Page 2 of Cuddling Sucks in Coffins
“Nah,” Jacek said, crossing his arms.
I laughed.
Pretty sure he was packing a stiffy between his legs, but I didn’t want to stare. I did anyway though. Actually all of them were tenting in a major way while they looked at me like something to be worshipped.
Somehow, I turned my back on them and the erotic need pouring off of their insanely gorgeous bodies.
As soon as I shut the door behind me, my laughter still touching my lips, I steeled my spine at the sudden shift of atmosphere. Inky black shadows immediately blotted out the happy sultriness I’d felt inside. The still night air tasted thick and somehow unnatural, as if I were breathing in sludge.
Paul was near. It had to be him. He had this way about him that seemed to pull down gravity like a window shade, darkening everything. Weighing it down. Crushing it.
But not me. Not tonight, Paul.
My slayer beast mode switched on, but still, the hairs along the back of my neck spiked as I stepped off the porch. Nights lately came fast and cold as fall hurtled itself toward winter. I shivered myself farther into my leather jacket, already missing the warmth I’d just left.
Hiking up my duffel bag and gripping the night’s necessary tools tighter, I set off toward the graveyard next door. It wasn’t every day I headed there with a shovel and a blowtorch, but these were interesting times. More so than usual anyway. And that was really saying something since I was the vampire slayer.
The cemetery’s grounds man, Tim, had lost his life to Paul just a few a days ago, a fact that would never stop weighing on my conscience. Since then, someone else—sent by Podunk City, I guessed—had been locking up tight and not allowing me access inside the graveyard. So I’d had to smash every one of the shiny new locks. Waste of a perfectly good lock, if you asked me, but it was the best I could do for now.
After I closed the creaky gate behind me, I scoured the graveyard for movement, then swept along the path toward the mausoleum near the back with the name Appelt above the stone door. Whoever was buried inside had tried to escape up the steps recently. Odd for someone who’d been long dead. Impossible, too, since they werestilldead. Ah, the mysteries of dead people behavior. But where the coffin had previously been, there was a trapdoor that had refused to budge. Once my shovel, blowtorch, and I entered the mausoleum, it was sure to be a party to get that sucker open.
Was it a good idea to open random things I knew nothing about? No. Was I going to anyway? Signs pointed to hell yes. I was pretty sure my patronus was a curious cat.
I stopped in my tracks, an icy chill running along my scalp. It wasn’t the painful drill into the back of my skull that I’d come to associate with Paul, but...someone else.
Just then, the door to the mausoleum creaked open. My pulse slammed into my throat. Was I about to be joined in the graveyard by Mr. or Ms. Appelt, who’d somehow finally freed themselves from that pesky thing known as death?
Because I was a dumbass, I was carrying too many trapdoor-opening tools to swipe the stake from the bun on top of my head. So I ducked behind a nearby cherub statue and peered around it with one eye.
Darkness crowded the inside of the mausoleum, outlining something even darker. Something large.
Wasthis Paul, now at full power, and prepared to take me out himself this time? I swallowed several times in quick succession and coiled my muscles in preparation for an epic throw down. Whether it was mine or his, I was about to find out.
The figure stepped out, dark eyes searching. Not a watery blue like Paul’s. Not wearing a striped-sleeved bowling shirt like Paul. Moonlight glinted off a piece of silver stuck to his belt. A police badge. If that didn’t scream he was a cop, the rest of him sure did. Dressed in an ill-fitting gray suit and tie, he was youngish with thin lips twisted in a scowl and a blond buzz cut.
“Just take care of it,” he growled into the cell phone at his ear. Then he ended the call and stashed the phone in his back pocket. A pause. “Miss, you can come out. I know you’re here.”
Shit. I closed my eyes. No way he was talking to me. He was probably talking to the dead—
“Belle, right? I’ve seen you around.”
Damn it all to hell.
Taking a deep, silent-as-can-be breath, I started to place my tools and duffel bag on the ground in the hopes he wouldn’t see them. But the strap of my duffel chose that moment to skip down my arm and wind itself around everything imaginable just as he stepped behind the cherub.
“Yeah?” I tried to sound casual as if this were an everyday thing. For me it was, except usually without an audience. And usually without the shovel and flamethrower in my hands.
Well, this didn’t look suspicious at all.
His dark eyes took in the situation I was currently tangled in and then narrowed. “How did you get in here?”
“The lock was busted.” I jerked my head the way I’d come in case he didn’t know which lock I was talking about.
“You mind telling me what you’re doing here after hours?”
I couldn’t try the truth because I literally couldn’t tell humans what I was, and he’d never believe me anyway since humans forgot they’d seen vampires as soon as they looked away. “My cat snuck in here?” I hadn’t meant to ask it as a question since that wasn’t exactly how lies worked, so I nodded to confirm it.
“You always bring a shovel and flamethrower when you go looking for your cat?”
