Page 2 of The Vampire and the Case of the Perilous Poltergeist

I flashed him a grin and batted my eyelashes. ‘Why don’t you say that louder? Are you afraid the little girl who handed you your arse might hear you?’

He couldn’t do anything to me, and he knew it. The academy would throw you out on your ear for lying, cheating, stealing or abusing another recruit. Thorsen had been pushing almost all those boundaries since we’d arrived nine weeks earlier though he hadn’t crossed the line – yet.

He’d flirted pretty hard with Margilene the first week. She’d reported him when he hadn't seemed inclined to listen to her polite instruction to ‘buzz off’, and he’d been warned about curtailing his unwanted advances. He didn’t need to add violence against another recruit to his already blemished record and I didn’t want to blemish mine, so I took the high road, ignored him and walked out.

We had fifteen minutes before we had to be back in the classroom and I wanted to text Connor. Thinking of my beau helped scrub the incident from my brain; Thorsen had to be in my physical presence sometimes, but he didn’t get any real estate in my mind.

Since we had a break, Sidnee and I hurried to the dorm room we shared with Margi. It was no coincidence that she was also a supernat, a witch. Margi was from the Deep South but she’d moved up from the lower forty-eight for a man. Once she was in Alaska the man had dumped her. What an asshat.

Other than Sidnee, Margi and me, there were only three other women in the academy and no female instructors. The other three women were all ped and slept in the next dorm over from us. The supernat men had also been segregated into one dorm on the other side of the break room. Separating the peds and supernats made it much easier for us to sneak out for our secret extra lessons that were focused on all things supernatural.

Each dorm was set up for four people but having only three of us in the small space was much nicer. The bathrooms were only designed for two – two sinks, two showers, two toilets – so someone always had to wait. Sometimes we only had fifteenminutes each to shower. Homesickness was already wracking me and I dreamed of a twenty-minute shower or maybe even a bath! Heaven.

I didn’t want to waste my break today in the bathroom; I needed contact with the outside world more than I needed to be clean. instead, I threw myself on my bed and reached into my footlocker for my phone.

There were three text messages waiting for me. Crap: what was wrong now?

Chapter 2

My gut clenched because the first text was from Gunnar. Was something wrong with Fluffy or Shadow? Had someone died? Had the beast beyond the barrier gotten through? If it were the latter, Gunnar would have had his hands too full to send me messages so I calmed my overactive imagination. I smiled as I opened it and saw pictures of a happy Fluffy, tail high in the air, and Shadow rolling around together.

I drank in the sight of them; I missed them so much. Another wave of homesickness hit me, something I’d never really battled with before. My home hadn’t been all that good but now I had a home to miss, friends, too, and a boyfriend only a fool would kick out of bed. Why on earth was I stuck in stupid Sitka when all I wanted was Portlock?

Before I could second guess myself, I hit dial and rang Gunnar. ‘What’s up doc?’ he answered and his jocular warmth flooded me.

‘Hey,’ I said as something in me settled. ‘How are you? How’s Sig?’

‘We’re both fine, Bunny, though we’re missing our girls.’

Our girls.I grinned.

‘How are you doing?’ Gunnar probed.

‘I’m okay. Thorsen is wearing me down.’

He grunted. ‘I did some digging after you complained about him last time. For some reason I can’t get his active file, but I can tell you why he has a chip on his shoulder. His dearest daddy is a senator so Thorsen has got delusions that he’s somebody. That’s probably why he didn’t get bounced for hitting on Margilene.’

I sighed. ‘It’s notwhatyou know, it’swhoyou know.’

‘You’re wrong, Bunny. And you’re gonna walk out of there with so much knowledge that you’ll prove that to him. Chin up. You’ve got this.’

I swallowed past the sudden rock in my throat.

‘Tell Bunny I send love!’ Sigrid hollered in the background. ‘And tell her we’re taking great care of Fluffy and Shadow!’

‘Did you hear that?’ Gunnar asked.

‘Hard not to.’ I smiled wryly. ‘She sure has a holler on her.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ he grumbled, but the affection in his voice was clear.

‘I’ve got to go. I just wanted to check in.’

‘Sure thing.’

‘Send our love to Sidnee too!’ Sigrid called.

‘I will. Speak soon, boss.’ I rang off.Home: it wasn’t even a place. I rolled my shoulders a few times then tackled the next message.

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