“I don’t mean it to be disrespectful. What I’m talking about is us, you know. Us dating, trying out a relationship. This isn’t about sex.”
It wasn’t? Now she was thoroughly freaked out. “There isn’t an us.”
“I just want to establish—”
“No! No establishing!” Tension whipped through her like a hurricane and she gripped her bag in her hands, suddenly wanting to pummel him until he went away. Until all of this just went away. Gone.
“But—”
“Gah!” she shrieked.
Wyatt’s eyes went huge. “Okay, damn, calm down. We won’t talk about anything important, how’s that? We’ll talk about the weather. It’s a nice night, isn’t it?”
Okay, now he was being petulant. It wasn’t her problem. Even if she felt a tiny bit bad. A lot bad. It wasn’t his fault that this was lousy timing. It wasn’t his fault Johnny was dead and Stella had thrown herself at him.
Feeling contrite, she said, “I’ve had better nights. But thank you for being here for me. I do appreciate it.”
His stiff shoulders relaxed. “You’re welcome. Let me know if you need any help with Johnny’s apartment.”
Yet another thing she didn’t want to think about. Going through Johnny’s stuff. Which reminded her. She reiterated, “That necklace wasn’t there, Wyatt. I would have seen it.”
“It has to be there. But what are you going to do with it anyway? Take Johnny’s blood and clone him?”
Oh, no he didn’t. “Excuse me?” she asked, her voice steely and unnatural even to her own ears.
“It’s there,” he insisted.
Stella followed up on her earlier impulse and whacked him on the arm with her purse.
“What the hell? What’s the matter with you?”
“You’re the matter with me! How could you even say something like that to me?” She hit him again, for good measure. Her purse tipped on its side and all its contents spilled all over the deck of the boat. “Shit!” She started chasing a rolling lipstick.
He bent over to help her and she held her hand up. “I’ve got it!”
Wyatt hesitated a second, but then he just shook his head. “Fine. You know where to find me if you need me.”
Stella sat back on her butt on the deck, deflated, watching him stomp off. He had a valid question. What the hell was the matter with her? She was pissing off the one person who was offering to help her. The other guys in the band had given her condolences but not a single one had offered to help with the arrangements for the wake or with Johnny’s effects. Just Wyatt. And she was shrieking at him like the banshees her mother had always told her about back in Ireland when she was a little girl.
After she cleaned up her purse mess, she should probably apologize. Or at least buy him a drink. Grappling around, she found her wallet, her keys, her compact. It was a bitch to apply makeup as a vampire because her skin was so pale, but she’d perfected the art of touch-and-go. Light powder, a swipe of nude lipstick. That was everything except her phone. Looking around, she didn’t see it. Fabulous. Her cell was gone.
Then she saw it had rolled along the deck, fallen off the edge, and down onto a dirty corner of the lower deck, which was closed off for their event. Stella sighed. Just what she needed. She knew she couldn’t reach it. Her options were to find a staff member and see if they would let her down onto the lower level. Or she could morph into bat form and snag it.
If she hadn’t consumed a large quantity of alcohol she might have reasoned out that option two wasn’t really much of an option as bats are generally not equipped to hold cell phones. She realized this a minute later and did what any drunk vampire would do—she tried to morph back on the tiny landing, promptly fell, and wound up face-first in the Mississippi before she was even sure what had happened.
It was cold. Wet. Dirty. And smelled like rotting fish and grease. Without hesitation, she went back into bat form, terrified she might swallow some of that seriously unhygienic river water. Granted, it wasn’t Dublin at the turn of the century, which had been a complete cesspool, but she was convinced there was a fair amount of funky in the Mississippi. As a vampire, she wasn’t going to catch a skin disease, but that didn’t make it any less gross.
Being in bat form wasn’t necessarily her favorite thing. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d done it. Probably in the ’80s right along with her last sexual activity. She’d been in a phase then involving teased hair and a love of spandex. Sometimes it had been nice to escape high-maintenance fashion and fly around.
Now she just wanted back to herself.
Only when she tried to morph back on the deck, she couldn’t.
What the hell.
She tried again.
Nothing.
It would seem she was drunker than she had realized.
Fabulous. She got to fly around until she sobered up. Just what she always wanted to do. Maybe she could lick some coffee to speed up the process.
When Wyatt reappeared on the deck a minute later, calling her name, she hid, suddenly embarrassed. She didn’t want him to see her like that. Which was stupid, but she was stupid. That’s what had been established in the last twenty-four hours. She was a big old idiot.
Besides, he would wonder why she didn’t change back and as a bat she couldn’t exactly tell him.
“Stella?” He stopped on the deck and looked around. When he spotted her purse, he swore.
He picked it up.
And that was the last thing Stella remembered that night.
Wyatt put Stella’s bag over his shoulder, calling her name again. He was worried. She never went anywhere without that purse. And there was nowhere to go on the deck but in the water. Leaning over, he scanned the river. No sign of her. But her phone was a few feet down on a ledge, and he reached for it, snagging it with one hand.
Leaning over made his head spin. Damn, he felt weird. Drunk, but a strange kind of drunk.
Woozy.
Climbing up onto the railing, because it seemed like the thing to do, Wyatt yelled, “Stella!” at the top of his lungs, suddenly feeling like he might have lost her forever. “Stella!”
And that was the last thing Wyatt remembered that night.
Chapter Three
A PARROT, A PRIEST, AND THE SLIGHT PROBLEM OF AN EXTRA VAMPIRE
REALLY? Damned sirens again?
Cort groaned, determinedly hauling the covers over his head.
Couldn’t these damned humans make it through one day of partying without the medics coming to deal with some idiot who drank seventeen hand grenades and now had alcohol poisoning? Or was it a couple of macho superegos who’d gotten into a barroom brawl, probably over a woman they both just met that night.