Page 60 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness

"I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear."

— Mina Harker, Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1897

Chapter Twenty

Mina

Grimm Cove,South Carolina, eighteen years later…

“Mom,everyoneelse is allowed to go tonight. Why can’t I?”

I climbed down from the ladder I’d been on and eyed my teenage daughter.

She was standing in our dining room wearing a T-shirt that said, “Vampires Suck” and a pair of shorts that were so short they nearly left butt cheek showing. Her long, dark hair was piled into a high, messy bun on top of her head. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she had a hip popped out. If Willa were here, she’d have called her my twin.

When it came to attitude, Temperance “Tempi” Murray was totally my twin. I often wondered if I had been that difficult to deal with when I’d been seventeen. If so, I owed alotof people apologies.

I laid the scraper that I’d been using to remove old wallpaper from the wall on the ladder’s shelf and gave my daughter a pointed look. “Did everyone else get in trouble for fighting at school two days ago? Did everyone else get caught making outwith a college-aged boy last week? And did everyone else boost a car two weeks ago?”

Honestly, I could have listed more things, but that felt like enough to get my point across. I walked past Temperance on my way to the kitchen.

She rolled her eyes dramatically, and it was like looking in a mirror. She followed me into the kitchen. “Boost a car? You make it sound like Hannah and I hot-wired it or something and led police on a three-state chase. We didn’t.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Sure, wecouldhave hot-wired it since Hannah had read how to do it, but there were keys in it. We just borrowed it. And it was returned without damage.”

I gave her a hard look. She knew damn well what she and her cousin had pulled.

She groaned. “Mom, come on. Marcy said it was all right. She’s who told Hannah and me where the keys were. We didn’t steal anything.”

Marcy Dotter-Van Helsing was married to Abraham “Bram” Van Helsing, who just so happened to be the same Van Helsing mentioned in Stoker’s novel. In real life, he didn’t just hunt demons; he shared his body with one. I hadn’t gotten the full story on it all, but I was guessing it was a doozy. Marcy was a witch of some sort, and I was guessing even more than that, but I hadn’t wanted to pry.

We stayed at the Van Helsing estate the first week we’d been back in Grimm Cove and that was enough for me. One week of watching grown men who were trained demon hunters chase around a squirrel with a fetish for Italian leather shoes, a raccoon named Buffy (after the slayer), and a master vampire feared and respected by so many, fold like a cheap suit the second his wife mentioned bubble baths had been more than enough for me. Not to mention, there were always dozens of people there.

Temperance had loved our time at the estate. She and Hannah enjoyed playing with Burgess (the squirrel) and at some point, Buffy the Raccoon had started following my daughter around like a trained puppy.

When I’d found this house listed for next to nothing because of its condition, I’d jumped on it, wanting away from the chaos. I wasn’t used to living with so many people anymore. When I was little, our family home was nearly identical to the Van Helsing estate, minus the wildlife. It was always filled to the brim with slayers and hunters—heck, even supernaturals since my father was big on making peace, not war.

A piece of me missed that, but it didn’t quite feel the same with the Van Helsings. They, along with their extensive network of friends, had been nothing but welcoming. Even so, I’d enjoyed the last week of being in my own place. Sure, it needed a ton of work, and I missed living with my sister, but it kept me busy. It also gave me the perfect excuse to get out of plans Marcy kept trying to make for us.

I’d been actively avoiding her because of the amount of excessive cheer she always had. It confused me and made me uncomfortable. How anyone could be that happy all the time was baffling. Then there was the fact she’d started calling and texting me three days back, telling me congratulations on the new baby and how happy she was my mate and I decided to stay in Grimm Cove. I wasn’t pregnant. To be pregnant, I’d need to be sexually active. Something I’d not been since the woods with Drac all those years ago.

Try as I might to explain to Marcy that I wasn’t expecting a baby, she kept saying it. She was also insisting on throwing a belated wedding celebration for me. I didn’t bother asking who the groom was in her mind. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

I’d been introduced to a guy who was a deer-shifter the other day. He was good looking but was already drinking a beer atbreakfast time—never a good sign. If I pushed Marcy too hard for answers to her weirdness, she might decide to try to fix me up with him.

I’d have questioned her logic, but Marcy talked to squirrels. What was the point?

It took me a second to realize Temperance was still trying to plead her case. There was a party happening on campus tonight to kick off the new school year and she’d gotten an invite. The “hell no” had flown out of my mouth before she’d even finished giving me the details. She was still in high school, granted she was a senior, but she had no business at a party on campus where there would be drinking and God only knew what else happening.

Telling her had made me the bad guy. The stick-in-the-mud mom who was out to ruin her life. Queue the dramatics. Suddenly, I thought of Drac and how he would have handled the situation, had he been present in her life. Would he have talked me down from my firm stance? Would he have taken an even firmer one?

Guilt twisted at my gut. I’d tried to find him after everything had happened. I didn’t have an actual name to go from and looking for tall, dark and doable didn’t get me anywhere. Too bad there wasn’t a public database that tracked guys who could create darkness and make a woman orgasm in record time.

He'd have been the top result—I’m sure.

Then again, maybe, had I found him and been able to tell him I was pregnant with his child, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with her or me. Maybe I was just a fun romp he had one night in the woods. Maybe he had perfected the art of seducing young women, saying all the right things to get what he wanted, and then moving on.

Or maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have wanted to play house with him. There was a time in my life I wouldn’t have believeda vampire could make a good father. But I’d seen Bram Van Helsing with his adult daughter, Dana, and he cherished her.

None of it mattered. Drac wasn’t part of my life, and as far as I knew, wasn’t even aware he had a daughter with me. My heart hurt for Temperance. She used to ask me about him when she was little, wanting details I couldn’t give her. Not because I didn’t want to. I couldn’t give her what I didn’t have.

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