Page 7 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Four

Two months earlier

Peter sat across from his employers at a small table near the back of the hotel’s bar. He considered it a small victory every time he kept from rolling his eyes.

They were paying him enough to cover his living expenses for a year. Eighteen months if he was frugal. He owed them the courtesy of not mocking them openly. Even if they were idiots.

“Do you have everything you need?” the man seated directly across from him asked. He appeared younger than the man to his right, dressed impeccably in a smart gray suit and a blue silk tie that matched his eyes.

Peter made a show of leafing through the papers they’d handed him. None would be useful, but they were paying him enough to pretend they were.

“Yes,” he said.

His employers stood from their chairs, the champagne they’d ordered an hour ago still untouched.

Of course, nobody at their table could consume anything served here.

Peter thought their ordering the most expensive bottle on the menu was both a surefire way to attract unwanted attention and wasteful.

Surely these people could have found better uses of their seemingly limitless resources than this.

He closed his eyes, reminding himself that it was not his place to criticize.

“Keep us updated,” the second man instructed. His name was John, and he looked about sixty, though Peter knew this bore no relation to his actual age. Like the champagne, John’s garish red plaid suit and matching pocket square seemed specially designed to draw attention.

“I will provide regular updates,” Peter agreed.

Of course he would. They had hired him to do a job.

Peter wondered if this was the first time they had ever done something like this.

Fortunately for all of them, this was not Peter’s first time.

Far from it. “Just so I’m clear, you do not wish for me to eliminate the subject. You only want me to—”

“Crack the safe,” the younger man said.

“And bring us its contents,” John added, smiling.

“Should be easy enough,” Peter said. He cleared his throat.

“Forgive me, but…I couldn’t help but wonder why we’re meeting here.

” He gestured to their surroundings. If the safe he needed to crack was in Chicago, why were they meeting here, in an out-of-the-way university town hours away in Indiana?

It wasn’t like Peter to question the people who hired him, but his curiosity had gotten the better of him.

“This is what I like about you, Mr.Elliott,” the man called John said, grinning at him.

“Always asking tough questions.” Peter wasn’t always asking tough questions, but he let it go.

“We have recently set up our operations at a warehouse here because no one suspects vampire masterminds in small university towns.” He leaned in closer. “Rent is cheaper here, too.”

Peter had no response to that.

“If there’s nothing further…” John said.

“Nothing,” Peter agreed.

His employers shook his hand, placed an absurd amount of cash on the table to cover the champagne, and excused themselves.

Peter stayed put for a long time after they left. He needed to feed soon. But for now, he contented himself with watching the people at the other tables, carefree and enjoying themselves.

He envied them that.

It was nearly seven the following morning when I blinked open my eyes.

Despite how exhausted I’d been, I’d slept fitfully. Simply knowing Peter was in my living room had woken me up several times throughout the night.

My first class was in an hour, though. Tired or not, I had to get ready.

I pulled my robe over my pajamas, then removed the sound-buffering wind spell I’d put under the door the night before.

I listened closely for hints that Peter was still there.

He’d said he’d be gone first thing, but I was dubious.

Though most vampires could function during the day, those stereotypes about nocturnal vampires preferring the night were based on truth.

When I cracked open my bedroom door, Peter was hunched over my coffee table, reading through the journal he’d shown me the night before. His focus was so intense he didn’t notice me watching him.

Did he have to be so attractive? It was inconvenient as hell.

He wore the same clothes he’d had on the night before, but his simple black-T-shirt-and-blue-jeans combo really freaking worked on him.

I watched as a lock of slightly-too-long hair fell into his eyes before he pushed it to the side.

The sunlight streamed in through the living room window, bringing out highlights I hadn’t noticed earlier.

Hints of auburn glinted amid his dark brown strands in the morning light.

As if he could feel my eyes on him, he lifted his head and glanced in my direction. I quickly looked away, feeling like an idiot for having been caught staring.

“Uh…” I muttered towards the windowsill. “Good morning.”

Peter’s brows furrowed in irritation. As though my presence were an annoyance, taking him away from something important. And then, as if realizing that he was behaving rudely—which he was; this was my home after all—his eyes softened. “Good morning,” he said. “Um. Sleep well?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “But it’s fine. I frequently don’t.”

His forehead creased. “No?”

I shook my head. “I tend to drink caffeine too late at night.” My yearslong love affair with caffeinated beverages did frequently wreak havoc on my sleep schedule, though, of course, last night’s insomnia had nothing to do with it.

“Oh,” Peter said, not sure what to do with this. “I’m…sorry to hear that.”

I moved into the room, sitting down in the chair opposite him. Peter’s eyes met mine before flicking down to my bare legs, lingering there a beat too long. I flushed with the attention before chiding myself for waltzing in there in a robe that barely covered my ass.

I grabbed the fleecy throw draped over the back of my chair and covered my legs. “Going over your journal?” I asked, nodding at his notebook.

“Yes,” he said, before closing it on a frustrated sigh. “I’ve been going over the entries, hoping they might jog my memories. It was one of the only things on me when I woke up with amnesia, so I assume it was once important to me.”

“Has it helped?”

“No.” His disappointment was palpable. Even though the last thing I wanted was to start caring about this person, I felt bad. “Some of the entries are cryptic notes with nothing but a date, a location, and a few words I have no context for. Others are sketches.”

My eyes widened. “Sketches?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Of buildings and whatnot. I wonder if I was a traveling architect. Or something.” He paused, considering. “But I don’t remember making the designs or visiting any of these places.”

Peter stood up stiffly, stretching his arms over his head and closing his eyes on a quiet groan. Had he managed to sleep at all on that tiny couch? His shirt rode up a little as he moved, leaving bare a two-inch strip of pale skin just above the waistband of his jeans.

I stared, before I realized what I was doing and looked away.

Gods. I was acting like someone in one of my romance novels. Not that I’d ever read one where a secret witch ogles the hot vampire she’d just let crash on her couch.

“Can I take a shower before I go?” Peter’s question cut into my self-recriminations. “The bus terminal doesn’t have one. It’s been a while.”

“Oh, sure.” I pointed towards my bedroom. “You need to walk through there to get to the bathroom.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That okay?”

I thought of my secret stash of just in case supplies. “Yeah. But stay out of my closet.”

He nodded. “Of course.”

Once I heard the shower running, I made myself toast and coffee so I wouldn’t have to start work uncaffeinated or on an empty stomach. Becky had brought homemade apple butter into the studio for everyone last week and I slathered some on my toast as a treat.

While I munched, my eyes drifted to Peter’s journal. The urge to leaf through it was strong. I had many good traits, but keeping my nose out of other people’s business had never been one of them.

As much as I didn’t want to get mixed up in whatever Peter’s deal was, I was curious about who he had been.

Maybe I could even help him. His journal entries might not ring any bells for him, but I’d been all over the world multiple times.

Maybe seeing dates and places might give me ideas on who past-him had been.

No. This was none of my business, and it needed to stay that way. I picked up the journal from the coffee table, then placed it on the rickety table by my front door so I wouldn’t be tempted.

To my surprise, the table didn’t wobble at all.

Peter walked out of my bedroom a few minutes later, fully dressed except for his shoes. Seeing him with damp hair and in his socks first thing in the morning was so unexpectedly intimate I had to look away.

“Thanks for the shower,” he said. “And for letting me stay last night.”

“Of course.” I pointed to the table by the door. “So, I know this is a weird question, but did you do something to that table? I got that thing used for five dollars, and it’s always wobbled. Except now it doesn’t.”

“Yes,” he said. “I fixed it.”

I blinked at him. “Seriously?”

He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

“What did you fix it with?” I did not and never had owned a single tool. If I needed something fixed, I either used magic or paid someone to take care of it for me.

He waggled his fingers. “These. It just needed a nut tightened. All you need for that is your hands if you know what you’re doing.”

Each of his large fingers was easily twice the width of mine. How had he managed to manipulate something as small as a nut with nothing but his bare hands?

“Well,” I said, trying to cover my surprise. “Now I know, I guess. Thanks for doing that.” I smiled at him. “That wobble was pretty annoying.”

“It was nothing.” He walked towards the front door, where he’d set his shoes and his duffel bag. “Guess I’ll be going.”