Shift of Time (A Rue Darrow Novel Book 1)

C
opyright © February 2015
, Audrey Claire

N
o part
of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express written permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

T
his book is
a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story line are created from the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

D
ear Readers
,

Please note you do not have to read previous novels to follow Rue Darrow’s adventures. However, I wanted you to be aware that Rue used to be named Libby Grace. You can learn about Libby’s adventures in the Libby Grace Mystery series available now.

Also, if you have read the Makayla Rose Mystery series, you will find a surprise guest from that series in this book.

Thank you, and happy reading.

- Audrey

“
R
ue Darrow
, vampire.”

This was what I so ridiculously muttered to myself each morning I woke to a new day. Scratch that—each
night
I woke to a new day—must remember I’m one of the undead now. If you can’t tell in the couple of sentences previous to this one, I’m different. I don’t mean just in appearance, but let’s start there.

After I found it necessary to vacate my previous body for reasons I won’t go into, Ian, my absentee boyfriend and local vampire, found me a new one. I quit the flesh I had lived in for thirty-eight years and entered this fresher, cuter body. Then Ian so kindly turned me into a vampire.

Before you assume I had no qualms about this entire process, I assure you, I wrestled with it, and I still do. Ian, in his quiet, explain-nothing-and-do-what-he-wants-with-no-moral-hang-ups way, took care of the rest. Eight years after my ordeal of having my body marked by Death, I was dying. Well, being marked by the being called Death is equal to dying, but I mean I was dying
faster
.

I should have gone gracefully into the dark night, as it were. My desire above all else was to watch my precious son grow into adulthood and stand on his own. So I tossed aside my own morals and embraced Ian’s solution. Wouldn’t you know, nothing worked out as I had thought it would.

Nothing except that I was now Rue Darrow, a vampire living in New Orleans. I was alone with no son, no best friend, and no Ian. I was of all beings most pitiable. However, don’t get the impression I was five foot three inches of depression either. Depression was for humans, at least in my mind.

I reached out to the medicine cabinet mirror and ran a hand over the surface to clear away the fog. My face came into view. Now, many people believe vampires can’t be seen in mirrors. I’m here to tell you that belief is incorrect. I could see myself just fine, but there was an eeriness I couldn’t put my finger on. Therefore, I tended not to allow humans to see me in reflection—better to avoid awkward explanations.

As Rue, I was twenty-eight with a shock of ear-length red curls, had green eyes and flawless pale skin. I was still fit, thank goodness, but vampirism had stepped that condition up as well. My muscles were pure steel, a bonus for beating up bad guys, not so nice when hugging Grandma or cozying to a human boyfriend. I had neither, so that wasn’t an issue.

When Ian turned me, he advised me that I had a choice of where to live, but I couldn’t stay in my hometown, Summit’s Edge. There would be too many questions. Where was Libby Grace? Why are you living in her house and taking care of her son? That kind of thing. Ian couldn’t glamour the entire town, so moving was the solution. I had chosen New Orleans.

A check of my cell phone showed I had time before work, so I cleaned up and walked out of the bathroom to the living room, which shared floor space with my bedroom, the tiny dining area, and off to the side, the kitchen. My apartment was bare bones and no bigger than an oversized closet. I liked it, but often I missed my house in North Carolina.

While I stood before the closet dressing in the boring brown pencil skirt and crisp white dress shirt, which was my uniform at the hotel, my cell phone dinged. I paused to check the messages, and if I had a beating heart it would have warmed at that moment. A text from Jake.

Hey, Mom, I guess you’re up now. It’s dark out.

I sank onto my bed and typed rapid fire, my fingers probably a blur to the human eye but not to mine. As you can see, I still impressed myself with my abilities.

Hi, baby. Yes, I’m awake. How was your day?

Jake was the sunshine in my life since I had lost the privilege of seeing it. I would have played the role of vampire mom and raised him myself if I could. However, it wasn’t what he wanted. In many ways, I wish I could go back in the past and not give him the choice, but I had.

SOS.

Jake never elaborated. I had to dig to get him to share more of his life with me.

Dad okay?

I wasn’t so eloquent either.

Sure.

Jake lived with his dad in Raleigh, North Carolina. I had escaped the emotional abuse my ex-husband put me through when we divorced, and I had vowed afterward to never allow Mason custody of Jake in order to either browbeat him or make him a carbon copy of himself.

You mean he has stopped saying I’m the worst mother in existence?

No response.

I’m sorry, Jake. You understand why I haven’t visited, right?

I shut my eyes after typing this and listened for his response, willing it to be an affirmative but fearing it wouldn’t. He had said he accepted me, but how could a child see his mother turned into a monster and be okay with it?
I
wasn’t fully okay with it.

The ding, and I focused on the screen.

Yes, I know.

You can come to where I am.

I was hopeful.

No, Mom. We can’t risk your secret coming out, and you know Dad will push to meet with you. We have to leave it like this. Maybe…when I’m on my own…

His own meant when he was grown up, and it seemed a century away. The worst part of this ordeal was in the beginning, I couldn’t stop crying for losing Jake. Now I didn’t at all. Only a few months had passed. Not that I didn’t miss him and hurt every day I couldn’t see his face or hug him. No, it was the problem of my humanity. No one had to tell me, as a vampire, my attachment to human emotions was fading. One night I might wake up and not care if I ever saw Jake again. Knowing that terrified me, but maybe my fears were unfounded. After all, Ian loved me, and he had been a vampire over one hundred years.

I considered telling Jake I would see him and that’s that, but I hesitated. Separating myself from Jake was not just to keep my secret. Eight years ago, I had fought with a vampire and a skin walker, and both of them tried to use Jake to get to me. Back then, before I’d had to change bodies, I could stay close to my son and protect him the best way I could. I also had Ian’s help.

Then came the day Ian was called away, back to his homeland of Scotland. He hadn’t shared the details, but by the hardness in his eyes, I had gathered it was serious. Three months had passed since I’d heard from him, no note, no call. I had tried reaching him and received the message that his cell phone had been disconnected. I worried he might be dead or staked or whatever one called it when referring to a vampire’s death, but some sense inside me told me he was alive.

Whatever state Ian was in or whatever he was doing that he didn’t deign to share with me, I had adjusted to my new life alone. Ian had remained long enough to teach me the basics and to get me past the blood lust into a routine of feeding without killing. Then he had kissed me good-bye with a promise to return.

Putting the past behind me, I gave a sharp nod of my head and rose from the bed, typing as I did.

All right, Jake, but please call me if you need me. I will come to you. I promise, and I love you.

I know, Mom. I love you, too.

That ended our short and very unsatisfactory conversation, but I vowed to call him in the morning before I slept in order to hear his voice. For now, I needed to get to work.

I left my apartment on the second floor and descended the stairs on the outside of the building. My landlord occupied the first floor. He was a squat, grumpy man who would just as soon spit on a woman as give her a helping hand. I don’t know what Ian had said to Almonester to get him to lease the apartment to me because he had most certainly not been interested in “anything to do with vampires!”

His vehemence with narrowed beady eyes and flared nostrils had taken me by surprise, but Ian hadn’t flinched to find this man knew what we were. In the end, Ian won the argument that ensued, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t through glamouring Almonester. You see, before Ian left me, he had given me a warning.

“Stay away from Almonester. Do not spend any more time in his presence than you have to, and by no means must you ever try to glamour him.”

The seriousness in Ian’s tone had me concerned, and I had asked, “Why, and how does he know what we are?”

Ian hadn’t explained. He gave me other instructions and warnings regarding living in a city when I had been born and raised in a small town. I had listened and agreed to most of it, but Almonester kept me curious.

I pressed for information. “Ian, about Almonester. Why shouldn’t I try to glamour him? You said I should practice because it’s still a challenge.”

He had embraced me, kissed me, and drew away. “If you try to, it will not work.”

That had made me nervous. Even my hometown friend Isabelle, who was a witch, was susceptible to glamouring if she wasn’t careful. As far as I knew, only a ghost wasn’t, which I had been in my past when I jumped from my body. In the end, I concluded there was much in the world I didn’t know and much for me to learn. I had no teacher, and my steps would falter along the way, but I kept my head up in hope someday soon things would turn around.

S
hortly after moving
to New Orleans, I discovered this was the city for me. Granted, Summit’s Edge was quiet and neighborly. Everyone knew everyone else almost since the day they were born. You were tolerant, if not friendly, with the folks in your neighborhood. Granted you might not know that among the population there lived a witch, a vampire, a ghost, and a killer—or two—but other than that we were just like any small town.

In New Orleans, with the people nearing four hundred thousand, there were many more opportunities for the unusual, for the dangerous, and for nonhumans to hunt. That’s where I came in and why I loved my new home despite my personal problems. As I stood on the corner of the narrow street, taking in the scents and sounds on the night air, the hunger in me increased. A few blocks away, a jazz band played live music. On a balcony, crowded with potted ferns, a woman whose pulse raced smoked a cigarette to calm down. In still another direction, a man who had had too much to drink, although it was hardly past seven in the evening, stumbled along an alley.

I took in all of this around me, and my fangs itched to sink into the neck of my prey. The woman was too close to home, the bar where the band played too filled with people, the man in the alley, disgusting because he was also unwashed. No, Ian had taught me where to go to feed, and I kept to his training to keep myself safe.

I zipped along the street, keeping to the shadows, and headed north to an area of the city Ian and I had decided was one of three locations to use as my hunting grounds. I varied them from night to night. Being young in vampire years, I had to feed often. Sometimes I could skip nights, but most often not.

Today I availed myself of a sober and clean human, thank heavens, and performed my little trick to ensure he wouldn’t remember me. With the man afterward sitting on a bench, his head in his palm as he waited for the dizziness to pass, I thanked him softly and whisked away on the wind.

You might think that as a somewhat sheltered woman by my upbringing, I should have been put off by the mere thought of drinking blood. Maybe
some
newly born vampires were. I don’t know. However, as I mentioned, I am different. I’m aware of a darkness within my heart that wasn’t there before.

I realize by all I have learned about my kind I am cursed, possibly separated from redemption for eternity. A vampire doesn’t know what’s on the other side of a staking or a walk in the sun. Maybe nothing, possibly regaining what was lost. What you should know of me is that when I awoke as a vampire, I had a lust for blood, one that threatened to send me mad. Only Ian saved me, but that desire didn’t die. I control it. So when you question if I am disgusted drinking a human’s blood, I ask in return, are you disgusted by your favorite drink or your favorite food?

I have never killed a human being. I have never even come close. I work and pay my bills. I am boring and ordinary. I just happen to be a vampire. Okay, and I happen to be losing my emotions. That could be inconvenient and might change my former assertions, but I hoped not.

At five minutes before I was due to take my place at the front desk, I arrived at work. Half a block down from the hotel’s service entrance, I stopped my high-speed advance and walked normally. My footsteps echoed on the sidewalk. The scent of mango shrimp with vermicelli rice noodles teased my memory of a time when I could eat normal food. I said I didn’t turn my nose up at blood, not that I didn’t miss chewing and the flavor of good southern cooking.

Horns honked from the direction of the front of the hotel, and a warm if humid breeze stirred my hair, bringing with it a hint of the Mississippi River. I supposed I was somewhat obsessed with smells. You would be too if your past included a time when you had no sense of smell at all, and now it was probably better than an animal’s.

“Rue,” called a familiar voice. “You’re cutting it close.”

Carl stood near the entrance smoking the long, slender cigarettes he favored. I had always thought his body matched those cigarettes. Carl stood at six foot four with a thin build. His toothy grin, displayed often, was his best feature. He waved a smoking bud in my direction before tossing it into the receptacle.

“We’re having a meeting.”

“Another one?” I moved past him into the hall and continued to the room where our meetings usually took place. Being the last to arrive, I made use of the wall near the door. Hotel staff of various stations loitered about, all in uniform, some chatting together happily, others annoyed at the inconvenience of the gathering.

“Let’s make this brief,” the hotel manager said. He held a clipboard, and wiped a handkerchief over his moist forehead. “I’m going to shift some people around tonight. We have a couple of temp folks coming in, but I need another half hour to fill in for them.”

The usual groans arose. I contemplated spending eternity in these meetings and doing this sort of work. I had once been an elementary school teacher, a vocation I had enjoyed. Unfortunately, during the time I had lost my physical body and had to exist as a spirit, I had to give up the job. Since there were no night elementary schools, I was still blocked from my preferred career.

“Rue!”

I stirred from my thoughts and focused on the manager. His high color indicated he had called my name more than once, and I detected an elevated heartbeat. I didn’t center on it because even if I had fed moments ago, the pulse from a human heart was like waving candy before a child. Best to focus on the manager’s expression of annoyance.

“Present,” I said, and a few snickers rose from the crowd. Did I mention vampirism brings on sarcasm? Truly, it does. Scout’s honor.

The manager’s temperature rose higher. “I need to switch around your schedule for tomorrow through the rest of the week.”

I had no problem with this and was used to working the desk, acting as a bellman, and even once or twice washing dishes in the kitchen. I did it all to get paid. The jobs were menial, and I had one requirement.

The manager flipped through the pages on the clipboard and scratched down some information. “Lloyd’s going on vacation, so you’ll fill in. He works from six a.m. until two p.m., so tomorrow, you’ll—”

“No.”

Heads swiveled in my direction. I froze, realized I was standing
too
still, and shifted my weight to the other foot. The manager threatened to pop a capillary. I hoped he wouldn’t.

“Excuse me?”

I tried my best not to stare at the bulging vein in his forehead.

“You’ll work where I place you. Everyone who gets hired here understands hours change. Sometimes you work early, sometimes afternoon or overnight. We don’t play favorites, and
everyone
pays their dues.”

I could talk to him later and attempt to change his mind. For some reason, my glamouring worked perfectly when convincing people to forget I drank their blood. Other times, not so much. Either I flubbed what I intended to say, or I tried too hard, and I’ll just say, I could use a little glamouring on myself to forget those incidents. If you’ll recall I have never killed a human. Let’s enjoy that stainless record and move on.

Someone elbowed me, and I glanced over to find it was Carl. His eyes were round, and the smile was absent from his face. “Say okay, or he’ll fire you,” he whispered under his breath. “He’s in a terrible mood.”

I turned back to the manager. The room lay in silence as everyone listened to the argument play out. “I will work any position,” I said, my voice more deadpan than I had meant it to be. “I don’t work days. I’m a night owl, and it shouldn’t be a problem since most people like the day shift.”

“It is a problem,” he snapped, and I knew this wasn’t going to end well for me, mainly because we were in a room full of his subordinates, and men tended to have that darn thing called an ego that they were bound and determined to protect. He stabbed the pen he held in my direction. “You’re going to take over Lloyd’s hours
permanently
, or you’re fired.”

Work the day shift in a sunlit lobby, not to mention frequently running out to the driveway to assist guests? He must be joking. I threaded my way through the crowd toward him, but a few people stepped aside. The closer I drew, the more frazzled the manager appeared. I smelled his nervous energy, bordering on fear. While he was a man of larger build and height than my small frame, a vampire gave off such a delightful aura. Humans didn’t know what it was they detected, but they sensed the threat even if they couldn’t pin down its source. I confess it was another plus to my makeup that I enjoyed. See? I said I was different.

Of course, I had no intention of hurting the man. Ian had informed me from night one. Humans feed us. We protect them. We do not hurt them, even if they are pompous blowhards too impressed with their positions.

I drew up before the manager and stopped. He quaked and then straightened his shoulders and stuck out his chest. I let him sweat out my intentions for a moment longer, feeling the rising tension in the room. Then I relented. “I guess I don’t work here anymore.”

As I spun away, Carl grasped my hand. “Rue, don’t go.”

I gave his hand a squeeze but kept moving.

“If you walk out that door, Rue, I’m not giving you a good reference,” the manager shouted after me.

I paused but gritted my teeth together and kept going. The back alley was deserted, and I stopped just outside the door and pressed a hand against the wall. What had I done? My own pride had made me walk out when I could have made nice and changed his mind later. Now, I had rent to pay and no job.

Great.

After frowning at the moon for a while, I started back home. This time, I moved at a less hurried pace. No sense rushing. I had nowhere to get to fast. The loss of my job didn’t get me too down. I had been wondering how long I would put up with the boring position. Of course, I wasn’t looking forward to job searching either. Oh well, I lived and I learned.