemed to reopen the wound; I could feel blood seeping through my shirt. We made it through the door. I heard a distinct
thud
. I looked down and saw that the bullet had rolled across the filthy carpet into the wall.

I meant to set him gently on the bed, but ended up flopping him across the threadbare bedspread. The rickety
bed squealed in protest as he bounced, but he didn’t bat an eyelash. I huffed, leaning against the yellowed floral wallpaper to catch my breath. “Sorry. You’re heavier than you look.”

I locked the door and wedged the desk chair against the knob. The room was without amenities, but too dirty to be considered Spartan, too outdated to be considered retro. The carpet may have been a sort of maroon at some point, but it was now more of a knotty brownish gray. The bedspread was the same paper-thin synthetic fiber used in all cheap motels. Not thick enough to keep you warm, but just enough material to catch a wealth of germs and bodily fluids.

I shook off the flashbacks to Norman Bates’s establishment in
Psycho
and told myself it was just like any of the other crappy, indigent motels I’d stayed at in any number of cities, and I hadn’t been stabbed in the shower yet. There was that one time a crazy lady kicked down my door and accused me of sleeping with her husband, but it turned out she meant to break into the room across the hall.

I turned back to the sleeping giant on the bed. The flannel shirt was a total loss. The fabric made an unpleasant ripping noise as I peeled it away, the dried blood adhering the stiff flannel to his skin. The wound seemed even smaller now, the area around it a perfectly normal, healthy color. I pushed back from him, away from the bed, staring at the minuscule hole in his flesh.

This couldn’t be right.

Taking a step back, I knocked over his duffel and saw
a bottle of Bactine spray sticking out of the partially opened zipper. I arched an eyebrow and pulled the bag open. “What the . . . ?”

Never mind having to run to a pharmacy. The bag was filled to the brim with well-used first-aid supplies. And beef jerky. But not much in the way of clothes.

I glanced from the shrinking bullet hole to the enormous bag of meat treats with its distinct lack of clothes . . . and back to the bullet hole.

Oh, holy hell, this guy was a werewolf.

© J. Nash Photography

MOLLY HARPER
is the author of the acclaimed Nice Girls vampire series:
Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs, Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men, Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever,
and
Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors;
as well as several spin-offs set in the supernatural small town of Half-Moon Hollow:
Driving Mr. Dead,
available exclusively as an ebook;
The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires;
and “Undead Sublet,” a novella in the anthology
The Undead in My Bed.
She is also the author of a werewolf series set in Grundy, Alaska:
How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf
and
The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf.
Her stand-alone novel
And One Last Thing
 . . . was nominated for a RITA Award, and she recently launched a sexy original ebook series with
My Bluegrass Baby.
She is a former humor columnist and newspaper reporter who studied print journalism at Western Kentucky University and lives in Kentucky with her husband and children. Visit Molly on the web at
mollyharper.com
or at
singleundeadfemale.blogspot.com
.

authors.simonandschuster.com/Molly-Harper

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COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY GENE MOLLICA

ALSO BY MOLLY HARPER

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs

Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men

Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever

Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors

How to Flirt With a Naked Werewolf

The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf

The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

Driving Mr. Dead

My Bluegrass Baby

And One Last Thing . . .