Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men (40 page)

“From here, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

“That’s a little quick.” I laughed. “But I would love to go. Soon. And we will go to the Eiffel Tower, thank you.”

“I knew it,” he said. “At heart, you’re just a sentimental romantic fool.”

I laughed again, watching as Jolene and Zeb circled the floor. Lord help me, I actually started misting up. “Sometimes.”

“Are you crying?” he asked, lifting my chin.

“No!”

“Sentimental, romantic fool,” he said again as I wiped at my eyes.

“I really hate this song,” I grumbled.

He twirled me out and dipped me. “Honey, let it go.”

Read on for a sneak peek of

Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever
,

Molly Harper’s next Jane Jameson novel
,

coming in January 2010 from Pocket Books!

The worst thing you can possibly do in a relationship, vampire or otherwise, is actually telling your partner that you don’t trust him. Even if it’s true
.

—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to
Less Destructive Relationships

My life didn’t begin until I died.

Prefiring, prevampire Jane worked Saturdays and holidays and any other days that no one else on the library staff wanted to work. I had never done anything for myself. I’d never traveled. And now, I was my own boss. I’d had the opportunity to kiss foreign soil. Actually, it was the tile in Heathrow Airport’s Sunproof Lounge. I think it embarrassed my sire/boyfriend, Gabriel Nightengale, and the pickpockets were able to peg me as a tourist right away. But I was really, really happy to be off that plane.

I have claustrophobia issues.

I’d never had a healthy adult relationship as a live girl. Then again, I’d just abandoned my 150-year-old boyfriend in a hotel room in Brussels, so maybe this one didn’t count, either.

I’m pretty sure it was Brussels. We’d made quite a few stops since London.

My round-the-world romantic getaway with Gabriel turned sour early on, right after we checked into our first hotel in London. There was a note waiting for Gabriel at the front desk, fancy linen paper addressed in spidery black ink. Whatever it said, it put him in a very foul mood. The minute we’d settled into the exceedingly posh room, he put his flowy black coat back on, said he had to make some phone calls, and disappeared for most of the night. I and my newly purchased trunkload of lacy underthings took this very personally.

You know how after you’ve hung around a person for a while, you can tell when he’s
trying
to have a good time? Well, it’s just frightening in Gabriel. He was like a Carson-Wagonlit agent on crack, manically planning all-night excursions to museums, the opera, beer gardens, fancy, intimidating parties with his fancy, intimidating friends—anything that would keep us out of the hotel room from dusk ‘til dawn. Gabriel’s credit-card company put a fraud watch on his accounts as we switched hotels on a whim, two or three times per city. Each time we checked in, a creamy linen envelope was waiting for him at the front desk. And each time, his eyes got just a little more Manson-ish. Charles or Marilyn, take your pick.

His cell phone rang incessantly, and every time it did, he either let it go to voice mail or whispered, “Business,” and took the call outside. I tried to ignore the warning signs. I tried to give Gabriel the benefit of the doubt, but a girl can only bury her head so deep in the sand. He had told me months before that he was having issues
he couldn’t tell me about. There were frequent business trips where I couldn’t reach him by phone. And I’d found out that on several occasions, he’d lied about where he’d been. He’d assured me that it wasn’t another woman, despite the fact that the name Jeanine had popped up on his cell phone on several occasions. Never had I wished so much that my stupid, inconsistent mind-reading powers worked on my sire. And even though I still had (raging, screaming) doubts, I chose to believe him. But now, I was starting to feel like one of those women at whom people yell “How stupid can you be?” when they inevitably appear on
Dr. Phil
.

I suppose one should expect a certain amount of drama in a relationship that started with one party dying in a muddy ditch off a dark country road. I don’t like talking about the night I was turned. Every young vampire eventually gets drunk with buddies and shares war stories about his or her transformation. I do not partake in such revelries. Why?

The short version is this: I was (unfairly, unceremoniously) fired from the library and replaced by my supervisor’s barely literate firebug stepdaughter. But instead of getting a severance check, I got just enough of a gift certificate to get rip-snorting drunk at Shenanigans. I met Gabriel, and flirtation ensued. I sobered enough to drive, but because of unfortunate circumstances, my ancient car, Big Bertha, died halfway home. I was spotted walking down the road by the town drunk, Bud McElray, who mistook me for a deer and shot me. I was left in the ditch to die, only to be found and turned by Gabriel.

You don’t become a vampire just by being bitten.
Otherwise, the world would be overrun with bloodsuckers. To make a childe, a vampire will feed on a victim until he or she reaches the point of death. The vampire must be careful as drinking too much can leave the initiate unconscious and unable to drink the blood that will change him. I know, it sounds gross. But when faced with death by gunshot wound, it’s a tempting offer. The process takes a lot out of a vampire sire and is said to be the closest the undead can come to childbirth. It’s why a vampire will only turn a handful of “children” in his or her lifetime.

So, yes, Gabriel is both my sire and my boyfriend, which can cause some complications in our relationship. It was his job to lead me through the transition to vampirism, but since I rarely listened to him, that didn’t work out so well. And confrontations between the two of us tended to get sort of violent … and naked.

Instead of indulging in accusations of infidelity and undead Sid-and-Nancy–style hotel theatrics, I bit my tongue. Hell, I bit a hole through my tongue. Fortunately, I have vampire healing, so it grew right back. But then we checked into the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Munich, and a linen envelope was waiting. The look on Gabriel’s face made a bellboy cry.

Our itinerary became even more packed. I was frequently left alone with Gabriel’s strange friends as he held urgent “business meetings.” I occasionally woke up and couldn’t figure out where I was. And when Gabriel was in the shower one night, I happened to peek into the wastebasket, where he’d left the torn remnants of his latest note. I saw words like, “bloodmate” and “love you.”

I swear, it wasn’t my fault that the basket tipped over
and those little bits of paper somehow managed to perfectly reassemble in their original order.

OK, fine, I abused my jigsaw puzzle skills. But if Gabriel didn’t want me reading the note, he probably should have burned it. My vision tinged red as I made out phrases like, “Remember what we are to each other.” “Remember what we have.” “The woman you’re with can’t satisfy you like I do.”

Excuse me? Remember what we
are
? Satisfy you like I
do
? As in the presence tense? As in Gabriel had recently been satisfied by this woman? I fell on my knees, stunned by an explosion of pain in my chest. If my heart beat, I would have sworn I’d blown an aorta. He’d promised. He’d sworn that he was faithful to me. And, like an idiot, I’d believed him.

The phone rang. With numbed fingers, I knocked the phone off its cradle and heard the voice of my best friend, Zeb. I launched into a paranoid diatribe on cheating boyfriends and rude people who don’t embrace deodorant. I ignored all attempts on his part to make me think like a normal person or believe that all of this could be a very complicated coincidence.

“Whose side are you on?” I hissed, listening for the sound of Gabriel’s shower running. I swiped the little bits of paper back into the wastebasket.

“Um, logic and reason?” Zeb suggested. “And as much as I enjoy paying twelve dollars a minute to listen to you rant hysterically, I called to let you know there was a burglary at the shop last night.”

After my masterful string of profanity, Zeb explained that renovations at the bookstore were progressing nicely.
The expansion into the adult-video store next door had gone faster than expected, thanks to a central wall that collapsed on its own. But two nights before, someone had thrown a brick through the front window and ransacked the stock. Oddly enough, some of the more valuable items, figurines and crystals and ceremonial items, had been ignored in favor of tearing through boxes of books. Books were thrown aside, their spines cracked and damaged, Zeb’s descriptions of which were enough to make me produce distressed sounds in several different languages.

Zeb said in a soothing voice, “Fortunately, they didn’t know how valuable some of the books were, because they didn’t take anything.”

“What kind of underachieving burglars don’t take anything?” I asked, grasping at any excuse not to think about the nauseating ripple of pain shredding through my body. I could do this. I could get through this. I just had to focus on what Zeb was saying.

“I don’t know. Mr. Wainwright was out on the town with your aunt Jettie, so he was confused and was searching for his recommended daily allowance of visual stimuli,” Zeb said as I pulled my suitcase out of the closet. “Dick thinks it was someone looking for something specific but who couldn’t understand your weird shelving system.”

“Yeah, alphabetical order is revolutionary.” I snorted. “So, how much damage are we talking about here?”

“Not much. Other than the window being broken and the books being tossed around, nothing. Which, to me, says the thieves were over thirty. No angry teenager could pass up the chance to mess up newly painted walls and a shiny new espresso machine.”

“Look, I’m coming home on the next flight,” I said, randomly tossing clothes into my bag.

“What? No, Jane, there’s no reason to do that. Dick and Andrea can take care of everything. Andrea’s almost as anal-retentive as you are. She’s doing a great job.”

“I’m coming home, Zeb,” I repeated.

“Jane, don’t turn this into a—you’re hanging up on me now, aren’t you? Dang it, Jane!” he cried as I snapped the phone back into the cradle.

Gabriel emerged from the bathroom, his hips swathed in a huge white towel. His eyes tracked from my packed bag to the phone. “Who were you talking to?”

My head snapped up and it took everything in me not to throw the nightstand across the room at him. I wanted to scream at him, to strike at him until he hurt as much as I did. But I couldn’t. I was numb. Empty. I took a few deep breaths, unlocked my jaws, and concentrated on keeping my tone even, unaffected.

“There’s been a break-in at the shop. I need to go home and take care of it,” I said, clicking the suitcase shut. “If you could send the rest of my stuff home later, I’d appreciate it.”

I looked up, hoping to see some sign of response from Gabriel, something to show that he wanted me to stay. But he seemed relieved. “Well, if you have to go, you have to go. It’s probably better this way.”

And then he helped me pack. What the hell? It was like being slapped with indifference. He honestly did not care whether I was there or not. I could have just announced that I was going to take a flying leap off the roof, and he would nod obligingly. Of course, a flying
leap off the roof wouldn’t injure me, but it was hurtful all the same.

“Well, OK, then,” I muttered, throwing my coat on. “I’ll see you when you get home. After you’ve finished your business.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he promised as gave me a sterile peck on the forehead. It was a sad, dismissive, and fatherly sort of kiss. “This is really for the best. I think we can both agree this trip hasn’t quite worked out as we’d hoped. I’ll call you.”

As the door literally hit me in the butt on my way out, I was similarly struck by the realization that Gabriel had just used classic brush-off platitudes on me. Did he just break up with me and not even have the decency to tell me? Somewhere between numb and well and truly pissed, I carted my luggage to the front desk.

You know those French movies, where a weary lover climbs into a taxi wearing an oversized shawl and Jackie O sunglasses, and as Paris slowly fades away as she’s driven to the airport, they might show a single dramatic tear sliding down her cheek? Yes, the image is dramatic and glamorous, but living it just plain sucks.

If one is undead and hell-bent on travel, I must suggest Virgin Airlines’ Vamp Air. Trust Richard Branson to find a niche market involving carefully shaded windows and a selection of blood constantly warmed to exactly 98.6 degrees. Plus, few parents are willing to bring crying babies onto a plane full of vampires. I dragged my sunscreened, jet-lagged carcass through the Nashville International baggage claim at four
A.M.
to find Zeb waiting for me, holding a sign that said, “Undead Tourism Bureau.”

I propped my sunglasses on top of my head and smirked. “What were you going to do if someone else fit the bill?”